Early Monday morning...

heat---unbearable--at least that is what I thought yesterday---remained in the apartment most of the day---today it is forecast that the heat will even be stronger--where does that leave me in terms of plans? Ironically enough I woke up early this morning feeling stronger in my body then I have in a long time. Could take the subway somewhere, but what if there is a blackout---always a possibility. So I will probably stay around the apartment again, unless I can invent some other plan.
  Summary of yesterday: three good conversations on the phone with friends and a nice conversation with my brother, who is in LA, probably the best one we have had in a long time. Long story about how he and his friend Michael were perfectly situated to get the roles of Lenny and Squiggy in Laverne and Shirley. He has a great memory, gave me the info detail by detail. I admire him for dealing with his MS in the way that he is doing---being very outgoing, and, I think, stressing the positive. Lots of stories I could tell about our friendship which peaked during the four years I was at Hopkins. We went to so many musicals and plays together at that time---always waited outside the stage door, if there was a "West Side Story" graduate in the cast of whatever musical we saw that day. He also put up with my "dating problems" which were many during that time. Yes, that was a good time for us.
Rest of the day: rented The Wizard of Lies, the HBO movie directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert de Niro about Bernie Madoff.  I had wanted to see this movie for a long time---being stuck in the apartment yesterday, it seemed like a perfect choice. Now I am a little disappointed. Everyone's work is very very good--in addition to De Niro there is a great cast---but the movie can't break into the one dimensionality of Madoff's personality. The script tries to get under the surface of the man, but it can't break through---I don't think that anyone really could. Madoff to me is the ultimate "Hollow Man". He did what he did because...well I guess because he could. But I wonder, as he became closer and closer to being caught, did he fantasize what life in prison would be like. Here is a man of tremendous power, who loves to use it, but who makes a choice  to start a Ponzi scheme that, when it falls, will  ha have to  spend the rest of his life as a cypher--and all the aspects of his life that were so important---the money, the travel, the homes, the power---gone.  The movie dances around this conundrum---scenes throughout it simply repeat what we already know. After the first hour, my mind began to wander.
 That is a lot for one session---Monday is just beginning---we will see what happens.

Saturday---all day

....For the last hour and a half have been outside---mostly reading in Riverside Park. Finishing up Wild Palms, yes, believe it or not, only about 15 pages to go. Also stopped off at Barnes and Noble but did not buy anything. Some good news: the Center for Fiction, my favorite bookstore in Brooklyn, perhaps in the whole city has reopened for browsing, as of today. Terrific! Can I make it out there tomorrow? Hard to say, will have to take it moment by moment---everything now depends on stomach and energy, Today, did not feel that I had enough energy to visit my friend Riley at his new barista job in Bed-Stuy, but that was because I had a rough night last night.
    Hungry around 5:30, I walked over to one of the pizza stores on Amsterdam Avenue in the 80's and bought a slice of peppironi pizza. One slice, that is all---in the past, I would have digested it easily, then gone on to whatever play or movie I was seeing that night,  then, one the event was over, probably need a snack or a sandwich to finish off the night. Not so any more. The one slice of pizza crowded my body, then set off explosions in the stomach, then, for the next 8 or 9 hours, caused me much discomfort by putting incredible pressure on my stomach. Did not need to eat anything until around 8 this morning. What is happening here? Do I have to rethink my whole digestive process? 
And, of course, got very little sleep---which accounts for how tired I felt at certain times today. Or is that also because the red blood cell count has fallen? Never really sure. How much of what I feel is part of what the pandemic has demanded of me, and how much is what the doctors have found out?
Can't say at this point, but as the weeks continue, will have to explore it.
    So as 5 o'clock approaches, I sit at my screen. Tonight is the first baseball exhibition game of the year--and while I am not thrilled about the way the short and improvised season has been put together---I will listen or stream some of it. Anything, anything for a change---for a distraction.
Will report soon.

Friday morning....

