When I was wandering last night through an aisle of a bookstore in the city, after I’d left the building where I work, but before I’d gone down into the subway to wait for a train that would take me in the direction of the neighborhood where my apartment is, so I could sleep, I saw a book of poems that I didn’t reach for on the shelf, but that caused me to stop a moment, in the place where I was standing, when I noticed its title, which was, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.
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Some mornings I’ll sit here, not knowing what to write about, until that in itself, the not-knowing, becomes the thing I write about, though I suppose, in that case, I’m not writing about a thing so much as the absence of a thing, unless the not-knowing is a thing, the way silence can be a thing, if in fact silence can be a thing, which maybe it can’t be, I don’t know.
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All I hear is Billie Holiday.
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When I first saw the movie Citizen Kane, where it is revealed, at the end, that the main character’s dying word, Rosebud, is in fact the name of the sled he’d loved as a child, when, in winter, he’d go outside and have fun in the snow, before his life assumed the trajectory of ambition, responsibility and guile that would carry him into adulthood and old age, I thought of a stuffed animal that was gifted to me when I was so young that I cannot remember a time when I did not have it, and that is still somewhere, among my belongings, a panda bear to whom I gave the name Moynin.
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Last night, when I was getting ready to sleep, but before I in fact was sleeping, though I’d positioned myself in such a way that I might have appeared to be asleep, had anyone been in the room to see me, though no one was, I heard the sound of voices and footsteps in the stairwell of the building where I live, as a person who dwells on one of the floors above me, and who was returning from somewhere, in a cheerful mood, with a handful of friends or acquaintances, proceeded to the landing on which the door to my apartment is, and then continued on up, so that the noise they were making, as they talked and laughed and made jokes that belonged to them alone, or to the experience they were having, as a group, grew fainter, until I couldn’t hear them anymore, at which point I think I did fall asleep, for I don’t remember anything after that.
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I once worked in an office where the guy who sat in the cubicle beside mine, so that we were separated by a flimsy wall that didn’t quite reach our shoulders, if we were standing, would toss over to me, at random, without announcing that he was doing so, or giving me any warning, a tennis ball he’d found one morning, in the lot of the business park out front of our building, and that would bounce, each occasion that he lofted it, off the carpet behind my chair, or off my computer, or sometimes off my head, in which case I’d pretend to be annoyed, and would threaten to keep the ball on my side, and to not return it to him, though in fact I was amused, and was happy he was there, for he kept the day from becoming tedious, though I never told him this.
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My friend who works as a reporter told me the other night, when we were sitting in a bar not far from the offices of the news organization where she is employed, that she wants to quit being a journalist, and just write about whatever, like I do, which made me wonder to myself, is it true, do I only write about whatever, meaning nothing, or anything, though I didn’t give voice to this concern, but instead asked her why she thought she’d be happier if she did so, to which she responded that the issue wasn’t about being happier, but about no longer being unhappy, for there was, she said, a difference, though she also said, after a moment had elapsed, and we’d ordered another round of drinks, so that the bartender had cleared away the glasses that had begun to accumulate in front of us, before returning to us with more, that if the world needed journalists, and she believed it did, then she might as well count herself among them, for she had the aptitude and the temperament to be one, and anyway, she said, there were things in life more important than her own happiness, although, when I asked her what those things were, she only laughed and lifted her hands and said there were too many to enumerate, but that she would try to do so if I was willing to sit with her.
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In an illustrated Bible my family had when I was growing up, on the pages depicting the encounter, in the desert, between Jesus and the devil, after Jesus has been fasting, so that he might steel himself, or reconcile himself to what he must do, the devil is portrayed as an enormous winged creature, in mid-flight, with a scowling human face, a long tail, and hooves instead of feet, which seemed to me convincing when I first saw it, and tried to comprehend it, and which, as a visible expression of an invisible reality, is not unconvincing to me now.
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People get crushed like biscuit crumbs, and laid down in the bitumen.
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Between the pages of a book I’ve been reading, about a poet who lived long ago, in a cave on a mountain in a rainy part of Japan, and who died before any of his writings were published, so that he never knew his work would find an audience, or that people like me would one day think of him, though it’s possible he didn’t dwell on such things, or that, if he did, he cared, I have a bookmark on which I have drawn, during a moment of idleness or daydream, the semblance of his face as I imagine it to be, though likely as it never was.
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One of my professors in college was an elderly Jesuit who admitted to us, at the beginning of the semester, that, although his mind was strong, he knew he was ailing, and that we might be the last group of students he would teach, which didn’t turn out to be exactly true, for he was still alive the following term, when a friend of mine enrolled in the course I’d been in, and attended his lectures for several weeks, although it did turn out to be somewhat true, for he died before the year was up, so that his duties at the university were assigned to one of his brothers, by which I mean a man who’d taken the same vows as him, who lived in the same community on campus, and who was an academic in the same field, or discipline, though the two weren’t related by surname or by blood.
