Prayer:
I went out for a walk. Passed by the cathedral of St. John the Divine. Always tempted to go in and sit in a pew, feeling very pious, light a taper, and just think awhile, since I can't pray and don't believe in anything, not my religion or this one either. St. John's cathedral: the neighborhood place where you go to be with yourself. Isn't this called spirituality--being with yourself as though you were in the presence of someone holy? No small talk, no daydreaming, no reading, no earphones, just silence. Being formal with oneself. This wouldn't ever work in one's den or family room: You need a cathedral, and incense, and vaults, and crypts and, on special occasions, an organ, a choir, a full-house congregation to access what has all along been the closest thing we have--ourselves. But then, I'm a man of no faith. And a Jew. I sit back. I envy others. I envy them in every religion. Sometimes I'd like to think that everyone, including the priest and the rabbi, feel exactly as doubtful as I do, or even as certain that there is no God. Part of being a holy man is having to accept having these doubts, and living with guilt, shame, and terribly bad thoughts. But here's the difference: They know the rituals with which to soothe away these doubts. They know the songs, the lyrics. Wie selig sind ... I wouldn't know where to begin. I just like the place, the building, its proximity, the fact that it's, like me, still unfinished.
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Trading places:
I walked by Café Amiana this evening, Broadway and 105th. Groups and clusters of people having afternoon tea. Have always liked afternoon tea. Get together, sit together, be together till dark. Soon it will be coat-and-sweater season, and I like being warm and snug with others in warm, autumnal places. Orange pekoe or Earl Grey rituals. But who of my friends ever has the courage to say they'd rather stay together and have dinner and drag the evening out a little longer rather than disperse, as they all know they must. How I envy people in their 20s. Even their loneliness, or the makeshift, in-between jobs of young writers who despair of writing--even they can stop the clock and enjoy what, with Chaucer, I'll call fellowship. The thrill of being with people who, on impulse, for no reason, suddenly get up and all together head for the movies.
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Gregor von Rezzori:
A writer who influenced me more than any other writer. But not because I learned anything from him. I learned more from Proust, from Joyce, Svevo, Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Stendhal, and Ovid. What I learned from him one evening in 1986 was altogether different and extremely simple: that what I knew I wanted to write about and the way I wanted to write it in weren't unthinkable or embarrassing at all. Here was someone who was still alive and saying some of the things I was almost ready to believe no one might want to hear any longer. He gave me what no other writer had given me until then: courage.