Tidy

 

March 18, 2026

Much activity before departure. Sound of the dishwasher on the floor below.

I’ve remarked before how my chronological age is a shock to me when I think of it. The way I feel inside my head is indistinguishable from the way I felt when I was 25. I have the same excitement, the same anticipation, the same naive faith in the goodwill of the universe, the same caution about risk,–not that I’m averse to it in the abstract, but because I fear delay or detour to “What I Am Meant by Destiny to Do.”  You’d think that Destiny’s manifest indifference to me would have pushed that thought out long ago. 

The ferns by the back door are slaughtered by the freeze. Have not looked elsewhere, fearing what I would see, unable to effect redress.

Congratulating myself on finishing off this and that in the refrigerator before I depart. “How tidy he was” the officials will say if I do not return. 

Blessed St. Patrick

 March 17, 2026

Blessed Saint Patrick. Packing; unless I have a change of mind, packed. Angry snow last night, thinning out to a tiny sprinkle of diamonds every few minutes. 

My sister and I both leave the country Friday, to meet in a week in Prague. My emotion is anxiety, hers excitement, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same emotion pushed through different filters. 

Session of prayer deep into the night. “Warfare” would have been another name. It would be nice to be certain of something, anything, some time. I believe my life has come to nothing. To be certain of that would save expenditure of energy in the time left to me. 

The mercury plunges; I drag around in my winter cap and coat, wondering what to stuff into the slits under the windows. 

Sligo by Night

 

March 16, 2026

On the hypochondria front, in the dark of the morning I was seeing flashes of light behind my closed eyelids. I thought I’d read something about that being a symptom of stroke, and I prepared for the worst. Then, finally, I heard thunder & opened my eyes on an actual plain-old lightning storm, which still continues rain-wise, though the electronics are passed in the east. Bad night, all in all. Was it the weather? Something led me from one turbulent dream to another.

My most recent painting, Sligo by Night, was painted over the weekend on a panel that I've had for 52 years. It came with a painting I didn't like very much (but somehow remember in detail) which I painted over years ago, and painted over again this weekend. I love reusing backings, and this is an especially sturdy one. The vanished painting was by W Korybut. I looked that up. W Michael Korybut was King of Poland and Grant Duke of Latvia (or something). I don't think the painting was actually by him, but by Wanda Korybut, born in 1907, one example of whose work is noted for sale online. The lost painting was called "Quiet Garden" and featured a birdbath in yellow light amid a green landscape. As I say, it is vanished under other images, but I remember it well. There's a note on the back which reads, "To David with love from Keith and Denise, 5/4/74. " A gift from an enduring friend at one of the worst times of my life. The yellow birdbath is gone, but all else evolves. 

Found a flea on my hand last night. Mystery.

Tyler at the Verizon store says my phone is fine for traveling.

 March 15, 2026

Clouds gathering to the north. A turkey, having discovered how to flap to the top of the wire trellis and balance, perches there, looking into the guest room window like a nosy neighbor.  Got to read the Lesson from Samuel wherein God, despite insisting otherwise, holds a beauty pageant among Jesse’s sons to make rosy, beautiful-eyed David the next king. 

 

March 14, 2026

Returned to painting. Felt tension leak out of my body like cold water. I’d been dreaming of having art shows in tents and vast, rickety building, where I could revise my huge, bright canvases in front of the guests if I wanted to. 

Eugene

 March 13, 2026

Dad’s 107th birthday. The poems I write on his day involve travel, because when I was working this date happened in the middle of spring break, and I was often somewhere exotic. 

P and I on Blake. 

Some of my mind’s energy is spent wondering why I never “got” my father, why I seldom appreciated what he did, and why what he did was so seldom what I needed. I long to go back and thank him for this or that particular thing. He took us to California. He built the Big Slide and my teepee and Linda’s play house. He suffered through the Boy Scouts. Sometimes I was horrid. Sometimes he was horrid. Even if he was troubling to me, I should have recognized what my sister says all the time, “He was doing his best.” Something made me repelled at his presence, embarrassed by him, whatever the cause being buried in that time before there is memory. I think it was not my fault– how could it be? If I had known what it was I could have forgiven it. Or perhaps not, and it’s better that I never know. But I think he lived long enough for all those rocks and jags to become a level plane. And now, so have I.

 March 12, 2026

Bitter rain straight from the north. No gardening today. Power flickered a number of times, whatever it is in the house that whistles when the power goes out whistling its heart out. The news says that temperatures will hit 20 in the next few nights, so it’s possible that the gardening I’ve already done will be for naught.  However it goes in the next few days, a truth I take away is that I’m in better shape this year than I was last, the work do-able, even enticing, and never the debilitated staggering to a chair that ruled last season. Who can explain why things come and go? Years with terrible acid reflux– gone. Years with fierce and daily muscle spasms– gone. Difficult breathing and exhaustion– coming and going, but for the moment in abeyance.  Leg infections endure. One concedes they are small among possible afflictions. 

Checked Schwab. Thanks to Trump I’m $80,000 in the hole. It’s early in the day and the red numbers continue to plunge. Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has done absolutely everything wrong in his life, every blessed thing. It is amazing on its own, but that it should be tolerated, or have been tolerated past his youth, is more amazing still.

Briefly snowed.