September 18, 2009

Silent dark of the morning.

Loaded Yeats, Whitman, and the New York Times on my Kindle.

Went last night to see Josh B’s new company, Bat and Horse, open at NC Stage with a play called Nerve. The production was lovingly done and the acting was skillful. Afterwards, I was standing by my car, with the door open, when I finally determined not to go right home like a good boy, but to haunt some of the old haunts. I haunted exactly two, but that was better than scurrying home to plop down in front of a DVD. At Smokey’s I heard the tale of an exotic dancer whose hand had been paralyzed by a bee. I am an amateur, but I think he had real worries– one finger was cold and purple. I wondered about the man’s life. He was beautiful, in a way, but also attenuated and drawn, as if this pain were but the latest of many. He said, “I’m not from here, you know. I’m from Indianapolis.” He meant that to explain a lot, and, somehow, it did. Uberfag Chiropractor, who has been there at least every time I have, announced, “I am a doctor” and swept him away. Scully’s was livelier, and no one had any obvious complaints, but I was given a nasty drink, and I couldn’t fathom the cause of its nastiness, so turned I homeward. Where I watched a DVD anyhow.

Calm evening after a good day. Sucking Southern Comfort and diet coke directly out of the coke bottle. Excellent weight round and aerobics at the downtown Y in the morning, then in the afternoon I took my Kindle to the cross-trainer and did three miles before I even looked at the gauges, engrossed in reading Paradise Lost. In between I was unsuccessful in finding something I wanted to write. In between I went to the studio. J was in need of bucking up, having received his first graduate school critique, which was devastating, but which he took with an open mind. Hovering in the shadows was DM, who loves J, and who had been cultivating a friendship with him until the day J turned on him, for reasons which bespeak honesty and integrity on J’s part, but which are, I admit, too harsh for me to understand fully. D slouches into the room, makes a few comments, which J furiously ignores, and then he creeps out again, abashed and heartbroken. I respect J’s conviction in the matter, but it’s sad to see DM ghosting about like a whipped puppy. I’m sure he doesn’t understand what has happened. I’m sure he doesn’t–as I wouldn’t– understand why whatever happened bore such a consequence. The Flood is a soap opera. I’m there too little–and when I am there, too oblivious–to inform much of the story line.

One of the readers of my blog is, apparently, a former panelist for the NC Arts Council grants, who appended a brief, anonymous note saying that grants are never made to people already on the state payroll. I don’t believe that’s true. I know of one recipient from this year who is undoubtedly a state employee, and I was sure I knew of others in the past, though, when I put myself to the test, I really couldn’t think of any. But the deeper point is that this issue has weighed on my heart for twenty years, the fact that I applied, by my account twenty-one times, and was refused each time, while some I knew to be frauds or half-wits walked away with fat checks in their hands. The honoring of frauds and half-wits is not helped by this revelation, but, if true, if the consideration of State employment is even in the decision-making mix, it reveals me standing in the midst of twenty-one years of folly and misapprehension. It may in fact be the single worst case of folly, misapprehension, and wasted anguish in a life unusually rich in those things. Perhaps I can add it to the list of things to shut up about.