September 30, 2024

The one phone call I got from the world was from L. Amazing.

Trying not to have any shameful emotion about seeing the Marquee, which turned down my work because it was “spiritual” and “spiritual” doesn’t sell, completely submerged. I will think of the hundreds whose work is gone. Terrible thought occurred to me. I assumed the river office was on high enough ground, but maybe it wasn’t. If so, the poems of my youth, all my journals and notebooks and photo albums and theater memorabilia and scrapbooks are gone, the things I cherished most in my possession, perhaps cherished solely. They’ll still be either ruined are well when I return. Sadness fills me hour to hour, intensified by the realization that I’ve lost far less than most. I must force myself to keep making that comparison. 

I liked my life. I see no possibility of returning to it. 

I see no possibility of Asheville’s returning to what it was. The Asheville Era is over. A city that size, whose function is more ornamental than practical, cannot survive four weeks without water.

My mind is like a rat in a box, scurrying from one corner to the other, imagining that it’s missed some way out, that something will be different this time through.

Having brought clothes for three days, I made a trip to Walmart, where the workers were unexpectedly kind.

Wrote a bit of a play about the Army Corps of Engineers. Wandered aimlessly about town at sunset, wanting company but wanting nothing to eat or drink. Many spoke to me. I think I’m probably easy to speak to. 

But sad. Sad as night. 

Grackles

 

September 29, 2024

Unusual, for me, disinclination to record or to write anything at all. I sat on the pier in morning light and stared at the sea. What can I make a poem of? What would fit into a story or a play? I didn’t care. I hadn’t taken into account the exhaustion and trauma of the last few days. I can barely move between one chair and another. But the grackles on the pier were exceptionally beautiful, and sang and gurgled in a variety of voices I hadn’t heard before. Anglers pulled elegant small silver catfish out of the water. I met SMWL, who was beautifully dressed, as she had been heading for church but decided to service a massage client instead. She is a religious theorist of some kind, and confessed her belief that Hurricane Helene was caused by a group called HAARP. She admitted it was “a conspiracy theory” but asserted it could be true nevertheless. They also caused the fires on Maui. She seeks to transition from massage therapy into real estate. She was eager to talk. I googled her, and she seems to be a person of some importance. I enjoyed her company. We were simpatico in ways impossible to explore in our brief time together.

Dinner at Jack of Cups, improbably delicious butter beans. Drink afterward at Planet Follywood. Scott was there, but he didn’t remember me. Rode the elevator with a family from Asheville, right next to UNCA. She is an alumna and thought she remembered my name. 

It’s 9:30 PM and the Army Corps of Engineers are still plowing the beach, beepers beeping. No beach access, no TV– I complained to the desk clerk and he took some small charge off my bill. At least I can flush the toilet. 

Every now and then the floor shakes beneath my chair. It’s not waves or the wind. I don’t even think it’s the bulldozers.

Listening to Purcell. Reading Wordsworth. 

I am not used to not knowing what to do. 

Flight

 

September 28, 2024

Folly Beach. The waves are pink with sunset. 

Rose this morning facing the prospect of indeterminate days without water, without power, without internet or cellular service: threw some gear into a bag and drove to Folly Beach. I suppose that makes me a refugee. My rabbit and my turkeys were gleaning the ruins when I left. As I drove 19/23 toward I-26, I could see the French Broad to my right, a mighty river, light brown and turbulent and wide as the Ohio. Meadow Road and River Road are completely and profoundly inundated. The River Arts District is gone. Water touches the roofs of the buildings. What I feared most came to pass– All Souls is being called “a total loss.:Water came to the ceiling of the offices, and in the sanctuary reached the foot of the altar. Someone said “the walls are collapsing,” though what that could mean I’m not sure. As a docent I pointed proudly to the cushions and kneelers and pews and chairs and the intricate floor and said, “these are all exactly as they were when the church was opened in 1896" This never can be said again. This is the greatest shock in my life that does not involve the death of a person. Only upon arrival here could I get a sense of what happened to Asheville, as all forms of communication are kaput there. I know more than anyone whjo sleeps in the dark tonight on Lakeshore Drive. 

