July 25, 2015

Mother’s birthday. Fair, calm morning. The Porters not yet awake downstairs.
   
Worked in the studio, slopping around in water from the last flood, kept being distracted by a gleam that was, when I looked, the great floor puddle rippling in wind from the window. I have found my style and my subject matter in painting. To continue in that vein, I have found (or been given) alacrity and spontaneity in poetry that I have not had since I was a youth. Poems came through the years, but they were made. These of the last weeks have been begotten.
   
Drove to Cashiers through hell’s own traffic– stopped dead three times on 26; started out at 4:29, arrived at 6:45. You want to blame cops or a wreck, but there was no visible cause of the backups. In time did arrive at the public library, where there was nowhere to park. This was good, in a way, because it meant a capacity crowd for the one-act festival, which I did not expect at all. The room was indeed full. I seem to have been the only playwright who has ever attended the festival, so I was honored somewhat beyond my appetite for being honored. The remarkable thing was that the evening was good, competent, spirited, entertaining. One has such bad experiences with one-act festivals in library auditoria that even adequate is excellent. None of the plays was flat-out bad. Most of them were too long, structured like full-lengths condensed rather than organically like ten minute plays. Mine was By Far the Shortest. It was also the worst acted, for which the director apologized at the interval. “They were REALLY FANTASTIC at dress rehearsal–.” I think I may have received a commission from the Highland Theater– let’s wait for the e-mail.  But what a success for a tiny little town and a brave clutch of actors. After an excruciating talk-back– where I had to carry the banner for all playwrights at all times everywhere–I drove through intermittent rain and fog the weary miles back to Asheville. But every so often I’d pass a bog or a lake, when around me the crying of frogs would be wild and paradisial. Remind me not to drive 64 east from Cashiers at night ever again.