Is it me, or doesn't it seem a bit odd that someone who's paid to deal with international travelers all day doesn't know where Belgrade or the former Yugoslavia are? It did to me. But then I'm sure there's not a lot of call for vacations in sunny Belgrade just now.

In any event, I had heard from Dragana Vicanovich that our friend Rastislav Durman's family had just managed to get passage from Vienna to Belgrade using Avala Intercity. I decided I would be best off using the Web to put all the pieces together. I wouldn't have to wait in telephone queues or waste time explaining where Belgrade is.

Though I've taken a matter-of-fact attitude toward the subject, one of the issues I do consider about going outside of The Dome of the culture I'm seeking a break from is that of safety. Considerations of safety have weighed into my thoughts about the mode of transportation I'll take to the East. For while The Dome has its own levels of peril, stepping outside means taking more personal responsibility for myself. That is a good thing, but also a scarey one. It's trading one kind of fear for another.

There will be no American Embassy to run to in a pinch where I am going. That's where the rubber hits the road. Part of that weight will be borne by my hosts, of course. Dragana has been a particularly good salesperson for her country. She assures me it shall be worth the risk and perhaps even present the opportunity and environment I've been seeking. I've been told Belgrade was a beautiful capital before the conflict; I'm banking on some vestiges of that beauty remaining. I've not seen the Danube yet...

ABOUT THIS EDITION

PALADIN

Though, during our conversation on the day of the funeral, he was stoical and sounded more concerned about my sorting things out than his own feelings, one must know that this loss is significant for Rolfe. He flew to London on a dime. He still sounded a bit numb, I thought. Like myself, he was basing his plans while here on the priorities of others. We spoke briefly about every writer's main concern, paying for the last decision we've made. We agreed that meeting in the morning, rather than during the services, might be best.

(I was relieved as I was already getting self-conscious about appearing in my rumpled dark suit among the swells of London, embarassing Lionel in front of his family. While I would have liked showing my respects and honoring my friend's family, we are friends in the vaguest sort of way. There is the kinship of writing and penury, the lore of California, but little else between us. Though that may be enough. Being a Menuhin makes Lionel gravitate to London, yet he remains in Los Angeles, in California, the Edge of the World. He is also a Rolfe, of the United States of America.

Like me, he has conflicted feelings about where he "belongs." Unlike me, his family provides a sense of rootedness rather than mystery...)

I have been thinking a lot lately about my ambivalence toward this strange family of writers of which I am part. This journey is all about meeting and commiserating with my fellow writers -- that much is clear. I am darting around the world from place to place in order to reach out to those people who have enriched my latter years in a communion of words. It is both synchronicitous and karmic that so many of the writers I have known through G21 have crossed my path since I arrived in Europe. Now that I have come out of my isolation, we bang up against each other like pinballs, have animated and passionate arguments about the future of Europe, corporate domination, what it is a writer must do. As if any of us knew what it was a writer must do other than to keep "talking," place one word beside another in this chronicle of our search for Meaning and Truth.

Felicity has given me a book to read, Enter the Enchanted Forest by her relative Arland Ussher. It was published in Ireland years ago and is now out-of-print. It is a look at the classic fairy tales of Europe from a psychological/philosophical perspective. Arland was a philosopher. He speaks a lot about archetypes the fairy tales reveal and the human search for Meaning and Truth...

Fliss and I had a conversation about the reticence of most people to talk about ideas, rather than sports, or shopping, or gossip. Though Europeans are said to be more sympathetic to discussing ideas than my own countrymen, here in Britain I have mostly found other writers who exhibit that trait. Most other people are like those Lloyd Morcom most recently characterized as classically Australian, what I would describe as typically American, Fliss has called properly British and Hauquan Chau has lamented as characteristic of Japanese youth. Everywhere I turn I am confronted with the fact that we writers complain too much about the shallowness of our fellows! What have we been thinking?

MY AFTERNOON WITH LIONEL

• mothers and sons,
• the history and predilections of the Menuhin family and their offspring,
• Yaltah's special nature and her demons,
• America,
• Los Angeles,
• journalism,
• President Bush,
• the British, and
• the writing life.

It was a good visit that I shall treasure and I hope to see Lionel again.

Our meeting ended during an animated discussion (another one!) with an American expat, a woman who let it drop that she had some connection to the upper classes of Philadelphia. She has lived in London for most of her adult life, she told me, but retains her American accent and has a talent for interrupting. I was surprised that she was visiting Lionel, as she had a special penchant for cutting off his sentences and ruminations in mid-stream. (Lionel accuses himself of rambling, but I suspect it is a mechanism for handling the stress of his loss, the dealing with issues of the estate, the parade of people...)

Lionel returns to Los Angeles on Wednesday. I would feel very fortunate to get more time with him before we both leave London.

THINGS I LOVE THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Rod is "...walking the earth like Cain in the television series 'Kung Fu'." (A tip of the hat to screenwriter Quentin Tarantino.)

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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