March 18, 2018

Quiet Sunday. Because of the quiet certain things pass through my mind, turn, pass through again. I lie beside the cat and nap, and wake, and then there are new thoughts. The sky just before dark is gray and yellow.

I think of the two student complaints against me since last semester. They are absurd, groundless, either spite or hysteria, but the spite and the hysteria come from somewhere. What do I do or say to provoke people? I certainly never intend it. Why is the protective loyalty I feel toward my students apparently not returned? The way things are set up in the institution, these questions cannot even be asked.

Why did my father have a positive horror of my seeing a Broadway musical? I remember a fight on the sidewalk over The King and I at the Goodyear Theater, and when it was over his asking me if I liked it and I said “yes” and he said, “You’re lying, just like your mother.” I remember asking to see The Sound of Music for Christmas, and it was like my having asked for meth–though at last we went, everybody treating it like it was the Grand Tour. I wondered “since when did going to the movies become such a big deal?” We were going to the movies together once and he asked what I wanted to see and I said, West Side Story, but when we got there and he realized what it was, he refused to go in. We went to see Helman’s The Children’s Hour instead, of all things, he being fooled by the title. One more thing that cannot be asked. Perhaps he hated them that much, but I can’t think that was the real reason. I do not even know why I thought of this. Because the sky before dark is gray and yellow.

Sent money to the new theater. Who knows how THAT will turn out?

End of break and beginning of school tomorrow.