New York New York 2

November 7, 2014

Rain Thursday. Outside my window at dawn lay the angular jumble of the city, all line and plane grayed by rain. In the midst of it, perched on the peak of a roof, was a single gull, the one brightness, the one organic, living being. He made the whole city turn around himself as an axle makes a wheel. I went down to the Paramount lobby and began writing a play. I continued on the play in the sculpture court of the Met. The gull inspired the play, as did my reaction to On the Town the night before.

Subway to the Met. Ran first to the special showing of El Greco’s. Wandered and took in. Wandered, so far as I remember for the first time, into the American wing. I must have been saving that for a time like this. Lunched facing the gray rain in the green-gray Park. The horrible taxi ride back to the hotel consisted of forty blocks of the driver jabbering to his friend on speaker phone in one of those African languages that have no words, only modulations in a stream of sound. The cell phone has made us forget the occasion and the necessity of manners. I couldn’t stand it and jumped out of the cab long before we were home. Cleared my head in the ran. Thought of the paintings. Thought of my play.

My sickness is mild but exhausting. Slept as much of the afternoon as I had.

From the Internet:

I'm a longtime admirer of your poetry. I don't know of anyone else as good, now that Ted Hughes isn't around any more. I am writing to ask if I can use a short passage as an epigraph for a new novel, the sequel to my first one, "The God in Flight." "The God" is going to be published for Kindle soon, and I would like to bundle the first chapter of the sequel with it.

I would like to call that sequel "The Platinum Secret," which is your phrase, so I am asking your permission to do that. It is the only phrase I know that captures exactly what I mean. If I can use the material I have in mind, it would be perfectly clear that this concept is your concept.

Below is the material I would like to use as the epigraph:

Beloved reader, do not look for it here;
do not look for the platinum secret—
more precious than victory—
the disappointment men do not speak of,
after the hope which barely dared to breathe its name.

“After Reading Whitman at Midnight, He Returns to an Old Theme,” from Blood Rose

All the best,
LA

Evening: off to Roundabout’s production of The Real Thing with Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stoppard is the cleverest playwright in the world, and the show never disappointed on that or any other account: witty, perfectly acted, intellectually engaging. It gave me everything I lamented the lack of the night before. Happy with the Theater again, happy with Broadway. I was told I’d gotten the last ticket, and the sign said the show was sold out, but there were 20 seats in front of me in the mezzanine empty. The coat of the woman beside me stank rather shockingly. I wondered if her friend would tell her, or if she couldn’t detect it herself.

Joy returning up Times Square to bed. I thought of Blake’s “London.” Here there were no marks of weakness or of woe. Has the world changed so? Is that bit of it so special? Hundreds of smiling people taking pictures of one another under the dancing lights. Children petting the muzzles of the policemen’s horses.  Fifty languages. Ten thousand stories.