November 2, 2008

Three droll Mexicans hauled my new furniture in. I wondered what they were saying to each other, about my house, about me. The furniture disappeared from my conscious view almost as soon as it was installed.

John and Scott working all day on my porch, in the most remarkable and un-workmanlike silence. I gave them the left-over refreshments from my little Halloween party. Scott said, “I’m going home to shoot .22's with my sons and their cousins. It’s good redneck fun.”

Sang the Rheinberger Requiem, then Cantaria rehearsal. Came home sick with exhaustion. I’m wondering if I’m nourished by my association with All Souls. I hold with it hoping to be nourished, hoping to be surprised by some extraordinary stirring of the spirit, but it is long since anything of the like has happened. I’m not sure that I am a friend to my All Souls friends, or merely a kind of habit. I’ve offered my services to All Souls in a beyond-the-call way several times--running for Vestry, attempting to set up a drama program–and have been rebuffed each time. Am I needed? Am I a kind of outlandish appendage that is endured as other anomalies are endured? I don’t know whether it is merely vanity to want to be of service. I don’t know whether I am supposed to be “nourished.” Maybe I’m meant simply to endure this, too, as so many other things need to be endured. I think of the time poured into this institution, without any “return” either of the spirit or the emotions (should I look for a return?) and without any feeling that things wouldn’t be the same if I weren’t there at all. I have thought this before, but thought it doubly tonight because I was so weary, and the sight of those bricks and tiles was becoming sickening to me.