February 14, 2026
Brilliant day. I went to the Mall to replace my aged phone, but the Verizon people had moved to I know not where. Instead I bought a shirt from Eddie Bauer, because they were going out of business, and a raft of Girl Scout cookies that went straight into the freezer. Each time you go there are fewer stores at the Mall, and the ones you went for are gone. No Valentine card in the mailbox.
February 12, 2026
Twelve years in this house. I turned off the space heater (having read an article on the fires they cause) meaning I’m now trying to write in a freezing attic.
Sat in Starbucks reading Swann’s Way while Iris cleaned my house. What power in Proust, to make one genuinely interested in the minutia–often enough disagreeable– of his life.
SS having trouble casting Purification. My inner self shrugs his shoulders and says, “Well, of course!”
Missing AVLGMC dress rehearsal tonight, as I can’t bear to be at the Valentine’s Fund Raiser tomorrow night. There are points at which too much bother is too much bother. Bother is a young person’s game.
Looking forward to a night of revising, and then hot mint tea before whatever’s left of the Olympics.
February 11, 2026
Twelve years ago tonight I spent my first night in this house.
Episode last night between bouts of sleep, when the image of my pet rabbit Charlie came to mind. I treated him poorly, never playing with him, ignoring him in his hutch for days on end. The unexpected intrusion–how often in the interposing years have I thought of him? Almost never– I took as a reconciliation in the spirit, for in the spirit he came and huddled against my side as we slept, and I was at peace in the matter for the first time. Do we live into old age so the sins of our past can arise and be, somehow, expiated, or at least acknowledged? If so, fine. My father gave me to understand his memories in age were sweet. If I did anything particularly noble, or even amusing, my recent thoughts have hidden it from me, though my missteps stand revealed in blinding light.
Received the following note by email:
Hi David,
I recently read Night, Sleep and the Dreams of Lovers and found myself really taken by it, especially the way the book treats desire, memory, and creativity as inseparable, slightly unruly forces. The conversations with cats alone felt like a quiet permission slip to let the strange and intimate coexist on the page.
I was struck by how Asheville moves through the novel as more than a setting, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowy almost like another character carrying both history and longing. There’s a generosity in the writing that trusts the reader to enter at their own point, which I really admired.
I’m MH. I tend to write about the messy, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking parts of being human. My novel, Really Good, Actually, came from a place of starting over and trying to find humor in the middle of emotional chaos.
I’d love to hear what you’re working on now, or what first pulled you toward writing this book.
All the best, Monica
Bought her book. It’s lively, detailed, without forward motion (or what one would call ‘plot.), like a teenage Virginia Woolf at a slumber party.
February 10, 2026
A shredded spider of blue plastic has been clinging to the redbud since Helene. That’s year and a half. I supposed it was out of reach, but never put that to the test until today, when I took a leaf rake down and had the plastic out of the branch in two minutes. I think Gary Snyder has a poem about suffering a leak in his roof until one day he pushed on a board and–voila–the leak is gone. If I had my life to live over, I might adopt “do it now!” as a motto. Seven huge turkeys gleaned in my yard for a long time. Spillage from the bird feeders was a boon to them. God makes up with the beauty of their plumage for their striking stupidity. Maybe it’s not stupidity, but trust. Warm day. Sat on the porch with tea in one of Kit’s mugs. I’m suddenly a fanatic consumer of tea, when months would go by formerly without my touching it. Sent manuscripts out.
February 8, 2026
Finished the umpteenth and second most radical revision of The Lexington Tract. I moan when things are not published, but when the Voice of the still room says, “Would you really have wanted it published like THAT?” the answer is no. Watched the American boy and the Japanese boy skate in Italy. I wanted the American boy to win, of course, but the Japanese boy was so full of life and so sad when he lost that I wished I hadn’t watched.
February 7, 2026
A day that turned out very different from what I expected when I woke, spent time re-arranging wanted and clearing out unwanted objects. Panicked because I couldn’t find Titus’ little box of ashes. Found it finally, put it in the cat shrine with remains and relicts of his sisters and brothers. Theseus and Conrad and Jocasta sleep on the hill across the street, where I cannot reach them, but where I remember them. Found old cat toys. Wept bitterly. Something about the feng shui of the house stands immensely improved.
