February 9, 2013

In a dream I was trying to buy stamps on Saturday, testing to see if the Post Office were really closed or, as I suspected, fully manned and just ignoring customers. As I pounded, a former student (so she presented herself in the dream) came up and spoke to me in Italian. She said, “I was just testing to see if you were keeping up with your Italian.” My subconscious’s Italian is better than mine.

My friend and publisher Palmer Hall is dying in Texas, of a cancer which he fought valiantly, but it is a battle which he is not winning. The whole listserve of which we both were a part talks about this, giving each other updates, waiting for the latest news. I read, but find myself with nothing to add to the discourse. It’s not that I think this is ghoulish, but somehow I tend to withdraw from final dramas. I feel awkward about interposing myself between the person and the solemnity of his destiny.

The cottage’s plumbing problems drive a trench through the back yard, annihilating square feet of spring planting. Plumber Steve calls and laughs about how I’m going to buy him that new truck he always wanted. He thinks it’s funnier than I do. I wonder why a clogged drain couldn’t be, just once, a clogged drain and not a prolonged engineering project.

Beer at Asheville Pizza last evening, to congratulate ourselves on completing (so we think at the moment) our faculty hunt. I drink more beer than I have in the last six months. It was delicious.