July 31, 2017

Park Hotel, at the rim of the airport. Just recovering from a severe bout of cellulitis, fever, chills, annihilation for a few hours, rocking on the train from Dublin at interesting levels of misery. Have slept memorably, though, and feel ready for the homeward effort. Cabbie who took us from Limerick took 30 euro to bring us to the wrong hotel. Forty euro to get that righted. Second cabbie told of missing a flight because he was locked in a service station toilet.  L & J kept getting messages from Delta that they didn’t have tickets. That’s not exactly what was meant, but of course Delta put it in the most terrifying way possible, I suppose to show off their power. They walked to the airport, as you can do from here, and were told three different things by three different people, but I think they are assured of actual, if wretched, seats. A snow of dead skin begins from my sunburnt scalp and face. Sigh.

July 30, 2017

Finished Friday off in a drunken, happy stupor, in the midst of the Dublin broth I love so well. I had wandered about for a while, feeling sorry for myself, but actually walking into a bar and buying a drink solved that. Ended the day as happily as I had begun it

Went to bed last night sick and feverish with a flare-up of the phlebitis I had apparently not conquered fully in Galway. Things would have been much worse if I had not fooled myself and actually brought the spare bottle of antibiotics, which I thought I’d left at home. Things might have been better had I remembered I’d brought it and completed the cycle the first time. Miserable last night, just dim and spent this gray morning. Goodbye; goodbye Dublin with me in a bad mood and hardly able to lift my luggage. I suppose exiting this way, worrying about my next step, will keep me from being overwhelmed by the emotion of leaving Ireland again.

J&L arrived from their adventures in the North. We toured the city, notably the National Museum, the sort of place for which Jim has boundless appetite. I was getting ill, so that was the excuse for my grumpiness throughout. .

July 28, 2017

Suite 303 of the Clarence is nothing short of majestic.


Across the Street at the New Theater:
She: Did you see Confirmation Suit?
Me: Yes I did. (She sold me the ticket, but. . .)
She: What did you think?
Me: Thin material salvaged by bravura delivery.
She: Behan? Thin material? That’s . . . controversial.
Me walking away thinking, “It’s only controversial because you assume Behan, being Dublin’s darling, will be good all the time. Besides, it’s not even Behan’s in that form, but adapted from prose by somebody else.” Society selects some favorites–on the basis of personality or history-- completely without regard to their actual merit. In Ireland Behan is one.

When I was in the bar of the Project Arts I was surrounded by active and enthusiastic theater people, actors and directors, all chattering about their last roles and the gossip of present productions. It was exciting, joyful. About half of me longed to be among them. About half of that half wondered why I had not sought that energy out at the beginning.

The table where I wrote most of The Beautiful Johanna on Cow Lane is gone. I’m writing most of Nimmos’ Quay in the Clarence, which should last a little longer.

Hiked to the Hugh Lane, saw the pieces that I’ve always loved, and a few, such as “The Tipperary Hurler,” which I love now and didn’t remember.

A day of brilliant light. For the first part of it, wandering through the lively blocks north of the river, I was deeply happy.

Dublin 2

July 27, 2017

Up early to a vat of cappuccino and then to the National Gallery. It’s been long enough since my last museum jaunt that I gobbled this one up, especially old favorites that I have seen time after time, and missed in the interval. Thirty seven years ago I saw a fantastic painting of Mary Magdalene ascending to heaven gowned in her own hair. No one knew what I was talking about. Even the museum, when I asked, didn’t know what I meant, but there it was, The Assumption of Mary Magdalene by Silvestro dei Gheraducci. So many circles are closing, Liam in Sligo, the Clarence, the Assumption of Mary in the NGI.

Intermittent, quite ferocious, rain, me seeking out Loretto Maegher, who has moved and renamed her gallery again. Now it is the Trinity. I stopped by and bought a painting, which I will not describe so it’s a surprise again when it arrives in the mail in a week or so. Both she and her sister look great.

J went to Derry and apparently found a raft of relatives sitting ‘round the ancestral graves.

Dublin was to me so much the City of Sex that now that it isn’t, I don’t know what to do with my evenings. Theater, yes, but what then? The idea of dragging myself across Dame Street to the George is almost unendurable. The Dock, the Sauna of the Mysteries, is gone. There are others, and I was a hit there late into my 50's, but– it’s best for imagining now. There are dangers such as Gary the Bad Actor last night, almost certainly a pickpocket, and perhaps not as harmless as the other two to whom I fell victim through the years. Do I even want it? Only in the metaphysical sense– by which I may mean, only from an angel.

