March 3, 2017

Vivid dreams. In the first, some time early in the night, I was a TA at some big university, worried that I would never find a job in Academia. I woke and realized that I was almost ready to retire from a job I did get. At first I couldn’t believe it; then the relief was palpable.

The second was also academic. I worked at a university department whose offices had huge, generous windows. In the midst of our cubicles was a sort of courtyard, walled by glass, about twelve feet by twelve feet. You could see to the other side, and the courtyard seemed empty, paved with white gravel. But someone had discovered that whatever went into that cubicle disappeared, no one knew to where. Thereby commenced a series of crimes whereby one or another of the department maneuvered people they hated in the courtyard– which looked pleasant enough from the outside-- to be rid of them forever. A little dog was the first and accidental victim. A secretary also blundered into it by mistake. I’d been reading a history of New York, so as she disappeared I heard somebody cry out, “O! Cornbury!” I was vouchsafed a vision of some who had disappeared, and they were huddled on the shore of a cold sea, mist and dimness and rolling fog all around them. They did have, however, vivid sweaters.

Pachelbel from Pandora. Spent yesterday sending out manuscripts, which accounts for my having considered it in my heart a waste. Gathered myself to go to the Magnetic Theater, where I had the pleasant surprise of a really solid work called Terry Tempest: the Last Interview. C dominated the stage to exactly the right degree. Current actors need to be reminded about matters of projection, though, a situation which was not aided by a woman in the front row who thought she was showing support by braying at the top of her lungs at anything that might resemble a joke. Except that from the rear I couldn’t tell exactly who she was, I wanted to go down and say, “The play can make it on its own. Please shut up.” But, all in all, I expected less than I got.  The moon over the river district was a thick white Cheshire cat smile.

Met A at the play. He had phoned me yesterday, but ran afoul of my neglectful phone habits. His news was astonishing and, to me, devastating– surely to him as well, but his features were composed as he spoke. He’s left New York, unable to live there between the sadly infrequent gigs. It is well for him to be here, very well indeed for local theater, but I felt sad for the New York theater, which takes so little care for its own future. I think I embarrassed him with my tsunami of fatherly protectiveness, which he, in the bosom of his family, probably doesn’t need.