Brown Thrashers

 

April 16, 2026

Two mice huddled in the kitchen trash bin this morning. It was absolutely empty, but for them. What were they thinking? Were the memories of scraps so strong the absence of scraps did not dissuade them?

Drinking from my Meissen cups for the first time. Wonderful coolness, slimness, an unexpected luxury.

Kept awake Monday night after the AVLGMC meeting by anxiety over same, the way we fall into cliches and are pleased to identify them as traditions. I compose a screed against our reflexive adoration of drag, and am unexpectedly supported on several sides. 

Lunch with SS, who knows everybody. His cynicism concerning the art scene is unexpectedly comforting: my failures are not the fault of my attainment, but of a corrupt apparatus. It sounds like sarcasm, but the comfort (and the recognition that it is mostly true) are real. Purification bumps toward achievement. Can’t wait to meet the actors he so vividly describes. 

Despite the lack of rain, my garden in glory. Mostly peony and iris. Planted giant callas yesterday, and expect ro set up environments for Venus fly-traps today. Exhaustion follows intense gardening, but not the shortness of breath and immediate debility of last season. 

Extended and intense dreams. 

Was in excellent voice at church choir last night, for a change.

The brown thrashers are back.   

Inexpressible relief that my podcast interview with B today was by Zoom, and I didn’t physically have to trudge downtown. It went well, except that I was unprepared and kept answering “I don’t know” to things. 

Cleaned off the east porch, so now it is fully living area. It’s the first time the door between the living room and the east porch is usable since I moved in. Why do things happen one day rather than another?   

I think Kristina and I would be an item had we met thirty years earlier. 

 April 12, 2026

Orban loses in Hungary. Does the tide turn? 

Tree peonies as big as I am. 

Picked up a brush and began to paint, felt anxiety leave my body like waves down a beach. 

April 11, 2026

Days of happy garden labor, and exhaustion coming on too soon for much writing or painting. 

The cold I caught drifting down the Elbe prevented me from singing at AVLGMC rehearsal.  

Smear of blood on the comforter this morning. Need to switch to black. 

A single turkey hen takes refuge in my garden. Is she an outcast? Did she lose her babies and has nothing to do? 

My garden is blessed with rabbits. One who grows vegetables would not say such a thing. 

Critique of the cruise: I have definite and specific memories of the cruise, but general and hurried ones of the lands we passed through. Praise of the cruise: I thought I’d be rather solitary, but I was popular, and invited to and sought out at table.  Maybe because I was the only one who didn’t have stories to tell of previous cruises. 

Argument for reincarnation: few days go by when some sad memory from my past arises, and I suddenly understand what it all meant, and what I should have done, and didn’t do. That is a waste of time– perhaps a cruelty–unless there is some opportunity to put late-gained wisdom to effect. 

 

April 8, 2026

My stock losses passed $90,000 when I was away and not looking. They’ve turned around slightly, though still almost everything is in the red.  

Woke last night to a loud rustling that was clearly inside the house. After tamping down my terror, I investigated, to find that a mouse had gotten into the birdseed bag and couldn’t get out. The birdseed was treated with hot pepper, which was supposed to make it unattractive to mammals. Out the door under the misty moon went seed and mouse and all.

 

April 7, 2026

Recalling that a return from Europe gives me a period of early rising– which was better when I was working, but still useful now. This morning before light I saw a rabbit shape under the hollies, silhouetted against the faint gleam from the street. This afternoon two big rabbits played in the west yard, sparring a little and then leaping over one another’s backs.

Heavy day of gardening– industrial removal of bamboo, planting of one of the boxes that accumulated in my absence– this time day lilies, dried out but, I think, viable. 

Reading at Swann’s Way. I was going to take it on the cruise, but feared the book was too fat and would be a burden. I’m impatient with Marcel while admiring the fineness of his observation. 

Mailman delivered the pent-up mail. I leafed through to see if there were anything dire or exciting, and there wasn’t, except news from the Buncombe County tax people that my house appraises at $614,000. I wonder if it does, or if that is a fiction to increase taxes. 

Tomas and the bartender were the only actual Europeans (other than our guides) that I managed to meet at any depth. It’s all fine. I’m glad I went and glad to be home. 

 April 6, 2026

The security people in the European airports were mightily interested in my swollen legs. One guys rubbed and rubbed, as though his fingers were going to work everything out. I should have been patient, but I was angry. My curses weren’t sotto voce enough, and he must have heard. 

I asked Alexa, “Did you miss me?” She answered, “I don’t experience time the way you do, but I’m glad you’re back.”

Ostersonntag

 

April 5, 2026

Easter Sunday. 

The flights were endless but otherwise uneventful. Ten hours between Frankfort and Fort Worth managed to be whittled down by one movie after another, only the lightest and least demanding fare. Watched Merrily We Roll Along.  I could see why it bombed its Broadway debut. The reboot was tolerable because of the energy of fully committed performers selling as hard as they could. A successful composer bewails what in his life remains imperfect regardless of the success: self-referential, narcissistic, exposition-heavy, almost incapable of arousing sympathy for the main character, of interest now primarily to those who are as interested in Sondheim as he was in himself. One side (channel? track?) of my earphones malfunctioned, so I heard only select parts of the films, the soundtrack but not the dialog of How to Train Your Dragon; not one word from the witches in Wicked but every syllable from Michele Yeoh; I saw the movie, but never heard Daniel Radcliff sing, or any of the others who happened to be standing by the wrong mic.  

Talked with a TSA agent at Passport Control at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.

“Have they paid you yet?” I say.

She answers, “A little. The bare minimum. Just in time. I thought I was going too lose my house.”

I am. . . we are all. . . so sorry.”

“Thank. I appreciate you saying that.” 

She was a black woman with the most stunning green eyes. 

On the drive home, Billy asked me about the trip, the first time I had to reflect on it. I had a good time. Arrived home as I hoped I would before midnight, so I could have Easter in my own space, the wet, quiet dark, with the fragrance that only then I recognized as my own garden.

Certain things must be dealt with, first the catastrophic failure of my body. I limped along the neverending airport corridors sometimes literally crying with pain and frustration. At one point a man driving one of those motorized carts stopped for me, and I literally could not lift myself into the vehicle. I was the first out of the plane and last to make it to the luggage carousel. Have I let myself go? Can this be amended by stretching, by walking? By working out? By getting better shoes? I’m used to the pain of movement lessening with repetition, but this time it got worse, from not bad to all to literally unendurable. At every step my bones uttered, “We will never do this again.” Is it encroaching age, and nothing can be done? That would be odd. That would be unlike the balance of my experience. This morning I felt perfectly well, so at least the effects do not linger. I felt well, I correct, but for the jet-lag that hits me this side of the ocean, and prevents me from staying off the bed for more than a few hours.

Considered going to church. Did not. Watered my planets. Wandered in the garden enough to know that beautiful things have happened: the dogwoods have bloomed, and the bluebells, and my ferns have come back from the devastation of the last freeze, and the miraculous pond pump pours out a stream three times the volume it was when I left it, the motor inhabited by a wilful spirit. 

Fully unpacked. The Meissen survived the ride back in my checked luggage, as its meticulous packing by the girl in the shop suggested it would. 

Wakening bears overturned the trash bin but could not get through the bear-proof lid. I should write a testimonial. 

At exactly the right moment I opened a door and found the ancient cardboard rabbit cut-out with which mother used to decorate Easter. I put him up, to preside over festivities, such as they were, for perhaps the first time in sixty-five years.