Autumn

     The days had become cooler and shorter.  The leaves on the trees began to yellow and I saw birds flying in flocks--probably on their way to warmer climates.  The nights were colder and longer.  I could not sleep and I went outside for a breath of fresh air.  There were no more lights coming from the bungalows and the sky was full of stars.  God, or whoever He is, was still there, observing his creation.  A new theater?  A new man?  The old idolatry was here again.  The stone and clay idols had been exchanged for a Gertrude Stein, a Picasso, a Bernard Shaw, an Ezra Pound.  Everybody worshipped culture and progress.  I myself had tried to become a priest of this idolatry, although I was aware of its falsehood.  At its best, art could be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while.  I walked over to the colony.  Most of those whose names the bungalows bore had departed this world, with its illusions, forever.  Those who worshipped them would soon follow.  I lifted up my eyes to the starry sky again and again as if in hope that some revelation might descend upon me from above.  I inhaled the cold air and shivered.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Lost in America