June 29, 2018

Strange night. I was afraid of something, anxious, but couldn’t think of what it was. I wondered if it was bears. I startled twice at sounds that might have been a bear coming through the sliding door. But I don’t think it was that, but rather that “bear” was the shape taken by some nebulous dark think. I stayed up until 3 watching Netflix, rose at 7 feeling completely and miraculously refreshed. I believe, though, that almost unprecedented anxiety over the state of my country lay behind my unrest. It’s not just that our leader is a tyrant and a sociopath, but that he had followers in–what proportion? 30% of us? 40%? His example has allowed the worst of us to come crawling out of the cellar. Racists, bigots, self-proclaimed Nazis march boldly in city streets, with an impunity that I, at least, never imagined. Whole “news” programs on Fox are lie after lie strung together like evil pearls, and people sit before their sets nodding their empty heads and murmuring “just as we thought.” People who know that the President is a liar and a rapist and a racist and a greedy Plutocrat nevertheless quote him as scripture and base their renewed hatreds upon his crooked words. They are lies, but they are lies they want to hear. Reason and tolerance are, at the moment, from where I sit, useless. People are using the words “civil war.”  It’s the first time in my life I have not found the concept laughable.

Traded in the old Prius for a new one. It was the saleswoman’s first week on the job, and the process went by fits and starts, but was eventually accomplished. My trade-in divided the price exactly in half.

Unloaded the blocks in the bed of the truck so Zach could use it today for moving. Almost more than I could accomplish, though my recovery time was encouragingly brief.

June 28, 2018

Zach gave me a weekend at a resort for being a faithful client.

Rain continues, with my blessing.

Sensational day at the studio. Painted the commission for Art Space Charter School. They give you a 12" square piece of plywood and tell you to go to town. The sort of thing I do all the time anyway– Doing it because of my long time crush on JH. My studio mate down the hall has not paid her rent in two months, and is destitute. I tried to buy one of her pieces. The piece I selected was the only thing on the wall NOT by her. Who is the goddess of thwarted goodwill?

Stacks of material begin to arrive from Red Hen Press, questionnaires, directives, messages I haven’t the publication savvy fully to understand. Have to sit back and take a deep breath. I know I have done this before, but I must purge it from recollection each time.

June 26, 2018

Two days of lovely rain. This morning when I woke it was quite lovely, murmuring and poetic, though at other times it was violent. Blew the livingroom back door open at one point. The hose stretches useless across the dripping grass. Towhees call in the pearly drizzle.

Will Ray solves the problem of the ripped out basement windows. He saw a big bear do it, then climb the cherry tree beside my bedroom and rest for a while. The practicalities of the deed are hard to fathom, so maybe he was just in a playful mood. But this means he could rip the sliding screen door off in a second, and there he could actually enter, as he could not through thy tiny ventilation windows. For all that, living with bears is an excitement I don’t want to give up just yet.

Took yet another urinous carpet to the cleaners. Both cats have changed their habits radically. Summer? Age? I don’t understand myself, so why should I understand them?

When my recorded segment was played for the audience at the Cantaria concert, it got a tremendous laugh. When Chrysse came backstage, she said that I had been “adorable.” Wish I knew what I said that was so funny, so adorable, that it might be replicated.

In the midst of massive writing. I note the incredibly frequent use of “was” and “there.” Often the revision of a page is toward the end only of thinning those out.

Coffee with SS, two Jeremiahs lamenting the Asheville art scene and advancing age.

June 24, 2018

Rose and donned my purple robe and sang at a service where Naomi Tutu preached. She lived up to, exceeded expectation. In the afternoon it was Catawba Brewery for Alden Thompson’s first birthday. He was really the center of it, smiling, laughing, taking it all in, the light of wonderment never gone from his face. I said, “I want to have a baby.” I don’t know if I can judge the reaction properly. I don’t think one would call it encouraging.

