New York reawakins, and we are ....

 caught on the upprer west side? Possible. Strange day---five days after biopsy,  (no results in yet) some pain in my unrinary tract---seems to be receeding now, but earlier---intense. What does that mean for me today? Probably a lot of reading in the close environs of my apartment house. No trip to Brooklyn just yet. Ah, remember a time when Sunday morning meant getting on the subway---the 1 to the A to the M at 4th street---the ride over the Williamsburg Bridge----South fourth, Lorimer, the beginning of Bed Stuy from a distance, from the window,  Bed Stuy on one side and Bushwick on the other. Finally getting off at Knickerbocker, walking from there to Wycoff and Jefferson and finally Cobra Club with your bartender friend Olivia getting you coffee and putting on the baseball game for you. Some aquaintances dropping by---feeeling good, then off, down the Bushwick grid, past Starr Street and the Bushwick Starr--possibly stopping by Molasses, the bookstore you like---chatting with Matt, who owns the place and his nice wife Maggie---the continuing out of Bushwick, to Broadway, then walking a bit away from Myrtle Avenue and chopsing a street---Bainbridge, Decatur,  maybe Patchen, to walk down, into Bed Stuy, brownstone city, calm, relaxed, wondering if this is the same neighborhood I was taught as a white person to fear for most of my adult life, Finally, a bus ride back to Flatbush and the BAM neighborhood, checking out the books at the Fiction Center, having some coffee there, reading what ever looked interesting, and also checking out the Atrium, opposite the BAM Harvey, plenty of TV' to watch baseball or football. Those days are long gone. I wonder if the Atrium and its restaurants have re opened. Always found good convesation there---could that happen now?  

Can't say---still dreaming of many trips, but today my companion will be Henry Roth as I try to come close the finishing his autobiographical novel, A Diving Rock on the Hudson---His writing is revelatory--much of the time, but some of it is plodding. What is he to me...? I read his story, almost recorded day by day, as if it were my own. But it isn't. Could I write about my life at Science or at Hopkins, It is hot today--I can feel the Baltimore heat---even more intense then we have here--just thinking about some moments that I spent there. But what would be the point,,,? More things going on now. Now I simply fantasize another book after Roth, but quite different in content I would hope.

Played out. Not much more to say. Want to move on. Will report soon.