Today the coolest thing happened. I was walking with the Indian Princess and I was going off about business and how obsessed and passionate one can be about business and being an entrepreneur in America. How challenging and yet easy it can be to make it big and become successful here. one minute you can just have this idea, and in the next you can just hit it big. She would have none of it. just wasn't interested in it. she hates talking about money. just wants to talk about art and love. And that's cool. that's her thing. so we diverge on that. I being rather obsessed with it myself, but still being into art and love as well, but just understanding that art and love are a lot more enjoyable when you are rolling in money. Anyway, right as I'm telling her all of this, we’re walking down the street and we run into the Salamander. I hadn't seen him in years. And there he was. And two minutes before I was talking about him. Using him as an example of the classic American dream.

The Salamander makes many appearances in the early years of The Adventures of Fishy. he was always a fixture at the Shattered concerts. And he was always dirt poor. Millions of brilliant ideas, but just never hit it big. And he was like probably forty or fifty when the Toad and I were still teenagers. But he went to all of our shows and was always a big supporter. And none of our friends wanted him around because they probably felt like he was too poor or whatever. it probably just brought up their own fears of being poor or being a struggling genius with lots of ideas and no money. But me and Toad liked having him around. He was cool and smart and a good conversationalist.

A few years ago I remembered him getting this idea about making these little plastic covers that go over canned beverages. They make the can sanitary to drink from right from the factory. And you could advertise on them to third parties as well. a brilliant idea. and guess what? Yep. He did it. in fact, we’re starting to see them pop up on cans all over the country. soft drinks and beers and whatever. and it was his idea. and so I see him and I yell to him, ‘hey Salamander, what's up man?! How the hell are you? how's the new business?!” And wouldn’t you know it, he's driving around in a brand new jaguar and he lives in this posh apartment on the fiftieth floor overlooking the ocean now. His business took off and now he's just totally fucking rich and successful. How awesome. That's America.

What is it about deceiving others? Even when we tell ourselves that we are being totally honest with the other person and telling them exactly how we feel... we can still feel like we are in the wrong in some way. meditating on it last night I realized that when we deceive ourselves we are still deceiving others in a way. when we aren't totally in the right with how we are being or what we are doing. Just by us being deceptive with ourselves. That's the worse crime we can commit in a way. deceiving ourselves. You can really feel it. sometimes we don't recognize what it is, but we can tell that something is there. in our space that isn't quite right. [I think that is part of what is wrong with our nation right now, with our collective conscience, is the whole Bush thing, how he got in, and how uncomfortable many of us feel by the whole thing. way down deep inside we can just feel that something is not quite right with everything that is going on, but we endure it anyway. And it makes us all feel a bit shifty and insecure inside.]

Bas has found a girlfriend. We went out for brunch in the morning with Powder, which is what we now call the Golden Child since he mysteriously lost every hair on his body earlier this year. this happened to another friend of mine, Wim, who lives in Munich. I always just thought that he thought it was cool to be bald and shave all his hair off his body, like one would expect from a german. but then I learned of this strange malady that can strike us at any time. anyway, the golden child now has this disease. Who knows for how long. but he is handling it very well. with dignity and tolerance. And so yes Bas is in love. For the first time since I have known him. ten years and I have never seen him like this before. holding hands and kissing and snuggling in public. It is very nice. it reminds one of the power of that. there is nothing like it. it is quite intoxicating, love. I am happy for Bas and inspired by his new love. We had both been waiting for it for so long. how wonderful love is.

His new love, when hearing of this strange occurrence as of late where ever since I decided to move from here have all of a sudden started meeting all these cool people and making all these new friends, tells me that “the universe is trying to tell you something. that it isn't about where you live. that its all about you and the people you meet. It isn't the place.” I told her that that is a lovely thought and I thought she was dead on right about that. it doesn’t mean that I'm not going to move, because I am, but its nice to experience Miami in such a new and exciting way before I leave. Today me and few people from the office that I rent were standing around in the kitchen area having coffee. We realized by chance that there we were, all six of us white people, better known as gringos, all huddled together. Out of roughly sixty people who all work out of this same office only six of us are Americans. Everyone else, like Miami itself, is from south America or the carribean. It was funny that we were all standing there. It really made us see it from that perspective. How it feels to be such a minority.

I have noticed this seriousness in me about women that I never had before. where you might meet a girl and you can tell she's into you, and you may be into her too, but because I am so focused on HER, whoever she it, wherever she is, that I just don't even entertain all the other ones that cross my path. I may end up missing out on some great adventures, but I don't want to get distracted; and I hope that my true love is feeling and doing the same thing. staying true to us as weird as that may sound. I am a romantic still, somehow, and I really believe in all the magic that surrounds love and romance and finding the right one. the lightening striking so to speak. so I'm keeping the light on for her in my heart.

Last screening: my dinner with André. I love this movie. Even if it starts a little slow. One is immediately struck by how far we’ve come in our thinking. This is a play from 1981, comes off very passé and pseudo intellectual now. this was back in the day when intellectuals had certain calling cards that you had to play in any film or play or book: death, your mother, Nazis, tribal dancing with primitive tribes, religion, theatre, Greek mythology, the meaning of life, neurosis, therapy. All very seventies New York intelligencia. Things are different now. [one can notice that in the late seventies early eighties New York was known for this kind of intellectual snobbery; which was great. Because they were like the torch bearers of intelligent life in America. You know that whole woody Allen, George plimpton, gore Vidal thing. Whereas now that has changed. I'm not sure what New York is known for now, if you can pin it down to any one thing. I keep seeing Carson daily pop up in my minds’ eye unfortunately. God help us all if that's what New York is known for now, Or sex and the city, that whole shallow sex and money thing that tends to dominate American culture now – where something is only worth thinking about and discussing if you can fuck it or make money from it, or can reduce its most basic core down to a three minute sound bite. Three minutes. Who am I kidding. More like fifteen seconds. But something has changed. There isn't that ‘well be careful. you won't be able to just go in there and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes because they’re a New Yorker thing anymore. Because as Rockaway says, there aren't any more new Yorkers left in New York anymore. They’ve all moved out of the city and have been replaced now by wealthy urbanites from all over the world. so yes the city is still the most varied cosmopolitan melting pot the world has ever seen, but where is that old New York where elite thinkers gathered together to discuss the great thoughts of times present past and future?

Another thing, I don't know when it happened, but as a whole, we have seemed to come to terms with death now haven't we? We aren't as afraid of it or hung up on it as we used to be. we have crossed that boundary. You get to see that ‘old New York’ in this movie. Back when there was graffiti, and New York was still kind of sleazy and dumpy, and the Upper East Side was nicer than other neighborhoods. But that New York is now long gone. New York is now the playground of the rich and successful. The whole damn little island. When the cheapest thing you can buy costs over $400,000. amazing. if there is one place in the whole world to be, the only place TO BE, if that concept is possible, which its not of course, because there are millions of places to be here on earth, depending on where you are in the moment in your heart and mind, then New York is that one place. [o.k. I'm exaggerating. (but only slightly) You can add Paris London and Madrid to that list. Fine. LA can join in. But not because I believe it as much as I just don't feel like arguing the point with angry readers writing in to protest.]