September 11, 2014

Decided to give camellias one last chance. Bought three of different kinds. Planted one near the yellow magnolias, and on a branch of one magnolia I saw a fat fledgling, gripping tight, its eyes wide with uncertainty. I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of bird it was. Its wings were boldly striped in black. A goldfinch? It looked too big. Anyway, I crept away, trying not to frighten it, and left off watering there until the evening, when the tiny bird had gone on its way. Who the hell produces fledglings in September?  Iris came too in the mail, and they went into the ground, blue and black and orange.

Playwrights met here last night. They don’t seem a big class in the classroom, but they certainly do in the living room. Steve spoke to them, largely about his personal view of the history of the theater these last thirty years. Put some details together for me, but I have no idea how they will use the information until we meet again on Monday, which now seems impossibly far off. Slept-sang through choir, tottered home to bed without even a drink at Avenue M.

When SS speaks on the subject, I understand what I did wrong in my playwright career. I did concentrate on writing the best I could. That was well. That was the main thing. That’s where I should have been. BUT, there was enough of me to do other things as well, some things which I decided against, others which simply did not occur to me. I might, perhaps should, have gone to New York and attached myself to a young theater and grown up with them, sweeping their floors and acting in their plays while they produced mine. I’m a good collaborator, and rather less selfish than the run of theater people. That would have worked. But I’m also freakishly private, and require rafts of quiet time in which to gestate. That might not have worked so well, but perhaps I require the quiet because I had it. Maybe if things had always been hectic, I would have been fine with that. In all my artistic endeavors, I thought it would work to live the life I wanted and just enter my products in when they were finished, the eternal outsider, so overawing people with quality they didn’t care about not knowing who I was. In no pursuit, poetry or fiction of theater, has that worked very well. Being part of the group is vital in ways that I never suspected, or in ways which I thought I could overcome. The success I have had is amazing, considering all this. Every one of my successes “came in through the transom,“ and that is a matter of pride, but I should have aimed for less purity and more exposure. It’s amazing how little quality counts, how much association does. But, quality does count. At this point that’s what I have to cling to. Bruce and John chose me when most of what they do is glitzy revivals. I still cherish that, though I don’t know yet exactly how it happened, or if it is over. Bailiwick chose me, and though that was disastrous, the original choice was pure. Everything is too slow. Unless I live to be 100, none of it can come together.

Noises of waking around me.