8 PM. I fell asleep soon after I, Claudius ended last night. I’ve been having vivid, complex dreams, and I suspect my brain is working overtime because of the impending big changes in my life.
In one dream, I walked into a doctor’s waiting room – not the sleek new kind with high-tech furniture and all those media from Whittle Communications, but an old-fashioned waiting room with plush chairs and couches, resembling an English parlor, the kind my pediatrician Dr. Stein or my psychiatrist Dr. Lipton had.
But this room was for meditation, and it had been a gift from some physician who died and wanted a place for people to think about their lives without actually being spurred to do so because of a health problem.
This morning was dark and cool. At 6:30 AM, I worked out and a couple of hours later, I was out of the house, making two trips to the post office to send off three boxes of stuff to Fort Lauderdale.
Then I hopped on a bus to Far Rockaway. The Green Line drivers may go out on strike on Thursday
because they’re resisting givebacks to management. I’m glad I won’t be here to deal with the strike, if it comes off, except for its first few days.
For the first few months when I lived in Rockaway in 1979, the Green bus drivers were also on strike, and it caused me a lot of inconvenience, even though I had a car then.
At the nursing home, I first saw Grandma Ethel walking in the hall. We went to her room, where I took out the oranges and applies I‘d brought on Friday and neglected to leave there. Grandma’s complaints were the usual.
“Instead of getting better, I’m getting worse,” she said, meaning the burning sensation and bitter taste in her mouth. I cluck my tongue and say, “Terrible, just terrible,” and wait for her to change the subject and go on to some other topics: Marty’s weight, her daily meal schedule, the pleasantness of some of the nicer workers at the home.
I know I’ll never convince her that she’s not sick any more than I could make Josh realize nobody was harassing him. Perception always beat reality. I stayed with Grandma until noon, when she and the others went into lunch. It’s going to be very hard on
her when I leave, and my twice-weekly visits are a memory.
Instead of taking the bus, I decided to walk down Central Avenue to Cedarhurst, about twenty blocks, but it was cool and pleasant and hadn’t yet started raining.
As the homes of Woodmere gave way to the stores of Cedarhurst, I mingled among the frum (Orthodox – Ronna uses the term) and had frozen yogurt at TCBY and a big salad at Supples, an upscale deli. For a change it was nice to have my salad in a restaurant. At the bookstore I found the newest edition of the guide to law schools, and this one seemed to imply that the University of Florida was more competitive, if still relaxed. Their videocassettes and computer files in the law library sound up-to-date, and UF is probably a well-heeled law school.
Obviously if I’m getting a scholarship, I assume someone sent back a “cancel” form when they got the stuff about orientation last week. I hope I prove worthy of the scholarship. Their offer of it makes me feel more warmly toward UF’s College of Law, as ifs they are really concerned about me.
Perhaps I’m going to blossom in Gainesville. I know I’ve got to make sure I don’t come off as some snotty know-it-all because of my age and experience. As a
laws student, I’m no more experienced than a 22- year-old who got his B.A. this year. I want to try to fit in at the law school and university and wider
community.
At Broward Community College, I always felt alienated and different, and I’m tired of being an outsider. I hope I can be hard-working but also friendly and helpful. We’ll see. I just don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.
My tendency is always to criticize, if only to myself, when I’m in a new group – even at artists’ colonies. For a while I’d like to be just one of the guys.
Back home, I spoke to Pete, who just got back for Europe – the hated Milan but he liked Lugano and other places – and is on his way to San Francisco to earn triple mileage on Pan Am before the airline totally disappears into Delta, United and/or TWA. I read that Southeast Bank in Miami is close to failure; it must be the $6700 I owed on my Preferred
MasterCard that put them over the edge.
Tom Person sent out a xerox of his New Pages column, in which he reprinted his review of Narcissism and Me. It’s fairly dopey, but at least I get one good quote blurb from the one review of that chapbook.
Manhattan D.A. Morgenthau indicted the Bank of Credit and Commerce International but the scandal’s reach is global, and BCCI seems to have been a Ponzi scheme involved with every evil enterprise from money laundering to bribery to covert actions like Iran/Contra and other arms sales and even murder. The CIA, the Medellin drug cartel, Neiman Marcus, Arab terrorists – it’s as if somebody’s paranoid fantasy about a worldwide conspiracy of evil came true.