A sign of approaching senility is that I can’t type a sentence without making a typo. Could I ever? Am I just noticing it now?

Saw my bunny in the middle of the street. Could not rest until he was safe under my hollies.

June 22, 2018

Much more productive day at the studio. Heroic weeding in the front garden–where the primary weed is, surprisingly, rogue violets. Heroic progress on Tub, including the perception that the last 2/3 of the book needs fully to be redone: barking up a whole forest of wrong trees.

Drove to Black Mountain to take a painting to The Flood, which has been restored after–a flood. Handsome man let me in. I wanted to get to know him, but he seemed intent in setting up for the day, and his old blind dog Rosie was watching us. We talked of art and business and didgeridoos. Stopped at an antique store in downtown Black Mountain. Saw an old recipe book I wanted. The price taped to the cover said $18. I said to myself, “not for $18.” At that instant the price tag detached itself and floated to the floor. I did not pick it up. Instead, I went to the check put and said “this.” She went and looked for the price for a minute and, not finding it, said, “How about $8?” I said, “fine.”

 Ate at Gan Shan Station, where an old friend from high school (he was in high school, I was here) now managing the restaurant paid for my lunch

 

Another carpet–the hall runner–off to the cleaner after drenching by poor incontinent Maud, my dear heart.

Awake late into the night, waking late in the morning, which has been, historically, unlike me.

June 21, 2018

Solstice– an overcast, overheated, uncertain one. As I moved through the day there were squalls of rain here and there, but never enough to dampen the ground.

Mediocre performance at the studio this morning, though since then I had the thought that may turn the work to excellence. Did paint over outright bad pieces, so the level of the whole is raised. Steve grumpy, so no conversation coming or going.

Drove to Arden to retrieve my laundered (is that the right word?) rugs. When I picked them up to bring them into the house, my arms where they touched them broke out instantly in inflammation. So, I’m allergic to my own Persian carpets. I wonder if this has affected my health in general? That would have been a very expensive mistake.

The flowers of high summer don’t get exclaimed over like the flowers of spring, so let me remark upon the golden hollyhocks outside the fence, the spindly orange marigolds, the yellow calla lilies (why are they all yellow? Did I prefer that?) And of course the white and red and orange and golden roses, the pink and white sorrel.

My Origins of Fairyland class didn’t make, so I’m teaching Intro to Lit. Almost infinitely easier. . . .

Summer. . . .  Spring. . . too long. . . Gongula. . . .

June 19, 2018

Fine summer days follow each other, so fine that I forget the garden needs a drink until it begins to droop a little. Huge work on short fiction today, including the unexpected resurrection of a novella.  Didn’t know I was going to do that when I sat down at the desk. Surprising close– surprising I just dropped it all those years ago,

June 18, 2018

Good writing at High 5, heroic weeding in the AM. Then, too much reading of Facebook, where, after a very little while, outrage begins to weaken the spirit. We have a President who lies literally every time he opens his mouth, who works actively to undermine the safety and reputation of the United States, who has spent his high office crippling Democracy, destroying the environment, making a burlesque of the Presidency, increasing the suffering of the poor, polluting the purity of the spoken word, alienating those who wished us well, elevating the perverse, mocking the patriot, and finding ways to enrich himself and his sickening family; who is a traitor in original and constant collusion with an enemy power, who has destroyed a once-great political party by making it an accessory in every unforgivable crime– and yet he is still President. I can’t find a way of dealing with this. I write a little or do some weeding, have a cocktail, come back and a soulless would-be Hitler is STILL President, despite the fact that he has done none of these things in secret. His only evident virtue is the arrogance which allows his trespasses to remain transparent.. Yes, I understand there are people who think he’s doing a great job, and, not knowing them, I cannot add them to the list of evil, but surely to the rolls of the deluded, to say that they are wrong, objectively, permanently, without–now–legitimate excuse.  Down is not up, chaos is not order, the world is not flat, cruelty is not necessary no matter what life experience you may have had, no matter how much your college-boy neighbor infuriates you, no matter that your sainted daddy hated dark people and loved the flag, no matter how sincerely, even religiously, you hold to these opinions, you are wrong and must stand to one side, silent. No? Then look at videos of the “good” Germans who were made to bury the dead in the concentration camps in 1945, who knew what was happening and let it happen. That is your fate.

