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Everyday another little bit of the house gets organized, and things in the studio are moved out.

1. The mosaic mural in the shower. 2. Detail of shower. 3. New hat rack. 4. The living room. 5. Ruth's room. 6. Counseling corner. 7. Bronco Bob at InCahoots. 8. Bronco Bill there too.

Yesterday, one of the characters in Assassin showed up. No, not the exact character, but one of the people that "Martina" was modeled after, or at least part because Martina is a composite of at least four women I have known in my life. But the central persona, showed up in person. I was surprised because I figured I would never ever see her again, nor did I have any wish to see her again--not out of anger or bitterness, but just that she was a very rich desert and one helping was entirely enough.

As for the daily humdrum, I continue to finish details now on the outside of the house and think about decorating the party which is only two weeks away. Did I say I am getting hysterical?

You may be following the conclusion of ASSASSIN. http://kewolve.com/Assassin.htm Believe it or not I am almost in the last pages but not quite yet...anyway here is up to date....

Santiago sat at the table under the avocado tree and laughed. He could not believe how much had occurred in one week as he edited the scrawl in the last pages of the second book. The best and the worst events always came together and after 60 years he no longer understood which experience was the one to follow. The agent in London said an advance of $15,000 was deposited in his bank account. and the book would be published sooner than expected. Money could finally be something to touch. That was good.

My Lai returned every morning at 3 AM, each time six faces taunting and calling him an assassin. In the day hours a different oriental face tortured him. Santiago was falling into booby-trap love even though he told himself, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN.

Irony was my song. Anna went back to merry-old and I returned to the Restonica Gorge with the repeat purpose of refreshing my memory of this groove in the earth--this time it was a mad twist of the Cosmic Road Show. I was with my daughter and the Oriental Beauty, Yokomi. Once again I was under the spell of the Restonica, the tantric two-step valley. I remembered Martina wrote in her letter, 'The mountains are High," and a decade later I was beginning to know what she really meant.

I was a maniac, a slave to sex--call my condition what you want--the reality of energy. I wanted to be with a woman, beautiful, exotic in mind, compelling in nature, full intrigue of the female mystery. I the man, the simple plain-ass simple dip-shit balls-in-the-head-man.

Being that incarnation, I was not confused thinking anything else (like money) could substitute the delightful torment a certain woman could design--the inflection of voice, the flutter of an eyelid, the gentle sashay of the hips, yet so absent from Anna. She was almost as much a man as me. The turn around of one woman to the next can be dazzling.

There was Yokomi, sleeping like a child, next to me, next to my daughter in my tent.

She was there because of my rampant nuts--the mad penis search for the primal snatchola--me the demented shaman looking for the sacrificial pussy I could penetrate at sunrise. I was disgusted with my melodramatic NEVER NEVER nonsense and falling into fantasy. All it took was the subtle batting of Oriental eyelashes in the dark drum beat of one night.

I drove Tara and Becky the Australian up into the mountains to find the techno-rave. For an hour we could not find the road Sophie said led to the abandoned stone building that was once a jail for Corsican bandits. I stopped the Renault at the edge of a precipice overlooking a long valley and listened. In a moment we heard a steady thump coming from the opposite hillside. There were dim lights, then the flash of car headlights. In another moment we bumped up a jeep trail to a two-store ruin. Cars were parked around the base and an eerie flickering light filled the holes that were once windows and doors.

Sophie came to the entrance and waved, then Yokomi stepped next her and smiled like a full moon. I heard Tara say to no one in particular, "Oh fuck, I should have known."

Yokomi and I talked for a few minutes with the buzz and lights of the portable Rave machine bouncing around us. There were only a dozen or so people--no one dancing.

Yokomi's attention drifted as I babbled something about the weirdness of having a dance in a incarceration stone building. Her eyes flicked to the side occasionally. Tara was talking intensely with the young man that was at Sophie's party. Yokomi eyes held curiosity but nothing else.

"So tell me, are you two together?" I said and raised my chin toward the young stud.

