March 3, 2013

Gray Sunday dawn, me slamming down cranberry juice as though I had just crawled through a desert. Desultory snowflakes wait for a wind to guide them.

Grabbed time to go to the studio yesterday. It was in such disarray that I could not paint, could not so much as find anything until after a thorough rebuilding. I called Jolene to see who had been in my space, and it had been herself and Mitch, responding to yet another deluge and yet another flood from the roof by hauling my most imperiled stuff to places (I wonder how they decided?) where they would be more safe. I felt embarrassed because I snapped at them for the good deed of protecting my work. On the other hand, the floods come five times a year and five times I year I’m told it’s fixed and it never is. I ruined a pastel by spraying it with varnish, and had to repaint it. So, with getting the space back into working order and repainting a work I ruined, I left the studio at exactly the same place I left it the last time. Zero gain.

Fixated on the unfinished plumbing, I had to lie down, as I do under stress. When I woke, Steve had at least cut the access pipes down to the size of cakes, which had been towers before. The ruins are still ruins, but my repeated phone calls have kept me alive in his remembrance.

Feeling that The Mikado is a success. Opening night went quite well, and last night–so far as I’m concerned–was flawless. Came blasting in on the parts I was unsure of before. Laughter from the audience, lightheartedness from the cast. The men’s dressing room nothing but conviviality. J and L and DJ and G came last night, and though my time with them was brief, they seemed to have had a great time. You want to beg, “But how was I?” knowing that if they were paying attention to you, the leads were not doing their jobs.

Strangely divorced from the things I do– distanced in a way I can’t explain. I scurry away from the theater as if heading for some important activity. I rush from school after class as if now my real efforts can begin. I hoard and protect my time as though some great incipient deed needed acres of it. When I sit down to write, I think, “Let’s get this out of the way so I can get back to my real task.” But what? I’m like the snow outside, waiting for a wind to condense me, blow me some direction or the other. This began in Sligo, the darkness of which I have avoided setting down in words. Perhaps that’s what I must do. Lincoln in New York should be my lodestar, but it isn’t, not yet. I expect it to come to nothing, and one of the voices in the brain says I will make it come to nothing by expecting it, while the others try to shout the idiot down.

Snow thickens. It knows one direction, anyhow: down.