Interesting day yesterday. In the early evening, I participated in an online trivia game created by the Kaslynn, who is the Assistant Head of Equality for Flatbush. She expected a bigger online comittment from the members, but in the end, it was only myself and "Miss Elias", a Jamaican grandmother and member of E4f who played. Had a great time, the liveliness that Kaslynn projected and the idea that I was really keeping all of this going, made me feel very strong. Very focused in a world that I really like. Nothng "romantic", nothing moody or reflective--just living in the moment. Very different from earlier in the day. I was in the library on 82nd and Amsterdam. There is a book that I have reading there---I don't take it out, It is called The Power Notebooks and it is by Katie Roiphe. The book is a diary-meditation, on her life, but it really focuses on her relationships with men--both permanent and fleeting. I get lost in it---why? The loneliness, the search for contact, the search for immediate contact--that gets to me. Sometimes she admits that she chooses men to sleep with whom she does not have much feeling for, ;yet she does it. Where am I in this? Somehow I see myself--the way I present myself to women---"non manipulative--forthright" as exactly the kind of man she would NOT choose to have a brief affair with. But I read on--perhaps I am attracted to the excitement I identify with her choices, or feelings.
When I have read about fifty pages, and kept myself cool---for that is what I have really come to the library for---I replace the book on the shelf. I know that the next time I go to this library i will go right to it, but I don't want to take it home with me. On these hot days, the libraries are my only destination---I build the vision of my day around them. Today the plan (in my mind) is to go south, and spend most of my time at the Lincoln Center library---lots of books or plays or essays on Shakespeare to browse, but also I will bring the book that I am currently reading---a biography of Ethel Rosenberg---to the library and make that my essential reading focus. Quite a contrast: the musings of Katie Roiphe, played against the totally realistic life that Ethel Rosenberg lived, before she was jailed. Ethel had no time for reflection---a husband who was living pay check to pay check; two young sons that she was very comitted to taking care of--no, this was a very practical life, built around the attempt of a young couple to rise above the poverty that they were born into.
The "poor Jews" of the twenties, thirties and forties---why does that life resonate with me--born and raised in a comfortable middle class environment---far away from the horrors of poverty. And yet I know them. What does that mean...? Will return to this at another time.
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