Cambridge

June 29, 2011

Morning new-washed after yesterday’s rain. I don’t recall ever hearing thunder in England before, but there was plenty of it then.

Deriving joy from companionship with my students. Either because of them or because of me this never happened before to the same degree. Cooked a vat of chili last night in the sad little kitchen on our floor, and delighted to watch them gobble it down. They bought ice-cream, and served out huge helpings for dessert. It’s one thing to try to keep up with 20-year-olds in physical exertion; it’s quite another to do so in eating, and I fear I must surrender at the outset. I must also set aside the thought of how much this makes me miss not being a father. I suppose I am one, for a little time.

J reports the first sexual encounter, with a barmaid at the Pickerel. Huzzah! we all cried. He is the same who reports that when he interviewed for this program, saw that the interviewers were women and whispered to himself, “I’m in!”

Nightmares, two of them, very similar. In the first I was playing a part in King Lear, Edmund or Edgar I think, and had missed many rehearsals, and arrived on the night of dress rehearsal mortified that I did not know my lines. I thought that if I could just read over them they might come back to me, but I couldn’t find a script. I searched and searched, but there was no script. The saving thought came to me, “This is just a dream,” but the dream answered, “No, this time it is real.” I woke, and after a while I dreamed again. This time Chall was directing a one-act with himself and me as actors, and, again, I had not learned my lines. I asked to see a script, but one could not be found. When I located documents that looked like the script, they were printed with gibberish I didn’t understand. Chall the whole time wore a mask of stony disapproval. Finally I said “where is my script?” and Chall said, “I threw it in the oven.” I looked at a burner that was on the scene, and pulled the script out, but it was covered with ashes, and, when I opened it, printed with the same gibberish as before. Again my subconscious argued that the horrible moment was real and I couldn’t just wake up from it. . . though I dd.