In the Norseman in Temple Bar

I will sit in the pub window until twelve beautiful men pass by.
I will measure the consumption of my pint to make this happen–
neither too fast, so the beer gives out before the beauty,
nor too slow, as to leave the intoxicants unbalanced,
the lesser enduring.
Conquer, soul says to heart, the inclination to lament.
all those who passed when nobody was watching.
This task is not suggested in the tourist books.
There is a reason. You were warned. I whisper “beware.”
Yet, one for the curl of his dark brown hair.
One for the flash of his grass-green eye.
Another for his song as he passes by.
One for the strut of a tall red stag.
One for his cock raised like a flag
(Is it the seams of his trousers at play?
a merry memory from yesterday?)
One for his sorrow, one for his mirth.
One who is, for what it’s worth,
so like me once upon a time.
I make it all go neatly in a rhyme,
except for the fragment of my heart
that gull-like haunts the Liffey water, all apart,
with his lone cry to the living and the dead,
and this summer night will not be comforted.

Mandy Patinkin is announced for The Great Comet. That show will play forever.

Saw The Water Orchard at Project Arts, as if Joe Orton and Samuel Beckett, each at the age of fifteen, had crossed swords with Chekov. Witty, enjoyable, the one farce I’ve seen from which I could come away satisfied. It’s still pointless– an absurd problem invented and then solved absurdly-- but an effervescent night of theater. Would it work with actors less dazzlingly accomplished? One last drink at the Garage Bar, which I kind of love.

Dublin

July 26, 2017

Rain on a Wednesday morning. On the two days we didn’t have rain, with me running around bareheaded, I got a sunburn unlike any other–not visibly red, but a rather handsome ruddy tan, scalp, nose, forehead and cheeks nevertheless burned and seared and would not stop. “Sun poisoning,” suggested my nurse sister. At Parke’s Castle I literally had to run from shade to shade, having neglected to bring a hat. At least it was a new sensation. Not entirely past, I discovered as I shaved this morning.

County Sligo was our study yesterday, driven about by Mr. Rooney the eager taxi man, to Drumcliffe and Mullaghmore and Glencar, of lake and falling water, and finally to Parke’s Castle, which I hate because of its history, and because it is boring to go there. But I was reminded there of one of my early attachments to Sligo, the fact that on Church Island stood the stronghold of the O’Cuinans, the hereditary bards of the O’Rourkes– and they are the Keenans and they we are what is left of them. I am what is left of them. The last poet. I wanted to blab out all the history and legend I know of the places, building like flood behind a dam, but was reluctant to usurp our kindly guide We have been eating excellently, and finished off with fine Italian in a place now called “Italian Lane.” Will try to reverse the effects of that with a vodka fast in Dublin.

Blue Raincoat is doing its Yeats play series, and of all the things on this planet which I want to see, that stands near–or at– the top, and all I can do is counsel myself to prepare for the next season, as all the ways I could think of to take advantage would be impossible to manage now. The serious-looking Yeats School students throng–or rather pepper– the cafés.  Poor sad Sligo is each time diminished from his liveliness of the time before. David Roche is gone.

L& J had a money crisis. I’ve learned to install many redundant systems to head off such crises, but I suppose I learned to do so by having them. Even a moment’s doubt about finances or lodging can destroy a day abroad. We split up today, they heading for Derry, me for Dublin. I’m not traveling well this time. I wanted to plop down somewhere and soak that one place in. I have not been able to get my energy levels up, and I must see to that, as well as renew about half a dozen prescriptions, when I get home.  I instinctively blame some disorder, but maybe it’s just age. I don’t notice when I travel alone, for then I pick my own pace. Traveling at the rate of a normal person exposes it.

The irony of Dublin is that there’s nothing playing at the Abbey.

Yesterday was mother’s birthday. I wish we could have brought her to Ireland. I came here at first because of her.

What is Sligo to me? I fantasy based on the conviction that the life of my soul–as far back as I can reach it–began along the shores of Lough Gill.

2:30: Checked in to the Clarence, where I will stay four lovely nights. The lobby looks the same as it did when I checked in 37 years ago, where they took a look at my backpack and said, “I’m afraid we’re a little above you, lad,” but took pity on my obvious tourist panic and found me a squalid room in the basement, near the food storage areas. Why my Am Ex didn’t spell equality to them I don’t know. I’ve been “upgraded” to a suite, perhaps in memory of that long ago affront– a suite with windows opening on the Liffey. It has a bidet.  It is the best accommodation I have ever had. I am happy.

Walked around Temple Bar, three minutes in full light, and my Sun Poisoning is ablaze again. Can hardly stand it, though I’ve been indoors for an hour. Who ever heard of this? Bought theater tickets for the next two nights.

