December 10, 2014

Days ruled by imagination– as much as I can of the daylight spent writing, spent in the midst of worlds I have created or altered. When I lie down there are the fantasies one has when one lies down, places and people and situations created to fill gaps in the world one has stopped waiting for the world to fill. I can live like this a long time. I rejoice living like this, and resent interruptions, even those I give myself, like pulling on my shoes and going downtown yesterday afternoon to hit a few galleries, just to get out of the house. Bought a wooden tree ornament carved to look like a woodpecker. Bought chocolate at the chocolate shop that was like the mud of paradise, thick and chocolatey, almost beyond even my enlarged capacity for sweetness. Watched people passing in the gray light.

Woke one morning with the Christmas tree tipping to leeward. Called Leland to help me straighten it. I had not screwed all the screws. Curious.

Finished helping a young women get her MFA at Antioch U. Part of me rebelled, for her general social incompetence and scatter-brainedness should have counted for something, but there was nowhere on the report to speak of that. “Why me?” I wondered the whole time. The reading she organized was preposterous. She was never sure what she was doing, with that or in her relations with me. She called frantically, interrupting my evening because she had neglected to mention a deadline, and then didn’t want to speak to me because I returned the call in the midst of her supper. Fortunately, her own writing is quite good, so I could swallow hard and sign the documents.
    I know the present mood is that credentials belong to those who desire them, and that earning them is a process of a disgraced hierarchical tyranny, but in this I fear I cling to the old ways. We have decided to give trophies to everyone on the team, from kindergarten stick-ball, where it doesn’t matter so much, to the arts and society, where it does. I am trying unsuccessfully to think of a problem with current society that does not at some point involve people pretending to be something they are not, and being allowed by some conspiracy of perception to do so. Carnival rides pass for theater. Hysterical self-interest masquerades as public service; murderers and cowards wear badges and call themselves keepers of the peace. Bigots pass as men of God. Ignoramuses get Ph.d’s and teach college because no one dares call them on their ignorance. Bloodthirsty vengefulness is a called the desire for closure, or for justice. Oppression is called Safety. Tyranny is called Order. Self-indulgence is art. I try to make a hierarchy here, but I don’t know what is worse than what, and suspect that mendacity in small things may be as damaging, ultimately, as mendacity in the great. None of is allowed to turn from the things we are bad at and give our energies to those things where we might do good.

Yet, I am having a fine time, holding off these matters with one hand, writing with the other.  Dark, dark morning. . . hours yet before I need to put in an appearance, true or false.