Stories
Midterm Report on Culture of Peace - 2005
Youth Report on Culture of Peace - 2006
A trilogy of books for a new strategy
Final Report on Culture of Peace - 2010
Struggling with the United Nations
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The Culture of Peace News Network continued
Missions for the Culture of Peace
Travels with Lindsay in the USA
Vacations with Lindsay in the Caribbean
As I drew near the age of 70, I became, unconsciously more than consciously, increasingly aware of my impending death. On the one hand, I prepared my life's work in such a way that it would not die with me but would be continued through my books, my websites, and, eventually, the Culture of Peace Corporation.
Lindsay paid a heavy price for this during our attempts to talk, including with a psychotherapist, after our split in February 2009. At a certain point she sent me a photo of two empty chairs facing a beach and saying that these were our retirement chairs waiting for us. But that only convinced me that I was imprisoned by marriage and needed to escape the fate of retiring into lawn chairs watching the sea.
In some ways I sought unconsciously to recover my youth. I once again trained and took part in running competitions, barefoot as always. I was able to win trophies most of the time since there were not many good runners over the age of 70, but, of course, my times were nothing like what they had been 30 years before. Each year I would scrutinize my times. Was I continuing to lose speed?
It was not accidental that when I set out to write a utopian novella (I Have Seen the Promised Land), the plot was that of a man at the end of his life, and I specifically re-read Thomas Mann's Death in Venice with that in mind while I was writing the book.
Once I was divorced, I was attracted to beautiful young women. Of course, this is natural at any age, but when you are 70, there is an unconscious component of trying to recover one's youth. I had a very passionate affair with a wonderful young woman, speaking mostly Russian, as if I had just arrived in Moscow in 1976. In fact at that time, Margarita was only 5 years old! Here we are in lawn chairs, in contrast to those in the photo above.
click on photo to enlarge
For almost five years, Margarita and I had a passionate, on-again, off-again romance. At the end of this, in 2015, when she had gone back to her family in Russia and we had said goodbye, I had to look in the mirror and realize that I was now 76! And I had to renew my relationship with Kiki or risk being all alone like the character in my Utopian novella. Although she was scarred badly by all this, Kiki was able to come to terms with my behavior and I went back to acting my age.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme