February 11, 2015

I have been living in this house for one year. Tonight is the anniversary of my sleeping here for the first time. Moving was the right thing to do– a little tardy, if anything. Even when I’m looking at 62, I have no particular feeling for it other than curiosity about what it looks like inside now.

Awful night last night, the respiratory and the digestive systems at war to see which could cause the most upheaval. Worn this morning, exhausted, my throat battered by acids. You’d think the acid would kill the infection, like the Great Fire killing the fleas, but no such luck.

Read-through of Amadeus last night warm and encouraging. My propensity to be the Village Explainer led me to supply the Italian and German pronunciations. . . I hope I was helpful rather than just annoying. Sometimes I can’t help myself. Arrived early enough to poke around in my Riverside office, which is across the hall from the rehearsal space. Randomly read my journal entry for February 10, 1980. Syracuse winter. I had walked several miles down Erie Boulevard to see a movie (though I didn’t record it, I remember it was The Rose), and walked back. All the while I was reveling in the night noises, and all, all the while I was exulting God in a conversation, my side of which was praise, His side of which was starlight and the call of hidden birds at the roadside, signs and mysteries which I was joyful to interpret. How He could beat that devotion into the angry stand-off we have today is not an edifying chronicle. The mortal things on my mind were Tim, whom I loved, and the typing of my dissertation, which looked at the time to be without incident. Both, of course, turned to disaster in their various and variously permanent ways. After the dissertation was typed and the typing paid for, beautifully and unexpectedly, by my father, Sutton said, “I think the work is ready for one final revision.” I could never afford to have it typed again. I refused, and won the battle (with the rest of my committee on my side), but I didn’t reveal my reason for refusing, and I lost the friendship of Walter Sutton, whose letter of recommendation revealed his pique and sabotaged me in the job market for two years. Tim came to me when he was hurt but never when he was happy. Yet, on the pages of that journal, I was so happy. Blow after blow had come and not yet damaged me. The night was a dome of crystal.