November 4, 2009

An eventful and productive day. Also one dominated by three friends and their phone calls. J has moved to Tennessee to give his marital turmoil space to cool. I would have advised him not to volunteer the truth, but he did, and a word uttered is like red wine spilt on white cloth; it can never be recalled, it can never be as though it hadn’t happened. Truth sometimes can hurt widely and deeply while retain very little of what one might call virtue. Getting it off your chest is putting it one someone else’s. I say all of this in the abstract. The thing on my mind is that he is absent and unhappy, and I miss him. I look at the objects he left in the studio and I am bereft. It perplexes me why I am the last to know everything about this, that I learn incidentally by a rumor or a random phone call, but I will accept his explanation that he dreads my bad opinion.

JP called months ago and I ignored him, remembering the trouble that surrounds him and all his deeds. He called again, sounding vulnerable and–well, interesting–so I called back. I know far more about his last decade or so than he imagines I do–having been contacted by business partners and detectives when his ship was sinking-- and I listened to hear if he had turned over the least new leaf, if truthfulness had found even a toehold in his narrative. Negative, sorry, sorry to say. I do believe his mother died, but other than that, it is likely that every single statement, anecdote, detail is false. The time I know him to have been in prison he filled with tales of traveling, living in California, association of some sort with the Marines. Does he suppose I live under a rock? Perhaps he is so pathological he doesn’t care whether his lies are believed, so long as he has the freedom to tell them. He does remain, however, interesting.

JS, at the other extreme, phones from U Va that he is seeking work with a group of attorneys in Harlem who protect those vulnerable and friendless people– Harlem Neighborhood Defenders-- and would I mind recycling my earlier recommendations for him. “Fine,” I say. What I mean is, “You are the most upright soul I know personally, and I would lobby Satan if I thought it would open a path for you.”

Bade goodbye to my old studio, locking the door behind me for the last time. I felt bad. I felt I had failed it. My imagination is too anthropomorphizing for my own good.