9:30. Crossed the street to see Communion Suit at the New Theater, adapted from the work of Brendan Behan. It was very thin material put across by presentation bordering on frenzy. Which is not to say it wasn’t amusing in its way, and that I didn’t think about it leaving the theater, heading to the Song 66 (or something) a Gin Bar on Parliament which used to be something else, where handsome blond Gary tried to seduce me, with such extravagance I guessed he must be a whore, or a mugger, and it takes real blatancy for me to “get it.” I regret not being able to take a pass from a handsome young man at face value any more. I regret, more deeply, that the Irish theater I have seen this season has been experimental in unnecessary and I-thought-we-were-all-through-with-that ways. Gulls float on the Liffey. It is very late and there is still light in the sky.  

July 24, 2017


An Cruscin Lan, Sligo, where I have stayed more than anywhere else in Ireland. Different room, though, in the front overlooking the street. Geraldine had my painting out in the lobby to greet me. It was good to see it again. Two days in Sligo will be hard. It is one of my sacred places, and there will be no leisure to deal with it in that way. We were half way to the most sacred spot of all, the place along the river where I realized my long association with Ireland in lives past, but turned aside to investigate some stone work under the old mill. It’s probably for the best, to leave the holy places untouched. Drive from Galway is more forested than I remember. Lovely time in McGarrigles, which is, as I think of it, my favorite bat in Ireland, and the one with the longest association.

July 23, 2017

J & L and I hit the town, dining at the King’s Head, eventually hearing Cois Cladaigh at St. Nicholas. Exquisite and bold singing. It’s a relief to have someone to see the sights and encounter the challenges with, if I could get over the conviction that it’s my responsibility that everyone have the right measure of fun.

Regretted turning on the news, for it was all about Trump, and his newest claim that he is able to pardon anyone, presumably even himself. His constant use of the phrase “Fake News” reminds one of Goebbels’: “repeat, repeat, repeat.” He’s a world class tyrant by pure instinct, having, surely, put no thought into it at all.

Nimmo’s Quay moves forward at a rate and in a way I recognize from those plays that turned out good.

“Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures” on morning TV, in which Andy goes back in time to get barnacles from a basilosaurus.” Blue tits thronging the trees in the close.

Wandered down to the sea, then through the town to the city walls as before. Went to NUIG to see Australia’s Casus Circus defy death and honor the gods of acrobatics. Delicious–indeed, mystically wonderful–meal at Rouge. We leave Galway tomorrow. Being in company keeps me from getting all mystical and weepy about departure, which is probably a good thing.

July 22, 2017

Rain vanishes and the summer is back, at least for a while. L&J arrive looking like teenagers on their first trip to Europe.

What is amazing is the overflow of my imagination, rich and exploratory, as I remember from times past. I think the demon made my subconscious fearful to look into certain places, terrified of what it might see. Now those passageways are vacant. Several dream-fantasies of a giant house or castle, which had either been underwater or soaked for some reason, being restored as a residence for me, or as an art venue over which I would preside. This morning I was running a marathon, but somehow we ejected colors as we ran, and the runners were making a gigantic 3-dimensional painting.

Lost a tooth or a crown while eating a brownie this morning. It doesn’t hurt, so I think I’ll leave it until I get home. The only problem is my tongue constantly worrying the new rough edges.

Walked the route I walked daily that one summer, up the Canal Road to NUIG. If I can’t live on the Long Walk, I would settle for Canal Road. Wanted to visit the Greatest of All Toilets at NUIG, but it was closed, for summer and for Saturday. Many cats along the way.  Veered over to the cathedral, where I arrived in time to hear a homily on the Feast Day of Saint Mary Magdalene. The priest was an ass.

July 21, 2017

The Irish are addicted to poppers and make the worst porn.

Rain through the night and chill heavy rain now at morning. This is my Ireland.

