From country goats – belonging to good friends who bought and then enhanced the lavish house we built in Woodstock, enhanced it to a startling & magnificent degree – to city sights. The goats are pygmy goats, a growing herd whose females have produced an alarmingly large number of boys this year. Goatkeepers have no use for males, since one will suffice to service a whole herd of girls, and they (the boys) yield no milk to justify their cost in hay and grain. They’re mostly bound for the pot, all around the world (goat meat is the most eaten meat, on Planet Earth), but in this case their owner has no stomach for the killing. And neither have I. (I used to do it, as a goatbreeder myself many decades ago, but it was no fun even then.)
The city brings a meeting with Louanne, a beloved friend of nearly 50 years’ standing, who comes to Manhattan to visit her daughter, Circe, and her Ethiopian grandchild, the dynamic Abush. And I get to catch up with news of Lu’s family elsewhere; this time I’m bringing my book to our brunch, and have the joy of dedicating it to Lu and her partner, Jeremy, a scholar of the ancient world who I hope will find things to smile at in my book with its feet in prehistoric caves and a teasing meditation on what might pass today for Stone Age shamanism. I meet Lu on a sunny morning in Union Square, home on a day like this to pick-up chess games, luscious market produce, and homelessness. Also home to flyers for every cause under the sun – including news of a coup against God, seemingly forestalled. Reaching my college, my day is rendered blissful and complete when I see reclining on a sunlit bench, en route to the swimming pool, Saint David Hedges, a dear, true friend and a true saint of the public school classroom. (I’ve watched him teach.) I call him a saint, though like me he’s a Jew; well then, a Jewish saint. I ask him how the classroom is, these days. ‘A land beyond love,’ he says, summing it all up, as does his wry expression.

First, the country, and a much-anticipated day: Claire’s portrait exhibition at the Uptown Gallery in Kingston. We were hoping that a few of her subjects might be there (for a photo opportunity!) but through bad luck and also a case of bad management – I failed to get Michael Esposito to the exhbition (St. Michael the archangel as I think of him, a man of supernatural sweetness and humility, who shed the trappings of rock music success to mend bicycles in Woodstock) – the portraits alone had to represent their sitters. It’s something they did ably and vividly, and the many visitors to the opening came away entranced, as always, by Claire’s mastery of the medium. This goes beyond draughtsmanship: I had the honor of introducing her, and alongside others’ comments about Claire’s capacity to render the true person, ‘the faces behind the face,’ I maintained that she paints the person not only as they are but as they were and in some cases will be. In other words, it was time itself, not just portraiture, that hung on the wall before us. For good pictures of her art, proceed to Clairelambe.net

Then back to the city, via bus and the 2 line, once known (you hear it rarely these days) as the African Queen, as it sheds white folks when it goes under the East River (do they drown?) into Brooklyn, and becomes more and more the train I love, a country unto itself. On my working Tuesday with John we late-lunched at Nizam’s tiny, wonderful Indian restaurant. Nizam is himself a writer, and the 3 of us commune about this. Nizam’s books concern politics – and inevitably corruption and mismanagement – in his native Bangla Desh. He’s safer here with us, in Brooklyn, feeding us wonderful food. (Goan shrimp, in my case; it’s so good I can’t bear to sacrifice it for any of the other marvellous dishes.) Then back at last to catch the bus home, via the old Gethsemane, 42nd Street with its underground crowds mirroring the above-ground ones – literally parallel universes.

Ah, September. When I was an activist in South Africa many years ago (a book about us, called The London Recruits, was recently published, and a documentary may be on the way – it was a dangerous business – two of us were killed), when Mandela was still in prison, I was in touch with a township resident who sported the unforgettable name of Goodbye September Suitcase. Many such wonderful names in the townships. I couldn’t fully grasp this one till I realized that his first name was not Goodbye, but Goodbye September. Last name Suitcase; born at the end of September. Here in Woodstock, final days before the start of the fall teaching semester in the city. Glorious sunshine in the closing days of August. Coffee with friends – Shiv, Alan – outside Bread Alone. Inside, another Nataka work of flower art.

Then back to the office – via the 2 line with its usual cargo of Hasidim, Hispanic and African Americans – past my favorite bench, well loaded with grateful ladies in the shade, to my corridor, with a solitary student waiting.

Wednesday, to Linda for breakfast as always, then back on the 2 line, up to Jimmy’s for work on our musical – today via a lady on the Columbus Circle subway platform, good voice, wearing angel wings, singing Voi Che Sapete, and then Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. En route to Jimmy’s, met a nice liver-(brown)-spotted dalmatian, and sighed for Pop, my liver-spotted dalmatian of so many years ago.

Up at 4:50 to make breakfast after sleeping warily – hour by hour – but very pleasantly, and jump on the bike in the pitch dark to get to Kingston and catch the 6:15 express bus to Manhattan, in time for the now customary 3-meeting Wednesday. (Today it was Linda, Jimmy, & John, in turn.) The 6:15 is a blissful bus ride – half-full bus straight into the Thruway & no stops. How many rides left on the bike before it sells? Ezra Pound – not well-known for his wheelies, but – once said that ceasing to love or be lovable was the real death, and that the other was ‘little, beside it.’ In the biker’s bible it says something similar: selling your bike, with no replacement in view… this is the real death. But I’ve had so much joy on 2 wheels I find it hard to grieve. Gratefulness comes first.

Arriving at Columbus Circle for breakfast at Bouchon with Linda, the irrepressible Moby, newspaper-seller supreme, greets me and I grab a quick snap of his infectious grin. Great start to the day. Good work follows – inspired contributions from Jimmy, a good review for John’s new novel, and, to our delight, proof copies of our grammar primer.

Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus – the original – (not the first one, which died after a brief life in the ’60s and is being refurbished) – the actual Magic Bus traveled in by the Pranksters – reader, if you know nothing of this, instruct yourself in the America of 50 years ago – arrived in Woodstock on a 50th Anniversary journey (anniversary of the original trip, and trip is truly the word), raising money for the refurbishment of Further (name of the bus) in its short-lived first incarnation. This, however, is the Further of the epic journey, and not a “Further II.” It is the great, the one and only. Sometimes spelt Furthur and sometimes Furthr.

En route to other parts but momentarily parked outside Oriole 9, our fashionable daytime restaurant, it briefly provided a dazzling focus for our little town, here in its main (and almost one and only) street. Its only thoroughfare, although myriad veins set off from it into the surrounding hills. The glow of the Magic Bus made it seem like an apparition, a spaceship, a Doctor Who-like vehicle from a parallel reality. And since the reality it bespoke is no more, or is barely breathing, finding it intact in a form as profuse in design as a Hindu temple (but far more colorful), in the middle of Woodstock, was both supremely appropriate, and completely strange. Like a visitor from an age more bygone than the 50 years by calendar time. Another America.