December 15, 2011

After I woke the first time and fed the cats, I lay back down and was seized immediately by the most elaborate dream. I was on my way home from New York, but decided to stay another night. I wanted to revisit the National Hotel. It is long gone in life, swallowed up by the complex of buildings which now stands on the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, but there it was in the dream, far more squalid than it had been in life, when I had my memorable adventure there. The room was long, the corners of it so dark that unexpected roommates or passers-through kept appearing out of it. The floor of the closet was a deep pool of water, and one had to be careful not to drop anything in it, for you couldn’t tell how deep the water was and whether the dropped thing would be retrievable. The room, I realize, was flown in by the dream from the long high room Nick and I had in Cobh, but darkened and windowless and filthy. Derelicts wandered in and out, and prostitutes, each more debased than the last, but somehow none of them very threatening. I must have chosen that place for human adventure, but when one arrived, he was too dirty and, probably, disease ridden to be appealing. I dropped one of my shoes into the pool. That was the last straw, and I packed up and snuck out, at each step expecting somebody to bar the way, but they never did, and then I was out on contemporary 8th Avenue, and then Maud banged the cat food can in the kitchen, and I was awake again.

I was not ready to return from new York. All day yesterday I was planning adventures which could only be realized if, when I opened the door, I’d be looking out on W. 46th.

Bought and erected the Christmas tree yesterday. I was– what is the word?–blithe. Caught myself singing through it all.

Dear God, I stand at the brink of age and still worry about what I worried about as a teenager, suffer the same hurts I suffered as a teenager. Less piercing, less long lasting? Yes, of course, but I don’t count diminished appreciation even of suffering as much of a blessing.

I tempt God by saying, “All would be well, I would behave if things went well for me, one day, all day.” He does not take the bait.

Crystal attached to the window blind caught in the sun, blazing blue-white, like the hottest star in the galaxy.

Evening: The Cantaria concert--audience packed to the rafters-- does, again, five times better than any rehearsal would have led us to expect. Somewhere there is a choir rehearsed to perfection which ctrashes and burns at every concert, to balance us out.