June 17, 2018

Two night of beautiful moon– the first night inexpressible, the thinnest silver sliver in a blood-red twilight, Venus glittering just below. Last night over Biltmore Avenue, sharing it with brothers-in-song exiting from the Diana Wortham.  Cantaria’s 20th Anniversary concert came off, as these things often do, better than we had reason to expect. I myself kept in good voice, and my memorial poem was received with tears and approbation. The whole night was a crowd-pleaser. Even my legs and feet were not so bad off at the end as they would have been had we had done merely well.  Champagne reception at Blue Spiral afterwards. I think there were moments when, even musically, we transcended. 

Woke in the middle of the night from an awful dream. I kept ignoring my cell phone because someone I hated kept phoning me again and again. He had something on me. . . I owed him money or something . .  and I didn’t want to speak to him. I even gave my phone to Quinn to answer for a while, but he said, “You better talk to this guy before it becomes worse.” I startled awake. I lay in bed a long time wrestling with this problem, until I realized there was no such person and no such situation. Relief, but also confusion that I had been taken in by the fiction for so long.

Rose in the morning with sweet awareness of the concert being out of the way, and the rest of the summer pretty much mine. Joyfully weeded and joyfully watered in the morning light. As I did so, I noticed that something –raccoons I suppose-- had ripped the little basement ventilation windows out, leaving holes by which the basement could be entered. This house has been here 94 years– and I here in the last 4 of them-- and this had never happened. At the Blue Spiral reception I had a flash vision that someone was breaking into my house, but I assumed it was people. Looked in the basement for new tenants, but didn’t detect any. Went to Tru Valu, where a big red neck and I. . . it’s hard to explain. .  In the space of five minutes he was hugging me. Did I know him? He seemed to know me.  Moved on to Lowe’s, where their inefficiency bordered on a debacle once again. Sent me to the wrong door to pick up my blocks, etc. But when I finally got to the right place, was befriended by the two (again giant) rednecks who loaded my truck. Strange, immediate male affection. I felt blessed, but also perplexed. Lord, I said under my breath, I don’t understand this, but I will take it. Their tale of how if they see someone shoplifting they are not allowed to do anything about it led to an account of some black people attacking a security guard on a video, and that led to a rather emotional and eloquent dissertation by the bigger one on how things are falling apart and maybe we need fewer freedoms and a little more order. There, from someone I already liked, came support of Trump and his tactics (though the name was not mentioned) that may have been ignorant, but was certainly not evil, and certainly heart-felt. I’ve been Ancient Marinered twice this week. Betty at Tru Valu was of the opinion that the ‘coons were after food and, not finding any, will not return. My inclination is to take her wisdom until it happens again.

Green persimmons on my persimmon tree.

June 16, 2018

Huge and gratifying progress on Tub.

Appointment with the glasses maker. Refused–against the doctor’s oft-repeated advice-- the dilation exam, only because I had not prepared for it and had no way to get home with pixilated vision. Refused to reschedule because there is really no one I wanted to bother to drive me around for that time. And because, after the 10th or 11th admonition, my jaw became set. I remember the same thing happening last visit five years ago– was it? In the end I had to say “No is no” to ease the conversation into something else. My eyes are well, no more cataract presence than can be expected at my age. The glasses and all are $800, about $300 less than the last time at the same place, to which I returned, inexplicably, after a frustrating first encounter. But, all flows on.

