It’s a warm night so I’m writing this at an outdoor cafe table near my apartment. As usual, a dapper old gentleman is here talking about hospital visits and doctors—his and his friends; he’s remarkably consistent. People drop in to catch up with him about who is sick and dying with what; he’s a remarkable repository of information about local health. Just now I finally learned that he’s a retired doctor; I suppose this cafe has become a shadow office. I like people like this. They intuitively know what makes life interesting to them and commit to it completely.
Glimpses, raptures, moments of un-thinking.
Last night was the first time I had two sold out shows at once, one in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn; tonight, I’m back to sending mass blasts for a show that’s only half sold. Up the hill, down the hill, up the hill, rolling the bolder.
One clean way of dividing people is into two camps: those who want immortality and those who want morality; cosmonauts and necronauts. Sinking or floating. I think I admire the latter, but feel the impulse within myself towards the former. I think total acceptance is a better technology than total denial (say inventing a pill that ends aging)—but I wonder, have long wondered, if I would take the pill, and for how long. Often I think wishing for more—for wanting to tack more onto your life than you were given—is really what Emerson would call a “weakness of the will”—a rejection of spiritual self-reliance. Immortality—whether through science, religion, or fame—is a distraction from what is here and now: what you are, what you have always been.
A few nights ago Crumps and I got beers and talked about the future of our writing—mostly his I guess—but there was a shared anxiety about what next, and how. Writers