Rose yesterday and walked toward the sea. Kept along the high stone walls that look into the harbor– gulls, cormorants, swans (a black swan among them, probably brought here as a novelty–though now that I think of it, there are black swans on that lake in Cork) and a gray heron. Went to the end of Nimmo’s Quay, hoping for the shoal of jellyfish I saw there once. One jellyfish was spread out like spilled molten crystal on the sea wrack. The stormy sky toward Connemara was varied and dramatic. Rain started and stopped. I crept along the margin of the sea, probing in the tidepools.  Picked up shells. I was at peace as a man seldom is. Rain, rock, moving water, the call of wild sea bird, yellow flowers in the crannies of broken stone. Having lunch in the King’s Head I hit upon the subject of my next play, began to write. In the early evening, hiked to Nun’s Island to see a piece called Yellow Moon, done by youth and community theater forces. It was sweet and affecting --a sort of Highlands Stagger Lee-- and lead by a girl of amazing fierce beauty, and a boy with remarkable expressiveness, a potentially fine actor. Again, it was not a play, but a story-theater event in which the chorus told you what was happening and what you ought to think about it. Leaving the Arts Festival I will have seen some fine theater, but only no actual play. Growing fond of weissbier. In the dark of night I went to St. Nicholas to hear Lankum, an extraordinary and original folk group, whose unusual vocal technique was abetted by the resonance of the church. Lovely. Home in the rain, to discover that my key no longer worked in the outside door. Hussein the Mauritanian tried to help, but it didn’t work for him either. It was midnight. Hussein called the landlord, who arrived with a minimum of grumpiness, and we discovered that the cows in the other apartment had flipped the clip on the lock that prevents any key from turning. Rang and rang until they roused. They could not be made to understand what they had done, and it was only when they discovered they couldn’t get out, and panicked, that one of them, during that awful flailing of hands, accidentally opened the clip. Jesus, how I hated them. But when I was inside, my coleslaw chips from the chipper were still warm and not that wet. I think, and have always thought, that I could dwell here happy.

From my bedroom window I can see the houses of the Long Walk, the place where I would live if I could magically live anywhere.

When I came to the end of Nimmo’s Quay, there was a tall stone with puddles of rain around it. The stone smelled like piss, and I realized it was the custom of men to piss on it , either for magical reasons or because it was so far from anything else. I honored the custom, for there was nobody else in sight.

July 20, 2017

Blast of light in the window at waking deceived about the nature of this mottled, agate day.

Walking to An Taibhdhearc last night I heard myself praying, “Thank you, God, for returning me to this place I love.” I was on my way to see Dun naBan Tri Thine, my first play in Gaelic (with English subtitles projected on the wall.). Of course it was well done, but the play suffered from being a couple of brilliant ideas never quite realized by the playwright. Are the Sidhe assisting this woman or terrorizing her? If both, why and to what degree? Is liberation the elimination or the harmonization of supernatural forces? Is to reject the identity taken on, willingly, one supposes, by a wife and mother in some way to be fulfilled? As with Pumpgirl, men are seen by a female playwright as brutal obstacles to a woman’s self-fulfillment, but (perhaps I’m saying this because I’m a man) the desired fulfillment seems unearned, ill-defined, irrational, infantile. Acknowledgment of all these negative qualities does not modify the demand for fulfillment, but makes it the more urgent, based on a woman’s appetite, or self-image, rather than upon palpable truth. The man in “The Fairy Fort” is the blameless victim of his wife’s delusion; in Pumpgirl, he’s a slob who’s not allowed reformation, as that would interfere with the wife’s conviction of persecution. Female artists think of objectivity as male subjectivity. This will keep them in the second rank forever

On one side of me was a ginger lad here on an expedition from Carleton College. On the other was an elderly woman from Connemara, who has studied Yeats and more particularly Ted Hughes. She told me that Hughes had to escape to Ireland to shake off Sylvia and do his best work. Also that Assia Wevill, the woman in his life after Plath, killed herself, and their baby as well, with gas, just as Plath had done.  It amazes us both that Feminist criticism scorns whoever does not blame Ted for this. Her belief was that it was his tragedy to be attracted to gifted, unstable women, not that he caused their instability. Maybe you have to live in Connemara to have the freedom to say all that. Actually it reminds me of the last two plays, masculinity at fault because it does not (cannot) yield at every point to the feminine vision, which demands to be allowed to shimmer and backtrack and transform outside of a man’s ability to follow.

Bought my 7th or 8th copy of The Crock of Gold.

Had the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life in the Bier House. Mother’s is second.

