I rode the train to the beach yesterday, not to go swimming, but to wander along the boardwalk and to stand at the railing and to look out across the sand toward the water, in which no people could be seen, though now and then a dog that was with a woman who was dressed against the weather, and whose hair was disordered by the wind, and who seemed to be smiling or laughing, and sometimes speaking to herself or to the dog, as the two of them made their way in the direction they’d been going before they’d arrived in my line of vision…yes, now and then the dog would plunge into the surf to retrieve a ball the woman had thrown.
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I remember reading The Tell-Tale Heart in high school, and my friend asking me afterward, as she had also read it, for we were in the same class in which the story had been assigned, whether I thought the narrator was insane, to which I’d responded that I didn’t know, but that my first impression was that, yes, he was insane, despite his claims to the contrary, which caused my friend to laugh, and to make the observation that sanity is one of those things you cannot say you have without casting doubt upon yourself.
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I imagine that if I had a child with someone, and that child was young, say, an infant or a toddler, I would write about things that the child said, or did, and about my impressions of the child, though I suppose that, in doing so, I would reveal more about myself than I would about the child, for the reader would have insight into my mind, and would see what I noticed, and what I thought was worth recording, whereas they would encounter the child only indirectly, by way of what I told them, so that they’d always be at a remove, even if my intention was otherwise.
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Keeping a diary is a lonelier occupation than I’d thought it would be, though no one is making me do it, unless you count myself, which I suppose I do, for the me who is keeping the diary seems separate, to me, from the me who insists that I keep it.
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There had been a suicide earlier in the day, at the station in the subway I find myself in when I’ve worked in Manhattan and am ready to go home, but I didn’t realize it till later that night, when I’d returned from the city and had walked through my neighborhood and, in my apartment, had lay down with my phone to scroll through my apps and to look at some headlines, though when I came across the story, which I’d linked to from social media, I learned that the incident had happened around noon, which was several hours before I’d arrived on the platform from which the person had jumped, which explained why, by the time I got there, and was standing among the other commuters, most of whom seemed tired, impatient or bored, the trains were running again, everything had returned to normal, and I saw no indication that a tragedy had occurred.
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A painting I’d been looking at on a wall in a museum in a city in which I do not live, but to which I’d traveled, by plane, so I could stay in a hotel, and sleep late, and do things I don’t ordinarily do, was said, by the voice of a woman who was speaking through an audio device that had been handed to me, upon my admittance, and that contained descriptions of all the artwork on display, not only in this room, but also in the others, to be this artist’s least favorite, among his own canvases, though it happened to be his most popular and well-known.
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When I’m at the pearly gates, this’ll be on my videotape.
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An old woman who was stationed at the circulation desk at the library, when I happened to be checking out a book that was not about angels, but that had the word angel in the title, told me, when she saw the cover, as she scanned the barcode and printed a receipt to hand to me, that once, when she’d been going through a difficult time, she’d had an encounter with an angel, though she had not realized that’s what the being had been until many years later, when she’d recalled it.
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Someone asked me whether the entries in my diary are true, and when I said that essentially the entries are true, they asked me what did I mean by essentially, to which I replied that even when the entries are not recollections of events that have occurred, they are recollections of how those events would have occurred if they in fact had occurred. Though when this person then asked me how could I be certain that an event that had not occurred would occur the way I imagined it would, I told them I could not be certain, but that nevertheless I was.
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I’d spent a few hours in a bar that isn’t in my neighborhood, and into which I’d never before gone, so that I was unfamiliar with the regulars, and probably didn’t need to have been there at all, when, afterward, I found myself on the sidewalk outside with a handful of men and women who were about my age, but whose names I didn’t know, and who seemed, without having said anything, to have admitted me into their company, which, in a disorderly way, and yet as if of one mind, began to move in a direction along the block, until we reached a street down which we turned, and proceeded until we arrived at a building in which was an apartment that belonged to one of their number, and in whose kitchen, once we’d climbed the stairs and had let ourselves in and were gathered in it, was a fridge that, when opened, revealed many cans of beer, though after someone had taken a few and had handed them around, and we’d kept on drinking, I became conscious of the fact that I hadn’t spoken in a while, or made an effort to be social, and I began to worry that I might appear to these people as strange, and cause them to feel uncomfortable, so after a minute, when no one was paying attention, I wandered into the living room, where music was playing from somebody’s phone, placed my beer on a bookshelf, pretended to look at some books, and then left.
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I’d sat down to play chess with an old man who’d set up his board at one of those tables in a corner of the park, near the West 4th Street entrance, so that people like myself, who were wandering past, if they weren’t in a hurry and had a few dollars on them, could take him up, and test their skills against his; and I’d done better than I’d expected, but eventually had lost; although, after the game was over, and he’d shaken my hand and had asked me did I want to go again, to which I’d said thank you, but no, I’d remained where I was, at his prompting, and had talked to him about where I was from, and what had brought me to the city, and how long I’d lived here, and things like that, so that soon enough, on my own, as I realized he might’ve had another person to challenge, or contend with, if I wasn’t still seated in front of him, I volunteered to play him once more, removing from my wallet another few dollars, and placing them on the table, where he arranged the board and invited me to move first, which I did, though on this occasion, as we proceeded, he managed to defeat me very quickly, so that I was amazed at what had happened, and, by the end, could only stare at our pieces, where they now stood, though I myself had participated in their maneuvers, and had seen how they’d arrived there.
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I was drawing a picture, using a pencil and a sheet of paper, of the face of Joan of Arc, not as I have seen it rendered, in paintings and in still frames from movies, though all those have been beautiful, and have moved me, and will remain with me, I think, in my memory, until I die...yes, I was drawing a picture of her face, not as I have seen it in renderings, all of which are dear to me, and which I hope have changed me, if only in the way that they can, but as it suggests itself to me when I am sitting at my desk in my apartment, with my eyes closed, so that I cannot be distracted by any object upon which my gaze might settle, and I try to imagine or evoke it.
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Oh, what can I do? Nothing, my sparrow blue.
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A woman who’d profiled me for a magazine that I’d seen before, in bookstores and on tables in waiting rooms, and places like that, so that I’d been excited to meet her, and in fact had enjoyed the hours we’d spent together, wandering my neighborhood and talking about the themes she said persisted in my work, which I maintain has always been about the same thing, though what that thing is has never been easy to describe, texted me after I’d seen her off, after I’d walked her to the top of a stairwell that leads down into the subway, so she could ride a train back into the city, and told me she’d thought of one more question, though after I’d responded, and had returned to my apartment, so that I’d had time to think about how I’d replied, and to see that it wasn’t what I’d intended, I texted her again, to change or to clarify my answer, which elicited from her a further question, to which I wrote back in such a convoluted way that I decided, having done so, to simply call her and have a conversation on the phone, which I was able to do, though we ending up digressing so far from the subject that I can’t remember now what we said, or if she even used it in what she wrote.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I arrive, will you come and find me?
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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.