Grueling and largely useless rehearsal last night. Maybe frustrating rather than useless. We were flatly terrible, though the small ensemble was lively and charming. Through one whole song I simply could not find my note. The man to my right does not sing until the last note, which he lands on if he likes it (he’s pretty accurate too, for that one note) while the one to my left simply makes up what he wants to sing, while Barry has nothing below an A, so I am still essentially alone on my part.

Happy wind-down time at the Wayside, where I was reminded that I am very loud. Would never have known this on my own.

Woke this AM with gout, an interesting development on a day which will be mostly standing and walking and, at the insistence of our punctilious assistant director, the wearing of formal shoes. The pill I took moments ago is effective, but also makes me feel like a sleepwalker underwater.

The main tasks of the foreseeable future will be the pulling of weeds and the watering of gardens. Fortunately, I enjoy both.

June 15, 2018

Weirdly tranquil morning. It seemed wondrous silent when I rose, and remains so now that I’m deep into the day’s activities.

Cantaria rehearsal last night encouraging. I kept my voice the whole night, in answer to my prayers.  Friddle was there to receive homage as our founder and to direct “New Victory.” B increases the contortions necessary not to acknowledge my existence. What could go on in his head? Does he actually imagine wrong done to himself? That’s very Trumpian.

Speaking of whom, my country is unrecognizable Children are being torn from their parents and put into concentration camps. Jeff Sessions may well be the most evil person in public life anywhere in te world, and he seems to be making policy for Americans. I am an American and I will not stand for it. Having said that, I have no idea what to do. Write a poem? Give an address? Even with a gun in my hand I would get only so far. I have never been so frustrated as a citizen. Every day reveals some new atrocity that I fear with my whole heart will the next day come to seem like ordinary life. My cousin D reacts to a photo of children in cages with “that’s an old photo; check your sources.” She is a mother. I throw my hands into the air and say to myself, “THAT’S your response?” Do I want to see violence in the streets? I’m seeing it now, from the government. O, divinities who rule over such things, tell me what to do!

June 14, 2018

Interesting day. Woke disturbed and uncomfortable, something just below the level of consciousness–but above the level of dreams–bothering me in the night. Got Ancient-Marinered by Mr. Crutchfield at the High 5, who reminded me of a show I did long ago, and who spoke to me of the world of spirits in a way which I knew immediately to be truthful and efficacious. Sometimes the healers come. Sometimes they find you behind your iced chai. When I left him I felt like a clear stream.

Will picks up the picnic table after four weeks. We were three or four days into the period when I couldn’t stand it anymore, and it had to be gone under whatever circumstances. Remembered my father like that, times when his patience came to an end without warning and without effort on his part to allow us to understand. Dead space on my lawn about the size of a grave.

Said “no” to The Field at HART, which was saying “no” to the man of my dreams. Were I the man of his dreams, it would be different. The world gradually draws away from you the things you aren’t meant to reach.

Glennis was the only person who ever called me a racist– an accusation so odd that it was more curious than hurtful. Perhaps it was to get me back for calling her a fraud. All this was so long ago. The clear stream I mentioned before is cleansing old declivities.

Bad throat is back. It’s possible I won’t be able to sing the Cantaria concert.

Bunny thinks I can’t see him when I’m out in the yard. I think this is very droll. Maybe freezing like that works on foxes and cats. I fight the temptation to try to pet him. I have petted wild rabbits, but I think because they were paralyzed with fear. I don’t want to put mine through that.

Circe is capable of staring at me steadily for a very long time. I wonder what she’s seeing that she hasn’t seen a thousand times before.

June 13, 2018


Yeats’ birthday. Dull, blue, sultry. Did some weeding early on, and the weeds let themselves out easy, as though they were weary already of the summer.

