Williamstown 3

May 7, 2013

My emotions for the past few days, since setting down in Williamstown, have been unusual. All the valves seem to be open, all my experiences fluidly available to me, my judgments without doubt or second-guessing. My mind is like an aqueduct leading clear water from the stone of the mountain, or like a system of deep pools pouring into one another, transparent, reflecting calm sky.

Yesterday was exactly as brilliant and stainless as the day before. Went early to the Tunnel City Café, where I read in their books of poems (and wrote inside the covers that I had done so) and wrote poetry hugely. I stayed long enough to watch shifts of students and professors come in and gossip and go out. Turned and found Water Street, with its river I don’t know the name of, and small untidy shops unlike the posh compactness of the town itself, and an empty factory, and wildflowers I remember from my youth glorying the grass. Tried to go to he university art museum, but it is closed on Mondays. Late in the afternoon I went to Griffin Hall (very elegantly Georgian) to hear a reading by the student creative writing prize winners. One poet was promising and one story was very good. The rest, not. Of course I was comparing them to my students, and I think, despite multiple inequities between Williams and UNCA, we come out slightly ahead. We are certainly far more avant-garde, though that impression might also be translated as “trendy,” so if that’s an advantage or not one cannot say.

The reading of my play went well, I think. One or two read-throughs had been better, but that’s how it goes. The play is good, and if I came here to be assured of that, well enough. Drew close to my actors, and the fact that I will never hear from them again makes me sad, however often this same scene has played out before. We went to the Purple. . .  Something for drinks afterwards, and gathered around us a cloud of local theater people, some from the Main Street Theater in North Adams. It is curious to me how much I am NOT a theater person. It is not my only topic of conversation, not even in the top ten. I never recite my credentials the first thing when I sit down, never recount old productions, have relatively few war stories in my repertoire. It’s like dogs spraying the trees or grouse strutting around with their feathers spread. But it’s also part of the culture, and I regret not being more natural at it. Talked long with actor David, who presented his time in LA as a sojourn among Satanists and creeping shadows. I liked him, and was jealous when he talked to someone else.

Excellent sleep, and now an excellent morning, indistinguishable from the ones before.