May 29, 2018

Rain or not, the Memorial Day extravaganza went off without a hitch, and despite my reluctance at every step of the way, the end was well, and I’m glad it happened. Bill had the grill going in one minute. Large group, mostly from All Souls, but also student Ethan-the-Promise. Less exhausted, even after cleanup, than I expected to be. Again over-provided notoriously. The weather was irrelevant.

May 28, 2018

Memorial Day. Rain. Hurricane, yet. I think this might mean the end of my picnic and the $200 worth of food and supplies strewn around the house– just like New Years, obliterated by weather. The gods do not want me to have a party. According to the Internet, it will be raining for a week. My disappointment–as at New Years–is not unbearable. What will I do with all those plastic plates?

May 27, 2018

Made two kinds of roasted vegetables for the picnic, hearing that there are vegetarians among us.

Each day ends with me in the back yard, machete-ing out the invasive purple bamboo shoots.

Progress in Jason of the Apes.

May 26, 2018

Woke with a feeling of dread that I can’t assign to any particular thing. Improvised two maple custard pies. Rabbit serenely munching clover in the yard. Maybe I was brought into te world that a rabbit could graze clover in my yard.  Great concern of Facebook over my shit bitch adventure.

May 25, 2018

Day of blue agate. Unwrapped and dusted the grill. Soon I will be baking pies and roasting vegetables for the picnic. Rehearsal last night leads us to believe we are in good enough shape for the concert. Since the commissioned piece is a disappointment, it’s hard to see how this concert is any more gala than another, except that it will be at the Wortham.

Something very strange happened in the night. In dreams I was approached by a being that looked like my sister, but I knew it wasn’t my sister. It was evil, but I couldn’t strike at it because it looked like my sister, and I wasn’t absolutely sure. Suddenly, it went black as a hole in the universe, vaguely man shaped. I knew it was a demon–to be more specific, MY demon. I cried out THE DEMON and tried to fight. We struggled. It was fighting for a place in me forever and I was fighting to be rid of it. I knew I must have been screaming, but I didn’t actually know I was asleep. I was more afraid and more desperate than I have been at any other time in my life, waking or sleeping. It is the new standard in bad dreams. I bit at it, crushed under, unable to move or breathe or use my arms. Then I awoke. There was not only the infinite relief of waking from that, but the conviction that it had been a real action, and the lingering darkness of the demon was gone, completing the process begun Maundy Thursday.

May 24, 2018

I’m writing so hard on my novel that I forget to record here, and feel that little bits of my life flee away unmarked.

Excellent morning sessions of writing at High 5.

Took out my machete and hacked down all the new bamboo stalks, the ones still hackable, growing on the other side of the fence, against the apartments’ parking lot. Whether that strip of land is mine or not, I figured nobody would care. Anyway, I think, the world at that hour being marvelously empty, my deeds went unmarked.

Lunch with Sam. He’ll be staying here between his return from Oregon and his moving into his apartment. I asked him what he would wish if Ganesh appeared and offered him anything, and his response was both admirably and sadly modest. Practical, even. I hope he gets his wish.

Preparing bit by bit for the Memorial Day picnic. I wish it weren’t happening, but I think I’ll be glad it did. I am not the one to have responsibility for big events.

I argue with the frogs that I am their loving god and they needn’t bother leaping to safety when I appear.

Deadheaded today. The garden is lovely, but cries for a good weeding. Good stand of milkweed. Good stands of joe-pye.

Wrote in my novel about a professor going to his office and finding “Penis Head” written over his name on his schedule sheet. This, of course, is a reference to the Boy, one of whose nicknames is exactly that. I go to my office this morning and find scrawled on my schedule, “Your a shit bitch, doctor.” The faulty grammar makes it difficult to believe it was one of my students. Also, some context would be useful. Was my shit bitchery in this case intentional or inadvertent? If the latter, perhaps it can be corrected.

