In the novel Moby-Dick, after Ishmael has begun his journey toward Nantucket, but before he has boarded the Pequod, which is the ship that will carry him to sea, under the command of Captain Ahab, who is, as it turns out, obsessed to the point of madness with the white whale, he sees, in the dim light of the vestibule of an inn at which he is staying, a painting done in oils of a storm-tossed vessel upon whose masts a leviathan, having breached the surface of the ocean, with what seems like impossible fury, is about to crash, though of course this painting never existed, just as the painter who painted it never was born, and the inn in which it hung never was built, and the character who beheld it never breathed, or walked, or spoke, but in fact was no more than a thought that occurred in the mind of a man who did exist, and who imagined it all, and who wrote it down on pages that were then copied and printed and reproduced, and bound between covers, and sold in bookstores, and loaned from libraries, and obtained by people like myself, on down through the decades and the eras, so that all of us who have read it, and who will read it, do dream up, in our individual brains, visions or moving pictures that, because our psyches are separate, or distinct, must vary from each other’s in detail, emphasis, and scope, but not in substance.
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Maybe it is true, as people sometimes say, that artists don’t need to suffer for the sake of their work, by which it is meant, I think, that suffering doesn’t add to one’s talent, nor help one make use of that talent, when the time comes to use it, though it is also true, I think, that suffering, if it doesn’t embitter us, or wreck us so thoroughly that we lose our minds, or ability to function, can bring about an increase in humility and love, both of which can be of use to an artist, in the practice of their art, though more important than their art is what can happen in their soul.
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Because I have become obsessed with this diary, with contributing an entry to it every day, so that the idea of skipping a day fills me with dread, as if to do so would mean more to me than it would to anyone else, and more to me, also, than it would objectively amount to, I recognize that I’m not as interested in what I have to say as I am in merely saying something, though even now I’ve tried to say this as entirely or as thoroughly as possible.
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There are the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones; the Dominions, the Virtues, and the Powers; the Principalities, the Archangels, and the Angels. They are, all of them, angels. That is, beings made of spirit, rather than matter alone, or rather than spirit and matter both. But of these nine choirs, it is from only the lowest of them, the one that is furthest from the presence of God, not occupied with singing, or with praise of the divine, or with the overseeing of the cosmos, or the deployment of wonders and signs, or the protection of heaven, or the sustaining of those properties by which time and creation persist, but rather with the quotidian, the everyday, the humdrum, with, in a word, the affairs of humankind…yes, it is from this lowest choir that the guardian angels appear.
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I once told my friend, who is a Buddhist, that all dogs are secretly Zen masters, and he laughed and said no, not dogs, but trees.
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A friend of mine who has been reading my diary told me that I omit too much from some of the entries, so that readers are left in a state of uncertainty, or ambiguity, with regard to how they should feel about the events or the observations I describe, though when I asked this friend if she thought I ought to say more in these entries, so as to remedy the situation, she said she didn’t know whether saying more was the answer, for there was something about even these that she liked, though she wasn’t sure she could say why, and though that didn’t mean, she said, that they couldn’t be improved.
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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.