Yokomi gave that inscrutable legend smile of the Orient and said, "For the time being..."

" You remember Erik of course. He was very interested with your daughter at Sophie's party," she said.

"Yeah hi. Well, it's been nice talking," I said. Two is company and three is blow it out your ass and cry baby. I began a search for booze or dope trying not to kick myself too much for being an idiot. Yokomi was a babe, why would she want an old goat? She had Erik the Nordic God.

People started to arrive and gradually drift toward the center of the large room and dance. The walls were bare buff colored stone. About 20 feet up there were pieces of broken and burnt wood beams which had once been the second floor. Only a portion of the roof covered the back section and stars blinked dimly into the neon and colored spot lights set up around the disc jockey's equipment. The noisy monotonous thump banged around my head so it was better to move to it than let a hole be drilled through my skull.

I was angry with myself and dancing helped release the sexual frustration. I needed to turn my brain off. I let the pounding vibrations persuade take charge. What the hell, I began to find the inner Techno-Zorba, I thought and laughed out loud. Freedom came with the sweat and transformed me to a primitive rutting machine.

It was at that point that Yokomi came out to the dance area and flashed me the inscrutable stuff and once again I went for it. We went like pagans around each other while the air smoldered voodoo and the music blurred on the night. We danced an through three of the bumping tunes then her eye seemed to get stuck on a sharp corner of the room. I went in a circle so not to blow my cool and get a glimpse. It was the Nordic God leaning against the wall, being unconcerned, talking with Tara, playing cool. It worked.

Yokomi left the floor and I continued to dance knowing she was just a momentary illusion. Yet I took the lesson of Erik. Paying any attention to her killed her curiosity. Hey, two guys can play that game. So I was cool. It worked again. In five minutes Yokomi was dancing seduction in my eyes. We talked about going camping together sometime. We danced until the morning sky began turn burn magenta through the hole in the roof. Then suddenly Yokomi said, " Don't forget about camping. It will be fun," then she followed Erik as he went out the door.

Tara and Becky appeared and said they wanted to go. The magic ball was apparently over and I didn't even get a glass shoe.

"Santiago, we dance the fuck again oui? I make big fete this weekend and we fuck the world. I make sure Yokomi is there oui?"

"Sure Sophie, but make sure she brings her boyfriend--I know Tara would like that..."

"Yeah sure, maybe you make a trade. Erik is too young for her. She needs mature stuff."

Tara and I left a few minutes later. My wad of sexual energy was wasted, but I was gratified—a young beautiful woman had teased me. She said she wanted to see me again. Maybe that is good as it gets when you are an old geezer. Sophie grabbed me by the arm as I was getting in the car.

“Remember—we do mad fuck again next fete,” and then she laughed. “Yokomi fuck you good time, oui?”

“Sophie, I am fucked up enough. She is too young—I am too old. What do I want with more trouble?”

Sophie pulled her big hot lips next to my ear and said, “Mon cher, you fuck for trouble. You a man.” Her English was bad but she knew what she was saying.

How little is captured in words of what actually has happened...describing what is around me. At best I am drawing a thin cartoon of an incredibly ornate tableau. The sun is rising above the jagged ridgeline piercing the pitch black poles of pine, skidding across the stone skull of the distant mountain. River banks melt like ice cream as frigid glacial waters carry away another billion years of the smallest grains of the observable universe down to Mother Mediterranean. I write the scene with flowery words that make serious writers laugh. Fuck them, dry or juicy, words catch only the shadows.

When I was camped with Anna in this valley and her sex encased my body I felt nothing. If she was the woman I had desired with passionate heart, that lustful tongue would have been sweet. But she was not the woman. Her song of love was whispered to a deaf man even as her lips slipped down onto a habitual stiffened cock. She was an aging magician playing the spontaneous skin flute. If only she had been the woman I wanted it would have been a miracle, but she was only a tease of an old dream. I feel so bad for Anna who gave love, but was not loved.

