October 4, 2011



Brought the Christmas cacti in at the threat of a freeze. The threat was vain, but I’m glad they’re in anyway. The flamingo/tangerine roses that I begged to endure have endured.

Met Mickey in her sweep through town last night, at Magnetic Field. As ever, she is full of plans. Her beloved boyfriend has an affect not unlike mine, which I found intriguing. Jayson tried to comfort me for my disappointment with Lear.

Casey asked me to play Friar Lawrence in R&J, which I couldn’t do because of Our Town.

I move from one task to another in a daze. I am in a phase of fending off.

My Lit students are the worst I’ve had in years, grudging and uncommunicative; my beginning creative writers are the best I’ve had in years, one or two of them presently publishable.

Proustian moment: I bought some lard to make pie crust. Of course I have not made the pies, but I decided to use the lard to fry some vegetables. The minute I tasted them I remembered my grandmother, my father’s mother. Taste memories flooded back. Her cooking always tasted spoiled to me, tainted, and the loathing and anxiety that caused was part of the reason trips to her house were a trial. The spoiled meat taste was in fact lard– which is, I suppose, in a way, spoiled meat. I wish I could go back and apologize, for in my direct way I must have said something about it sometime.

Case said, “I thought you were a wonderful professor, and thought it wonderful that you had no filters on what you said or did. But then I realized you DO in fact have filters, and then it became a little terrifying.”