I never had a full sense of the destruction a hurricane can cause. I would rather have kept my innocence. It is awesome, though. If I were Shelley I would rhapsodize. 

Had vodka in Planet Follywood, where I met Scott, who was born in Cleveland and adopted into a family in Marietta. He came to Folly because he “fell in love,” though with the town or a woman he did not reveal. A street festival, “Mermaids and Mateys,” clogged the main street when I arrived. A grackle sang and preened on my balcony as I unpacked. 

Vodka comforted me into troubled sleep.

Helene

 September 27, 2024

The Journal of Hurricane Helene, which I keep in longhand in a sketchbook because the power is out and there’s nothing but paper and ink. Last night was calm except for inexhaustible sheets of lightning to the west. Wind hit around dawn, and as I write there are terrifying gusts of I can’t imagine what velocity. My power went out at about 6:30 AM, accompanied by two giant balls of chartreuse fire, where a tree at the Apartments hit the power lines. Called 911. Nobody answered.. Rose and set out to check on DJ. Couldn’t get there because of deep, swirling water at the intersection. Returned to help a woman with a chainsaw clear the street of the fallen silver maple. She said, “I’m just trying to get home.” I thought it mightily resourceful to travel with a chainsaw. We had it mostly cleared away when a fire engine pulled up and disgorged four firemen and a bigger chainsaw. You don’t realize how big firemen are until you’re among them. Lest we think they were there to help us, they said “We’re headed for an emergency,” and took off as soon as the hole was big enough for a fire truck. Did finally make it to DJ’s. He was safe, but with all his electric accessories, worse off than most of us. The stroll, short as it was, showed me the real damage. Two houses I passed were annihilated by uprooted trees, and the alley behind 62 was a mare’s nest of lumber and incapacitated cars. The damage is theatrical, gratuitous, the immensity and indifference of Nature now past question. I showered and gloated “well, at least we have water,” when the water went off. They’ll blame it on the hurricane, but Asheville’s water system has teetered on the edge of catastrophe since I moved here. Ventured out in my car, having to double back whenever a street was blocked, Devastation unimaginable, everywhere. People wandered the streets, dazed, regarding the ruin of their lives. I hadn’t anticipated the additional peril of dead streetlights, every intersection therefore chaos. Addressed the long dark night by sitting on my front porch drinking bourbon and having a heart-to-heart with God. It was a beautiful experience, actually, and if it had marked the end of the ordeal, it would have been more satisfying as a tale told in following years.

Helene

 

September 26, 2024

Dark before morning. Rain fell steadily all night, though right now seems to be a lull in which I can hear the night insects chirring in the garden. This deluge is driven before the hurricane, which was two hundred miles from landfall in Florida when it began. The real show comes tonight, the same downpour joined by sixty mile an hour winds. Or maybe it will pass us by. 

Docenting yesterday, large lacunae in the visitation, during which I took out the recorder that’s been languishing in my satchel for a decade, played old hymns that sounded pure, like a boy singing, in that reverberant space. My fingers remembered how to hit the holes. 

As I sit at the desk, the rain increases several-fold, sounding more like mighty wind. How does the air hold so much water? Why does it want to? 

8:30 PM. Wind and downpour increasing. Helene, now a category 4, has not yet made landfall 400 miles away. Reports say it will be a category 2 in the suburbs of Atlanta. 

 

September 25, 2024

Crows calling in a gray sky. 

Forecasts avow that Hurricane Helene will dump 12 inches of rain on us today and tomorrow. 

David Theodore

 

September 24, 2024

David Theodore Adam has come into this world

Odd, half-stormy morning. 

I realize that, except for replacing the broken pane and aligning them so they’ll again open and close, I can’t be sure that anything was done to the front windows at all. I didn’t watch over them, and there was a minimum of banging. Winter will tell. 

Hopkins at All Souls last night. Decent crowd despite the downpour.

Sitting at the downstairs desk for a ZOOM meeting, I saw in the dogwoods outside a summer tanager, the first I’ve seen since college. Signs and portents. . . .