a strange and brooding day....

yessterday---body very tired--probably after all the activity the day before. Did not leave the neighborhood. Some good reading though---completed the book of essays by Jerome Charyn, the novelist-essayist from the Bronx who must be in his early eighties now. That means the Bronx he grew up in was similar to the Bronx that I grew up in--though his neighborhood, a little bit south of where I was raised, was more working class-a little tougher--and a little more religiously and racially mixed. Nevertheless, I see it as all-Jewish-- my father was a good friend of two teachers at the Junior High School that he went to---as such, I attended a few spring plays and concerts that they gave in the early and mid-fifties. I felt that I was in an all white community--no doubt about it. In 1957 I went to a production of (believe it or not) My Fair Lady that they did---in addition to watching what went on on stage, I could not help but notice on the fringes of the audience a few groups of hispanic kids watching from the sidelines. That neighborhood changed quickly in the late 50's---the Concourse, about a mile west of the school changed about 10 years later. Why do I always feel a sense of mourning when I think about those days, and the fact that those neighborhoods no longer exist. The neighborhood that I group up in---more protected---directly to the north of Charyn's and protected by the parkland of the Bronx Zoo--remained stable---it still is, even though now I would think it would be very mixed--but basically middle class.
  And strange how it is so easy for me to take a trip to Brooklyn and move easily through Bed-Stuy or Bushwick but the thought of a visit to the Bronx fills me with a kind of apprehension. I tutored many students in the Bronx up to about 2009, but now all my teaching is done near Washington Heights. Will I return to travel in the Bronx at some point soon..? Can's say
  Started reading a book on King Lear by Harold Bloom, very accessible but still intellectual. Also have just finished The Duchess of Malfi, a play by John Webster a somewhat younger contemporary of Shakespeare. I am becoming more and more interested in reading plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries---as I read I seek out images and and ideas that I can link to Shakespeare's plays. Certainly I found a good deal of them in the Webster play, Fascinating how little we really know about these plays, their writers and the life they lead.
  Feeling much stronger today---the plan (tentative, of course, as all my plans are) would be to go out Bushwick tonight and try to see the project at the Bushwick Starr---also I will deliver some flyers for the BAN march to the Starr Bar, which is right across the street from the theater. Will report tomorrow on what happens.