Sunday morning---"Oh Endless Night!"

 That quote from Tamino, the hero of Mozart's The Magic Flute, on his journey  to find a woman he has fallen in love with, and who at that moment in the opera he is searching for, seems to be blocked.  It is a moment where the music captures the  sensitivity of the Prince, but also his hunger for resolution.  For me, the "endless night" began when I woke up this morning. Another day mostly in the apartment---the next week a continuum of that---trying to find excitement from the classical music I listen to, what I read, the football games I am betting on (three today) and maybe a good conversation or two with a friend. But the "sameness" of all of that just got to me. On top of that my one tutoree is asking me to help her with statistics problems. I can help her with some of them but others are way over my head.   --her teacher, for some bizarre reason insists that she complete this work to pass. Absurd, since these are very advanced questions.

What else? Well, yesterday i listened to most of the Met's Broadcast of The Magic Flute--still find the music and Mozart's setting of the drama through music amazing. Can it really be almost 54 -years ago that I attended the opening night of the Met's then new production---in German, had the Chagall paintings for scenery, and was directed by Gunther Rennert. What I rememeber most about that performance was Herman Prey's singing of Papageno's aria (really a song) called Ein Maidchen Oder Weibchen (probably spelled it wrong)---very simple, but he got an enormous hand afterwards. Early  1967---what a different time for me! Really searching for some artistic and personal meaning in my life. Lived on Irving Place between 18th and 19th---a studio very similar to the one I live in now. Working on an acting scene with Gilbert Price, working each night from 6 to 10 at the 33rd street Post Office sorting mail, spending the weekdays at home, and going to the Met or City opera on weekends. That part of my life finally ended in July of 67 when i began work as a social worker for Riverdale Children's Association and was able to quit the Post Office. I was glad for the change---I wanted to have a social life in the evenings and finally admitted to myself that the lifestyle of being an aspiring actor, something that I had dreamed about for years,  was not going  towork for me. What else...? The beginning of my relationship with my friend Fred, which would last for another 30 years, and reading Malamud's The Fixer--other books too, but the memory of that book, or actually the memory of reading that book in my apartment before going to work, remains with me. No dating---that was one of the reasons that I was happy to get the job at Riverdale,  So I emerged from the "dark" world of the postoffice into the "light" of day at 79th and 5th Avenue---that is where the offices of Riverdale were situated--and moved into the next chapter of my life.

Enough memory! Time to return to the present. Read a little---listen to some football predictions on the radio, and get ready to follow the two games I have bet on that begin at 1:00. Wish me luck!