January 8, 2011

Sound out on the dark, snowy street which I take to be a plow.

Now that my sabbatical is within two days of being at an end, time to record what I have done since May: 4 novels (2 from scratch), 5 short stories, two full-length plays and five one-acts, a screenplay, twelve or more good poems.

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Evening.

Vadim Bora is dead. You never expect to be without some people, even if you hardly ever see them. They were part of the landscape.

Poor Steve and Casey, their beautiful show shut down by snow!

The woodpeckers have found the baskets of suet. My pair of towhees glean with their bright feathers fluffed over the snow.

The snow that was pristine on the front porch this morning is now pocked and dented by the feet of birds til it looks like fine white leather.

Bitter argument with the people at Barclay Cards, in the middle of which I realized I was, mostly, in the wrong. What do you do in such a situation? Put a note of haughty resignation in your voice, as though you were merely retreating from a conversation with idiots. There are some jobs I wouldn’t have, because of people like me . . . .

Quiet day, weather and the murderous reaction of Southern drivers to it turning one in on oneself. I have mostly slept. My capacity for sleep is astounding, disturbing, as though I were in training for the Long Sleep ending all. It’s a sort of hibernation, to bridge the times of happy activity. What if we were cats and all that was not pounce and leap and dance were sleep? Victoria on the CD. Deep black wind against the window.