Tomi called her mom in Colorado who called cousin Midori in Salamanca who said they’d be delighted to have me and classes start on October 14. Yow! That’s in two weeks!

Said goodbye to Patrick at two a.m. last night, in Paris, outside the Moroccan restaurant across the bridge where I’d spent three hours in a fog of cigarette smoke and animated conversation, drinking mint tea and trying to look as if I had any idea what anyone was saying. Said goodbye to Lobna this morning, on the sidewalk in front of her apartment in the 17th, in yet another scene that made me feel like I was living in a French movie. One short plane flight and one three-and-a-half-hour bus ride later, and here I am in a rented room in Señora Francisca Mesonero’s apartment on Calle Petunias in Salamanca, Spain, about to start a new life as a starving student. Class starts at 8:45 tomorrow morning.

Two weeks ago, Salamanca was a name on a map. I just can’t get over the way you can decide to do something and then the next thing you know, it’s really happening.

[In SF] Prince 2 is in good shape. The artists were thrilled to meet me after slaving away for three months. Daniel is off the project. The current team consists of Steve, Scott and Nicole.

Today I screened the 1940 Thief of Baghdad for them. They’re jazzed. In the art department, at least, Prince 2 is the “cool” project to be on. Meetings with Leila and Brian have been productive. We all seem to be in sync and happy.

Scott said: “For three months everybody’s been saying ‘Jordan this’ and ‘Jordan that’ and ‘When Jordan gets back.’ I thought you’d be much older. When I saw you, I thought: ‘My gosh, he’s just a baby!’”

When I arrived, the mood was a bit nervous because Brian and Leila felt that John (Baker, head of E2 which means entertainment and education) had doubts about the project and would probably cut our budget severely. It turned out he hadn’t seen any of the work the artists had done. I took him upstairs and had the artists show him what they were working on. That, plus I’ve been making a point of trying to include him in things and keep him informed so he feels like he’s a part of it. I really didn’t do all that much, but it seems to have turned John around 180 degrees. Today he told me that he’s bagged all the other entertainment products they had in development and is putting everything behind Prince 2. He wants it to be an example of the “New Broderbund” (whatever that is). Fine with me.

John is still nervous about the cost of the project, which he says is the biggest Broderbund has ever done. He wants to lower the licensing royalty rate so he’s covered in case it’s not a megahit. We’re discussing it.

Broderbund stock went out at $10 (after a split) and has gone to $25, making overnight millionaires of quite a few people. The company has been moved to a new building on Redwood Blvd. Very slick. Glass and elevators and chrome, and everything in the official Broderbund typeface. The front desk receptionist is even cute; I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or if it’s part of the new corporate image.

IBM and Mac Prince are going out February in the new box. I’ve spent a certain amount of time shmoozing with the fresh-faced marketing people who have been assigned to Prince. They seem inclined to promote the product, as opposed to burying it, which represents a considerable improvement in marketing strategy.

Feyna says Game Boy Prince should be on the shelves this week.

Saw a prototype of the 8-bit Nintendo version. It’s OK, nothing spectacular.

Nearing the end of my second week. It’s been a good trip. The Prince 2 Team (Leila, Scott, Steve, Nicole and Maureen on graphics; Tom, Michael and Jonelle on sound, Jeff programming, Brian producing) is more jazzed than ever. The Powers That Be (Doug and John) look favorably upon the enterprise and seem inclined to let us do it our way without interference despite the fact that it’s the costliest entertainment product in Broderbund’s history. Not only that, but John actually signed the contract!

Meanwhile, Prince 1 is chugging along. The IBM release/Mac release is getting a goodly share of marketing attention. They’re even doing a promotional video! (Today after work Dexter and I went down to Mill Valley to retape the swordfighting scenes. When they couldn’t get the camera to work, we went across the road and had a beer while they figured it out.)

Licensing activity continues. For the first time, Steve and Feyna seem to be on top of things, rather than buried underneath them. The Game Boy version arrived yesterday and got everyone all excited. 8-bit Nintendo and Sega Master versions are close to shipping, so they say. Some more new deals have been signed including Sega Game Gear.

So, it looks like I’ll be able to continue the “expatriate writer” life a while longer.

All I need is a story worth writing.

Saw La double vie de Veronique with Tomi. She said: “It just proves that if you’re a good-looking French girl, you can get away with just about anything.”

Yesterday was my last day at Broderbund. I said goodbye to everyone. It’s actually not such a bad thing, taking off for months at a time: They spend so much time saying “If only Jordan were here!” they’re starting to idealize me in my absence.

The artists all want to please me… it’s like I’m their dad. I don’t know how that happened, but it’s great. I guess that makes Brian the mom?

