I woke this morning at 4:14am

I don’t make this stuff up.

There are people in the room next door that have been living here for eight years.

Whenever they move around their room, our room shakes.

We can hear every conversation.

Which means that they can hear us, if they care to listen.

They probably don’t. They seem preoccupied with their own lives, which from all accounts are colourful.

Right now at 5am they are talking, volubly. Intensely. Non stop.

It’s 5am guys.

What’s to talk about at 5am?

We must be near a train line because every ten minutes or so, I can hear the mournful wailing whistle blast of a freight train as it passes in the night.

It’s somehow romantic.

Huh.

Romance in an hour-by-hour motel.

That’s funny.

I like this place.

The sheets are clean.

Stained, but clean.

And the wifi works. For $28 a night, I must be grateful for these small miracles.

We’re under a flight path.

And right by the freeway.

Noise is my friend.

Jennifer feels uncomfortable here. The lock on the door doesn’t work.

It looks like it’s been jemmied open many times.

When we went out to dinner last night we had to carry all our valuables.

There’s no safe in the room, of course.

We’re lucky there’s a bathroom.

The towels they’ve given us are the size of handkerchiefs.

And as thin.

No soap.

No toiletries.

No coffee maker.

The tv is a museum piece.

The conversation next door has raised a pitch.

I hope they don’t start fighting.

They’ve been walking around the room a lot.

Their footsteps shake our bed.

Like I said, I don’t make this stuff up.

Last night, before I went to bed, I got an email. It was from my university Professor, to let me know that an amount of money which had suddenly and unexpectedly landed in my account was for work I’d done earlier this year, which I’d forgotten about.

I’m in a joint venture with the university to develop a global online educational resource for film students.

The money was like a gift from the heavens.

I got another email yesterday – this one from the Parmarth Niketan ashram, in Rishikesh. They want me to do a promotional film on their ashram, and to film it next year at the International Yoga Festival, which they mount each year.

It’s a huge event, and it attracts spiritual leaders from all over the India, and indeed the world.

I would love to do the film.

Strange – these two emails out of the blue, on my first day in Dallas.

Before I went to sleep last night, I did my first entry in my video diary.

I was exhausted.

It had been a long and tense day for me.

I’d been anxious.

But I sat in front of the camera and just did a stream of consciousness purge of all my thoughts, all my feelings.

It was from the heart.

Unrehearsed, unwritten, unprepared.

Just me, talking to camera, revealing all my thoughts and fears.

I’ll do this at the end of each day.

I don’t know what I’ll do with it – all these video diaries. But the astrologer in Mumbai told me I had to keep a diary, and I thought it was better I do it on video.

The people next door are getting agitated. They don’t seem happy.

My god, is this going to happen every morning at 5am?

Literally, our bed is shaking as they walk around, going to the bathroom, whatever.

Wherever.

And I can hear every utterance.

It’s anthropological here.

Last night, again out of the blue, I got a phone call from a lady who has been emailing me lately. She knows astrology, and heard I was coming to Dallas. She lives in another state, but says she wants to come and meet me.

She says I’m handsome.

She was a former futures trader.

She knows rich people. Very rich people.

She seems smart and sharp and tells me I have to wear red, because Mars is very strong in my zodiac. She says my red Swannies cap is the reason I walked the Camino so well.

I’ve brought one red t-shirt with me.

I must wear it today.

She’s read my book, and quotes back to me passages I’ve written.

She says I’m a warrior, in zodiac terms.

I hear police sirens out on the highway.

They’re angry and insistent.

A lot of them.

Something’s going on.

The people next door have calmed down a bit.

I must be thankful for small mercies.

I’m writing this more for me than you.

I hope you don’t mind.

I’m sorry
I love you
Please forgive me
Thank you.