April 9, 2011

Wild Acres. What must be remarked upon is the extreme, the awesome, the almost disturbing silence of this place. Dead silent. Away from the crowd last night it was silent as mist. This morning, with the sky pink and gray, there is not a bird singing, not a branch rubbing against a branch. A most solemn and heroic silence. Are all the hills round about as silent as this? I suppose the very act of going to find out would bring silence to things which might have been crying out. Are we the cause of the silence, or a local mitigation of it?

Contrary to expectation, I enjoyed my first evening here. My legs were more of a bother than I expected (though that is relieved this morning), but the company was cheerful and the introductory meeting–where we all introduced ourselves and we featured writers read–was by several levels of magnitude less tedious than it might have been. Apparently I read “The Friend at the Pool” to good effect. I liked it as I was reading it, its simplicity and mirth a happy surprise. Mark Smith-Soto read some ferociously good poems. All in all, though, I didn’t think the featured writers were that good, and maybe that will be an encouragement to the participants.

Just now, far down in the valley, a cardinal whoops and a mourning dove coos.

Back at the side of my old friend Luc. People lose contact. I don’t like that so much. I would still be buddies with the kids I was buddies with on Goodview Avenue if the world hadn’t changed around me.

Evening. Two of my three sessions are behind me. I will never admit to what degree they were pure improvisation, as shall the next and last coming up in half an hour. It is possible that we shall all be washed away by then. Arguably the worst weather on Planet Earth rages outside: torrential, gale-driven rain interspersed and sometimes replaced by sizeable, concussive hail. Thunder rolls. The roof shakes. The walks overflow with new creeks armed with white pellets of ice. I don’t know what the wild creatures do out unprotected in this calamity. Since I moved here I’ve been amazed by the flooding of mountaintops. It seems counterintuitive, but one sees it again and again. Something is making tremendous noise, and I’m not sure what It is. Maybe all these trees drummed by hail and wind at once.

The weekend’s participants are more varied and less purely literary than one usually encounters at events such as this, I suppose because The Sun is itself as much spiritual and political as it is literary. They are game and attentive, only occasionally combative. But three classes in a day is hard even if you’d had a semester to build up to it. I don’t know how much money I’m getting for this, but unless it’s a great deal indeed, I will have earned it. One man– who everybody says looks like me–insisted that I admit that my Sun stories are “gems” that only a person with special knowledge could have written. People come thinking that authorship is a fraternity one enters with a secret password rather than through actual labor. They want me to give them that word. When I say there is no such thing, they assume they have asked in the wrong way. You see it in their faces.

I’ve been too exhausted to socialize much. At every break I lie down, nap, my customary way of fighting off the fever. Socialization would just make me frantic concerning the brevity of all such things.

Later evening. My central responsibility is despatched. The last session was a tooth-pull. I hope it didn’t show. Entirely my fault for being shoddily prepared. When I hear me talking about writing it seems an infinitely noble undertaking. When I hear me talking about writing, I never mention envy or disappointment. Such purity in me, when I speak of it.