Lost track of days. Sometimes I lose track of a day while I’m in it. This is due to my summer schedule of living by half-days: working hard in the morning, taking a nap, rising and working hard until fairly late at night. Two working days for the price of one.  I’m writing three books at once and making alternating progress on each. I think I’m keeping the voices distinguishable. They seem like whole different countries to me. Many of my colleagues go to writing retreats. I create a writing retreat on Lakeshore Drive by not looking at the clock and not answering the phone: all the advantages of isolation, plus my own bathroom and my own bed. I believe I’ve already mentioned that my prayer–now that I think I know the things I’ll never have and the things I might still– is to have time to finish the projects that crowd my brain. The dark adjunct of that dedication is impatience– impatience with anything that intrudes or gobbles time.

Lunch with Adam. We did not talk of ourselves at all, but about Shakespeare, and it was one of the best conversations I’ve had in a year, totally without hesitation or artifice. His perspective is as an actor, mine as a playwright and professor (though I have done my share of acting) and between us I think we covered the bases.  There are plenty of examples of “bad playwriting” in Shakespeare– many of them in As You Like It, which is the last thing I saw Adam in. Perhaps the rules for playwriting were not yet set down. My belief is that WS had a different feel for “the finished product” and would have been more comfortable with improvisation than I would be (pace Hamlet). It’s also possible that his perfect artifacts were imperfectly remembered and transmitted. It’s also possible that WS’s perspective was essentially that of an actor, and though his structure may be faulted, the beauty of his uttered lines may not. Adam showed me photos of an Orestia in which he played Aegesthus. Looked sensational. There are reasons for living in New York. Discussed the catastrophes of the Magnetic. Adam’s perspective is keenly and informatively different from mine. They’ve cancelled an upcoming production: the beginning of another bump-in-the-road, or merely the recognition that it was an awful play the first time and reviving it was suicidal? I’ve never had any idea which star to hitch my wagon to, or even which would have me, or what exactly to do to help keep that wagon on the road.

Look for the rabbit in my garden mornings and evening. If he is there, then all is well. I tell the neighbors’ cat, “You are welcome, but leave my rabbit alone.”

Simone and I at a downtown radio station this AM to plug the Cantaria concert. I enjoy that sort of thing. The light in the room was glorious. The station is in the Self-Help Building, where I had my gallery for so long, and my studio for a while after that. Entering from Wall Street, I smelled the same beauty-salonish smells I remember from all those years ago. Have I been inside that building since? May not have been. The memories were good. I had a good time being a gallery owner, or that is what endures in recollection. Discovered two new downtown cafes, having arrived, of course, early for the interview. 

June 7, 2018

Established a summer rhythm– work-out and writing in the early morning, trip to the cafe if there’s time, then to the studio, then home for a nap, then yard work or more writing, then the festivities of the evening, which could be more writing or sitting in front of the TV with gin in my hand. For the moment it suits me.

Heroic weeding the AM.

Best Cantaria rehearsal in living memory. Work done, no spikes of fury. My “In Memoriam” was well received.

We are separating families and putting children in concentration camps. The main part of fury is having no idea what to do about it.

June 6, 2018

Fifty years ago tonight I graduated from high school.

June 4, 2018

Returned to the Y in the dark of the morning, and feeling the better for it.  Dozens of handsome men. One needs to remember that as inspiration toward a regular workout schedule.

Experiments with kimchi have proved disastrous: two portions on two different days, two episodes of explosive and urgent diarrhea.

Read my faculty evaluation. It was better than I expected, concerning the upheavals of the past year. I do not read my student evaluations, but enough of them are quoted on the chair’s for me to get the picture. Rick points out that in the SAME CLASS one student says, “He concentrates on getting the full meaning out of individual works, so that sometimes the big picture is lost,” and another says, “Good on the big picture, but sometimes misses close readings of individual works. “ Enough students still think I’m the universal genius to make it worth my while. The lazy and the ill-prepared are frustrated by me. Not one who has loved literature has ever failed to love me.

