11:17 am
I wake up (quite awhile ago) eager to get back to things at my desk. The morning quiet admires me. The neighborhood gladly leaves me to my designs. (Positive narcissism is a fine state.)
The publishing pioneer Jason Epstein, now very elderly, one of the founders of The New York Review of Books, writes in the current issue of NYRB about the “revolution” in publishing that allows any writer to gain an audience through social networking and niche markets.
The difficult, solitary work of literary creation, however, demands rare individual talent and in fiction is almost never collaborative. Social networking may expose readers to this or that book but violates the solitude required to create artificial worlds with real people in them. Until it is ready to be shown to a trusted friend or editor, a writer's work in progress is intensely private.It’s no high pitch of observable activity, rather a happy embarrassment of looking into white space or listening for the point, a phrase.
The thing I’m “supposed” to work on is here, but easily there apart, or rather with an array of possible receptacles, sundry projects that may enjoy moments of free association, a note routed somewhere evergreens out the window acknowledge by slightly swaying.
Eccentricity, improvisation, sketching, freedom’s just another word for everything to gain.
1:30 pm
A woman on the avenue, by the curb, says, smiling as another woman walks up, “You’re fashionably late!”
I’m sitting on a bench against the store window of The Cheeseboard, eating my Saturday afternoon slice. The women are mothers, one replacing the other, supervising a little herd of hyperactive girls selling cookies on North Shattuck, Berkeley, sunny, balmy spring previewing itself. Happy people everywhere: so many romantic couples, but also many elderly. (Berkeley’s a great place for getting old.) Parents and kids all over the street. Scads of people sit on the grassy median of Shattuck, eating pizza under trees, schmoozing, checking their cells. Like every Saturday, a jazz trio is playing in the pizza place, which is always crowded. The Epicurious Center across the street, next to Chez Panisse, sells fresh sushi, gellato, gourmet soups, evil chocolates, and teas (among other delights). The day is nearly idyllic (except for the cars).
A great thing about being a mental person is that I don’t mind waiting in a long line, which is common at the Cheeseboard Pizza. I don’t easily tire of watching people, because I fade in and out of knowing they’re there.
What is being “fashionably late”? I associated to “late modernity”: To be “late” is to be really Now, as well as so engaged with things so important that one is—O, so sorry—late for the party, thus sure to have maximal attention for one’s entrance. (But to call someone fashionably late is, of course, a note of affection.)
2 pm
A block up from Shattuck, via Vine St., is Walnut Square (corner of Vine and Walnut), where the original Peet’s Coffee café is crowded. (Peet’s is now a local chain of gourmet coffee shops, the best.) A classical guitarist on the curb outside the café bids for sales of his CD via delicate entrancements. The Walnut Square boutiques are busy. The Friends Society is meeting at their place across from Peet’s, Jewish Community Center up Walnut a block (Saul’s Deli nearby, always crowded). At Walnut and Vine, persons from all directions walk, bike, and jog by. (Peet’s is actually the vortex of the universe.) Perfect sky above, the streets thick with trees and old houses, each with so much personality you could want to snap a pic of most. Birds everywhere playing the field.
Alas, I was too early to be a “Millennial,” which is the sequel of being Gen X. Years ago, I wanted to really understand the Gen X mind, which I did. Now, I want to see the world through Millennials’ eyes. It’s amazing how a stage of life defines one’s world, such that having been 2o-something as a Baby Boomer is very different than being 20-something as a Millennial, even though being 20-something has a general aura belonging to every life: Being in one’s 20s! Everyone older knows how it goes, as if the world is culminating Now. “It’s all for us, because we are what the world is for.” I revel in the ironic beauty of youth—without longing, because it’s like spring, you know.
