Here I am Up, fighting back sleep. Going back to bed.

Latet

Today I renewed our membership at the Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts. And I stayed around to check some exhibitions, Renaissance and Mannerist Art, English Silver, and the Faberge Collection of Russian Easter Eggs.

To be fair, I spent very little time with the Faberge. I just noticed a stunning icon.

The English Silver is rather impressive. I was particularly taken with this casting.

After my brief foray into Culture, I went to Kuba Kuba, the original in The Fan. I had the codfish cake and eggs. The fish has a nice enchilada sauce with capers.

All in all, a nice sojourn.

I did my minor/major home repairs, sat around but decided I would swim. I did an early evening swim, way better than just sitting around. I’m happy I did.

Nothing much else to say.

I’m watching a freight now, headed North to Who Knows Where. It carries tank cars with chemicals, empty refuse receptacles, plain box cars, one of which bears a stunning fresco of graffiti. (We could write about how creating beauty in this culture is an act of vandalism. That begs the question, “What is all that stuff in the museums then?”)

South bound #89 The Palmetto passes through, bound for Savannah. I have a private fantasy of a certain woman in Savannah boarding that train Northbound for a clandestine tryst, dirty, sweaty liaison, purging our bodies of the potential energy stored too long.

I want to drink the coffee I brewed. And just sit some more,wondering when J will return.

Every day I get the op-ed page from The New York Times in my email. The editor is a chap named David Leonhardt.

Each time I read the first few words, I ask myself

Who cares?

It has been a long trip down the road to irrelevance for The Grey Lady.

And New York. Art Deco, I fear, is but Woody Allen’s memory.

It’s all gone. Like The Old Penn Station.

Jerome Kern,The Gershwins, Cole Porter, The Talking Heads, by golly, replaced by Disney musicals.

Nobody speaks Yiddish anymore, goes to The Catskills, or does piece work sewing.

The great grandchildren of these seamstresses live in. Westchester, work on Wall Street or publishing.

Their measure of success has moved beyond escape from tenement.

And this City lives more on its memories than its dreams, just like everywhere else.

How do I articulate my loneliness, without leaving my house, to my wife, my partner who sleeps, who cringes at any sudden move or disturbance of the space?

The night almost alwsys features a period of wakefulness for me. I become more and more alert. I use this time to read or enjoy the silence while I drink my decaffeinated coffee. Then I think again about my sleeping wife, with her worries about me.

Pleasure between spouses is not her “language”, to use a current metaphor. She chooses worry over fellatio and cunnilingus. Did she ever surrender to anyone, besides Jesus, in the baptismal pool at some long forgotten church?

Will I ever know?

It is going to take every fiber of my being to dispose of the accumulated chaos in this house, to make it a home.

God I’m lonely. That is a prayer.

I am not a basketball fan. I can tell you who everybody else is talking about and that the Raptors won the NBA Championship last year.

But I an genuinely saddened about Kobe Bryant’s death. Just sad.