Landing

What I remember this year from Holy Week is heart of stone into heart of flesh.  That was Ezekiel.  I did not get to read it.  The other server and I fought, and I lost.  So I got to listen to it.

If there was a church of Shakespeare, I would go there, too.

I would fight to read there, too, and light the candles any time they needed me.

It’s my secret ambition to add all of Shakespeare to the Bible.  I am making no progress in this.

When my friend was hurt four months ago, I thought, we will never eat at our restaurant again.  That was how my grief expressed itself.  Losses are specific.

What I will never do with my grandmother is pat her shoulder to try to make her feel okay for a minute.

Last night my little cadre of friends I grew up with, not from childhood but through adulthood, maybe a more eventful growing up, actually, probably a rougher one, we all had dinner at our restaurant like not a fucking thing had happened, except that we all got our minds blown and one of us was physically stomped about as much as a person can be.  Everyone ordered the same thing they always order, and it was hard to believe it was happening, really, it was like, is this it?  This is it.

Reminding me of the Holocaust survivor I heard speak who said, “Don’t ever take for granted a quiet evening at home.”  Just being around for the regular bullshit of wondering about your choices and how time is passing and what it all means is a great victory.

I’m just very tired.

I sat on my dad’s porch while my brother smoked and we were both like, who are you?  Except that we know each other like we know ourselves.  No surprises.

I drove the convertible home with the top down.  It was cloudy.

I feel like a spring pressed down here after about two days.  I have to get out and for one reason or another walk a long, long way.  This is the way I’m a New Yorker.

There I am black and white, and thin, here I am full and fat and dizzy.

That and that there is nothing in New York I think should be different, I think it is all perfect, the rich, subway delays, piss in the street.

The first sentence of the next novel I’ll read: “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

Image: Men Shoveling Chairs, Circle of Rogier van der Weyden, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The novel Murphy, Samuel Beckett.

Ezekiel 36:25.