April 8, 2011

Looking out over my lawn in the dark of the morning, I realize that one of my best buys was those two LED flowers, one red, one yellow, which have been glowing through the nights in my lawn, summer and winter, going on two years. They keep the domestic night from loneliness.

Struck by phlebitis in the middle of class yesterday afternoon, amid some pronouncement about Yeats. Previous such experiences forearmed me, and there were pills in my desk. I took them and continued class, came home and collapsed. I think it will remain a mild attack. There were no chills nor nightmares, though I did wake in a cleansing sweat, and my leg is in pain, not bad, but persistent. The worst part of this is that today I drive to Wildacres to be a featured writer in The Sun’s “Into the Fire” festival. Dozens of people have paid hundreds of dollars to–I suppose in part–hear me. I could not phone and say I wasn’t coming. No one believes it when someone calls at the last minute and says they’re sick, though I must be more tolerant now, seeing that is sometimes the case. Unless there’s a turn, I can make it. Events such as this are sources of ambivalence in my life. I don’t like doing them, but I know for a fact my career would have been different–better–had I done more of them, festivals and workshops and little celebrations where one goes to be humiliated and exalted in the same moment. I prize my time so much, and yet so much of my time has come to nothing because I did not cultivate a public. I told MO that I didn’t feel prepared and he said, “Just turn on the charm.” I’ll have to. I was not well enough last night to work. I hope there’s enough of it, of the charm. I feel fraudulent at writers’ conferences because, though I know how to do it, how to write, I don’t know how it’s done. It’s like asking a bird how she flies. One has read what other people have said. One looks at oneself writing, and hopes something is deducible. It would ruin this business if people understood that nobody can tell you how to write, or show you how to write, though if you are a writer already they can certainly break bad and foster good practices. Maybe I misunderstand and everybody just goes there for the company.

Who taught me how to write? I had people who encouraged me, but reading was the primary teacher. The encouragement allowed it to happen, though. The encouragement kept me from turning to other, easier, or more sociable, things. The encouragement was all. The rest was already there, and but needed the junk to be chipped away. Even today the encouragement is all, though one is too proud to say so.

One of my students pointed out there are only three more class sessions. I had been picturing a near infinity stretching off toward some indeterminate summer.

Yellow and pink tree peonies in bloom. Wish I had friends who could come and look at my garden.