Amsterdam journal, returning from Belgium

26 Saturday. We returned from Brussels late, and went to a meeting for Wereld Scriveners in Amsterdam, a group of foreign writers who want to create an avenue for publication, and recognition. I found the problems, typical and depressing translator Kavlijn Stoeffer put it this event together. Vins sits and listens to me give voice to my misery. I’m too tired to write, as usual. I’m hoping for some quiet time to recollect my thoughts, etc., in the near future.

Later Jan calls Vins, and they talk for quite some time. I rouse myself from sleep. Jan says, you are waking from a dream. And though I’m depressed, I wake up a bit from the depression. He says, this is the state I was in when I came back from San Francisco and only now am I coming out of it. He said, now I am more focused, literally, and have gained clarity with the Hasselblad camera. The slowness of the cameras system gives him reflective time.

I have not written about Jan or Vins because it has been too painful. Vins is snorting in the kitchen because I am talking to Jan, I am unused to this jealousy which is not entirely unfounded, I might add, but what am I to do when Vins says Jan called in order to talk to you. What am I to say to him when nothing ever happened between us? 

Jan wants me to come to dinner tomorrow in Lissel but Eric Vleugels is coming over. I am looking forward to seeing him again. As much as I hate to say no to Jan I can’t see any way out of this pickle. It is so banal, so tragically human as to be nearly comical. Maybe I will laugh later.