Anna knows I am an asshole. It was not the first time she had been fucked by me. But now she has returned to her dreary England and telephones me trying to resurrect my disease by talking about our sexual moments not knowing her words make me nauseous with the memory. I tell her what I must as an old friend but as a lover, a man I remain a complete asshole. I nervously slither out of the conversation and promise her more lies intro the future. All the women who have known me know I’m an asshole. Six people I killed in their very last moment of existence looked at me with that look—you are an asshole. It's good to know who you are.

I carry on with the game. I jump out of one rumpled rut into the next. Always the disease of men, that little pole of erection directing traffic. The Oriental Beauty is in the crossing. But she appears to be as duplicitous as the average man with nuts. She loves to get stoned on hashish and wine. Maybe she is just plain crazy. She acts out her life with spontaneous moments that have no content, no underlying meaning. She accepted the veneer of my play because I spoke her inner language in a country where we were both foreigners. I was interested in her art. That was my tricky little ploy---you know, I like I give a shit about art after all. At the techno dance she told me she didn't have anything to do for a couple days, so I invited her to go camping with Tara and me. The next thing I know I am back in the Restonica in a tent with my daughter and her.

We spent two days together, Tara doing her best to remind me I was an old goat chasing young women. I ignored her of course. On walks up the mountain trails occasionally Tara would either be ahead or behind and Yokomi and I would have insular moments. I asked her directly which is an alien manner to Japanese culture if she was interested in me as a friend or if there was any romantic notion. She answered with another puzzle, that she not only had a thing going with young Erik but also there was a Hungarian she had met in India and maybe she wasn't over him quite yet. But that was just the opening. She said she never had an affair with an older man, then gave me that inscrutable oriental face thing. Well, I may be a fool but I can take a hint as well as a boot in the mouth.

Either way of what that mysterious smile was about, I could have played the role. I may have snagged her like a trout on a finger touch line, but the truth was my ego got hurt. Yeah I was an old goat just like my daughter was saying. Playing the game meant wearing the mask of a cheap trickster, not so much to her as to myself. As it was I did things from her view point of culture that were repulsive. I coughed up big gobs and spat into the forest. My sandals smelled like sour feet. I didn't cover my armpit stench with deodorant. Since Admiral Perry, the Japanese predilection for bodily cleanliness has been legendary, and I carried around the fumes of Armageddon. So much encouragement for elderly sex appeal.

If that was not bad enough I began to talk about me. Typical male bullshit. And I carried on telling her about my former life with Tara's mother, Martina and Dark Eyes and all the rest of my spent seed vessels. I could visibly see Yokomi's mind run off into the woods.

After the two days we returned to the Farm. Yokomi gave me an international "ciao" farewell kissing me French style on both cheeks. I felt like Grand Pa. The "Angel" I had been looking for flew away again. What a fucking idiot. Would I never learn?

All of the women, all of the lies, all of the years of jumping from one riddle to the next, all of it made me feel not just stupid but sick in the soul. I was an assassin that killed not only innocent strangers and random lovers but my own spirit. Okay, this time I was going to clear my head and become a saint. Okay, that is shit. Tara and I had only two weeks left in Corsica, so if I couldn't be a saint I could try being a father. I had money in the bank and for once could spend a few bucks on my little girl.

In the late afternoon, Eloise came down to the pool bungalow and told me, "Oscar and I have decided to have another little barbeque before you return to America, and thought it would be good if all your friends could come. Would that be all right with you?" But before I could answer she ask she gave me a curious wink and said, " I say how did that camping expedition go?"

I knew she was asking because she had seen me fall all over myself at the previous party. I kept her informed of my besotted on-going soap opera condition as it progressed towards the eminent romantic disaster. Her only comment had been "I have no idea how so much of nothing can happen over so little of anything."

"Oh, I had a great time," I said, "and Eloise, you will be the first to know if I get involved in further nonsense."

"Really, it isn't any of my business, but the way Tara was talking your meeting with this young woman, I thought you perhaps had found another challenge."

