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.