Excerpt:

David taught the following courses this year: LANG 260: Introduction to Creative Writing, LANG 365: Playwriting Workshop, LANG 494: Senior Seminar in Creative Writing, LIT 327: Readings in Poetry, LIT 335: Western Literature: Enlightenment to Modern, and LIT 446: Studies in Modern Literature: Irish Renaissance. This in itself represents a remarkable range of teaching. On his student evaluations, his rating of instructor numbers are as follows: LANG 260, 4.1; LANG 365, 4.6; LANG 494, 3.6; LIT 327, 3.6; LIT 335, 2.8; LIT 446, 5. These numbers, too, reflect a wide range from 2.8 to 5 (only a few faculty members receive a 5 for one or another of their classes). Student comments also range from the highest praise to criticism, especially with regard to giving clear instructions on assignments, due dates, standards for grading, and related matters. A student in LIT 327: Readings in Poetry, writes, "He's one of the only professors I've encountered at UNC-A who doesn't seem to have lost faith in the traditional lecture method. Thankfully there is still a niche in higher education where I can learn what I cannot see as well as what I can. This is a professor that doesn't cede his class entirely to the material qualms of my generation. Here, finally, is a class about the arts that embraces the spiritual nature of art, rather than talking around it as if it doesn't exist, or as if art ought to work in service to material matters. This teacher understands the nature of his work on a very deep level." A student in LIT 335: Western Literature: Enlightenment to Modern writes, "I wish all courses met the high mark set by this one. It hit all my criteria for a great class: material was broad in scope but still within the bounds of the course, all of it was explained thoroughly with cross reference, the professor set no arbitrary rules about the syllabus and classroom procedure, each session was dynamic and fluid, I felt like I learned something real by the end, and it encouraged myself and my fellow students to be reflective and engaged. This class was completely optional for me but I'm glad my gut feeling about it during registration was correct."

 

Sounds, finally, of the mowing of the lawn.

June 3, 2018

Baked magic cookies with Steve’s butter. Three on Saturday night made me calm and expansive, made me notice my body and note that nothing hurt.

Garrett’s recital at All Souls– a fountain of snow, a white voice, a kind heart. The way people pass into and out of one’s life–

June 2, 2018

As You Like It last night was Cadillac theater, streamlined, swift, elegant in every part. Any college boy can play Orlando, so it was probably not the right role for Adam. He played it brilliantly, of course, but as though every moment he was gong to break out of it and become Hamlet. He needs something bigger, meatier, which I would supply if the world allowed. My new theory is that Orlando IS Hamlet if Hamlet had not been a prince and had been allowed to return to Wittenburg with his friends. Or, Hamlet is Orlando denied Arden. Lonely drink at the Brazilian bar afterward. 

June 1, 2018

Yesterday’s rehearsal productive and not irritating, probably because Their Highnesses were absent. What do you do when your absence makes things better?

Incredibly productive day at the studio. A new direction, a new confidence.

Sam will not be staying with me after all.

It is not yet dark, but we might be going through a day without a thunderstorm.  Wondering when Tony will address the backyard, and what machine he will use upon its overgrown wildness. I see men in turbans swinging scythes. . . .

As You Like It at NC Stage tonight, with Adam as. . . somebody. I try not to resent the time it will take from writing.

May 31, 2018

Sat on my sofa listening to the rain. As I watched through the front windows, a large unfamiliar cat crossed the lawn, looking cautious and tentative. Minutes later a coyote not only crossed the lawn, but came up onto the porch. My mind took a snapshot of it. By the time I got to the door it was gone.  What all is this deluge driving out of hiding?

Realized my prayers of late are mostly to be kept from interruption, to suffer as little upheaval as possible, so I can get done the work I still see before me.

May 30, 2018

Biltmore flooded, Biltmore Avenue closed on either side of the bridge. Woodfin (reportedly) afraid that Asheville will open the Beaver Lake dam and avoid one flood by causing another. Me, I’m listening to the rain on the roof, working on two novels at once.