April 24, 2012

 After turning my yard into a sort of war-camp, temporary structures lifted above the ground over every delicate plant, I don’t think it frosted last night at all. Well enough, though, for it gave me something to do at first of morning, packing the bivouac away, leaning over to smell the white cup peony, inhaling the most amazing fragrance on the earth, natural and unnaturally sumptuous at once, heady and lingering. Why is there a bee anywhere in the world but inside that cup?

 My storage area has considerably less in it than I remember, and that means that my nightmares of getting another space to store the stuff were for nought. Made one emptying trip today, wherein I rid myself of old picture frames, an aluminum easel, unsold Urthona Press books, and the plastic hydrangeas acquired for the production of Piss. I was in a hurry, so sealed boxes went to the studio unopened. Two more loads or so should do it. Once upon a time I had TWO of those vast storage rooms. Sic transit gloria mundi.

 Last night my students did their original brief plays in the Grotto, using mostly actors from the drama department. I have orchestrated this more than twenty times now, and this one was the best– nearly the best in terms of the quality of the plays, far and away the best in terms of the ease and drama-less-ness of the process. I said “do you want to do this?” and after they said “yes” I did practically nothing else. I was so proud of their inventiveness, their application, their orderliness. The ten consecutive days when I think about retiring are interrupted by one day like that, and the tally is set back to zero.

 William Billings in my head from last Sunday’s anthem. MR gave me a liter of moonshine. “Never‘shine in cut glass had such clarity.”