Have just returned from a "journey" to 14th street, to make a deposit in the bank where I have a checking account. Considering how nervous I have been about being too far away from the apartment, this trip was relatively easy. No stomach problems and two very efficient subway rides allowed me to make the trip and back in just about an hour. Pretty good...? Maybe this afternoon I will head north to 146 st. and Broadway and sit and read at Hamiltons, one of the coffee shops that I frequent when I tutor at the 145st. library.
  Speaking of reading, I have made a lot of progress in Wild Palms, the novel by Faulkner that I began on Wednesday. Some of the way he writes and describes nature---some of the excitement that he is able to get from the passions and clashes of his characters, seems totally amazing to me. How can one person be so observant?  I think I have about 80 pages or close to that to go. And yes, once I finish Wild Palms, I think I will buy another one of his novels, and work my way through that one as well. Maybe Absolom, Absolom. But I would also like to check out a book by a female Shakespeare scholar that takes the reader through about 18 of his plays. What I have read so far, as I have browsed the book at Barnes and Noble, makes me want to follow her through her analysis' of the plays she has chosen. Maybe that will be next.
 Had a nice phone conversation with my friend Riley yesterday. He is beginning a job as a barista at a new coffee place in Bed-Stuy--on Halsey and Tompkins. Tomorrow it is supposed to be incredibly hot, not a great day to travel,  still, I would like to attempt a visit to see the place and "hang" with him. We will see what happens.......

Beginning the Faulkner...

So...have just read the first 26 pages of Wild Palms---Wow!---very intense. Faulkner really draws you in---this book demands so much concentration---but i think that is what I like about it. Should be a viable challenge for the next few days---maybe a way of getting through the weekend. Strange, the idea of losing myself in a book and sitting in Riverside Park, just a short distance from where I live, is something, pre-Pandemic, I would never have thought of. Will doing this reading by a substitute for standing on the corner of Broadway and Patchen Avenue in Brooklyn, where Bed-Stuy meets Bushwick, and trying to comprehend the history of those streets around there for the last 15 or so years? Not sure, energy is still erratic---health issues still are part of my life. But Wild Palms may excite me so much, it will easily replace my "jaunts" through Brooklyn.
  Yesterday, spent a good deal of the day at 1470 Madison Avenue, the large Mount Sinai building where the Hematologist and his nurse practitioner discussed the findings of my blood results---the ones that were discussed with me last week by the Resident at Ryan health, and which hinted at some trouble in my blood,that I had not experienced before. Yes, my red blood cell count has gone down from about 13.5 to 9.5, which means I probably have some iron deficiency. The doctor was very warm and personable---seemed to really listen to me---and gave me some iron pills to take as start. But I can't take them until I have the colonoscopy; that was very important to the doctor. So, three more weeks to prepare---and then it happens. Feel a lot more relaxed about it then before.
   My friend Sarah and her husband Alex have committed to taking to the procedure and back---really very lovely of them---I greatly appreciate it. Sarah also said that she would help me get through the day before--that is the really tough one--so I am hoping for the best.
  Have listened to the first two segments of the virtual Richard II presented by the Public. Lots to quibble about, but lets just say I love the language---taking it in, thinking about the imagery, so even if there are some overall problems, I can get a lot out of it. Shakespeare is all encompassing. The poetics of Richard II are so strong---so very different from the rest of his history plays---well, we will see how this plays out. Will report soon.
    

of buying books and reading books and "others"

Saturday afternoon: what to read. Only "new" book is an Agatha Christie mystery. At Barnes and Noble I do my search, weigh my options--easily about ten books I could leave with but which two shall it be? Final Decision: Everyman, by Philip Roth, and Wild Palms, by William Faulkner.
  Reasons: I had read Everyman before, probably right after it came out, which would have been about thirteen years ago. I don't think that I have ever bought a book that I have previously read, so why this one? I am very comfortable with Roth's vision, also very familiar with the kind of people he writes about. I wanted something "familiar"---a book that I would feel comfortable re-reading. That accounts for Everyman.
 As for Wild Palms, would you believe it but i have never read a novel by Faulkner all the way through. Something about Wild Palms seemed different from some of his other novels--it is also mentioned prominently in Adam Rapp's play, The Sound Inside--which I just read. It was there so why not? A good challenge. Probably next choice I will make to read.
  Finished Everyman yesterday. Did not remember it as being so harsh. Roth glories in demonstrating time and time again how the body of an older person (the protagonist and several others) is able to do less and less. Does he pile it on a bit much? Sure---but that harsh tone really grates at the reader. The central character is a retired advertising executive---the novel begins with his funeral, then turns back to the last years of his life---his loneliness, conflicts, etc. It is a life of relative financial ease and conformity except that like most Roth protagonists his hunger for women and their flesh destroys the two serious relationships that should be the anchor of his adult life. Roth always glories in the availability of certain women. Everyman is no exception.
  It was the right novel for me to read at the right time. Let's see if I can penetrate the Faulkner.
 

Have just finished reading...Hema and Kaushik,

a novella by Jhumpa Lahiri that ends her collection called Unaccustomed Earth. Not all of it---I had read most of it before, but just the part close to the end of the novella, in which Hema, thirty seven, intellectual, and coming out of a long and unsuccessful affair with a college professor meets Kaushik, another Indian, whom she had a crush on as a child. This is in Rome, where he is working as an independent photographer, and she is doing research.  A few months before, Hema has just accepted a marriage proposal from Navin, another Indian male---a scientist. Yet she is uncomfortable with this---though she is second generation Indian--and completely removed intellectually from the world of her parents---in which all marriages were arranged--she understands that this was an "arranged" traditional marriage itself. She and Kaushik meet by accident at a dinner arranged by mutual friends, are immediately attracted to each other and begin a passionate affair---which will last during the length of their time in Rome. Kaushik is starting a new job in China, and towards the last days of their affair, he asks her to reject Navin and come with him. She explains to him that she can't---that this arranged marriage is "settled" and for all of the passion and fulfillment she experiences with Kaushik, she must live the marriage through. "Coward!" he calls her. She starts to cry. That is the end of it.
    On the way to China, Kaushik stops in Thailand to take some pictures. He is caught in a monsoon and disappears. Hema returns to Cambridge where she and Navin will build a home. She does not love Navin, but accepts him---she is pregnant and focuses on the unborn child. Of course, she can't keep Kaushik out of her mind, but gradually accepts Navin's meaningful good intentions. Her final statement (and the final statement in the book) is to Kaushik.  "It might have been your child, but this was not the case. We had been careful. You had left nothing behind"
   So that is the end of the passion. The almost complete annihilation of it. That last sentence, why does it speak to me so much? If I were reading it aloud, who would I have wanted to hear it? And what woman, in what time and place,  who knew me, once felt passionate about me, would make that statement to me?
 So I am mesmerized by her writing, and her vision. It helps that in this world, time has stopped, no structure to adhere to, isolated from hanging out with friends or acquaintances, the power of the writing---any writing that I read, can be overwhelming. The book becomes an acquaintance. Thinking about the writing, going over it in my head, replaces whatever excitement I would get from the outside world.
  There are real things happening too. Scheduled a colonoscopy for August 4. Should help me get
to the bottom of some of my stomach problems. More to come.
    

Lahiri versus Eisenberg (and some other things)

Just one more day. Tomorrow at this time I should know a little more about my condition, and hopefully have a date for the colonoscopy. This is what I am waiting for---why I have simply hung out around the apartment biding my time---letting the time pass---as I wait for tomorrow's appointment.
   So with that in mind, once I had finished whatever morning tasks that I had, the plan was to go to nearby Riverside Park and read, read, read. First book to accompany me: Under the 82nd Airborne, the excellent book of short stories written by Deborah Eisenberg. Took my seat a little north of 79th street in the park, but found my thoughts dominated by memories of the play Six Degrees of Separation, by John Guare. Went through the whole play in my head, fantasized about directing a production with high school students, isolated certain moments in which I would make certain choices. When over, reached out to Ms. Eisenberg's stories, but found myself not wanting to enter her milieu---the world of her stories, usually populated by bright, stalled somewhat entitled people. Also her laconic style that leads one into the situations she so carefully writes about, was not where I wanted to go. So I returned to the apartment, and chose a story from Unaccustomed Earth, a great group of eight shorts stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Ms. Lahiri's style and the world she creates--full of longing and sensitivity seemed much more suited to my reader's needs then Ms. Eisenberg's.
   The story that I read has the same title as the collection. Its central character is Rumi, born Indian but raised in Pennsylvania, about 38, who has just moved to Seattle with her three year old child and her wasp husband who works for a hedge fund. They had previously lived in Park Slope Brooklyn (of course!) Adam, the husband, is traveling on business, and Rumi is visited by her father, a widower, who stays with her and Akash (the three year old) for a week. This is enough to let Rumi think through her memories of her parents---Indians who saw marriage as a task more than a romance.  A strong sense of obligation permeated those relationships, and Rumi remembers the disparate aspects of her mother and father as they raised two children in America to be American.  Lot of memories, lots of evaluations---Seattle, for Rumi is the unaccustomed earth she must navigate, just as her parents had to navigate the America they settled in and raised their children. The writer captures Rumi's isolation perfectly, there is a sense of sadness and gentleness that goes through the long (about 60 pages) short story. It drew me in completely.
   Back to the present---tomorrow at 1:30 is the appointment with the doctor who will perform the colonoscopy. When it is over, will have much to report.