October 16, 2007

Dark before morning. I must leave the house in a few minutes, and not return until 11, I think, under the glitter of the moon, Jupiter, red Antares. I don’t like packed days like this. Too much energy goes into finding a place to hide or to shut down for a moment.

Conferences with my poets yesterday afternoon, an event that turned out to be one of extraordinary sweetness to me, face after face of earnestness and eagerness, some of them truly gifted, all of them loveable to me, at least in those moments, as if I were the temporary father of the world. I feel blest that I am not in one of those colleges people talk about where the students are sullen and resistant. When I count my blessings, I too often pass this one over. Not this quiet morning.

Had an explosion of temper at rehearsal last night, a very little one, which perhaps nobody recognized as such but me. But, the worst thing in a play is for one actor to interfere with another’s process, and God knows what I do that infuriates the crap out of everyone, and I paused long enough to realize that exhaustion was angry, and not discernment. I knew about 1/5 of my lines, which was enough to keep me from panic.

Someone attached a snide comment to the review of my book on the Mountain Xpress webpage. I know who it was, and the sorrow of it is not the comment, which was juvenile, but the source, which is one I have tried hard to love, and evidently tried all the wrong ways.