May 21, 2018

When I woke on Whitsunday I had wet the bed. I don’t remember ever having done that in my life– of course I must have back then, but that was before recollection. I went around all day feeling strange. Would my life change now? Had I reached a level of dotage where I would be doing that from now on? There was no warning, no premonition, just waking to the deed, which, told by temperature, must have been a while before.  I had gotten (on purpose) exceptionally drunk the night before, so perhaps I was too deep in sleep to have the looking-for-a-bathroom dream that often ends the night. I waited for another night to pass where I did not wet the bed to write about it, which I can do now without the note of despair. My confusion lay in the unusual condition of not being to explain the event at all.

In a related issue, Maud has taken to urinating in random places. I wondered why the smell was not eliminated by cleaning out the litter box. Had to take two rugs to Togar’s to be cleaned. Bought two more while I was there. It may be time to roll up the Oriental rugs until the cats have crossed the rainbow bridge. Will see if, thwarted in her adventures, Maud returns to the litter box.

The garden is incredibly beautiful. Sat late last night while a single thrush called and the red Whitsun roses faded into the dark.

May 20, 2018

Drove to the studio through the flooded French Broad under the railroad bridge. The water was as high on the Prius as I ever want it to be.

Finally retrieved my paintings–and my paltry yet better-than-nothing check-- from the old Flood Gallery. Took them to Riverview, thinking the River Road to Roberts Street would still be flooded. Also, couldn’t imagine climbing those stairs repeatedly. Met one of my neighbors– Maria, who makes French matting on commission for opulent patrons. Admitted that I had never heard of French matting before.

Pentecost. Put on the red shirt. Looked into the garden, where the Dublin Bays, the Mr Lincolns, the peonies are themselves tongues of flame. Each year to hear the Gospel done in Tongues is thrilling.  Sat in the garden at evening. A thrush called. The grass under my feet was imponderably cool. I was afraid of something and didn’t quite know what.


   Whitsunday



Cardinals find the rain pools under the leaves.
Thrush bells evening from the rhododendron dome.
It is the day of the first red rose,
the bush afire and yet unconsumed.

This is the scarlet Whitsun.
This is me in my red shirt in the darkening garden.
I sat with jaws slack waiting for the Tongues.

I listened for the Galilean and the Cretan
of the crawlers in the grass.
Maybe if I call to the thrush in thrush,
to the rose in the dialects of fire. . . .

I think I knew this.
I think I used this once to get me far enough
into a country where there would be no turning back.

The neighbor’s cat goes plush paw
under the Dublin Bays, the Mr. Lincolns.
The one voice in my mouth, unchanged through all.
Me and my red shirt in the darkening garden

May 19, 2018

Happy day, though the world itself teeters between a joyful wedding and another school shooting. We know the solution to the murder of children, and yet we do not enact it. Centuries further on will regard us with sickened disbelief.

Good writing at the High 5 just after opening.

The rain has made my yard a prairie rimmed with flowers. Each day I dig out twenty or so bamboo shoots, though the ones after the rain were longer and fiercer. The garden would be gone in a year were one not vigilant. Going to the studio today along the river road I ran into a flood that was just about as high as it could be and still allow my Prius through. Great brown waves parted from the wakes of my car and the cars in front of me. Good day painting. I drove home another way.

Tonight I want to go to the theater, but I want more to type onto the computer the longhand from the morning in the café.

Once when I was going to spend a long time in the hospital, mother made me two pairs of pajamas and let me pick the fabric. One was leopard. The other was lavender butterflies, and I begged her to make sure the big butterfly spread intact across my back. She must have been reading part of my future even then.

May 18, 2018

Rehearsal infuriating last night, B up to his passive-aggressive shenanigans. That the world does not need his input at every (or at any) point does not seem to register. S thanked me for my patience.

Great and penetrating rains, several days together. I bless, my garden blesses.

Made my reservations for the Ohio trip.

