M Train

In The Thief’s Journal Jean Genet had written of ­Saint-­Laurent as hallowed ground and of the inmates incarcerated there with devotional empathy.

I would sit by a low window in Caffè Dante that looked out into the corner of a small alley, reading Mrabet’s The Beach Café. A young ­fish-­seller named Driss meets a reclusive, uncongenial codger who has a ­so-­called café with only one table and one chair on a rocky stretch of shore near Tangier.

High winds, cold rain, or the threat of rain; a looming continuum of calamitous skies that subtly permeate my entire being. Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.

It’s not so easy writing about nothing.

There were books lining the walls and halls, books that I knew and books I wished to know.

All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations.

Feeling a surge of investigative energy

Though often amused by my quixotic notions, Fred did not make light of this ­self-­imposed task.

Saint-­Laurent-­du-­Maroni

told me where I was standing and which way was west but not where I was going and nothing of my worth.