June 19, 2026

Sweet cool breathy day. Last night was quite terrible, me wandering down the paths of fury and rebellion. Those paths are righteous paths, even when futile. That’s a way to wake exhausted.

Another way to wake exhausted is to have a dress rehearsal as bad as ours was. Of course everything goes awry at such a time, one expects it, but the flat fact is that we don’t know the music well enough to present it to an audience. Whole elements will not be seen or heard until first performance tonight, and we typically wait till dress rehearsal to address vital elements of performance and interpretation. Until this point we are drilled about fish mouth and final consonants to the exclusion of all else.  Do I forget my fury from performance to performance, or am I just too habituated to go do something else? It’s not that we don’t have fun– we do. But we’re just not very good.  

Bears in the news for greater and greater boldness. WJ had the windows torn out of his garage door. 

Revision

 June 18, 2026

My rictus of revision continues, a great slaughter of adverbs and helping verbs, by thousands of words reduced. My initial preference for the construction, “was working” over “worked” needs to be examined. I think I want to prolong action rather than freeze it in the minute, but that’s good only for one sentence in fifty. Like a poet, I pay attention to the music of a line. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it must be corrected. Also, the odd conviction that everything must be attributed to somebody in the story. I have to take out, “Sam saw Rhys walking out of the near woods” and replace it with “Rhys walked out of the near woods” about 100 times. But I finished, and wept as I was finishing.

 June 17, 2026

Woke at 4 to complete prep for the colonoscopy. Reasonably sure that will never happen again. L a prince driving me and then waiting for the procedure to happen. Personnel at the clinic friendly and light-hearted, joking with each other in the corridor. Groggy– from the anesthesia? From the fuss and tedium of it all? 

 June 16, 2026

Fast for the idiot colonoscopy. I wouldn’t have eaten yet at this hour on any other day, but the idea that I CAN’T is provoking. I make too much of every interruption in my routine. I am not one who takes things in stride. 

Miserable with cold last night. Getting up and retrieving the comforter seemed beyond my abilities, somehow. 

Timothy Liberty

 

June 14, 2026

Timothy Liberty was first presented in April, 1986. I’ve been writing plays for 40 years. Plus. One feels perpetually a journeyman.

Poetry

 

June 12, 2026

Diana Wortham died five days before she accepted my Facebook Friend request. 

Stephen says this of How to Spend Your Father’s Birthday:

SM: 7:44 PM (55 minutes ago: to me

I'm in awe. I don't know how else to phrase it, your work has always been incredible but now that I have a bit more lived experience - some of these words cut sharp. 

Can you download WhatsApp? It's the messaging system we use here / it's so much easier. If you have it, my number is +353838638100 

A Christmas Poem - beyond words. If you can make me feel like that (I'm normally an emotionless android). That one really hit home for me. 

Still making my way through them. Each one needs breath so I'm taking my time 

Supper with DJ at Vinnie’s. Huge mastiff slobbering on the terrace. We talked about the strange politics of the church, the factions each largely mysterious to the other. Wheels within wheels. Something is wrong with the rebuilding process that is not fully addressed by the sentence, “It takes time.”

 June 11, 2026

Woke stomach-ill, wondered why. Walked into the kitchen and realized that, while drunk, I’d drunk half a bottle of blue-cheese dressing. 

Infuriating rehearsal. Our director will lose count and fail to make an entrance in order to make fish mouth. For any arts director, the thing you correct most is the thing you’re wrong about. Never a better illustration.

Picked up the book of 17th century writings I bought in Waynesville. Went through, with surprise and delight, Bacon and Jonson. I was supposed to have read them long ago, but probably did not. 

My back door stood wide open when I returned from rehearsal. I left it open, creeping through the house, so if an animal got in it would have an exit. Seems to have been no intruder.