I saw the slight lift in the straight line of her thin lips. "I promise Mother Confessor, if I get into any mischief you will hear it from me, but I think I am finally learning not to be such a fool."

Eloise chuckled. "Don't be daft. Men are perpetual fools and that is why we love you so."

The fire was burning down to coals in the barbeque pit. The sun dropped behind the western ridge of the valley. A gold blue light filtered over the green of the vegetable fields. The leaves of the avocado tree were black in the fading color of the evening. Smoke from charcoal drifted towards the river. Open bottles of Domaine Peraldi and salads were laid out on a long plank table. Jamahl monitored the chicken and sausages on the grill.

So... what I have been doing in between finishing details in the house has been out in the studio.

For the first time since I was a kid in high school I have been painting "western" themes albeit, in my own weird ass eclectic mode. Also I put together some of the broken tiles from the disaster kiln wreck that happened in Las Cruces, so not all was lost to accident.

1. Bronco Bob again. 2. Bronco Bill again. 3. The Gay Caballero this time in a fiesta outfit. 4. Another bronco buster. 5. The Dying Warrior 1. 6. Dying Warrior 2. 7. The tiles in shower detail. 8. The shower. 9. Me posing as an old goat in the desert.

1. Ruth puts the ceiling right. 2. Gina follows the big dog. 3. She trails the guy. 4. Clouds building in evening. 5. Shiloh on the hunt trains under-puppy. 6. Shiloh camouflaged. 7. Ruth walks in her world, thinking redecoration.

We are at the last of doing the main part of the house before I start working outside getting ready for the big day of September 7th. Ruth is determined to make her little spot more soothing with calm colors and decorative touches. I wait for it to be over.

1. My beautiful and romantic adventurous daughter and I had lunch yesterday. She told me all about her plans of journey across the west side of Africa. I tried my best to keep my mouth shut and not panic. Her mother and I did even crazier things, so it is our fault our little girl has a rare strand of lunacy. That was the wonderful part of the day.

2. Some where in the course of beaucratic madness at the end of the day I was waiting for my number to come up on the magic billboard of MVD. I got to the counter ten minutes to five and the lady was handing me the plate when I tried to pass her my credit card. She pulled back the plate and flicked her eyes and thumb to my right where there was a big bold ONLY CASH CHECKS OR MONEY ORDERS NO CREDIT CARDS sign. I looked in my pocket knowing I left the check book at home.

3. Coming home can be the best part about everything, especially when you have a young puppy following an old Alfa dog.

4. We go for little walks together down in our own piece of heaven. Yesterday I lost GinaLolaBrigida for a terrifying ten minutes in the bush. I know there are things down there that are just waiting for a little snack to pass by. That won't last too long.

Sometimes I get that old sensation, that I have to get up and go do something meaningful immediately. I don't know where or when this peculiar human neurosis began but it has been a constant since I was a child.

However, lately I have been repeating a mantra in my head that slowly seems to be working.

It is this: YOU ARE NEARLY 64 YEARS OLD, AND YOU ARE RETIRED SO ENJOY WHAT IS LEFT.

What that means is instead of me going off in mad pursuit of fortune and fame I wait for Ruth to revise the honey-doo list.

In fact, even without the list of honey-doo there is enough projects on our 12 plus acres to keep me busy for the next 30 years...hmmm...let me see that takes me up to 94, then what?

Today I go get our camper trailer insured and licensed so maybe we can schedule a week or two someplace where both of us do nothing but act RETIRED. That would be just fine.

If you looked at the web site on him, of course it only gives a little of the story of his life.

The most simple thing I can say about Charles was that even though his art may not have been totally original, he certainly was. I have met very few characters like him, in fact none. He was unique.

I was just about to leave Corsica when our friend Rollie said, "Stop, I have a house for you!" We went to the house on the river, Charles called "La Ranch" and there he was packing his car with suit cases. He said, "You here to watch the house?" I expected an examination of my character before he would turn over such a beautiful place to a complete stranger. I said yes and waited. He handed me the keys , got in his car and started the engine and said, "Okay goodbye." I could not believe he was just going to drive away with nothing more. "Wait, what about the electricity and phone and when will you return and and...." He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "Don't worry I cover everything and I see you in a year or so." With that he backed out the driveway with his beautiful young wife and sure enough I did not see him until 16 months later, having lived in his house and he paid for the works.

