May 20, 2012

Quiet evening. The bluebird has brought his baby–or perhaps it is his mate, though I don’t think there is that much dimorphism among bluebirds–to the wire over the birdbath.

Rose early and wrote at the newly remodeled Edna Café. I sat outside, where the sky is remodeled every hour. I wrote a poem I did not remember until this instant, so much had intervened between then and now. I drove up the Parkway, thinking to hike. As I drove, a young black bear strode out onto the road in front of me. He paused, but seeing cars coming from both directions, loped on. He was indeed very black. Parked at the Beaver Dam Gap overlook and headed up, and south. The May forest was green, luminous, shiny, beautiful. I named, as I always do, the plants and creatures I saw around me, as though they would vanish if someone did not call their names every now and then. The eyed click beetle is a whole lot bigger than one expects. I stopped to write, leaning against a bare outcrop of rock, and a vulture soared at eye level, though she was a hundred feet above the valley she scoured. I realized that I had picked up a number of ticks as I sat, and the rest of the journey was a little rushed because of those loathsome creatures, and my desire to get back to the car and give myself a thorough inspection. Coming down I ran into a man coming up. He was dressed more for the golf course than a walk in the woods. Jack was his name, and he was from Malibu. He is some sort of tycoon there, and had just sold a property for 21 million dollars. He said I would know the location, because there is a big rock there in the surf and it’s in all the movies. George Clooney and Will Smith and others had looked at it, but decided that it wasn’t private enough.  Anthony Hopkins lives next door. Jack was a little obsessed with poison ivy, so I showed him what it was (the plant he thought was poison ivy is actually wild strawberry). He had left his family in the car while he took his little walk, apparently to get a fee for the “real woods.”

DV was in town, and we had lunch, during which we caught each other up on our lives. It went a good deal deeper than that, and in the end we were witnessing to one another in a way seldom allowed by time and casual era we inhabit. He was looking sensationally handsome. With David and Wiley, it was a great weekend for beloved former students. The suggestion that one has done well as a teacher calms the heart more than almost anything else.

Came home to listen to the messages on my land line, and discovered that my story “The First Full Night of Winter” had one the short story prize from Writecorner Press ($1100) and that Conversation Involving Doppler the Cat won the Durango Art Center Play Festival Prize ($500) and will enjoy a full production there in September. I had to listen carefully to the fiction people, because–due to my idiotic record-keeping– I had no idea who they were nor what story they were talking about. You listen enough, and most things come clear without your having to admit to your own obliviousness.

Sidney leaves a phone message suggesting cuts to Lincoln. I realize I don’t know him well enough to know whether the suggestions are just throwing ideas around, spitballing, or that he has long and deeply considered, and come to a conclusion. I say just that on email and wait for a response. It’s clear that if the New York theater thing progresses much farther, part of my life, anyway, will have to migrate to New York. A bigger part than now.

Outside it is the deepest silver-green it can be before turning to the blue of night. My elderberries are in bloom.