I told my friend who is writing a book about saints that she herself reminds me of a saint, insofar as the way she has arranged her life, or the way the circumstances of her life have arranged themselves, with or without her intention, has come to resemble, to my mind, that of certain men and women who lived centuries ago, in communities in the desert, engaged in prayer and the study of biblical texts, though of course my friend does not live in the desert, but in an apartment here in the city, in a neighborhood not far from my own, where any number of noises or distractions can beset her, and where, it seems, no one shows an interest in what she is doing, or believes that it will sell, though when I mention this she becomes indignant, and tells me she is neither a saint nor a person who cares about revenue, but is merely a writer, like any other, who will not abuse her talent by producing work based on what the market tells her is valuable, a statement that does little to dissuade me from my impression, though I do not mention it again.
diary /
My friend, who is also a writer, and who has been working on a book about saints, with whom, as a subject, she admits she is obsessed, told me yesterday, while we were walking through the park during a letup in the rain, so that sometimes we’d feel, on the back of our necks, when a breeze would lift the branches of a tree we happened to be passing under, the water that had been sliding from the leaves, and that now and then would come down on us, as if in a shower…yes, my friend told me, as we walked in the park like this, talking about her book, and how the writing of it has been going, and whether she thinks it will end in publication, that, like every person she knows who is in any way close to her, she finds herself on the verge of tears each day, though she doesn’t always understand why, and though, as well, she doesn’t always give in to them, if give in is the right word.
diary /
From the galley at the back of a plane, during a flight that had been in progress for several hours, so that I knew the aircraft was somewhere above an ocean, although, because night had fallen, and because we’d reached such an altitude that we might also have been above clouds, I knew, as well, that I wouldn’t have been able to see the surface of the waves, had I been looking out one of the windows, which I hadn’t been…yes, from the galley at the back of this plane, in the cabin of which the lighting had been dimmed, so that most of the passengers had fallen asleep, though I had been unable to, and instead had gotten up and had wandered toward the lavatories, though I didn’t at that moment need to use one, so that I was, more or less, just standing there, out of a restlessness or boredom that expressed itself physically…yes, from this galley near the lavatories, where I was standing, I heard a flight attendant telling her colleague, as they sat beside each other, on those metal or foldout seats they could pull down from the wall when there were no tasks for them to do, or to attend to, that she was going to close her eyes a minute, but that she wasn’t going to fall asleep, and that, if she did, her colleague shouldn’t be afraid to nudge her, with an elbow, though at this point her colleague laughed, and said something I didn’t catch, but that the first one must have heard, for it caused her to respond in kind, and for their conversation to continue, so that the two of them were still talking, a few minutes later, when another passenger, an older woman, came shuffling down the aisle and stepped past me, or around me, and poked her head into the galley, and asked, in a polite voice, if it would be possible for her to have a cup of water, to which both attendants said yes, of course, and to which the one who was nearest responded further, as she got up to retrieve a bottle from a fridge, and to uncap it, by asking a question that encouraged the old woman to say more, about her trip and about where she was traveling to, so that a new conversation began, and I was able to listen a while longer.
diary /
In college I took a course with an English professor who, among the faculty in his department, was regarded as an expert on Shakespeare, whose plays he’d have us read, and, each meeting, would lecture about with passion and insight, and a breadth of knowledge that was remarkable for how far it could digress from the subject without seeming to lose its relevance, although, what I most remember now, having obtained my degree and moved to a city and found employment in a career that seems to me about as removed from the humanities as one can get, work-wise, without delivering one’s self entirely from the order of social interactions…yes, what I most remember now are not the plays, or what we learned from them, though we might have learned a lot, but a moment of levity toward the end of the semester, when this professor told us, while leaning against his desk, pulling at his beard, and talking more casually than he tended to, that he didn’t, in fact, enjoy teaching Shakespeare, because doing so reminded him of how vast was the gulf that separated him, in terms of achievement, from the bard himself.
diary /
When I arrive, will you come and find me?
diary /
I was talking to an old woman, in the nave of a church, about a stained glass window I’d stopped to look up at after I’d come in a few minutes earlier, so that she’d noticed me as she’d begun to make her way down the aisle, from where she’d been kneeling, in a pew toward the front, and had, on reaching the place where I’d been standing, made a remark, or asked me a question, about the object of my gaze...yes, I was talking to her about this stained glass window, the meaning of which she understood better than I did, when another old woman, with whom she seemed to be friends, though I hadn’t realized anyone else was present, approached us from the side, and joined our conversation, which was quiet and unexciting, and not like conversations I’m used to having, though it was by no means unpleasant, and in fact went a long way to cheer me.
