London 6-A

Evening: Hiked through Regents Park to the London Zoo. What did I like best? The hammerkopfs, I think, who were gathering material for their nests at my very feet, or maybe the capuchin monkey who looked so sad, wondrous and untouchably sad. A pregnant bridge wandered through the zoo with a few of her attendants, her bouquet clutched in her hand. It rained hard and cold, and I walked home down Oxford Street through alternations of rain and not-rain, though it was never quite light. Nor is it now, an hour or so before evening.

In five hours the last evening performance of Lincoln goes up in New York. Praise. Standing ovations. It is emblematic that I would have left before all that gathered to a greatness. Perhaps it’s for the best. But I wonder why made the London sojourn so long? I could have returned yesterday and seen the play for the last time tonight! I wonder what’s going on in my head, sometimes. Or maybe it belongs to the actors now, a production rather than a playwright’s workshop. In any case, I feel melancholy. I’ll wait for the next bout of light, put on my shoes, and go out and have a drink. I’ll drink to everyone.

Father’s day tomorrow. I was going to say “half of my thoughts of him are resentful,” but that is too much, I think, and in any case, it means the other half are not. In my mind I’m always showing him things I’m doing. I never start my car without thinking how much he would be fascinated by a hybrid. .What if he had sat in the audience for The Loves of Mr Lincoln?  I think we would have liked that. Yes, I think that would have been well.