August 31, 2012

Pale haze, long before dawn, of moonlight diffused through mist.

Classes have been excellent, my writers eager and productive, not infrequently brilliant.

Dinner last night with ACB. We lived on Goodview Avenue together when we were kids, and though we were aware of each other, we were not friends until the mini-reunion I had in Akron years ago, to which she came. Not surprising, then, that there was less reminiscing than there was catching up on all we didn’t know about each other. Her brother, Mike, who was older than us and on whom I had a desperate crush, died years ago, an alcoholic. Tried to look him up on Google, but there’s a baseball player with the same name, and I was worn out by the first billion entries’ being his. She brought me birthday presents, a jar of basil from her garden and a book with pictures of Ireland. She remembers my reading my poetry in assemblies at school, which I don’t remember and which I think was unlikely because I tended to be secretive about all that. She congratulated me on being such a success and making everybody proud. Not feeling a success right now, or ever, I wanted to say, “What the hell could you possibly mean?” but decided just to let it be.

Desperate letters from Ste in Cambridge. I have no idea how to respond, especially since each letter contradicts the emotion and reverses the requests of the one before.

Kevin sings. I think I was waiting for him to do so before I moved from this keyboard. The lawn is dusty-sweet with the scent of the wild clematis. I eased my war against it, and now it covers everything like first snow.