1971

Mid-January, to Paris. Late in the month, books himself into the Bircher-Benner clinic in Zurich, where he undergoes a five-day fasting regimen. “A beautiful prison,” he calls it. Will periodically return to European clinics for multi-day fasts, exercise routines, and general physical recuperation.

Later in February, returns to New York and then, with Sigrid, travels to Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Caribbean island of St. Martin; also visits Arizona on this trip. Is increasingly annoyed at the way beautiful places have turned into tourist meccas, “already full of horrible people.”

June, to Paris for the opening of his solo exhibition at the Galerie Maeght.

October, goes to the opening of the Maeght exhibition at the gallery’s Zurich branch; meets Nabokov there.