October 5, 2014

The furnace didn’t turn on, and won’t. Pilot light? Who knows? I go down into the basement and stare at the cold dead thing, wondering what it wants, wondering if Stewart saddled me with an appliance that was on its last season. These things always happen on a Saturday night, when no one can be called. But I survived the night bundled up, and am about my business in the same bundling. In the arctic dreams I was a pilot who specialized in giving tired condors rides. The condors would wait for me in the vacant corners of parking lots.

The cold began at City-County Plaza, where Cantaria sang for Asheville Pride. I had my first solo at such a venue, and I think we did well enough. A giant lesbian strode onto the stage mid-performance and ordered us to stand closer to the mics. The light was brilliant, but we were freezing. Keeping back the blinding light was the first good my new glasses have yet done me.

Revised poems late into the evening. Was disappointed when they were flawed, but said to myself, “this is why we are revising.” Edward Albee mentioned in an interview that he wrote poetry until he asked himself if he felt like a poet, and he did not, so he turned to other things. Do I feel like a poet? The answer is, oddly, after all these years, no. It always rather surprises and delights me that I can write poetry. It seems exterior, in a way, an achievement rather than a compulsion. Isn’t that curious, after all this time?

What do I actually feel like? I feel like a boy who walks through the woods.

Drank jasmine tea like a camel in the desert. Second round steeps in the kitchen below.