Rob Martyn showed me Living Books. It’s awesome. If Disney had any sense they’d do a deal with Broderbund. A Living Book of The Little Mermaid would sell fifty trillion copies. Disney doesn’t see it – they’re years behind the times and don’t know it. Rob called Disney “the China of educational software” – the sleeping giant.

Dinner with Rob and Tomi at Jennie Low’s. It occurred to me that the three of us, sitting at that table, were ideally qualified to go off and start a multimedia software company. With Living Books, the Sensei product line, and Prince of Persia to our names, we should have no problem raising a couple million bucks startup money.

Tomi, for one, would love to do it. Rob I think would be reluctant to take the risk. Me, I have other plans… although what they are, I have no idea.

Visiting George in L.A. has got me thinking seriously about moving there and spending the next couple of years writing and trying to get a picture made.

I suspect that for me, another six months abroad will go a long way. I mean, I’m enjoying learning how to be a bum, but it’s not really my nature. I’m happiest when I’m in the midst of things – struggling, forging alliances and overcoming problems and, dammit, making something. That’s why I’ve been coming up with all these crazy ideas lately, like shooting a documentary in Cuba or Madrid.

Seeing George made me realize I want to be making mainstream, American, theatrical features. I’ve been dreaming about it for years, but pursuing it only in fits and starts, and from afar, while I spend the rest of my time circling around it… preparing myself, for Christ’s sake, as if I weren’t yet worthy to try to breach the ramparts, or something.

I don’t regret any of the things I’ve done in the meantime – Prince, Prince 2, New York, Salamanca – but now I’m asking myself: What, exactly, am I waiting for? I know what I want to do with my life. Why not just do it?

Ken set up a meeting for me at Leonard Nimoy’s company. The guy I met with, Bill Blum, liked Bird of Paradise, but is leaving to start his own production company. He said he wants to keep me in mind for the future. All basically meaningless, but considering it was my first movie-biz meeting since 1988 and In the Dark, I’m not complaining.

[In NY] I’ve got that dizzy disoriented feeling of having jumped too many time zones in too short a time. It’s like seeing the last five years of my life in fast-forward: San Francisco, L.A., Chappaqua, uptown, downtown. Connections to all these places still intact, I drift freely among them. But there’s no place I really belong.

Talked to Robert for an hour last night. Half-playfully, we agreed to start a software company when he graduates in 1993. I told him I was thinking of moving to L.A. It sounded good… but today, walking in the Village, the urge seized me to move back here instead. New York is part of me; it will always be the city. When I’m here I feel real, I feel alive, I feel horny. How can I live anywhere else?

No wonder I have this nagging sense of meaninglessness: I’m not writing. I’ve been noodling around with this ghost story, but it’s not enough. I was built to work every day, not just now and then.

Stopped by NYU to visit Thierry. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t light up and say “What the fuck are you doing, what happened to you after Cannes? You wrote a feature, you got an agent, good for you, I always knew you had it in you!” Instead, we just chatted cordially for a few minutes and I left wondering what I’d been hoping from the encounter.

Maureen said kindly: “You have that look like you’ve come back to visit your old high school, hoping to recapture the feelings you had there.” She was right, of course. How pathetic. You can’t go back.

Mark Netter invited me to come visit him in the Alps. He’s in Albertville doing sound for CBS. He’s considering moving to L.A. Maybe we should get a place together. It’d be good to have a roommate, especially a film-happy one.

Brian sent me a nice thick packet of foreign reviews of Prince – always a pleasure – and a new disk of Prince 2 graphics from Leila. Drove to Mt. Kisco with Mom and Emily to look at them, in a computer graphics shop that charges $20 for 15 minutes (a far cry from the 60 cents they charge in Salamanca). By an ironic twist of fate, it’s located where the Electric Playhouse used to stand.

I should write my memoirs… starting at age 15 when I got my first Apple II, up through the publication of Prince, the game that marked the end of the Apple II era. It’s a good story, and it’s a piece of history that’s really mine: I was there. Don’t know who’d want to read it, though. Besides, I hate people who write their memoirs when they’re young. It’s so egotistical.

Whenever I get elegaic about my past like this, it’s usually a sign that some big change is about to happen.

Here I am, as free as it’s possible for anyone to be – free to travel, work, fall in love – and I’m holding back, like I’m waiting for my life to start. This is my life. It’s not a preparation for anything – it’s the thing itself. I have got to remember that.

Sandra Levinson said Aléa liked Bird of Paradise, said it was well written, but didn’t think it was a feature – maybe a TV movie. She offered to put it into Paul Mazursky’s hands, although we both agreed that was a long shot.

I told her about my idea to shoot a documentary in Cuba. I wrote up a proposal so she can get started trying to get me a visa.