Galway 3

July 19, 2017

The Galway Art Club’s annual show is crap. I think I remember this from before. The other art venues are moving and spectacular. Went to one on Middle Street where the attendant was having her lunch, and between bites of sandwich told me how some Asian woman wants to marry her son to get a Eurozone passport, while he wants to marry an American to get an American passport. Went to the Galway City Museum. Saw fierce spearheads dredged out of the Corrib. Walked the streets. Stopped at some of the old places, Taafee’s and the King’s Head. God-like bartenders. Napped heroic naps. In the evening went to Nun’s Island to see a play called Pumpgirl. Again, impeccable Irish acting glazes over whatever flaws there might have been. Powerful language, powerful situation– the problem is that it wasn’t actually a play, but three monologues–eventually revealed to be related-- delivered by people who sat on stage and never spoke to or acknowledged one another. I think that must be much easier for a playwright than actually to have dialog and interaction. But, I was mesmerized, and impressed with what it did accomplish. Every play I have seen out of Northern Ireland has dealt with the abject squalor of life. Sat next to the President of the Eugene O’Neill Society, and who is in town for an O’Neill conference at NUIG. At one time he was #2 attorney in the State Department (I think he said) and chief of the EPA for the western US. He and his wife are fans of Thomas Wolfe, and had been to Asheville to take in all that.  I have the best luck with theater neighbors. Drank my way back home. Lisa Hannigan at Roisin Dubh. At the bar on the corner, the name of which is not coming to me, I was propositioned by Jim, a restaurant worker having a few drinks before the last bus from Eyre Square.  Whatever else was happening, I thanked Ireland for still seeing me as a sexual being. I might have said yes but for the whole midnight bus ride into the boondocks thing. Rain last night, drizzle now. I fooled the gods by remembering to pack my big yellow slicker.

Went to inquire at the Laundrette, and found it filled with Amazons, with Valkyries, tall, strong women with blond hair to their shoulders. I don’t think it is actually a laundrette.

Ate lunch under an awning in Quay Street in the rain. Five women at the table behind me were complaining about how much Irish women complain.

I’m reminded how I know I’m Irish: they and I can find a smart retort for nearly everything that’s said. Here they appreciate it, like it; at home it’s smart-alecky.

Galway

July 17, 2017

Number 21, The Sea Road, Crescent Close, Galway. Turns out I have rented an apartment, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room. The livingroom window looks out on the big gray Catholic church where Pat Jourdan used to exhibit her devotions. The bedroom window looks over a neighborhood, where a few minutes ago a brother and sister were playing basketball in a back yard. The flight from JFK was not very eventful, because I was asleep nearly every second of it. My legs were in pain–so swollen my pant legs cut into them-- and the angle of the First Class seats was blessed and soporific relief. Drowsed off nevertheless on the bus between here and Shannon. The land between Shannon and Galway is known to me. Even the shapes of trees were familiar, and the distant gray of the Burren, and the little shops in Ennis and Gort. My left foot sole is blistered for some reason, and my legs are engorged, so going around the town was hard this afternoon, but go I did, until I almost literally could not take another step. And then there were the several narrow flights of stairs leading to my room. . . but I DID make it, and napped, and think I am ready to set out again. .
10:30. Walked–not at all happily–to the Black Box Theater and saw Woyzeck in Winter , a remarkable conflation of Die Winterreise and Woyzeck. It was quite wonderful in every aspect of concept and realization, as one has come to expect from Irish participants in the Arts Festival. I kept thinking, “who would have THOUGHT of this?” Boys slept spread-eagled behind the hedges I passed on my way to the theater, at peace in their own environment.

Stopped at the bar that was the Pump House fifteen years ago, where I had joyful nights. This night was joyful enough.
 
Legs, hip, foot in agony. Will I make it through tis adventure?

JFK

July 16, 2017

JFK  International, New York. An El Al jet is parked beneath the window where I write, in the Delta Sly Club, whose exclusivity is marred tonight by being crowded with travelers. Sat for a while with a distinguished Russian gentleman who hails from Archangel and who’s on his way to DC for a conference on global warming. He remarks on the variety of human faces, says, “you are a nation of many nations.” I want to say, “tell that to our leader.”  A little angling discovers that he is proud of Putin, thinks him a great man and a patriot. At one point in the flight between Atlanta and New York (after two white wines) I was overcome with gratitude at being on my way to Galway, a place which always brings me joy, and which, for some reason, I seem to have been denying myself. The Place Where I Missed Finding Love has become The Place Where I Might Have Found Love, which is, somehow, sweeter. Block long Kuwait Airlines jet. I still don’t understand how these things get into the air, or stay there once they’re launched. The man on one side of me is instructing his wife how to put air in the tires. The man on the other talks about opening the skate park he runs (or ran) at 1 in the morning for Dave Chappelle.

July 15, 2017

Illness continues, low-grade, necessitating many naps and several pills. Preparation for travel slowed-down, but it will probably be sufficient. The kind of travel I will be doing for the next 24 hours is mostly napping, anyway. Thunderstorms, the garden afterwards glittering with afternoon light. It would be nice if somebody surprised me by saying goodbye.

July 14, 2017

Vive la France.

Gold light came at evening upon the garden, and I thought if I were asked to paint paradise, that would be it.  Most of the afternoon thunder rumbled almost constantly at the far edges of the horizon. Long, sweet rain here, with blue lightning blazing overhead.

