Yes!

Trip Start Sep 07, 2006
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Trip End Dec 19, 2006


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Friday, September 15, 2006

(The Dolphins, Amsterdam, September 29-30, 2006)-It's a beautiful Friday night on the Liedseplein and I've been back in town for two weeks already! Yes! This is more like it. From the first evening of my return, sitting out in front of the Sensi Museum Coffeeshop with the usual suspects-Larry Hayden, Steve Dumach, Andrew Jones, Wild Bill and the rest-I'm basking in the special vibration that hums through this lovely city, where a group of friends can sit at little tables out on the sidewalk and drink coffee or have a beer and smoke joints and relax and have a few laughs without ever thinking about the police, or armed civilians, or religious fanatics butting into one's affairs.

Yes! Hundreds of people walk by on the Oude Doelenstraat, people of every ethnic persuasion, speaking to one another in languages of every description while dozens of bicycles pedal by and taxicabs and little cars and delivery vans make their way through the human traffic-and no one person gives a fuck about what we're doing at the Sensi or stops to pry into our business. No one! What a gas!

My life here in Amsterdam is a blessing. Each day is a blessed event, fully accepted in the spirit in which it is given me, cherished and lived to the full. On Monday, October 2nd, I'll make 65 years old, and I'm in the best shape I've been in since 1966. I'm 50 pounds lighter than when I turned 50, I'm keeping my blood sugar levels reasonably under control, minding my diet, sleeping well every night, doing my little set of exercises in the morning, taking long walks along the canals every day, and when I wake up Monday I'm going to be an ex-smoker at last.

I don't own anything, I don't have any bills, I don't want anything except a place to sleep and do my work and enough cash intake to cover the modest Food & Drug Administration budget on a daily basis. I've got my little money I made in America and my meals are covered for another three or four weeks. I only do what I want to, and I don't do anything I don't want to do. I'm also blessed with hundreds of friends all across the western world, two daughters and a granddaughter I'm crazy about, and all the weed I want to smoke available right over the counter every day. I'm in the throes of a blazing love affair with the amazing Dr. Dorothy Goodman and happier than I have any right to be.

So I'm counting my blessings and getting ready to celebrate a big birthday and keep moving on into whatever future the crazy and twisted gods who administer our sentences have in store for me. Plus this Fall travelogue is now caught up to date, and I can turn to the Summer 2006 log and try to remember what I did for those 11 weeks in America. Happy trails!
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