Yes it is true I am travelling to Vienna for sex and I have always travelled for sex but by chance along the way I have also discovered so many things that I would not have discovered otherwise [19th August 2006]

Yes, it is true I am travelling to Vienna for sex, and I have always travelled for sex, but by chance along the way I have also discovered so many things that I would not have discovered otherwise--the Libertines, Elena Prokina, Heidi Klum on the billboard. You always find things while looking for something else. While looking for Susi I met Patricia & Bella Rosa. While looking for Patricia I met Emily. While looking for Viktoriya I met Martina. While looking for Riccarda I met Diana. The Libertines and Elena Prokina were complete chance discoveries that I would not have made if I had not been in Berlin and Brussels respectively, and they are now two of the most important things in my life. I am going to Vienna to see the Maria Callas exhibition but no doubt I will find something else instead. I always find something different to what it was I thought I was looking for. But if I had not set out looking for that thing, I would not have found the other thing. This is becoming the law of my life. I suppose if I go now expecting to meet some other thing I will find nothing but the original thing. Life is a see-saw. As soon as you think you have worked out its hidden laws and mechanisms, they swing back the other way and become the opposite. It is more than anything travelling, though, that keeps them swinging & keeps giving you glimpses into their internal workings, like looking inside a watch. As Kenneth Williams wrote, none of his trips to Tangier were ever what he could call truly successful, but they were important in that they kept the pendulum swinging. Ernest Shackleton kept going back South, even though none of his expeditions ever had any clear aim. It was enough to be heading South again. There is something in my soul that means it is enough to be just heading South again, and South in my case meaning my four Stations of the Cross, my four Cities in the Autumn Stars, Brussels, Munich, Vienna and Berlin, with occasional forays as far as Venice or Budapest or Oslo. I have almost forgotten what it is like to sleep at night. I just lie there and stare at the ceiling and have to give up. I love to be awake all night reading or writing while the world is quiet. Days are noisy and full of people, so it is a pleasure to sleep through them. It is cheaper that way, too. This "loan"  I have taken out of £6,000 is vital to pay for my travels which gives me my vital observations which go to form my books. You have to speculate to accumulate. To dare is to do.