August 1, 2010

Furious morning rain. I was shoveling the sweet gum detritus off my patio with the rain falling on my back. It feels cool and refreshed now as it dries. The sweet gum dropped a big limb into the neighbors’ yard the day I returned from Europe. Kelley looks up at its vast eminence and says “that really worries me.” She expects it to launch an attack upon her dog or her child, when so far the tree in its major shedding has missed everything. But who knows? My scorn of the danger doesn’t mean there is no danger. I have always loved that tree, and do now, for it is beautiful and tremendous. When I bought the land I considered husbandry of it one of my concerns. But perhaps Kelley is right, and it is just too vast to sit where it does. It could endure forty years without dropping another limb. In this rain, in the next five minutes, it could launch a branch the size of any other tree into her yard, or DJ’s roof, or mine. Come autumn I think I will remove it, with much sadness. But I’m already thinking what to put in its place. Basswood, I think.

Writing and writing. It is amazing–and I am truly grateful–how fluid my invention remains. Invention was never the problem for me. Publication was. I suppose Fate thinks this evens things out, though it really doesn’t: the one aspect failing negates the other, so the net result is emptiness.

In minor contradiction to what I’ve just said, returned to fan notes about Bird Songs of the Mesozoic and the poem “Lament for Turlough O’Carolan.” How people find this material is a mystery to me.

MM spaces out, and so the Jane Bingham Festival must be severely re-tailored. Re-tailoring is the thing I hate most in the world.