Gotham Diary:
Early in the Morning
26 March 2012
 The ophthalmologist could see me, but only this morning; he and his wife (who runs his office) are flying off to Berlin this afternoon. I was sure that I’d had my eyes checked since Will was born; I still have very clear memories of showing of photographs of him on the iPad, even though they can’t be true, since I haven’t been.
The examination was inconclusive. Tentatively: conjuctivitis and something unknown, the something unknown currently obscrued by a blog of blood. Drops will reduce that over the next two weeks, and then the doctor will have another look.
The ophthalmologist could see me, at 9:30 this morning. The only thing that gets me out of the house that early is a colonoscopy (so as to break fast soonest). I had no idea how to arrange the morning. I thought about canceling, but not serously. I got out of bed, dressed, and went across the street for breakfast. Then I came home to make tea and toast for Kathleen. At 8:45, I set out. The morning was clear and cool — cold, almost. Blustery. I cut over to Third at 84nd and then to Park at 82nd. I arrived at the 70th Street office about five minutes early. I was on my way home, via Madison, at 9:35.
It was a few minutes before ten when I pulled up at Crawford Doyle, so I wasn’t surprised to find it shuttered. I needed to buy (get him) two Elizabeth Taylor novels, A View of the Harbour and Blaming. I had begun A Game of Hide and Seek, but it seemed very sad and not particularly dry, so I set it aside at once. The other titles had been highly recommended, so I thought I’d continue my perusal of Taylor with one of them. At a few minutes past ten, the shop opened up, and somehow the need for two books developed into the purchase of six.
***
 One of those books was Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. I have more or less dropped everything in order to read this book, which, from what I could tell, and certainly from what I have read so far, accords with a great many conclusions that I’d begun reaching even before the Cognitive Revolution got going. Top of the list: the delusion of rationality, the idea that man (very much the male of the species) is a rational animal. I’ve regarded Plato as a crock for well over twenty years; before that, I labored under the apprehension that I would never be bright enough to understand him.
Haidt is no modernist; his previous book was subtitled Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. I wouldn’t call him a West-basher, either, but he does make the case that morality in the West is somewhat cramped by global standards. (He hasn’t mentioned how much this limitation to the individual perspective owes to Christianity, which was from the start remarkably unconcerned with honor, purity, and — strictly speaking — authority. It’s this last item that preoccupies me. In the West, authority has lost all foundation, such that even if might doesn’t make right it’s the only thing that gets the job done. On optimistic days, I like to think that the idea of authority is undergoing a thorough overhaul in the Western imagination, and that in order to get on with the work we had to get rid of the older model.
On very optimistic days, I imagine that Age will once again command respect.
***
On Friday, I went to see Jeff, Who Lives at Home. It’s a very good movie, but good precisely for being utterly unremarkable. The Duplass brothers have concocted a filmmaking technique that condenses the tedium of everyday American life (Hooters, strip malls, cubicles) into a sort of visual punch that is itself full of refreshment. Ed Helms upstages Jason Segel by being not at all nice and embodying all the worldly attachments that Asian transcendentalism counsels us to avoid. He is a complete prick to his sweetly vexed wife (played by Judy Greer). Somebody really ought to make a picture in which Mr Helms plays twins, one as evil as Pat in this picture and one as sunny as Tim in Cedar Rapids.
My own private Susan Sarandon, alas, was not up to a romance with Rae Dawn Chong, kissing under the waterfall or elsewhere. That’s just me.