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I was in a drugstore, in the aisle where the greeting cards are kept, looking for a card for someone whose birthday isn’t far off, when a person who isn’t this someone, but who knows them like I do, as all three of us are related, called me on my phone, to say hello and to see how I was doing, which isn’t unusual, but in fact is quite normal, so that I began talking to this person as I stood there, browsing, until, after a while, I happened to mention where I was, and what I was doing, and how difficult the task seemed to be, or how difficult I seemed to have made it, which caused the person to laugh, and to ask me to describe for her some of the cards I was considering, in case she might narrow down the possibilities, which I didn’t think would be worth the effort, for I wasn’t in a talkative mood, though after I’d resigned myself to it, after she’d insisted, I discovered she was right, that she was able to help me choose one, and that doing so had cheered me up.
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I guess Chekhov is my favorite writer, if I had to choose one, though I feel like he would want me to choose another, if he were alive, and happened to hear someone put the question to me, and hear, as well, my answer, though I imagine, if that were the case, he would smile when he made whatever remark he was bound to make, as if he’d be pleased with what I’d said, but also embarrassed, so that I’d probably end up keeping my response as it had been, anyway, rather than changing it, or adding someone to it, despite his protestations, because by then I’d want only to joke with him, and give him reason to laugh, and be amused.
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When I consider the fiction I wrote when I was younger than I am now, though not so much younger that I do not recognize who I was at the time, or remember those stories as the efforts of a writer who’d reached maturity, I am struck by the amount of violence in them, and cannot explain to myself their meanings, though I suppose that, if I could explain them, I’d prefer I hadn’t written them, for if a story can be explained, it can be reduced, and if it can be reduced, it is absent of mystery, and if it is absent of mystery, which is not to say confusion, or obfuscation, it might be interesting and well-written, or well-written and entertaining, but it is not in possession of an essential characteristic of art.
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I have a friend who has told me he reads passages from a book by Marcus Aurelius every night, before he goes to bed, so that by now, at this stage in his life, he thinks he must have read the volume in its entirety more times than he could count on one hand, although, because he leafs through it at random, and reads whatever entry his gaze happens to fall upon, he is certain that he has read some parts of it more frequently than other parts, although, he also says, after he has told me this, that all of the wisdom in it is the same, or is of one piece, so that, regardless of the subject of any given paragraph, be it friendship, or misfortune, or love, or old age, the effect on the reader doesn’t vary, but remains what it has always been.
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Then the rain stopped, so we finished our coffee and paid the bill and got ready to leave the diner we’d entered an hour or so earlier, when the downpour had begun, all of a sudden, so that we hadn’t had much time to escape it, and had fled into the establishment in which we now were, where we’d removed the clothing that had been topmost on our persons, and had hung it on a coatrack near the door, so it might dry, before we’d been led to a booth, where, seated across from each other, we’d continued the conversation we’d been having, and that we’d had to interrupt, or that we’d chosen to interrupt, for it’s true we could’ve remained outside, in the street, and let ourselves be drenched while we’d went on talking.
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Someone asked me yesterday how long I would be keeping this diary, and I told them that I didn’t know, but that, at this moment, I wanted to keep it as long as I could, though when this person asked me why I wanted to do this, I didn’t have an answer, so that we’d begun to talk of other things, though after we’d parted, and I’d found myself on the train, and the train was moving through the tunnel in the subway, so that I had nothing to think about except that which had been on my mind, I realized that I did have an answer, and that the answer had to do with the passing of time, though it also had to do with the way I experienced the passing of time, so that I couldn’t say there was one definitive answer, though I could say there wasn’t any old answer, and that some answers were more true than others.
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“I wake up and I’m on Desolation Peak and the firs are motionless in the blue morning.”
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“Separation from God,” my friend said to me, when I asked him to provide me with a definition for hell, or gehenna, the existence of which we’d been debating, in a bar, for several minutes, without first having determined whether our understandings of the term were similar, so that now, only after I’d put the question to him, and he’d answered it, did I see that the basis for my argument had been different than his, and that his, in fact, seemed preferable to, or more accurate than, my own, so that I no longer was convinced of the reality of my position, and suddenly wasn’t sure what to say, which, because we’d been drinking, caused us to laugh, and, after we’d finished laughing, to talk about something else, for the subject had been too heavy to maintain for very long, though eventually one of us brought it up again.
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At the laundromat, while I sat on a chair near the windows in the sun, reading a book, as my clothes were spinning, so that now and then, when I looked up, I could see them through the glass, covered in suds, and hear the sound the washer made, though I couldn’t hear anything else, I fell asleep for a moment, and dreamed I was where I was, in the laundromat, on the chair, reading my book near the windows in the sun, though I had the feeling that a figure was beside me, so that suddenly I woke, and saw that I was alone, except for the woman who worked behind the counter at the far end of the place, who knew me and was friendly with me, but who’d already greeted me when I’d come in, so that now she was oblivious to me.