June 1, 2015

Thunderstorms in two directions, cool and rolling, fire at the edges: the summers I remember. The garden was overburdened rich when I came home; The stewartia is finally abloom. The clouds of roses bend down toward the ground. One pink in the front yard is like the inside of a shell repeated a thousandfold in the air.
   
I wanted to say that the flights home were without incident, but the fact is I almost missed the plane in Omaha because the taxi Would Not Come. I’m glad it was early, for I stood in the middle of the campus street, on the phone with the confused dispatcher, able to see no taxi for half a mile in either direction, dancing my fury dance at first of morning. The Ethiopian driver had parked at the entrance to the school, bewildered, phoning me with the number he had been given, which was ringing my landline in Asheville. Finally we connected. I was so angry and he was so frightened that he forgot to turn the meter on. Inside there was a line at the counter, and I made it to my gate only by blithely walking in front of everybody. Nobody said a word. Maybe steam was still curling out of my collar. The dispatcher lady kept pleading, “But he can’t find you” and I kept saying “He works for a taxi company and can’t find a simple address upon a simple street??? “ His rather beautiful face was so contorted with distress that I had to laugh, and then it was better. God paid me back by making the gate for my departure to Asheville the exact one I entered from Omaha.
   
Home was not the jolt I feared it would be. Maria had kept all things well. The cats remembered me after a while. I had left tea for myself in the fridge.
   
Went immediately to All Souls to hear the Atlanta Children’s Choir, and to see my friend Jonathan David. His beautiful “Alleluia” was being performed by the choir. Dinner at Avenue M, which I threw up at the base of the redbud tree. Too much travel, too much. . . .
   
I don’t know if I’ll be able to summarize the GPTF, or if it’s the sort of thing one formally summarizes. I’ve already done the changes I want to do to Washington Place, and insofar as the changes are improvements, all came out as it was meant to do. The trophy they gave me sailed unharmed through the Scylla and Charybdis of Delta Air, so that is some kind sign. I’m not the sort of person who generally picks up useful contacts, but I am the sort who remembers beauties and kindnesses, so I have things to think on there. In my luggage is a stack of cards on which the Design Wing had written the names and stats of all who died in the Triangle factory, as part of their design for the play. One seldom comes home with such souvenirs .
   
After limping like a war wounded through Rome and Omaha, I took one of the anti-inflammatory pills the doctor gave me for gout–and poof, I was restored. I had those pills with me the whole time. The gods have their little jokes. . . . .
   
The man from my mortgage company called with a plan to refinance and save me $90 a month. Incredulity made me rude, but we’re doing it now that I am assured
   
It is only Monday, and I have done most of the things which weighed upon my mind. Some lie ahead, and bed is yet hours off.