November 11, 2008

Accepted TB’s invitation to join him and Greg at the Usual for drinks last night. Greg is off to New York and TB off to alcohol and drug rehab in Idaho, and there I was lifting cocktails with him. He assured me that rehab began the next day. Greg was his usual font of the abstruse. TB was sweet and vulnerable, maybe a little frightened. Who can tell? He is newly stylish in his dress, or I didn’t notice before. I was happy to be sharing the evening with him. Friends of his came with a Trivial Pursuits game, and there DJ and I were playing Trival Pursuits in a bar until midnight. It was good. I was happy. Every night I need to do something peculiar.

Classes are good, I think, but end-of-the-semester hysteria makes my students narrow and fretful. They don’t want to explore; they want to be reassured. They tell me without flinching that they have to miss my class because they have to catch up on work for other classes. I am grateful for the candor, but astonished by the brass.

The Druid is not interested in The Beautiful Johanna. They didn’t read it (you can tell from the thank-you letter) and I am sorry.

Chall phones and offers me a kitten. That I should be thought of as a kitten-refuge satisfies me, even though, at the moment, the house is full.

Stock market too low even to look at. Am I depressed about that, or the crash of the Jane Bingham project, or Mickey’s departure, or the Druid, or what? I am depressed about something, though it is a little whimpering depression rather than a big howling one.

Glen showed me all the pictures on the Internet of himself in his kendo costume. That is the one where you whack folks with a length of bamboo. In the photos he looks focused and grave and very butch.