This morning on the C-train, I sat next to someone reading Faust.
Which might have impressed or intimidated me even more (not that I was about to engage him in conversation, given the recent stabbing death on the D-train) had I not been able to withdraw from my own bag a copy of 'In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,' which I recently started after finishing 'Swann's Way.' Unfortunately, the reviews I read about this second volume of Proust seemed to be correct: this translation (by James Grieve) is needlessly Anglocentric (replete with words like 'dames' and 'chap' and so forth) and lacks the amazing, seamless quality of the Lydia Davis translation of the first volume, which leaves you with the feeling of being pulled out to sea in a gentle but insistent current. Reading Proust for a second time makes me more than ever want to tackle it in the original French, now that Grieve has made me so acutely aware of what can be lost in translation.
I arrived at work, where time passed. At lunch, in lieu of going to the gym, I decided to go for a walk. On 34th Street, I lamented the construction of a huge tower of condominiums, which seems so out of scale with the rest of the neighborhood, the Empire State Building notwithstanding.
The forlorn beauty of the bare tree in front of the Empire State Building captured my mood perfectly. I had much to be grateful for on this day, which happens to be the eleventh anniversary of the day in 1998 on which I first met Stephen and we 'got married.' I remembered that day, which I had spent working in an office downtown in a publishing house where I was 'temping,' nervously awaiting the approach of my date with Stephen (with whom at that point I had only exchanged e-mail messages; we had not even exchanged photos); the light was much like today -- a low winter light in a clear sky -- and by the time I left my job, at exactly 5:00, it was already pitch black. I could not have predicted that within a month of meeting him, I would have 'come out' to everyone I knew and embarked on the most important relationship of my life, one that thankfully continues to this day.
Nor could I have predicted, by the same token, how difficult life would remain in other respects; all too often, as Schopenhauer most famously pointed out, it seems that once met, all of our desires are replaced by new and more strenuous ones. So while I could only think of my relationship with Stephen with love and gratitude, I remained preoccupied with other difficulties that have more recently plagued us. Why, for example, did the washing machine have to break yesterday? Why have taxes doubled on our house, requiring the payment of thousands of dollars per year that can be expected to outweigh any increase in our earnings? Why does my editor refuse to respond to any of my e-mail messages and what does that portend for the success of my novel? I felt doomed. Like the statue of the racing dog I passed in the meridian of Park Avenue, I could sense the tendrils of life -- whether real or imagined -- slowly winding around my limbs to hinder and eventually suffocate me.
Regrettably, the advertised 'rom-com' seemed to provide no relief to the churning restlessness of my thoughts.
For a second, I wished I was the type of person who could 'forget my troubles' with a shopping spree at ____.
I felt better, however, as I considered a line of newly planted trees on 32nd Street. If a tree can grow and thrive in the city, I reasoned, I should be able to do the same.
The tree did not seem at all intimidated by the massive buildings surrounding it.
I admired the facade of a nearby building and imagined the ghost of ____ leaning out of the window and waving to the throngs of admirers collected underneath.
I passed a brick wall, which only recently had seen the light of day after so many decades, and wished that I could spend a few minutes talking to it about the differences between life as it existed then and what it's like now. I wanted to ask if it liked teevee or regularly used the internet.
I did not, however, want to hatch a chicken revolution.
On Fifth Avenue, some of the trees still had their leaves, and I was hypnotized by the light splaying through the branches. I was struck by the idea that beauty can be found almost anywhere, if you can train yourself to find it, and even more than that, train yourself to focus on what is good instead of fixating on the negative and problematic. I vowed to 'pack up my troubles in an old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.'
While this only lasted a few minutes, and I was rather quickly enmeshed in the more mundane travails of the capitalist economy, I did feel calmer when the sun began to set a little while later; soon enough, I thought, I would be home with the ones I loved.
