March 30, 2025
Thought of the last time I saw BE: after church at All Souls. He was walking down the front walk toward his car, stiff, every step a new discomfort, the way the aged are. I called to him and he turned stiffly, looked at me with such a beaming smile, his joyfulness daunted by nothing.
March 29, 2025
Theater last night at NCS. Well acted, well designed, well directed. Also, 95% exposition. I’m supposed to disapprove of that, but in the moment it was interesting. I asked, “Why isn’t this a film documentary?” But the question could be asked of some film documentaries– such as one I saw the other night about the tornado that destroyed Joplin, MO– why isn’t this a play? WP’s flawless stage technique–. The play is three hours long, and I expected that to be a tribulation, but it was not.
Pain in my hip– actually a genuine pain in the butt– makes walking difficult. For a while in the morning I cry out at each step of my left leg, cry out more shrilly if I hit some unevenness in the floor. It feels like a bruise deep and raw. Prednisone helps it, so it must be an inflammation.
Evening: Sang at Grace Episcopal for BEs’ memorial service. Kind, good man. It was my good fortune to know him, to invite him to bachelor parties at my house. When we left the church the air was heavy with smoke. It looked like twilight, but it wasn’t.
March 27, 2025
As I was about to leave to get out of the way of the cleaning lady, Ben the Pool Guy pulled up with my new motor, the thrice longed-for. The wait extended from January. It was installed in three minutes, and the water moved in my pond once again. I cold hear the fish taking a deep breath. Ben mocked the filthiness of my pool, so I spent time scraping truly monumental masses of muck out of it with a hoe. Drove on (the cleaning lady still hadn’t arrived) to High 5, where I sat at a table, sipped chai, and wrote, as I had not done since the beginning of COVID. The people at the table behind me gossiped about Minneapolis politics. I was able to tell them I had been there last summer. The old gents across from me caught each other up on grandchildren and gardens. At my table I began a play, my first return to theatrical writing since The Review. You don’t expect to shrink from criticism like some callow Keats, but it happens whether you approve of it or not. Drove to Reems Creek and spent $700 on mulch and dirt and plants. Frantic to be writing and gardening and painting and going to rehearsal all at once. Sky clouding before night.
From the Nursery road you see plumes of smoke rising from the mountains. Helene piled up stacks of kindling for fire to be born from and consume what was not drowned.
A red-shouldered hawk flew low over my yard, pursued by blue jays. I stood at the door a long time, wanting her to return.
Evening: Drove to rehearsal up Sweeten Creek with the smoke of forest fires heavy around me. The smell was sweet, all that burning wood. The dimness of the air–
R led us through a rehearsal without hysteria, tangents, wasteful undirected energy.
My pair of brown thrashers has returned.
March 26, 2025
Put the finishing touches on The Nurseryman’s Wedding.
Yesterday hiking at the Arboretum with L and J. Glorious day. Ate lunch at a restaurant that lingers in my mind because while it was being built, I “dated” the guy who installed the appliances. A good day. I was hardly even tired. Iron slowly kicking in.
Left half way through rehearsal last night, my voice was so bad, and my throat hurt making ugly sounds, so there was no point. I’ve had some sort of voice-strangling infection for six months; fury over that hit while I was driving home. God was wise to keep his distance.
The chipper came, loudly reduced and transported the brush the Duke workmen had left. I assumed all that was going to be a big quarrel, never-ending, frustrating, but it went pretty much as they said it would. The workmen were cute. They enjoyed each other and their jobs.
Have been weepy since waking. Watch a cat video and longed for a cat. Every thought-road led to something grievous. That recedes as the morning advances.
Fifty-one years ago today mother died on the operating table. I remember on the first anniversary standing outside my horrible apartment on Adams Street in Syracuse, in a blizzard, sobbing so hard I couldn’t go in lest somebody hear me.
Evening: Cultivated, then planted black lilies and daylilies. It was too cold, but the work warmed me up enough.
One of those days when all bad notions come together in acute, blinding focus. Sat on the sunny cold porch with wine in my hand, cursing the Lord until I was too drunk to sit. Lay down in oblivion until the sun had traversed the sky. One benefit of the solitary life is that there are no witnesses to this terrible, and yet extended, moment.
To have some measure of control over something, paid off my car loan. Will probably total the car tonight.
Odd– I catch myself praying piteously to the Ghost I have spent two hours blaspheming.
March 24, 2025
City trucks in my driveway, sawing away limbs and branches near the wires, duplicating work done by somebody else after Helene, which I paid $2000 to get cleaned up. The guy on the crane amid the treetops said they’d brought a woodchipper and would clean up after themselves. Wait and see.
Saturday DJ and I hauled to St George’s for a LGBTQ discussion on how to protect ourselves during this predatory and heedless administration. My heart sank when I saw pens and stick-up notes and a white board, indicating the Episcopal (and Female) preference for process over action would predominate. And so it did. My inclination not to attend meetings presided over by women is thwarted by the fact that nearly every group I belong to is, essentially, a gynocracy. After an hour of self-examination, there was enough time for people to suggest a few pertinent phone numbers, and demonstrations to attend. There will be meetings before the demonstrations so we can– what? Participate with faultless self-knowledge, I suppose.
L and J came for dinner last night. Cooked myself into a stupor, and I think it was a success. It was revealed that dad’s macular degeneration was brought on by cataract surgery– thus justifying my own hesitancy to get that done, or anything done that involves entering a hospital. L and J are like kids, footloose and fancy-free in an expanding world.
Evening: The adventures of the pruners in my trees, on behalf of Duke Energy, went on all day, making me more miserable as the hours passed. Far deeper cutting than necessary, the almost-blossoming branches of redbud lying in heaps. My sadness probably exceeded the cause, but, in any case, enough with breaking and hacking and disturbance of the peace. Branches and debris lie higher than ever, higher than when I paid to have it all carted away. The sweet shy boy that I wanted to scream at but couldn’t said they’ll be back with a chipper and clean-up crew first thing in the morning. Even if it turns out, that means a day with a roaring chipper.
Thought of Sweetboi, glad that he had escaped all that. The glamour is gone from my sky.
March 21, 2025
Bach’s birthday. Can’t think of what I did all day, but planning dinner for L and J was part of it. Effulgence.
More Face Book comments on the passing of Sweeetboi than any other of my postings. This makes me glad. Considering how to honor him. A play? Fiction? A dance would probably be best. Maybe I should tell the full story to A and see what she can do. I run it through my head, and it’s a dance.
March 20, 2025
Blake seminar with P.
Vernal Equinox. Planted creeping phlox, fertilized the iris bed, met A for coffee and extended gossip, much of it about the astounding collapse of our university. Told for the first time the full story (as it stands now) of Sweetboi. Snow flying when I left rehearsal at 8:30.