Anyway, I have been trying to return to a former character I once was and that was when I was a painter, and I don't mean house.

Though it may be hard to detect, Charles influenced me greatly in the the style he had which if not unique, was completely free hand and exact. He was a true artist. If he did not paint a picture a day his bank account went down, and that was how he looked at it, not really that different from Rubens of Rembrandt. Charles was very successful. Everything he painted he sold. Not many artists can say that.

So here I am again, trying trying trying to go back to that beautiful freedom I had once upon a time when I was a painter.

I wouldn't mind if I sold a painting a day, or even painted one picture a day, but I doubt that will ever happen.

1. The door to my studio. 2. Wall mural detail. 3. Wall mural detail. 4. Bronco Buster Bill. 5. Bronco Buster Bob. 6. Gay Caballero

For some reason yesterday, I began thinking about an artist I once knew in Corsica. I thought about the last time I saw him when he was on his death bed, lucid, astute, proud and unafraid but still a skeptic of what life is.

Oddly enough he remembered everything about me and my family the last meeting we had ten years before. He was also very kind to the little girl that I was chaperoning that day and to my surprise, she who ordinarily was a problem brat, was very attentive and kind in return.

The artist was Charles Levier, http://www.anne-french.com/Paintings%20by%20Charles%20Levier.htm was 83 and only had a few weeks left to live. I had lived in his house on the Gravone river for over a year with my family, being a caretaker to the property. The house was for sale then, at a small price of $250,000. Of course that was a fortune to me then, but now the property is probably worth 2 million.

Anyway, why I was thinking of Charles I don't know but what came to mind was when I saw him he was alone, coughing with lung cancer and more or less cursing the fickleness of existence. His young German wife was away shopping or what not and according to Charles, did not give a fig about his well being.

I saw the property this summer, it looked in good condition and as far as I know the young wife did well with the estate, being she got everything in the end.

What conclusion I came of Charles sad end, was how lucky I am to not be alone and dying in a small room by myself. Even though death is a solitary experience, the thought of going to that edge of oblivion alone is very sad.

We had a long hard day yesterday so Ruth wanted to relax in our new 120 gallon bath tub. Hey it's big enough to have a family outing in it.

1.Gina the new pup is having a meeting with Scarlet. 2. Ruth prepares the bath. 3. Ruth in heaven. 4. Lots of suds. 5. Gina wants to swim. 6. Suds enough for the family.

A few days of meeting old friends at the Mine Shaft Tavern, watching the characters of town swapping stories and the most new event, introducing Shiloh to our new puppy, GinaLolaBrigida, or the short version Gina. She is pit bull and labrador.

1. Dwight Miller, my first friend in New Mexico from 1986. 2. Dwight and family meet Ruth. 3. Peter Mahl who will be with his band at our party. 4. Some of our friends. 5. Shiloh inspects Gina.

I am slightly hysterical because I want the place to look as good as we make it, but there is just so much yet to do, like finishing the outside. The entire new extension has to be closed in both on the bottom near the foundations and up at roof level.

I have to keep reminding myself it is just a single-wide trailer that has had its walls knocked out and it is pretending to be a house. Anyway, the party is not really about impressing the world or even our Madrid hippie contingent...

Well...big numbers. Ruth at 55 and me at 64. together 119 years of chaos in one place at one time.

Corsica not only seems like another life ago, it feels like we were never there aside from still paying for it.

Life goes on and especially when it comes to Ruth's plans for the house. So at last the living room is nearly done and both of us are happy.

Next the cabinet in the hallway and then on to putting the rock facing around the new extension...all of that before we have our BIG BIRTHDAY BANG in September.

1. Jezebelle knows her place. 2. The TV center. 3. The new coffee table. 4. The bar.