Interesting day....

Day 7 of living in an alternative universe--actually yesterday evening was the most "chill" and relaxed that I had. Have I finally come to terms with "the void"? Or maybe I was just tired and fell asleep easily. At any rate, I did not visit the Bronx, I returned home and rested---then decided it was possible for me to see Ben is Back. And see it I did, at the movie theater on 12th and 2nd, the theater that now inhabits the space that was, during the fifties and early sixties, the Pheonix Theater, probably the first not for profit theater in NY. It was there that, at 14, on the Saturday before Christmas, I trooped down and saw The Makropolous Case, by Capek. It was directed by Tyrone Guthrie, starred Eileen Herlie and had in it many stalwarts from Guthrie's Stratford Ontario crew. I was still new to going to the theater by myself---so I remember the whole experience as an incredible adventure.
Anyway, Ben is Back, the movie that I saw at the space kept my attention throughout. It is really a movie in two parts, the first, a family clinical drama, about how a well off family, in what obviously is a well off suburb, deals with the return of their teen age son who has been addicted and acted violently for several years, and now has a full day off from his rehabilitation center. An event in the middle of the movie changes the focus to a kind of obsessive mystery with the boy and his mother (who insists on being with him constantly)  forced to search for the family's  kidnapped dog, probably by dealers to whom the son still owes money to. The plot and tone shift is strange, but my interest was held throughout. The ending is kind of abrupt, but I left the theater believing that I had made the right choice.
  It was early when the movie ended, around 9, plenty of time to go into a bar for a beer or a meal, but somehow, I did not want to do it. First of all, I felt tired---still getting over a physical malaise that I had been into for the past few days, but for some reason, also did not want to "bar socialize", or whatever you want to call it. Simply returned to the apartment and got some rest.
  At Lincoln Center library, yesterday, I took out two plays: Junk and Oslo, both presented next door, neither that I got to see. Hope to read both of them very soon, still completing Hemingway's To Have and Have Not---kind of a fun read---Hemingway writes great dialogue,but the piece really does not have much staying power--still I want to finish it, have a sense of completion about it.
  Also yesterday, stopped into the new Shakespeare and Company in my neighborhood. Had some coffee (good!) but what was most interesting was looking at a new complete Shakespeare collection which included both Edward the III and even more interesting, a play called Sir Thomas More. Would like to read them both.
Tonight still up in the air---should I check out an Othello with a not so great cast---see some more movies---or maybe try a bar in Brooklyn or thereabouts. Will report tomorrow.