September 19, 2013

Autumn cool. The windows are closed except for cracks. The big angel’s trumpet is six feet tall and still hasn’t flowered.

A fish died in the tank yesterday. He was very old, and age had changed his shape and color. He was white, now, with a hump like a bison. I knew over the last few days that he was going, and I felt glad that I could keep him safe enough to drift away among the plastic weeds, something that would not happen in nature.

Sang with Virginia’s choir at Saint Mary’s last night. The atmosphere there was calm, communal, mutual, adult. I’m used to an atmosphere more tense and punitive. At home I often feel like a bad child who has barely been whipped into shape; last night I felt like an adult giving a gift. The sound of V’s choir is not good, but I think that can be laid on personnel rather than technique. Simone carries the alto section into glory. A quarter century ago when I started look for a church home, I longed for it to be St. Mary’s, because it was most like the Savior back in Syracuse. But I went three Sundays in a row and no one spoke to me.

Terrible news yesterday, and I did not react well, taking to my bed like a Victorian virgin. Did get to the studio and the gym. Did transcribe café poems, fighting my own illegible scrawl.