August 31, 2018

Illicitly took the day off at the end of the first two weeks of class. My excuse is to have free days around my birthday, if anybody asks, which they have not. Went to High 5 to kick-start one or the other of the novels. Did manage to move Sam-sam along, all the while fighting urgent, copious, inexplicable, and repetitive diarrhea, which eventually put an end to the morning’s writing. All’s well. Sat beside a man and his Jack Russell, who were beautiful together.

Return to the Asheville Gay Men’s Chorus, nee Cantaria, after a summer off. Was in despair the first few moments– the same pop tunes which I hated before, the same turbulent and self-indulgent individualism on the part of the choristers, with our well-established personalities. But, my spirits turned a corner, realizing that I could lament and fade away or I could manage to have fun, if I really put my mind to it. So, we’ll have fun. C has dementia, and comes to rehearsal anyway. What do I think of that? What’s the line between patience and ruinous indulgence? Not my call, thank God. A beautiful, young, and giant baritone gives me something to look at. Amazing what difference that makes.

I said to Circe curled up on the kitchen chair, “I’ve taken care of you for fifteen years, and do you send me a birthday card?”

I said to Maud curled up on the bathroom counter, “I’ve taken care of you for fifteen years, and do you send me a birthday card?”

I said to the frogs on the pond, “I made a world for you, and do you send me a birthday card?”

No sufficient answer from any.

I do receive a letter from Grey, which before the end has me weeping silently in the café in relief and gratitude, for his testimony that I did some good at one time. “I think I’m going to miss your literature classes more than I realized. They were truly one of a kind. I truly feel that you, along with the Western canon  which you wielded, saved me from self-induced drowning.” He’s at the MFA program at Alabama, which is not living up to his expectations, but which seems exactly to mirror my remembrance of the MA at Syracuse. He remembers when I said, “A false argument shrinks the world; a true argument enlarges it.” I am glad now to be reminded of that. He says, “I hope you find your lone, annual devotee.” To be fair, sometimes there are more than one.

Agonizing leg cramps last night, still sore this morning. Hurled invective at God between gulps of Gatorade.

August 30, 2018

Grievance Committee meeting. Luckily nobody has had a grievance (which came to us) in several years, so we mostly sat around warning each other against revealing emails and communications. Big Sam my veteran explains that he has had a headache for three years. My feminists in the back row harden their countenances against Donne’s “Song.” I wonder if they forgave him thereafter, or if one trespass is damnation? I wonder what the term “misogynist” applied to a man of the 17th Century could actually mean?

August 29, 2018

Little birthday gathering after choir, drinks and silly gifts from the bartenders.

August 28, 2018

I will bow and be simple; I will bow and be free; I will bow and be humble, yea bow like the willow tree.

August 27, 2018

Gentle Face Book exchange with Angie and Terry and some of my high school friends about Trump. Nobly, I neither fought nor lectured, but assured them I had noted their perspectives and hoped it would be well for all of us one day. But it is hard confronting a stand that is all assertion and no fact without saying so. Angie says it’s a shame that Trump hasn’t been left alone to do the important work of the people, that he has been thwarted at every turn. I want to point out that the Presidential decrees–things he can do and did do without input from everybody–have been uniformly disastrous. Would he suddenly veer to virtue of the whole world did his bidding? Terry says “somebody” must lead America in the “right direction,” and I want to ask “what is the right direction,” but I am afraid of what I may hear. You want to be gentle. . . you want to be reasonable. . . especially with old folks set in their ways. I remember when Angie was a doe, arguably the prettiest girl in the class. Yeats wrote about this all the time. . . “an intellectual hatred is the worst/so let her think all opinion is accursed.”

Evening spent listening to shape note singing and working on Jason.

August 26, 2018

Summer Sunday. Returned to church, sang Brahms and Tallis. It was the first Sunday DJ could not climb the steps into church. One doesn’t know what to say. Should some transitions be met with silent support? Maybe the right words or the right deeds will be given to me.

Me at the café: I’d like an everything bagel with cream cheese, and a black tea lemonade with no added sugar.
Her: What kind of bagel?
Me: Everything.
Her: Would you like cream cheese?
Me: Yes.
Her: Anything to drink?
Me: Black tea lemonade with no added sugar.
Her: Would you like green or black tea?
Me: Black.
Her: Would you like that sweetened?

August 25, 2018

Rose and went to the studio and had one of the best days ever, certainly in terms of actual square inches of canvas covered. Also, in terms of perceptual breakthroughs and technical confidence.

Lay down on the couch and slept and dreamed of long walks through a wintery landscape, meeting adventures at the meetings of lonely roads.

On the 23rd I looked back through my journals to see what I was doing on the 23rd of August 5 years ago, ten years ago, and on. Interesting. Some names which were important to me have completely lost their faces and contexts. Even more distressing is that the things that were one step out of reach then continue to be one step out of reach. The final entry into human intimacy or a steady literary career has always been denied, no matter how close I’ve come, no matter how often. It is past time for any change in this to make a real change in my life.