I woke this morning for the first time in months alone in my body. Only those who have been through it understand. But, the dissolution of the demon spread toxins through my body. Have been fighting the infection with antibiotics, achy and tired, which has lost me a whole day in my preparation for departure. It just means tomorrow will be chock full.

Reading a biography of John Berryman, stalled for the same reason as I stalled with Crane. Is he good enough? What secrets, what skills could one conceivably learn?

Played La Marseilles on You Tube in honor of the day.

July 13, 2017

Z pushed toxins into my bloodstream this AM, and I have spent most of the day achy and sleepy, though I did get writing and submitting done. I wouldn’t have been able to lift a shovel. I usually get done more in a day than I record here, and think, “I should really write about that,” and then I don’t. My ancient theory is that what needs to be remembered, will be remembered.

The native hibiscus bursts into scarlet flower eight feet above the front yard. Two years ago a storm beat it down before it bloomed. Last year it was the maniac gardeners claiming to take it for a peony. But this time, all is well, scarlet stars in due time, at the eye level of giants, delights to my heart.

It is possible that the demon is defeated.

July 12, 2017

As I write, arborists are dismantling the great sweet gum at 62, in whose shade I lived for 24 years. I went to snap a few pictures, but sadness overcame me. There is no single way in which the property will not be better for the loss of that monstrosity, and yet, turning my back and walking home, I could barely endure it.  Bereavement is not rational. I’ll let it go at that.

3 PM: re the above, astonishing hole in the tree line to the west.

July 11, 2017

A voice called my name from the end of my drive, and it was my student L, who wanted to tell me he’s off to LSU this fall, and to thank me to the degree that my letter of recommendation may have gotten him in. I hope I did well for him, for he was the rare student actually and at every visible moment engaged in the intellectual current of the class, brows knitted, hand in air. At 8:30 in the morning. May all go well. May all be triumph.

L has a friend who lives in the apartments behind my house. L says he is a genius, who could endure only one semester at UNCA. “There was only one professor for whom I had any respect,” he said. Then he named me and showed L a copy of one of my books in his possession. One chews these bones through long famine.

Pulled In the Country of the Young out of the dead files, read it, and, lo and behold, it is good. I remember why I put it away. Ignorant criticism has done me more harm than anything but neglect. I’m vulnerable to ignorant criticism because, unlike some writers who believe each syllable of theirs to be perfect, I’ve always tried to understand and profit by criticism. Apparently even that virtue becomes a vice at a certain point.

Lone mockingbird singing in the shade under my pine at sunset. An odd song, not is own, not any I can identify.

July 10, 2017

Princeton did a list of the 25 best universities for students who want to save the world, and UNCA was #1. You look around for the camera. . . .

Traveler’s haircut. . . the best haircut I’ve had in three years.  Reserved my airport driver (friends hauling me to and from the airport doesn’t seem to work for me, though evidently it does for others).

Intense gardening. Discovered that bamboo has TWO appearances when young, the fat purple spears which I recognize and obliterated, the frilly grass-like clumps which I let grown until I realized, today, what they are. Ferocious, exhausting hacking. Walking with the watering can between isolated new plantings. Discover the gil-over-the-ground is almost ineradicable.

Fed the fish in the pond. Lao Tzu, K’ung Fu Tsu and Siddhartha are all alive and speckled and well.

July 9, 2017

Realized I have one week until Ireland. The long, languid summer is less long, less languid than it felt. Excellent writing, even some inroads into submission of manuscripts. The hibiscus emerge in full pink and ivory moons. The real moon sails hibiscus-wise over the black hollies. Energetic gardening, afterwards come into to spend the next hour scratching mosquito bites. Ordered food from Valet Gourmet. When it arrived it could feed three.

July 8, 2017

Good writing n the morning. Good painting in the afternoon. One of the features of life in The River Arts District is the stream (a stream in some places, a trickle for me) of gawkers and looky-loos, who sometimes are charming or inspiring and often are tolerable. Often, not. But the central attitude of the process is off-putting. I think of this when waiters are going on about how tipping is a duty and an obligation. (It’s not, but that’s another story). I think that tourists should not come to the River District, or other arts districts, unless willing and prepared to make a major art purchase, and I don’t mean a mug or another packet of pretty note cards. If waiters deserve to make a living wage, so do artists. If you shouldn’t go to a restaurant if you’re unable to tip adequately, you sure as hell shouldn’t go to a street of studios without the means and willingness to support the source of your amusement and enlightenment. We are not museums. We support ourselves. You wouldn’t expect to go to the cinema and see the movie for free. The landscaping in a “free” city park is maintained and paid for by SOMEBODY.  Of course, restaurant tipping should be replaced by an adequate wage from the restaurant owner. In the same way, the city should pay a stipend to artists who make a place like Asheville a destination it would not otherwise be. Asheville without its artists is Johnson City, and if it doesn’t know that, it should. How to convey this to travelers from Florida or New York who wander through and assume we’re a kind of folk exhibit maintained for their amusement?  Ask, understand, grow, buy, or stay home. This doesn’t always bother me. Today it did.

