What a schedule: Monday after 24 hours I leave Atlanta after six efficient meetings- rushing to the airport, flying while I translate and edit a script. Coming back into NY city, I meet a couple of people and rushed around to take care of last things relatively effective and concentrated. Then everything dissolves in a dinner appointment, were I menage to loose tension. After sleeping very little that night I get up at 5:30 am to meditate and to have time to organize a couple of things before my first appointment at 8:45 am - next meeting at 10:00- next at 12:00- next at 1:00- next at 2:15. (No I don't have a psychiatrist yet;-) By then I already feel like my head is exploding, but I run down to Canal Street and buy two suitcases, next meeting at 2:45. I hear that I am on the cover of the next issue, the editor wants to talk to me about the design before I leave, at the same time a young woman wants to pick something up for a paper she wants to write about me for a class at NYU, Elga has a new assistant who doesn't know where everything is and I have to be finished - with "Hermes Mistress" dress packed in the new suitcase - and sit in a cab to JFK in two hours. I get excited about being the cover story but impatient with the assistant who can't find my CV for the woman from NYU, while I am standing there with the editor talking about the design of the cover. For some reason everything gets done and even though I am in a total rush I menage even to buy locks for my cases. At 4:45 I am waiting downstairs for the taxi that I've ordered. I get nervous, read my mail, arrange last things, go upstairs check the answering machine for any messages and finally call the car-service again. They tell me I should wait 5 more minutes. Meanwhile it started to rain and the taxi shift changed:

It is rush hour and I will certainly not find a cab to drive me to the airport. So I have no choice and wait. When the cab arrives I was almost hug him so glad am I, but boiling internal of stress and still try to be cool. But then there is this nasty woman in the cab making frowzy faces, because she doesn't want to share the car. Me neither but that's not the point of interest, I realize. We (the cabdriver and I) manage to stuff all the luggage in the car in an enormous stress (I have 3 suitcases and one huge bag and ordered a station wagon for myself, but they sent me a normal car with another person, so I think I will not use this company again). I am finally sitting in this cab with the woman and a poodle on her lap- she is screaming, her dog is barking - I just think: if you stress right now you are going to brake apart, so I swallow deep and make breathing exercises in order to cool down. Below the park entering Mc Dougal I just say to the woman, look it's not my fault that we are sharing a cab, no one asked us to do so. It is impossible to get a cab right now, because the shift just changed and my flight leaves in an hour and 30 minutes. So lets try to make the best out of it and let's stay calm. Where are you going? "to Minneapolis," she says. Oh so that's national I think, and I think at least she has a little more time than me so the driver can drop me off first. At the corner of Mc Dougal and Houston it hits me like a flash. I think there are very few national flights departing from JFK. I ask almost loosing my desperate voice. Are you going to JFK? No to Newark. This is the moment when I loose control, "This is ridiculous" I scream, trashing the rest of my voice. Now I am loosing my patience completely because the poodle starts barking again and I am not able to get out of the cab because the door is locked. I scream something like I want to get out here, look behind me and there is just someone getting out of a yellow cab. I started to bang against the door, trying to make signs to the cab driver that he shouldn't take anybody and start to completely panic. The cab driver in front of me gets impatient and screams "Shut up." If I wouldn't have been so desperate I would have shut up but he had to park first and I needed this yellow cab, picturing myself being completely handicapped standing at MC Dougal and Houston in the rain surrounded by my luggage trying to get out to the airport and there is no cab taking me. Finally once I get out I almost throw myself in front of the yellow cab which just wanted to take a left on Houston and ask him luckily more quiet again "can you take me to the airport" (my voice was almost nonexistent and he must have thought I was mad or desperate.) The other cab driver was clearly impolite throwing my bags out of the cab, and I just scream at him, thanks for being so helpful you asshole!!!, when he comes close to me and says "you're lucky that you're a woman" "I guess you're lucky that I am not a man" I say and take my last bag fletching my teeth.

Luckily our fight wasn't impressive enough for the other driver to hit the road, so when we finally had all my bags shuffled in the car I calmed down and we drove into one of those well known Houston traffic rush hour jams. I told him what just happened and then we broke out in laughter. Meanwhile it was 5:18, and I think that these were probably the four most intense minutes of my life besides the orgasms that I have. I made it to the airport by 6:18, and I had to make it because it would have been a catastrophe if not (I tried though to not think too much about it during the ride). The luggage was checked in without any problem which I felt was great, because I was worried about that. Once I was in the plane I still heard "last call for passenger Frank, last call Ms Frank please to gate 28"...I sat down in my chair and fell asleep before take off. I was woken up fifteen minutes before landing in Berlin, by a flight attendant asking if I was OK. It took me about 1 minute to realize were I am, two minutes to control my seat belt and it was like a dream I arrived at the airport in dizzy Berlin...