November 17, 2017:

Delphi, January 22, 1980.

My major concern is to recreate the cover of the Blue Guide with my inexpensive-but-decent Mamiya Sekor 500 DTL and deservedly-cheap-Vivitar-zoom. I do.

It's Tuesday, so the museum is closed. All through these ten weeks I time my excursions perfectly to miss the museums. Delphi, Olympia, Athens National Archaeological when I try a second time to make the walk.

Am I there by myself? No indication in journals, but, looking back, I think so. I think it was a day trip on the bus from Athens, and, I remember a moment of panic when the bus to return took off to the west — the opposite direction. At the base of the mountain it turned toward home, but there was a time, going around those crazy curves, when I wondered where I'd land.

I was alone in Delphi but then traveled through Sicily and Paris with the GF, who on that leg introduced me to pizza and made a valiant attempt to patch things up. It failed. I didn't return to school. After spending a month eating hamburgers to regain weight, reading Fielding and Bukowski aloud with a beautiful school chum, she moved me south in her little VW bug to finish incomplete classes, fuck French girls on vacation, and fuck her a few times too, although not together. In time I did go back; took up and failed with that beautiful school chum; took up and failed with a past-GF who to this day I unceasingly adore; slept with some younger students; and met the love of my life, who later lost that Mamiya Sekor on tour with R.E.M., which certainly was a symbolic end to something. To that 1979-80 trip to Greece, perhaps. In 2017 I finally make it to those museums that were closed last time.