Major revision of Night ,Sleep.– less a revision than reading through and being satisfied that it is right.

Fed potato chips to the crows. Painted crows.

July 7, 2017

Forty-one years ago today I lay in Cleveland Clinic with my heart in somebody else’s hand. Just happened to think that maybe so much had turned out badly because that turned out so well.  I should have been allowed to choose.

Resigned that T, my first and oldest friend in Asheville, my oldest continuing friend in the world now, has put me aside for the second time. Both times he’s turned from me because he apparently can have only one friend at a time and he thought somebody else would give him fame as a screenwriter. I go to the High Five and watch him with W, huddled and whispering, and remember twenty years ago when the same thing happened with S, and both times it was because he wanted to collaborate on screenplays to make him rich and famous. I understand why he won’t collaborate with me, even though that would be his one and only shot at what he desires. I wouldn’t collaborate with me. Losing him was terrible the first time. It is all right this time. I almost don’t even care, for the caring ended the first time and it was conviviality rather than love that allowed the restoration of our relationship. All things run their course. For a while we were inseparable. For a while he was the center of my life, and I at least a part of his That memory is sweet, though the disconnect from ongoing life seems now complete. The first separation is heartbreak. The second is “huh,” and turning back to one’s notebook and coffee.

Tried the High Five by the river, on the grounds, in fact, of my office complex. Wrote and watched the turbulent life of the river which we somehow, in the macrocosm, think of as “serene.” Complained for the second time in six months about the rain coming through my ceiling. They know. “Oh, we’ve got it looked at and estimates in. The only thing left is actually to do it.” Indeed.

Good painting before noon. People from New York came to talk about how superior the Asheville scene is to the Manhattan. I tell them that the Asheville scene is passing away, killed by greed and gentrification. She nods her head. They almost buy a painting. The price is a fifth of what it’s worth, but I knew they thought it was too high. I stop myself from saying, “But it’s FRAMED already! The frame itself cost $45!" They appreciated my work. That is supposed to be the end of it.

Fed DJ’s fish, and ran into Will, who have me a tour of 62, inside and out. I was relieved. It is not so foreign. It’s just as I remember it, with more mess and different colors. I think it is happier with a family in it. Most of my outdoor planting remains, often lovingly transplanted from where I’d put it to where he wanted it. He has decided the big sweet gum must come down. The giant lily pumping fragrance into the front yard he calls “The David Lily.”

Looked in journals from 1991–1993, trying to find references to S. I find that I was involved in a dizzying array of projects, that exhaust even to name. And of those projects, dozens and perhaps, in time, hundreds, not one came to anything. Not one. A cataclysm of effortful futility.  Maybe only I remember, and I only because I wrote it down. I am dumbfounded. All came to nothing. I should not have turned the pages. No one can blame me for not trying.

Rain on and off, which I bless because of my garden.

Just learned that Francis Davis is dead. She directed me in The Weir. I remember her upright and merry heart.

July 5, 2017

Continuation of the taming of the western terrace. One of the oddest things since the move was Will’s hauling the dirt he removed for his various construction projects and dumping it in my yard, along the streetside of the fence. I guess he figured it was my dirt and I would welcome it back. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but the dumping of it there was something which had to be redeemed. So I have been trying to do with new plantings and with allowing my old plants-- which came over, root or seed in the dirt-- to form stands, mostly lemon balm and green dragon.  So, healthy stands of echinacea, sunflower, a few red succulents, great columns of great mullein, green dragon, hawkweed., a grove of pokeweed whose fate I will decide later. A plausible wild garden to which I added pink rose-of-sharon that was half price at the hardware store by the river.. The comfrey had been languishing in the bamboo shade, so I transplanted it onto the terrace, where it can have at least afternoon light.

Sat in the High Five and wrote on Grendel. Cooked one of my eggplants.

July 4, 2017

Much weeding, then to Rich’s for an all-gay Independence Day party in their beautiful garden. For years I didn’t like parties, but endured them. More recently I have relaxed, and maybe a had a little fun. Surfeit of food. Everyone seemed to know the right moment to go home. Watched fireworks in New York and DC on TV. It's all a little hollow with that hog as President.

