March 21, 2009

The Equinox has come and gone, and changes came in its wake. My plot of bloodroot floats like a little ghost a few inches above earth in the twilight. Two crown imperials shoot up in the front yard, and if one of them is gold and the other is scarlet, all shall be perfection. I found strange flowers in the yard, slender, delicate gold. I wondered about them until I realized they were the pistol and stamens of crocus, from which the petals had fallen away.

TD and I finally manage to hook up at Starbuck’s this AM, after three mishaps. The melancholy tale of his screen writing career continues to unfold. I understand in five seconds how his collaborator is taking advantage of him, but T is slow to be convinced. He takes their fifteen years of (fruitless) history as cause for loyalty, whereas I take it as a sign of mendacity. I suppose we all see other’s problems clearer than our own. I take The Beautiful Johanna to C to see if he wants to design a set, and in one minute he has a beautiful conception, the likes of which I would never have thought of on my own. I wander downtown in the cold, bright light, half-awake, in a pleasant way, thick and slow, as though moving through crystal. I spend the afternoon at the university, empty except for me, trying to shovel out from under the strata of unfinished work. My students writing beautiful essays that nobody will see but them and me. This is why I am a Platonist, that I might assume all that effort comes to something, and is not lost, and comes back as music in some festival yet to be enjoyed.