June 14, 2024

Missed Yeats’ birthday. He will forgive me. 

Good weeding yesterday– which I forgot until I looked out and saw dead weeds wilting on the grass.

Scolded at Riverside for feeding the white lab. 

AVLGMC concert at Givens Estates last night. Well attended, appreciated, but I don’t know how good. Perhaps adequate. I was better than adequate, though not perfect. Unable to walk for half an hour afterward. D and G had me up to their apartment for wine. Much talk of Ireland and Celtic culture. Another thing I’d forgotten was that in the despair of February, 2020, I invited everyone to my studio to take what they wanted. D and G took a good deal, the bluebird box and the painted drawer face for themselves, and bird paintings for each of their grandsons. I was happy to know this, to feel a ray of redemption. It was also curious to see the works in an unexpected context, though I must have known this all happened long ago. 

I like the boys in AVLGMC more than I have in the last decade. 

Delayed announcement from UNCA that certain programs– Classics, Drama, some foreign languages– will be cancelled. I want to be apoplectic, though can’t quite rise to it. It would be like trying to reason with a MAGA rally. Every aspect of the decision–including the identity of those who made it–is wrong. Everybody knows it’s wrong; it doesn’t matter. “Administration” must be eliminated as a caste and as a concept, but I am not the one to lead that fight, or more than a puling skirmish of it. Sneaking into my thoughts is the slightest satisfaction that Drama is gone, Arnold’s entire and only legacy disappeared before his eyes. A university without a theater is an absurdity, so if UNCA survives, theater will return, perhaps this time founded upon something other than mediocrity and dilettantism. 

 June 12, 2024

Productive days in unexpected ways– an orgy of revision of older manuscripts. 

Movie night last night with R and DJ. Dune 2. It’s a long, red-brown film, but I never looked at the clock. 

When I returned from Ireland, some things in my house were different from how I’d left them. The most notable was that all my TV remotes lay organized in a straight line on the coffee table. I had not done this. It being unfathomable, I stopped thinking about it, until R mentioned that he’d brought A to the house (which he loves to visit) and read him poetry from my shelves. A poem by Richard Wilbur moved him in particular. I loved the idea of R and A wandering about my house when I was gone. 

Yeomanly bout of weeding. 

Don’t go out without slathering my face with sunblock. Lip still painful. 

 

June 9, 2024

Ill today, with what I don’t know. Maybe just downloading the Irish adventure. 

 

June 8, 2024

Extreme early rising brought on by the clash of times between here and Europe means that I woke, caught up on correspondence, submitted three manuscripts, did the day’s weeding before 10 AM. Good effort at weeding, though about a tithe of what needs to be done. The orange sun hat proved its mettle. 

People ask what the most important thing that happened in Ireland was, and I have to get past the real one to name one they want to hear about. The real one was lying in my bed in Cork, sort of getting physically ill, but certainly sliding into the abyss of dark thoughts. Memories were pinnacles cast up from the past, places where thoughts snag one and lash one to bareness and despair. I foresaw a night of howling anger, as I’ve had ten thousand times before. I realized this derived from looking up old journal references to Cork and the places I knew there, harmless enough, but each harmless recollection dragging its burden of disappointment, deception, futility. Then, like the touch of an angel, came the revelation, “then don’t think of it.” Do not indulge in recollection. Have no past. With some exceptions, my “present” is hopeful, energized, lighthearted. Each day means starting again with my full complement of visionary joy. Thinking of all the times– which is almost all times–when this visionary joy came to nothing is instructive without actually being helpful. Not thinking of the past is the only way forward. So far, it’s worked. I’ve drawn myself out of whatever declivity my thoughts detected. Lost nothing, moved forward. Maybe it’s my time of life. Maybe it’s a lesson I would have been happier learning as a lad. 

 June 7, 2024

Jet-lagged at rehearsal last night, but the affliction (always worse this side of the water) ebbs away. 

Bought huge floppy hats at Tractor Supply to keep the sun off my head while gardening. 

Sweetpea climbs my bedroom window, with the most perfect pink in the world. Sometimes there’s the soporific buzzing of bumblebees, the flutter of tiny copper-colored butterflies. Near constant rain while I was gone turns the garden into a jungle. It will require care soon–probably tomorrow– but the condition of jungle is one to which the garden aspires. When I pulled down bamboo stalks, considerable amounts of water spilled from them. I should have thought to taste the water.

Visit to MAHEC, receiving a clean bill of health. My blood pressure is, according to the technician, “fine.” 

Home

 

June 6, 2024

The Day that Would Not End ended at about 12:15 this morning. Faithful Billy dropped me at my darkling door. You had to stand in line for the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. The democratization of air travel cannot be stopped except by one’s dropping out oneself. Worked on the play. The last leg, between Atlanta and Asheville, was leavened by my seat companion, who owns a beauty salon in Shreveport, LA. We mostly talked about True Blood. She’s visiting a friend in Asheville to have a girls’ week while the friend’s son attends his first summer camp. 

The impression of finally being in my own house was that of stunning silence. Compared to Cork and Limerick, my street seems wholly uninhabited by night, silent as stone, not a peep until birds began to cry before dawn. Delicious summer warmth laving all. So far as I’ve looked, I find nothing here amiss– despite what I might have imagined. Potato salad in the Atlanta Sky Lounge of memorable savor. Drank iced tea as though it were ambrosia. 

Aryan Noor drove me to the airport. He said his name means “moonlight.” I observed that I thought the Queen of Jordan had the same name. He speaks Persian and fled to Ireland with his family when he was twelve from Afghanistan. He said that of all English speakers, American are the easiest to understand. He asked if Americans think that Trump is a joke, or is it just everybody else. The gay steward from the Shannon-New York flight said I was the passenger who gave the least trouble. Part of that was that I’d had three quite calming bloody Mary’s (which I made myself, so–) before boarding. 

Thought I’d save gardening for a little while, but new bamboo spearing through the canopy got me down there with my spade. There weren’t many, but they were large and, most of them beyond hacking, had to be wrestled to the ground. 

 June 5, 2024

Heaviest rain in the rainy time I’ve been here. Hoping Ireland can handle that and there won’t be trouble at Shannon. If Ireland can, maybe Delta can’t. All will be made known. Unusually restful last night. I retired early, my departure is not until past noon, and I had reasonable confidence I knew how to set my phone alarm. All issues that can be anticipated are well. Was this a good trip? Not by a wide margin, yes. Worth the price and bother? Who knows? I’m unlikely to regret it, likely to look back on it with profit and instruction, and the mystery of whether I can travel again is solved. Can’t say it was exactly pleasurable or restful, but that may be the anxiety of departure.