diary /
Or, instead of lying there, doing nothing, waiting to see if sleep was going to arrive, or if I was going to arrive at it, I’d get up and pull on my clothes and grab my keys and leave the apartment, and walk toward the end of the block, at which point I’d turn in one direction or another, based on an impulse whose origin was, to me, unfathomable, and continue until I became tired, and was able to locate the subway, and ride a train back to my neighborhood, where, if morning had begun, people would’ve woken and have started appearing outside, so that I’d feel as though I’d experienced the night in a way that they had not, though I’d also be aware that the reverse was true, and that whatever I might’ve gained from remaining conscious, and I wasn’t sure I’d gained anything at all, had cost me the equilibrium that was evident on these people’s faces.
diary /
When I was in my twenties, and learning to write fiction, I read more novels than I do now, as I wasn’t reading them for entertainment alone, though they did entertain me, but also to absorb, at some level of consciousness, the techniques the authors employed, and the styles that belonged to them, so that I might, once I closed the novels, and turned to my own work, attempt to reproduce what I’d absorbed, in stories of my own invention, until finally I understood that such a method of composition does not result in art, but rather in an approximation of, or an obtaining toward, art, and that what I in fact needed to do, if I wanted to write something worth reading, was to forget about the authors whose novels I’d read, and even about any stories I might want to tell, and instead think only of what word I wanted to begin with, and what word I ought to use next, and then next, and so on, until a dream I had not dreamt, and that perhaps is not a dream at all, began to reveal itself, sentence by sentence, on the page, which is not to say that all those novels I read were for naught, but rather that their effect on me, or their influence, however strong, isn’t easy to describe.
diary /
In my apartment I had some books that I’d already read, and, because there was no room for them on the shelves, or even on my desk, so that I’d begun to pile them on the floor, where now and then I’d spill them when I wasn’t looking where I was walking, or when I slid my chair back too quickly, after deciding to stand up from where I’d been sitting, I realized I ought to get rid of them, or give them away, so one morning I found a cardboard box, and put the books inside it, and carried the box downstairs, and placed it on the sidewalk, close to the building, where people walking past, on their way to wherever they were going, might see them and take them, which is what people seemed to have done, though I never actually saw anyone do this, but only saw evidence of them having done so, when, for instance, later that day, I returned to the building, and observed that the box was empty, except for two or three paperbacks that I felt somehow bad for, and thus retrieved from the box and carried back up the stairwell to my apartment with me.
diary /
My friend, who is also a writer, was trying to tell me last night, while we were drinking at a bar that was empty except for one or two other people, so that the place had assumed a feeling of tranquility, and the bartender, with almost no one to attend to, had taken up her phone, which was charging in an outlet behind the bar, where she was standing, and was scrolling through whatever she could see on its screen…yes, my friend was trying to tell me, while we were sitting there on stools, after he’d asked me what the real subject of my writing was, as opposed to the surface-level, or superficial, and I’d told him that I wasn’t sure I knew...yes, he was trying to tell me that he did know, and that he was going to inform me, but that first I had to finish this shot with him, which, after he’d picked up his, and had handed me mine, from where it had been waiting on a coaster in front of me, I ended up doing, though I needed a moment to gather myself, against the alcohol, before I lifted the glass and tipped it back and drained it.
diary /
I was having coffee, at his request, with the French translator of a volume of my stories, in order to discuss what my intention had been with regard to a usage, or phrase, that is particular to the English language, but which doesn’t seem to have a foreign equivalent, when the server who was waiting on us, at the table at which we were seated, at a café whose doors were open to the sidewalk, along which no one was walking at this hour, on a weekend, when people who live in this city tend to still be asleep…yes, we were having coffee, and talking in this way, trying to find a solution to the problem, when our server said to us, as she’d been standing beside us with a pad and pencil, so that she’d happened to overhear us, while she prepared to take our order, that maybe we should maintain the English in that instance, which didn’t seem to me like a bad idea, though as soon as she’d said it she apologized, as if it had occurred to her that she ought not to have said anything, although, as it turned out, when she wasn’t working here, in this industry, she said, she studied literature at a university, so she couldn’t help but be interested in our conversation, and, anyhow, neither myself nor my translator had minded that she’d spoken, but in fact saw the wisdom in what she’d told us, had wondered ourselves if maybe we should do that, and thus were grateful for her advice, which we went with.