Phone call from the woman who’s directing Waiting for the Witch in Cary. She’s having problems casting it because nobody seems to understand it. It is the simplest story in the world. One shrugs. She had other questions, but mostly talked about her own ten minute play, which was directed badly somewhere, and she wants to make sure she doesn’t subject mine to the same treatment. Something like that.

Began a novel, or a big story, about Tarzan. Watched Tarzan porn on the Internet.

May 16, 2018

Have I seen the Matriarchy? I’m in one of the first situations I’ve noticed, anyway, wherein all the power figures from the ground up are female, and it’s a very different experience. Is it just this situation, or is it what we would see if there were ever Matriarchy? The most interesting aspect is disregard for what actually happened. I don’t mean there’s disagreement about what happened; everyone pretty much agrees about that. It’s that the brute occurrences do not matter. What matter are the FEELINGS of those involved, even what MIGHT BE the feeling not yet manifest, which must be imagined and considered even though they have not been expressed. Yes, X happened-- we all acknowledge that-- but these people FEEL that Y happened, and those feelings must be honored. It is to me a perplexity, and after I’ve said, “but, that’s not true,” I don’t know what to say. Yes, we know the window was left open and rain came in, but this person FEELS that somebody threw a bucket of water into her house, and THAT’S what we must adjudicate.  I sit behind my keyboard shrugging.

May 15, 2018

Evening deciding between rain and later rain.


Jack’s retirement party, at the venue which used to be our Apothecary. It is now a lesbian feminist vegan events site, and a nice one. We were shunted away from the space allegedly because we were white boys in a traditionally Afro neighborhood. Those girls are every bit as white as we are. They are still using my blinds.


Went with DJ and Russell to see the latest Avengers movie. Actually kind of profound; you don’t expect that.


Having been denied Love, I am insistent upon Justice. I hope people sometimes use this truth to explain my actions.


Revised The Asheville Cantos.

May 11, 2018

Good summer day, now ending in what may be either rain or a heavy evening dew.  Wrote a passionate letter to all the Deans and Powers I could think of about the fascistic application of Title IX at UNCA– a kind of PC Inquisition that is not merely unjust but unreasonable and insane. Am told by others who have fought that it is a battle that, in the current climate, cannot be won, however irrefutable the arguments. The college falls with this if it is not corrected. There is no Academy without free thought. And why is it always the stupidest among us who wants to rule the thoughts of the commons?

Went to get one painting framed and sold another to the Blackbird framing lady, the black crowned night heron on the postcard for my ill-fated show, which she had cherished all this while. That was nice.

Had fun at Cantaria last night. Did an interview about the early days (was told that Will said, “if there was a hat he wants to wear it,” and since I do not wear hats, I assume he means something else, but it did not strike home) and I was assigned solos at which I did sufficiently well. Whatever the progress of What Ails Me, at least I can sing again.

May 10, 2018

Sam and his girlfriend (his surprising Chemist girlfriend) and his sister and mother arrived here and we had champagne cocktails on the back porch. Then we went to Little Jumbo for more cocktails, and it was a sweet evening unlike the one I was expecting. I had enough energy to carry everything to the end.

May 9, 2018

Stainless, radiant spring. Listening to Finn Magill play original pieces on You Tube.

Have taken to writing by the river. Actually, I’ve written nothing, but I heard the geese and watched the waters flow.

Planted arisaema and meadow rue.

Considered the accolades delivered by professors at the faculty meeting, and the almost unbelievable slaughter of grammar within. A single person could be “they” and “she” several random times within the same sentence. 

Considered beginning a criticism blog for local theater, but saved myself the trouble by remember how nobody wants to hear the truth, especially those hollering loudest for “good criticism.” And, do I always know when I’m enlightening and when I’m punishing?

Did some work at the studio. Was not the right day for it. 

The cell phone rings downstairs. Praying it’s nothing important. Meant to see Sam tonight, and I hope nothing is awry with that.

