WALKING ON THIN ICE

the worst examples of petty power-mad bureaucratic abuses i’ve met in our 11 months of travel come from the passport people at stansted and gatwick airports outside london england. the guy at stansted last october got snippy and sarcastic when he found out we were retired and traveling the world. before that, a woman at stansted threatened not to let us in because we didn’t have our exit ticket numbers with us. the guy this time at gatwick demanded our financial statements. told him we weren’t prepared to do that. said we’d better show them next time or we’d be refused entry. got snide when we told him we were artists. then he suddenly demanded to know what we did when we flew into england our third time last october. how the heck would i know what i did 9 months ago… my life since then has been too varied and interesting to remember what i did for 3 days while waiting for our flight to croatia. i just kept smiling and saying sure, i understand, these are tremulous times. sometimes it’s best to mollify small minds. i was afraid lady was going to explode - she kept saying afterwards that this wasn’t right. tried to tell her right has nothing to do with it - it’s just small dried-up people using their petty power to punish those with richer lives. seems now that i’m mellowing a wee bit, lady’s becoming more radicalized.

i see 5 possible reasons they dislike us: 1) lady’s young and i’m old… 2) we’re not working while we travel the world living our dream and having fun, while they sit at a crappy podium stamping pieces of paper for a living… 3) they resent americans because traitor dick cheney and war-time deserter george w bush are getting british soldiers killed in an illegal war… 4) they’re just pricks… the cheney bush beast told their british poodles to hassle us because of my anti-government comments on my website.

i must say though on our first entry into england last august, the passport people were pleasant, courteous, and fast. so that’s 1 nice to 3 rudes… or 1 civilized to 3 rubes.

we were greeted at our temporary london abode by our host’s black cat, a bunch of feathers, pools of fresh blood on the floor, and a large black bird huddled behind the door curtains. i let them out into the back yard so they could finish their play. the cat’s my friend, and i don’t think it’d be fair for me to take his prize from him - don’t believe the bird would live anyway.

re-watched 2001- a space odyssey. my 5th time. the first three times were the week it came out in 1968 - once on grass, once on acid, and once on speed. loved the movie. 4th time was 14 years ago when i bought a copy. 5th was last week in marrakech. there are 3 films which changed the face of science fiction film: 2001 (1968), star wars (1977), and blade runner (1982). can’t think of any since that have revamped our view. 2001 was revolutionary, a true to the facts sci/fi art movie. but it doesn’t hold up - 39 years later it’s creaky, slow moving, boring, and pretentious. in fact if i hadn’t read arthur c clarke’s paperback version of the movie, i still wouldn’t know what went on at the end. it’s sad losing respect for old friends this way. the more you learn, the more clearly you see.

we go up country to wordsworth/coleridge/rushkin territory tomorrow morning to live in the dirt for two weeks. lady calls this camping and says it’s fun. hmmmm.