diary /
In this paperback I bought at the airport, so that I’d have something to read on the plane, though I was hoping I’d fall asleep, and that the paperback would help me do so…yes, in this paperback I bought, and started reading, but that I didn’t finish, because indeed I fell asleep, was a character whose job it was to trace the whereabouts of two men who were rivals of the crime boss who employed him.
diary /
If I look back on this diary, and find entries, like yesterday’s, that I’d rather not have written, or that I wish I’d written differently, so that, were I to come across them again, I wouldn’t find them sentimental, or so involved with the workings of my own mind, and the notions that occur to me, that they would seem sentimental to me, even if they don’t seem that way to others, I won’t delete them, but will leave them where they are, though I’ll try not to think of them, and will hope they’ll go unnoticed, or be forgotten.
diary /
If I could return to my childhood, not to relive it, but to tell that child, through some mode of communication, some thing that might be of use to him, to make his life easier, or make him more capable of meeting life as it unfolded, so that he wouldn’t be spared its difficulties, but could respond to it with more honesty and courage than I had at the time, I suppose I would, though I wonder if, by doing so, I would undo whatever mechanisms have produced the person I am, and thus negate or extinguish me, which wouldn’t necessarily be a loss to the world, but which would be a loss to me, insofar as I don’t want to be extinguished, unless, by way of such an occurrence, I am delivered into the presence of whatever named or nameless entity created the world, and the mechanisms of which I speak.
diary /
In the rain, on the sidewalk, at a corner where there is a stairwell going down into the subway, I bought an umbrella from a man who, after he’d asked me did I want a blue one or a green one, and I’d told him a blue one, said to me, in a laughing voice, “I knew you’d say that.”
diary /
I had the afternoon off, so I went to a museum, thinking, I suppose, that I’d wander through the galleries, looking at whatever paintings were hanging on the walls, and then leaving once I began to feel restless, or bored, though after I’d arrived, and had sat on the steps out front of the building, so I could finish the sandwich I’d brought with me, before going in, I realized I was happy enough to remain where I was, watching the people who were around me, and the traffic in the street below me, for the duration of time I would’ve spent indoors.
diary /
I have a friend who has done well enough in his career, in finance, that he no longer worries about money, though he does worry about other things, like the happiness and well-being of his spouse, who also works, and their two young daughters, who do seem happy most of the time, he says, but who, like anyone, are troubled or affected by encounters and interactions that he couldn’t have predicted, and that he cannot influence as much as he would like to, so that a new appreciation for what he calls the psychological or existential realities of life has been brought home to him, although, when I ask him, jokingly, if he’d like to trade his circumstances for mine, so that I could become him, and he become me, though we’d still maintain our separate identities, or souls, he laughs and says, no, your circumstances are more difficult than mine, which I don’t think is true, although, after we part, and I’m walking back alone to my apartment, where no one is waiting for me but my dog, who I love dearly but who, I must admit, is not as complex as a human would be, and who thus requires less of me than I have the capacity to give, I realize that I don’t believe the reverse is true, either.
diary /
I went for a walk last night, and nothing extraordinary happened. I crossed the bridge, which, because the day had been rainy, wasn’t as crowded as it usually is, and now, though the rain had stopped, the planks on the bridge were slick, so that one’s footing wasn’t as certain as it is when they are dry, and I found myself looking down occasionally, to see where I was stepping, rather than looking only out past the metalwork and the beams and the girders, across the water, toward the buildings of the city whose lights had come on, or that already had been on but that now, because the sky was dark, and there was no natural light against which they were competing, or into which they were merging, were visible.
diary /
According to this book I've been reading, about a homicide that occurred in a town that doesn't seem, from what I can find out about it, to be known, historically, for anything other than the crime in question, a detective who worked on the case for many years, but who has been unable to identify and apprehend a suspect who can be arraigned and tried in court, continues to work on it, on his own, even though he has retired from the police department and has moved with his wife to a beachfront community in a different state, where, he told the journalist who interviewed him as part of her research for the book, the weather agrees with him and there are opportunities to relax, but where, as well, he’s begun to feel depressed for the first time in his life, a circumstance he attributes to the fact that the victim for whom he’s wanted to find justice has, to this day, gone without it, though lately he's become conscious, he said, of how such a concept must be more important to him, and to those who loved the victim, than it could be to the victim herself, who clearly cannot want anything, anymore, at least not in the way that he, or her family, can want something, assuming there's a way she can want anything at all, though whenever he does become conscious of this, he added, he reminds himself that such concerns are not for him to ponder, and that they do nothing to further the investigation.
diary /
You gotta be kidding me, the grass grows over me.