March 7, 2014

Honorah Foah writes that The Birth of Color will be recorded in Budapest in June. I ask if I can sing in the chorus, which would be very cool. I look online for flights to Budapest, then, on the brink of committing, remember that this piece has been on the verge of going public three times. Last summer I was prepared for a premiere in Rome. Twenty years ago it was Chartres. I won’t buy my ticket yet.

I’m in every goddam act of Man and Superman, after Act II with only a few forgettable lines. That’s just bad playwriting. Besides, it means that I have to be at every rehearsal.  Before we start each scene there is a round of bantering and a ritualistic recitation out of the Monty Python movies. Sometimes it takes quite a while, and the three of us codgers narrow our eyes and wait for it to be over. One the other hand, the atmosphere is sweet and young and merry, and no one ever cries, as one almost might, “Let’s get on with it!”

Old skinny ashtray-smelling plumber comes to fix the second toilet. He explains in detail to me what went wrong. He reminisces about another UNCA professor he knew long ago– I know whom he means– who lived at such-and-such a place and who was a very nice man. The fragments that live after us–

I can see my last Ohio license plate from where I sit.

In the wintery days after I moved, I transplanted a few more peonies. But finally gave out, thinking that I should just buy more. The idea that Will will plow them under for grass torments me, but we’ll deal with it when it comes.  Today, in the hardware store for some other reason, I could not stop myself from buying a couple of elderberry bushes and four Trillium luteum. The house’s being yellow has set me on a course I may regret one day, but I see it surrounded by a field of gold. Planted the elderberries on the eastern edge of the yard. The earth is pebbly there, and I uncovered black plastic which I buried again without seeking the limits of. Don’t explore where you don’t want to know. It’s shady in the morning, but I think it will get sun in the afternoon. The elderberries I planted at 62 prospered in the half light under the sweet gum.