travelling light has its drawbacks...for some

The old adage "take all you can't leave behind" was never my motto, I was always a packrat...Ann cured me of that, largely by destroying most of my possessions that had survived the locust swarm which was my first divorce (I had a complete set of Premier Magazine when she moved in with me in Venice...one day I came home to find she'd cut them all up to make a bedroom-wall montage of every actress she'd ever had the hots for. Six years of cautious collection, gone in a matter of hours).

So, now I have my memories and a few light items...also I find myself, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the guardian of thousands of Ann's images, from when she modelled. I am sure her copies did not survive the storm, but since there is no contact between us (and she lead me to believe that it would imperil her for me to make any contact with her) I am left with the classic conundrum...one I always know the answer to.

I would have probably liked to have had access to those images for my book cover for THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES (I wouldn't use them without permission, I have ethics), but now it is good that I didn't, or I would have never made the acquaintance of several new friends. And, when this Spring brings the end of the print of FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER and LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION, even her existing covers will be a fading memory

One day, perhaps, I shall get a letter or an email and know where to send ten portfolios worth of digital images...okay actually, just where to send her to find them, as I have stored them in cyberspace against some other mass destruction of all I hold dear. Don't look for them, they are well hidden, in perhaps the most vast labyrinth conceived by mortals. As is my complete catalog of writings.

I never really leave anything of value behind. Because it is never here for me to leave it.