February 5, 2026

Another dusting of snow. 

Rehearsal somber last night. K is done with being a choral director. He has resigned ASC and provides the church choir with third-rate pieces whose mistakes he barely manages to correct. We have declined into a second-rate church choir, whereas we were once the best in the city. Whether that is a cause or a result of his disinterest is difficult to tell. It is well when your own change of concentration affects nobody else. 

Frenzy of rewriting– which makes me blissfully happy. 

 February 4, 2026

When I checked my Schwab account, every single holding was in positive territory. God knows what causes such things. I thought maybe it was Trump’s death, but checking the news revealed no such mercy. 

Ajax came again for his repast at sundown. The Twilight Buccaneer. He’s very young. This was his first winter. His plumage hasn’t darkened, and he tried to land on the car, sliding down the hood with wings flapping wildly. 

Ajax

 February 2, 2026

The branch where Sweetboi perched is gone, but on the branch nearest to it that can support such weight I saw a young red-shouldered hawk. Against such an unforeseeable moment, I’d bought the proper food days ago, so I threw the offering out onto the snow. In a few moments Ajax the hawk stood on my driveway ripping apart the pork joint. He called from Sweetboi’s tree, and I answered as I did before. I was stupid with joy. As soon as things open, I’m out in the stores laying up hawk-supplies. Build your nest in my tree. Stare into my window. Scream from your branch when you are in need. 

Brigid the Blessed

 

February 1, 2026

Brigid the Blessed

Woke listening for the hum of the furnace that would testify that the power had not gone out. Held my breath for the flushing of the toilet that would testify that the pipes had not frozen. Watching what seemed like multiple thickness of snow fall from the air did not prepare me for the hard, compact, shallow snowfall revealed by morning. Patches of grass showed through. Places were swept bare by the wind. My red brick porch is clear of snow after the first day. 

Watched the film Sinners.  I tried to make it better than it was. I’m the ideal audience for things I don’t initially understand. Always the benefit of the doubt. 

What do I think about all day? It must be something, for I awoke in the first light and now tap at my computer in the last light of Saint Brigid’s Day. Something must carry one hour to the other. The odd thing is that I am happy. 

Snow

 

January 31, 2026

Beethoven string quartets on CD.

Snow began gently after midnight and has not stopped. At 6 PM it is thick, cold, shearing almost horizontally from the north. Pedestrian traffic down the street of kids and parents dragging sleds behind. I’m trying to think of where the sledding hill would be. A week ago I arrived in Charleston to avoid such an accumulation of events. Many birds at my feeders. I couldn’t account for the mob of robins and others not interested in seed, until I noticed that my gallant little pond pump is the only local source of liquid water. My swollen feet will not permit me to acquire boots, so if I need to go out in this, sneakers are my only available footwear. I’m unduly agitated by winter storms, which more often than not pass without consequence. Beethoven was actually not the right music to play right now. 

It has been suggested, as the Epstein files emerge, that all the agitations of Trump’s administration have been to distract from his criminal pederasty. What a world I aged into! It’s a good bet that those who have clung to him all this while will cling still, the sting of having chosen wrong being harder to acknowledge than atrocity. 

Naledi

 January 30, 2026

For the second week in a row, public run on grocery stores for supplies for a winter disaster foretold. I’m not fleeing to the beach this time. That will probably be a mistake. 

Chaotic but amusing rehearsal last night. Good fellowship, good-enough music making if what you want is good fellowship.  

Four days without alcohol. Without craving and never impaired, I didn’t worry about this issue until several health professionals recently wondered if I should cut down. “No problem,” I said, until I decided to do it, and the idea made me grumpier than I thought it would, reaching that end taking more determination than I imagined. A hill, but a little one. I like to do it, and invariably do it where it has never had much consequence. Drinking is part of my night ritual, but by that I mean the intake of liquids: turns out tea will do just as well. I sense practically no difference in my life, except that I can sleep longer sober, wake up less abruptly. I’m not sure those are necessarily improvements. But also, my dreams are vaster and more durable, able to return after a trip to the bathroom, able to mutate into epics. I like the feeling of going to bed tipsy. Also, I hear alarming creakings and scrapings in the house that I don’t hear inebriated. Anyway, the alarm abates somewhat, seeing how stopping is possible, so merely cutting back remains an option. 

Cold. You spend some time deciding what to wear indoors so you can be warm enough for the cold spots in the house, and yet endure the overheated ones. Tied a towel around the outdoor spigot, as if it were a little animal that could generate its own heat. Filled all the bird feeders.

Watched a documentary about the Naledi, a diminutive species of the genus Homo that seems to have been burying their dead with some ceremony and carving their emotions on cave walls a quarter of a million years ago. The experience was holy. We do not understand the abundance– no, infinitude– and variety of the stories of this little world. 

 

January 28, 2026

Rooting back into the home sod.