Connecting with readers --

Dear David,
Thank-you for writting your book. I met you and your wife at ",The Living Room" here in La Jolla. I was able to identify with alot of the situations.I especially loved the sailing part.

I travelled with my husband the opposite direction over a years journey from Australia to Europe then to Mexico and the USA.I was 19 yrs. old. It was 1975. Some of the best years of my life.After South East Asia and Burma ,Nepal and India my Husband got deathly ill.I was on a rickety old bus taking a short cut through an abandoned river bed when I noticed Brendon turning greenish,sweeting profusely and going in and out of consciousness, eyes rolling up into his head.I asked the bus driver to take him directly to the nearest hospital.He wouldn`t of course and their was no hospital.I finally got him off the bus when the tiny desicated,primative villages stoped and we got to a bigger sort of town.They actually had a two story concrete hotel.I got us a room up stairs with a window that opened out to the roof if you climbed out. I found out their was a doctor several miles out of town.I hired a bicycle rickshaw to get out there.The ride was long and bumpy. I was afraid the driver might take me somewhere and kill me. I chanted a Tibetan mantra the whole time. Eventually we came upon one of those white washed buildings with a red cross on it like you described in your book .There was an extreamly long line of people waiting,half dying. I pushed to the front as if a visiting dignitary,as if my desires were more important than any one else.The "doctor'' gave me some pills to give Brendon after I described his symptoms in great detail.The rickshaw driver took me back respectfully,a Hindu.When I thanked him he said "It is my duty",like they all would say when I thanked them.How odd,I would think. Brendon threw up the pills violently.Then I carefully read the bottle which said in tiny writting, only to be administered in cases of sevear blood poisoning.Then I noticed the expiration date of 1968. It was then 1975.

I gave up on doctors.At the open air market place and only shopping place I bought vegetables that I recognized and lots of ginger root. Back at our hotel,the cook let me boil the Ginger and then add the vegetables.I gave Brendon the broth daily spoon feeding him medicine drop portions plus saying the Tibetan mantras that I trusted more than the Catholic prayers we were both brought up with.Oddly my biggest fear was explaining to his parents that he had died in a nowhere town in north India.After probably two to three weeks he came around and sat up speaking coherently.He became strong enough to walk on the flat roof.One day at the market someone told me there was a tiny airport out from town.I thought,' now they tell me!' I immediately went there and got us seats on the smallest plane I`d ever seen.It had propellers that worked.It got us to New Dehli.Instead of going overland through Afganistan,Iran and Turkey to London we flew directly to England.My parents picked us up at the airport.Rather than bringing Brendon home ,my parents drove us both to the tropical disease hospital in London.They kept Brendon for 2or3 weeks.He was thin as a broomstick,with hepatitis, worms,and amebic dysentary.I had worms too but was otherwise healthy and almost plump, as the english doctor described me.

It is a mystery to me that I didn`t get sick.Months before when we were getting our vacinations renewed in Dehli I watched the doctor give Brendon his shot with a thick bent needle and could see it really hurt.I decided not to be "Macho" and bribed the doctor to stamp my immunization records as if I`d had the cholera shot anyway.I would rather risk cholera. I grew up in Venezuela and was allowed to run freely as kids were in that time.I think my immune system was familiar with tropical bacterias so I didn`t ever feel sick except after eating contaminated food bought from poor people from a train window in Burma.My body projected it out immediatly the same way it came in.

To cut a very long story short,I came to the same conclusion you did, that Love is what is the meaning of life. That love is what I came here for.At one point I realized that if I would love more and give more,that I would deserve to live.Doing Theraputic Massage in La Jolla for the last 25yrs gave me the opportunity to do that and raise my daughter alone. Now I feel so drained.I do not find reciprical love just tons of offers of sex without relationship let alone love.I don`t think it will happen in California .I will fly to New Zealand at this late point in my life and be open to being loved back in a country that has time to socialize walk,hike and really talk with the TV unplugged. That is how I remember life over there.I know that what I seek is over there and inside me.

I look forward to your next books ! Thank-you .I could not put your book down. As you can see it brought back memories of richer times and infinite possibilities.I spoke to my cop friend on the dog patrol,oops cannine unit. He remembers you from the Academy when he was 21 yrs old . He is now 45.You taught him tacticle holds in arm to arm defense.He liked you but not your brother.I was so disappointed that he won`t read your book but he is impressed that you actually published one.

I teach Yoga on the lawn outside at the Cove on Saturdays and Wednesdays at 8am,unless there is a pelting rain.Did you every read the Yoga Sutras of Patangali? Even Buddha realized that if the lute is strung too tight the strings break and too loose it won`t play.He realized this when he was on the brink of death from starvation and physical neglect . It sounds like all your strings are finely tuned and playing beautiful music now.

All the best to you,
Valerie O.