a blank....

 a nice tutoring session yesterday---returned from it feeling really upbeat--but will not have another one until Monday. So what happens now? Lots of free time, but very little income. New York is hot---not a great walking day, unless I can wait until the early evening when the weather will probably cool down. A possibility is the ERS production of The Seagull, which is playing at the Skirball Center in the village (is there really a Greenwich village anymore---has the quaintness and "struggling artist" aura of that world, as it was presented to me as a young adult,  simply vanished into a world of luxury highrises and brownstones that are worth easily over 10 million dollars). I am familiar and sometimes friendly with many of the ERS actors, and always kind of stimulated by the choices they make when they put something on.  This is their first venture into Chekhov--could either go tonight or any time next week.

Just took my morning chemo pill. It effects me, but it is hard to say how much. My body responds in different ways---and a lot depends on how my day is structured. Yesterday, no drowsiness as  worked throug the morning and  waited for the tutoring session to begin, but when I returned to the apartment and ate, my body was shot. Today with less structure, anything is possible.

At the Lincoln Center library on Monday, I finished reading Edmund Ironsides, a possible "lost" play by Shakespeare. I found it in the second floor reference section--along side of another book called Disputed Shakespeare, which contains eight plays that the editior feels were written by Shakespeare. Only one of them, Arden of Feversham. is really known. Ironsides centers on the battle for the English throne between the Danes and the Saxons, in the early 1000's. There were moments when phrases or images reminded me of other writings by Shakespeare, and it has one character, Edricus, a "scoundrel" who moves between both camps, playing each side against the other. He reminds me of a similar character in King John (Philip, the Bastard) , but there are other characters in Shakespeare's plays who observe in a cynical way as well. Still, came away rather unmoved by it---will try to read this summer at least one of the "disputed" plays in the larger book. At the moment I am currently reading what seems to be two autobiographical novels. The first, Kennedys Goodbye, by Kati Rose. charts the growth of a young woman growing up in a strange Catholic family in the seventies in working class Connecticut. Kind of charming and surprisingly perceptive as the narrator looks at the other members of her family. The second and more potent of the two is Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe; a black woman remembers her pre teen (so far) life in a Chicago project, one that like the others near it, will soon be torn down. Already there is one brutal scene in which white cops enter and terrorize her family for no reason, and drag her non gang member brother to a precinct that is harrowing for its police brutality. Made me feel enraged and frightened after reading it. I will put down Ms. Rose's book for a while, while I continue reading about Ms. Wolfe's black neighborhood and family. It has to be. 

All for now, should report soon.