December 29, 2012

Supper with Adam at Jack-of-the-Wood. The bar was turbulent, noisy, just right. A has his heartbreaks, but it seems to me that he is doing everything, professionally, exactly right. We talked about the ballad play he has been writing. He carries with him his guitar, a couple of scrips he’s learning, the manuscript of his play, in case there’s occasion to work on one of them. He is the complete artist, and part of his delightfulness is that, that truth never crosses his mind.

Writing, revising, watching old movies on DVD. Last night it was The Rains Came, 1939. I saw it n TV as a kid and for some reason it stuck. There are certain evocative images– the hero clinging to the statue of Queen Victoria in the flood, the hard-as-nails Rani, the cracking dam–I anticipated and relished, though it has been forty years since I saw them. I had forgotten the plot.

Growing to hate the flat-faced, giant cat that eats the crows’ food and attacks Maude through the closed window.