Dream that I was taking the train from Asheville to Hendersonville. Halfway, I got off at a scenic New England seaport town and looked at the water and the quaint shops for a while. When it was time to leave, I realized I was frightened either to continue on with my planned journey or to turn around and go home. Stood on the platform praying for somebody to help me.

May 7, 2018

Planted Janis’ hydrangea.

This is what NCLR has to say about my story:

Watts picked “Corin and Dorinda”  for second place, calling it “a wise story that is, at its heart, a story of disappointment. Despite being an accomplished scholar and teacher, Dorinda watches while her husband gets the ‘real job’ and becomes more and better ensconced in the English department at his small rural college. ‘Corin and Dorinda’ is an emotionally intelligent story about what we are owed and what duty we have to the people in our lives in happy times and especially when we don’t get what we desperately need.” Hopes’s story will be published in NCLR Online 2019, which comes out in January or early February.

Unbelievably tedious final faculty meeting. I remembered why I stopped going. Wanted to show solidarity with our retiring colleagues, but next time I’ll buy them a card. . . .

Last playwriting class of the year. Read through a gigantic play that even the author admitted was something she needed to “get out of my system” before going on to her real work.

May 6, 2018

Reading from Peniel at All Souls (with Andrew on the fiddle) went well, maybe better than I expected. Interesting smattering of students and strangers. Tired afterward, staggering, whimpering tired. Read some of Will’s students’ poetry, one, by Oliver, an 8th grader, had the authority of Blake. I was astonished. Janis gave me a blue hydrangea.

May 5, 2018

Darkling day, but so far without actual rain. Spading out a great invasion of purple bamboo shoots.

Mountain Xpress publishes its “sustainability” poetry contest winners. My second place poem is better than the winner by levels of magnitude. I’m glad they published them all, so I won’t have to make that point myself.

Cinquo de mayo and nobody has invited me out for a drink.

Pink and shell-pink and pinkish-orange peonies blaze in the gardens.

Perhaps I have finished Invisible Husbands. 

May 4, 2018

The terrible anniversary, which we do not forget. Much gardening, perhaps too much. I come out of the sun and lie down in the cool and sleep.

Underpaid Nick by $800 and can’t figure out how.

Sat by the French Broad and wrote of the trees and the geese.

Listening steadily to Mountain Gospel.

Within two hours of finishing Invisible Husbands. It will not be the ending I foresaw.

What of the Christians? If they just danced on their wooden floors crying “Glory!” all would be well. But we parse and pick and pretend we understand the scriptures. We point our bony fingers. Some great spirit must come among us. Some great spirit must overshadow us. Some great spirit must come among us for whom the only greeting we can devise is “Glory!” Overshadow. Bow us down.

May 2, 2018


Dug plots for wild sunflowers, and for something yet to be determined.

May 1, 2018

Had not appreciated the full difference cutting that pine would make. Except for up against the eastern side of the house (where the bloodroots and bluebells lie safe) there’s no spot totally free from the sun. The tool shed, ever in the shade before, spends its evening in a blast of light, as does the pond. The shady groves where I hoped to grow ginseng are golden with evening light. This is mostly good, but it means that the delicate things I planted thinking they were going to spend their lives in the cool and shadow must find some way forward. Today a goldy Oriental cypress went into the ground. I quipped, “In two hours I’ll just feel like planting another,” and the clerk did me the courtesy of laughing.  The silver maple at the eastern edge is dead, but I’m going to try to leave it to the woodpeckers until it falls apart.  Orange and black in the depth of the pool.

April 29, 2018

Sang at Highland Brewery last night for a festival of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It looked like Carnivale Venice in Hell, but I had a good time, and we either sang well, or to exactly the right audience, or both. I was, for a moment, happy.  Giant moon waiting for us in the parking lot. Towhees twittering as we took the wrong turn and veered around solemn mountains of gravel.