Thursday 1st November. Day 153.

Joe's next tat. It'll be sailing down his thigh, with the fore topgallant stuck in his groin

How to get to la B

Vietnamese propaganda - rather good. I was very tempted.

Our view at lunchtime

B says they look very wild!

Sounds like Ella Fitzgerald. Extraordinary, and brilliant. The Jazz club on Tuesday, after the Opera.

The Opera House

We had dinner at a nice upmarket restaurant by the lake, Maison de Tet. I paid with my card, but Aden keeps stuffing 1/2 million dong notes into my hand everytime I try to pay for anything. I have 380,000 dong in cash left (about £9) which might be just enough to cover the taxi to the airport this evening.

Then we went home, and smoked and chatted. I left about 11, and Aden came out to see me off, and told me how proud of me he was, and how much he loved me, and apologised for being grumpy, and I said he wasn't / it didn't matter / we had a lot of stuff to sort out. Joe spent the evening talking to Miriam (now in Mexico, Guadalajara, surfing and waiting for Joe to arrive at the end of the month).

I am disturbed to find how easily I'm slipping into checking my phone all the time, and wassapping la B, which Joe and I had been talking disapprovingly of only that morning. And the horrible sucking sensation I get whenever I'm trying to drop the damn thing or get up from this keyboard. There must be something else I need to do with this wonderful toy. 

A nice reply from Jim Green to my email. He picked up my reference to Ai No Corrida, which surprised me (why should it? did I think Sukie and I were the only people to have seen it?) and pointed out it's 'unhappy' ending. I agreed - all sensual passions lead to death. I really have immersed myself in the senses, all of them, here, just hanging on to a bit of meditation and office/rule work, but feel very in and of the world - which is maybe why I am nervous / not looking forward to returning to Bonnevaux. Henriette is there. She can sort me out. The world has a sort of thick quality, not the airy lightness of life at Bonnevaux - I am in it, and cannot see or get out of it. And little me keeps getting into scrapes - feeling like I'm being ignored (last night I wondered if it's just because I'm old, the conversation seemed to exclude me, or, if I said anything, it was unacknowledged by the group). Maybe my voice just grates, or something. In my drinking days I'd have just shrugged and had another slug.

Talking to Aden last night about Freud's idea that the satisfaction of desire leads to (temporary) oblivion - Lacan's le petit mort for example - and really, if dissatisfaction does not creep back in, as it always does, we are effectively dead. And how the ego / false self always powers in with another dis-pleasure, because if it didn't, it would simply cease to exist (or have a point for existing) - that we grow our ego as a means to try to satisfy the pleasure principle. Which leads on to Freud's later ideas about death - we want oblivion, the satisfaction of all desires.

Frustrating talking to Joe yesterday. He was telling me about someone who had had a vision and that the answer was all astrology. And this was better than the Bible (for example) because this someone was now, not 2,000 years ago. I tried to persuade him that the Bible was just a text, and just as contemporary (and certainly no more batty than his astrologer) as his astrologer. That the text should be judged on its merits, but he knew all about Christianity and knew it was bollocks. Aden was much more open, that bit further on, perhaps, to ideas about religion and myth, and said he had become more so over the last few years. I suspect it's also the company Joe keeps, who all think Christianity (and all religion) is obvious rubbish (he's reading Harari's Homo Deus) and anyone who talks about it or defends it is at best deluded, or just stupid, and can safely be ignored. A closed mind, for now. I wonder why it frightens him, or he's so hostile to it.

Aden said how close Lottie and Sukie are. I wonder if S has told L anything about me and her. Some odd reactions at times from L. Aden talked a lot about how unhappy she has been, and how difficult (to put it mildly) her mum is.

Thomas and Andrew looking very pleased - they've just signed the contract.
I wonder if the lake will be full by the time I get back?