But as I stood in the doorway (before me lay a deep, seductive darkness and behind me the painfully bright street), I heard somebody call my name from down below, and, stopping, feeling my knees buckle under me from fear, I turned around slowly and reluctantly, and looked.   But when I did that, I didn't see in front of the church anybody except on the other side of the street a few people who hurried long, staring stubbornly ahead, and, smiling feebly, I turned around again, and, still weak in the knees, stepped into the church, and, like a lump of sugar dissolving in warm water, disappeared in it (inside, a vast expanse of candles flickered all around, as if blinking their feverish eyes, and dark human figures dozed in the pews whispering prayers).

from the novel Meningitis (1978)

 

 weekend

(excerpts)

16. the second run

George runs along the beach.   He runs in the same direction as the day before.   He plans to run to the same spot as the day before.   There's no one around.   The tide is high.   The waves aren't very big.   They break high on the beach. The waves breaking look like artillery shells exploding.   This makes George a little depressed.   After about fifteen minutes since his starting to run it starts raining.   The rain gets quite strong.   George can feel the rain hitting his body.   The rain feels like the fingers of a drummer on a drum skin.   George likes the comparison.   This makes him feel better.   The comparison to a drum makes him think of being dead.  This is so because of his thinking of his skin being stretched out on the drum.    This doesn't detract from his liking the comparison of himself with a drum.   The clouds a this point seem to have gotten lower.   They seem to be travelling very fast.   They're moving west.   The sight of the clouds and the rain remind George of a run he'd taken along the beach on Fire Island a little less than two years ago.   It was in October.   George was running with another person. It was raining as heavily as now.   The clouds were just as dark and low.   They were moving just as fast in the same direction.   At one point George noticed birds flying.   They were moving in the same direction as the clouds.   The birds were moving faster however.  

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