June 14, 2009

Days of brilliant sun, and enough rain that the garden is an overabundant glory, at this point desperately in need of a solid day of weeding, which it is not immediately going to get.

First exam in summer Humanities. Evidently I may as well have been lecturing to the wall. No, it was worse than that. After reading all those masters–Kant and Galileo and Locke and Rousseau, who exhort thinking for oneself– they drew in their minds and tried to guess what the “right” answer might be, not thinking for themselves at all.

Lovely, detailed, and perhaps slightly depressing e-mail from Devin W, whom I have missed.

Last night’s Cantaria concert was quite good, the music varied and well-chosen, the crowd large enough, the singing several levels above what rehearsals could have led us to anticipate. Amanda sounded sensational in the Alto Rhapsody. Merry celebration at the Usual afterwards. I’d come fortified with syrups and lozenges, but in the event did not cough once. I heard frogs in the blessed trees of All Souls in the night while we were leaving. I long for frogs in my trees, or toads in my grass, or snakes in my piles of stones, any blessing from the quarter of creation.

The first day of this June’s River District Studio Stroll went well, too-- better, I think, than I remember it. This was partially because Jason and Denise and their friends kept away the feeling of isolation I’d had before, and while my other studios could be gloomy, ours now is a blaze of light, and on the corner of all river district activity. Even made some sales. The husband (or boyfriend) of one of Denise’s friends lingered with us, and became one of the select group of people whom I have hated instantly. Small and smelly and dredlocked past his waist, he possessed an of-all-other-things-oblivious self-regard for which I could find no conceivable justification. I painted steadily, and have three pieces I could complete today. The capoera dancers in the upstairs hall looked arthritic, or like me if I were doing it. We were spoiled by seeing capoera in Miami, where it was fluid as moonlight.

Late night. The orange lily on the back terrace is so vibrant in the twilight it looks like it’s electric, or afire.

Second day of gallery walk was successful, convivial, but so grueling I barely have energy to make it to bed. If I had to work a full eight hours of contact with the public, I would be lost. But it was by far the best of the studio strolls for me. None of my “group” bothered to show, a customary state of affairs, but one to which one never quite becomes accustomed. There is always a new friend, always a kindness from a stranger that skews for the better a skewed world.

From time to time one realizes that it is never going to be the way it is in movies; no one is lying awake in their bed thinking of you; no one weeps into the night over the mistake that separated them from you; no one is going to give up an afternoon nap or a Sunday potuck or a favorite TV show for you, let alone an hour or a day, or the safety of a safe life. No one is sick for missing you, or counting the hours until you return. People talk of friendship and loyalty, but they don’t really mean you, and if there is a test they will not so much as step up to take it, and they cannot be blamed. They will laugh or be mortified at your passion, and shrug off the accusation of indifference, indifferently. But one goes on, powered by that omnipotent word, “someday.” One goes on because, if you do not think of those things, the incidental joys of life are enough: the lily electric and afire in the twilight; J expounding on painting from behind his blue eyes; old acquaintances steeping into your studio, and some warmth, almost forgotten, is renewed, sweet and genuine for all its brevity, whole and good for all its strangeness. Unlike love, grace is random and impersonal, and one takes it with thanks.