July 3, 2017

Realized when the noise began that I could watch the Grove Park Inn fireworks while sitting on my sofa.

Baked my first bundt cake– “Mint Julep Cake”-- inspired, I guess, by the quarter acre of mint devouring my yard. Used part of one stalk; I’d need to throw a mojito party for the whole neighborhood. Cake’s destined for Rich’s 4th party, which I seem to have decided to attend. Maybe I just wanted to bake the cake.

B phoned and she and her mate and a lady playwright whose name I’ve forgotten had dinner at Travinia. Excellent talk, actually, and excellent food. D, the Russian tribesman of some kind (she used to call him “my Indigenous”), still can barely speak English. He was much prettier 10 years ago; she is unchanged. They have been running a sort of B&B by a lake in Guatemala. We talked about the Pretensions of H. Happy to be back in touch. B is one of those people to whom interesting things seem to happen. Arrived early for the dinner, went to the bookstore, bought a few things, sat down to browse through my purchases and drink an iced tea, when a play leapt full-blown into my head. That is the best.

Made reservations with Liam to stay with him in Sligo.

July 2, 2017

Day of the animals. I looked out the bathroom window at the first of morning and my rabbit was sitting in the grass, grooming . He has more red in his coat than it looks at distance. I felt blessed having him. I ran over the places on the property where he can hide, but he probably already new them. Sat at High Five under my crape myrtle writing, and a weaver finch flew onto my plate and took bites out of my croissant. I said “Little brother, fortune favors the bold.”  Then the dog at the next table walked over and put his head upon my lap. Cleaned out the filter on the pond, and ladled three huge tadpoles out of the mess. They were warm--perhaps the water is warm–and felt like gelatin in the hand.  Went to the studio but turned around and came home without lifting a brush. Revised “The Forest Road.” Thought of the time in Galway when it was night and I was having sex with a Spaniard on the grass near the beach, and a night soccer game raged all around us.

July 1, 2017

Quick and massive deluge. For a moment it was raining hard in the back yard and not at all in the front.

Excellent painting. People came into the studio from all over, including a surprising wealth of mothers and young sons. One little boy told me of seeing a water moccasin as he (the boy) was bouncing on his trampoline.

I’m fairly sure I have never used the word “trampoline” before in any writing.  

Stumbled upon “Fallen Orangemen,” the obituary page for Ellet High School. “Who would have thought that death had undone so many?”There is no page for the Class of 1950. Has no one from that year passed on? Very few and intriguing “causes of death”: one suffocated by a weightlifting bar falling on his chest, one killed while running drugs, several who died together in pairs in accidents down through the years, one at least murdered during an armed robbery. Drowning is fairly common. All the desperate ones, the hoodlums and outsiders, left us long ago, fulfilling the prophesies they must have heard around them. Ricky Rioux was acknowledged as a suicide, though he was not the only one. He was, however, the first, in my life. I remember when he did it. I could lead you to his house right now. He was snarling and extravagantly beautiful, and on the day we learned of his suicide the world changed for us, the whole concept of “inexplicable” entering in. We had one conversation, and I remember it, even the angle of the sun against the stoop of his house, me wondering why he was bothering with a dopey kid form the neighborhood. It’s 50 years later, and I am saying his name, writing his name. I hope it means something to him.

The second person I knew to commit suicide was a lively, fun-loving old man named Jim Stone, who went to our church, the grandfather of one of my friends. With Ricky as my only other exhibit, I wondered what there was about suicide that should attract the very young and the very old. I wondered also what, once you got to Jim’s age, could possibly bother you so much that you’d want to die. (Here is the sound of mordant laughter)

Sirens punctuate the deep blast of rain. A fallen tree? A fire leaping up into the rain?

My garden builds to its first climax after spring.

June 30, 2017

A day of doing all but nothing–an odd experience for me. I did paint some, and was happy doing it. It’s a bit of an illness, like flu I suppose, though I never get the flu. It may be simple exhaustion, after last night’s pitched and mortal warfare. It may be phlebitis. It’s been so long since I was hit by that I almost don’t remember. Voting for exhaustion. I had a dream of going to a carnival, but all the attractions closed just as I was approaching them. Too on-the-nose. Afternoon of watching old movie bloopers on You Tube. Too exhausted to rise up and stop doing it.  Clouds of various hurrying gray.

. . . that moment when you’re lifting your coffee to your mouth, and you catch a glimpse of your life as it is, and realize that life cannot be lived.