A lovely quiet Christmas, just the three of us, with Chiara soon to set off to Rome with her Bardian fellow-students and beloved art history Professor, Diana. As ever our tree is a pyramid covered in jewels treasured from years past, the whole of Chiara’s life set out in ornaments made by Claire or fashioned by her, plus a few gifted to us or found along the way. At 22 Chiara still wants Christmas stockings. What joy! This will have been her last Christmas while an undergrad, but surely not her last with us – or her last Christmas stocking. And perhaps Claire and I should give each other stockings even if we’re alone in far-flung places: much of the next 2 years, it seems, may be spent abroad; destinations partly unknown; among them Berlin, if my fellowship at the prestigious Wissenschaftskolleg comes through, thanks to my dear sponsor and friend of 50 years’ standing, Stephen Greenblatt.

To season the Season, a visit to the Buddhist temple high above us on Mt. Overlook, with its gorgeous gold roof ornaments and heavenly temple interior (which I dared not photograph), the most peaceful place I know. According to a good friend once attached to the temple, this peace is an illusion that leaves visitors happy; the reality, as of any institution I’ve ever known or heard of, is the same old human reality, regardless of nation, tribe or creed: jealousies, in-fighting…

My dear pal and former student Phil Saparov took me out to supper, as he so generously continues to do, as if the ‘A’s he received from me were not sufficiently merited (were they always? Yes! Why not?) and, in the true Russian fashion, deserved to be rewarded, if not outright bribed. But we’re way past the bribery stage and Phil continues to pay for a wonderful evening together. Phil is in fact not Russian but Azerbaijani – another Azerbaijani student of mine, 20 years ago, brought to one of our at-home parties, as a present for our daughter, Chiara, a huge doll taller than Chiara herself – and this time instead of going to a Russian banya as we have in the past, he took me to the Baku Palace, a formidable home of Azerbaijani food, on Sheepshead Bay, with a view of the water. And a half bottle of Belvedere vodka (is there better?) Phil brought to the meal. (Ah those banya visits! They would leave me absolutely legless: violently hot steam then freezing cold as ice cubes were poured on us, then heat again, then run into the back yard to grab snow off the fir trees and rub into our naked, shivering bodies – and, all the time, vodka and beer and more vodka and beer – and ladies present! Decorously toweled, but still! Ah, only in a Russia banya! After 5 or 6 hours of this I had to be escorted home, almost comatose.) The Baku Palace was a delight, though, as was the food, a lovely waitress, Phil with his tales of tutoring, and, across the road, when we’d finished, a Turkish establishment full of Phil’s Russian pals (former CUNY students). More food and drink. More lovely waitresses (current CUNY students). What an experience!

2015! When I was a teenager I would have doubted that I would make it to 2015, let alone be swimming a mile every morning before breafast. The Y in Kingston is my home from home. My photos make it seem less ancient and ramshackle than it in fact is, with many defects in walls and floors and elsewhere. New showers (not shown) are a big advance, but much remains to be repaired in the Men’s locker room. The good parts about the Y are the pool itself, always the right temperature, and the steam room (likewise – the total fog in the photo is true to the steam room on first entry, which affords no idea who or how many are present), and the companionship.

My good friend the painter and doughty swimmer Dan knows everyone in the pool and introduces any newbies to them; young life guard Quinn knows everyone too and greets us by name (not every life guard does, especially not the shy girls or the middle-aged man whose strut and unfriendliness have led me to dub him Hitler); Dan was once kind enough to ask me if I ever swam competitively – a huge compliment, this, from someone who swims many miles daily and is as fine a swimming sylist as I know; this week we shared a lane and he told me I was a ‘powerhouse.’ I’m still glowing. Of course the pool also includes ‘whales,’ my term for the huge self-taught 300-plus pounders who splash everyone and fill up a whole lane and more, ‘floaters,’ who rarely swim at all, but bob in place, or stand like sad sentries in the water, and other beasts of the communal pool.

I’m in the habit of doing my Buddhist prayers in the fog of the steam room. ‘What’s that noise?’ someone enquired, genuinely puzzled, last week. I grinned in secret, kept reciting, and no one answered.

‘What’s that on your back?’ is a regular question put to me, and I try and deflect further conversation by answering, truthfully, ‘German philosophy.’ That usually does it, except for a few persistent souls, whose noblest example is the eye surgeon Ron Hanowice, who not only probed until I confessed that it was the opening of Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, he actually bought the book and read it from cover, which few except specialists do. More effect than I could ever have believed my back would achieve. Alas, Ron found this truly hopeful and heartening masterpiece depressing. Ron is retiring to Texas this year. (My idea of depressing. Houston, what’s more!)

Apologies, readers, if such there be. The college semester came to a close a few days after my last update, launching me into Christmas followed by an opportunity to attempt address the total mess (see photo) accumulated in the past few months (years?), some of this mess physical, as evidenced in the photo, and some – the time-consuming part – in the form of communications pending, by email or snailmail. I failed to send off one single Christmas card. Even allowing for the decay in card-sending in the digital age, zero is an impressive score. Ten years ago I sent 170. I’m slowly catching up with The Mess, and this update will include multiple entries, with photos going back to the pre-Christmas period – my blog ever in mind.
In the final days of the semester life went on as usual, with work on Dr. Cicero books, visits to my fellow-novelist pal John, the usual subway trips, and Woodstock get-togethers with my august poet friends and co-religionists, Cardinal Kelly, and our Patriarch. At the good Cardinal’s intercession, our Patriarch promoted me by increasing my see to include not only my region of Brooklyn, but my access to it, the New York Thruway, which the Cardinal dubbed The Harriman Corridor. (See photo.) I am now Bishop of Woodstock, Flatbush, and the Harriman Corridor.

Winter comes to Brooklyn. First the rain and the darkness at noon, then the snow, flashing through the glow of the campus lamppost-lights, and blinding you as you cross the road in front of the snowblind Brooklyn traffic. The semester is almost over – at last! (15 weeks of it, 3 or 4 weeks too long for sustained concentration, compared to Cambridge’s 8-week semesters, rushing past.) On the positive side: heartening conversations with Conrad and Edward, two of my best students. My weekly work on the musical with Jimmy proceeds well; he has composed some quite wonderful melodies for Act 2. By the time we eventually finish will there still be anyone left who has heard of Rex Harrison? Or Hollywood? Or musical comedy? On Tuesday a lovely evening with Eric Idle, one of my oldest and dearest friends (see June 6 2014 blog), in town for the New York premiere of Not The Messiah and in good spirits but saddened by the loss of two close pals, Robin Williams and Mike Nichols.