February 3, 2012

Fresh, invigorating fragrance fills the house. I look for what it is, and see Jessie’s hyacinth blooming mightily from the vitrine. I didn’t plant it outside, as I thought it would, but let it spill its perfume in my private air. Lilac crocus blooming beside the windflowers–as though the terrace were a color card of graduated purples. Spears of daffodil leaves emerge from the ground, all surging forward too early in this false winter.

Reading a huge volume on Hans Holbein. His is the skill I would have if I could choose any painter’s. Susan Foister’s, the writer’s, erudition is exquisite, and though I won’t (nor will I have any need to) remember the half of it, I’m impressed by how much erudition there is in the world, how much there is to know, and for every thing there is to know, that there is someone willing to search it out, examine and judge and bring it into perfect light. She has read payment records five hundred years old. She has curtailed speculation where speculation ought not to have happened. She has learned names of men that even their families forgot before the Industrial Age. One might rest assured that someone has paid attention to every last detail. I feel the same sense of awe in my little Thursday morning reading group, where we consider morality and literature. Some in the circle have read everything and reference French postmodern theory without a sneer; I squeak into my little corner of comfort and hope I can follow along as long as possible.

Some painting today, though the din of C’s stereo clashing with L’s finally drove me out. C’s is worse, because closer, and because she has the worst musical taste I’ve ever encountered. Can’t describe it. . . sort of bubble-gum, I-love-Jesus-almost -as-much-as-my-boyfriend girlie mall muzak cranked to the level of physical pain. Can’t even close the door against it because her speakers aim at my wall. Did ask her to turn it down, but by then the mood was gone. The mood returns tonight, and if I weren’t already drunk I’d load up and head for the studio.

The retaining wall collapsed behind Marco’s house. His luck is the worst.

In the dark of the morning I put together the volume Go, Song, having discovered I have enough poems in forms for a whole book.

Drank a quart of Gatorade against the muscle spasms I blame on dehydration. Hydrating cures them, in any case. Gave myself a fresh round of them laughing from describing to Zach, me on the massage table, having them last night on the toilet and being consequently unable to wipe myself until everything settled down, referencing particularly the resultant blue streak of blasphemy. When I’d recovered from that I recounted the time I was in bed and realized the power was off, and that it was a thrown breaker switch, and when I got up to grope my way outside and down into the cellar to the breaker box, I twisted so as to induce excruciating muscle spasms, and in flailing around I knocked over a lamp, which broke on the floor. I had to get water to end the spasms, so down my foot went on the floor, right into the glass. So, bleeding and cramped double. I limped to the bathroom. Couldn’t see, but I knew I was gushing blood. Tried to bend over and drink out of the bathroom faucet, but the cramps redoubled when I did. Stood in the bathtub so I wouldn’t bleed over everything, blind, unable to bend over and grope for the glass in my foot because when I did the spasms in my gut were too agonizing. Finally walked on my heels to the kitchen, screaming in pain all the way. Found the flashlight. . . drank the water until the spasms eased. . . went out into the freezing night, bleeding into my sneakers, to flip the breaker switch.

Tom and I regaled this AM in Starbucks by Sojourn, who has enormous hands, and who works at the VA changing beds and who remembers not too many nights ago being so drunk he had to hold onto the grass to keep from floating up into the sky. Tom attracts even more half-sane monologists than I.

SW brilliant on Tartuffe in my class.

Everyone is asking for photos, and my head shots, too, have miraculously disappeared from the computer.

I have the feeling that wonderful things happened today, but when I sat down to write of them, only the feeling remained. That is enough.

Recurrent image of the NE corner of W 46th and 8th Avenue in New York. I am waiting for something there– what? Who knows?