August 24, 2018

Darkness falling outside the window. First bits of editing arriving from Red Hen Press. Though my one class was over today at 9:10, I agreed to meet with a student at 2, so I was in my office the whole time, mostly sleeping, as the hemoglobin issue coupled with an out-of-order elevator makes moving around campus problematic. The student wants to design video games, is on the autism spectrum, and his father with him kept saying “slow down. . . slow down. . .” which infuriated the kid, but he did slow down. I wondered what was the big deal with admissions– is he related to the governor or something? – but, on the other hand, I’ve probably done less than my share of this sort of thing. Decided while I was lecturing that I want a committee consisting of Donne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes to advise me through the rest of my life. My blue tree looks to be prospering.

August 23, 2018

All classes met at least once. I feel they are good. The Freshman are loaded with anxiety, but that is a constant and not open to my emendation, very much. Managed to get in a history of Occitan today, with Cavalcanti, et al, leading up to the Courtly Makers.  Creditable first tries by the playwrights. Climbing to our floor is a real task in my current condition. I stand at the top gasping for air, and a good part of my morning energy is thus dissipated. I mentioned that the elevator was out on the faculty list-serve and it appeared that nobody knew. Was FLOODED with concern and various voices demanding account from others and fussing about legal implications, but, as of today, still no elevator. I will live through it, but once I’m in my office I’m sort of trapped there, for there can be no casual going up and down.

My foot cooperating, planted a “chaste tree.” I’m sure that’s not its usual name, but I wanted it because it has blue flowers. Destroyed a yellowjacket nest drilled beside my little blue spruce.

On this night in 1966 I became a poet. It is a holier night to me than my birthday. I am there now, at my little desk in the darkness, smelling the summer night, weeping tears upon the page in Akron, Ohio. It was what gave me life.

August 20, 2018

First day of class. Anxious as a kid, I woke and rose far earlier than necessary. The Karpen elevator was out, and hauling up three floors of staircase was not how I wanted to begin my day. I think the class was good, We talked about Obedience and Enlightenment and John Donne. I think we have rapport. I enjoyed myself, anyway. Got a bill from a hotel in Charlotte where I never stayed. Surprisingly easy to get that reversed. It’s the little things. . . .

Gardening thwarted by gout, which makes the wearing of shoes problematic.

August 19, 2018

Candace from the Beverly Hills Theater group called to say I am a finalist in their Julie Harris play competition, with In the Paramount Hotel.  Looked it up, and there are three awards. I hope I get the big one. That would be nice.

Have been reviewing a woman for promotion to Professor at Palmetto College one state down. She is a dedicated and hard worker and deserves the promotion, and I said so. My personal take-away is that is that my own vitae and resumes are so bare-bones, one might say modest, as to be well-nigh useless. How did I get so far?

August 18, 2018

Gout kept me from the gardening I’d intended to do. Did go to High 5 and wrote furiously on Sam-sam. Did hobble up the steps and did some pretty fair painting. Handsome man from New York City looked at my paintings while I looked at him. Found where I can watch endless re-runs of Project Runway, and somehow that makes the world right.

Maud is living in my bathroom now, sometimes on the windowsill and sometimes in the corner of the shower. I hold her until she purrs for a long time.

August 17, 2018

David’s birthday.

One cat peed on a plastic bag on the dresser (she was within her rights; I had not cleaned the litter box) and the other cried piteously over something as I staggered around in the morning dark. Neither of them is feeling well. I think it is age, and all I can do is coo and caress and allow them to do whatever odd thing they want in the moment. Arrived at school, nevertheless, long before dawn, as I will be doing five days a week until Thanksgiving. Got my syllabi written, and my usual bad-tempered warnings against the excesses of the LAST group of students. A hike to the bookstore to check on my books almost did me in. Sometimes I think the anemia is reversing; sometimes I think it is not. Afternoon began with the faculty meeting. Two main topics were 1) meeting the new chancellor and 2) the new chancellor relating to us the piss-fight between two state agencies that resulted in a no-occupancy-allowed warning against five of our dorms–the news ones, which had already received their certificates of occupancy– and the distribution of confused students to local hotels. It seems some faucets may have been in a place not preferred by the Insurance Department. Or something. What is the proper expression for gigantic pettiness? The Chancellor, on the other hand, impressed and relieved me. I liked Mary, and feared we wouldn’t have two good ones in a row, but perhaps we do. Nancy seemed strong and fair and unflapped by the to-do, and, moreover, actually talked principally about education in her remarks. I have worked under every single chancellor UNCA has had. I would be surprised to outlast this one.

Dinner at Avenue M with DJ.

August 16, 2018

Mike McKovitch is dead. At the reunion he was sweet, and concerned about the nasty note one of my students had left. Maybe he was sweetening all before rising to go.

Maud fell behind the washing machine, and instead of thinking of a way to rescue her, I melted into despair. Called Will, who took the door apart, moved the dryer, and fished her out.

Cantaria has accepted Jon’s proposal for a Christmas commission with my text. Pleasure, yes, but mostly surprise. I would like to have heard the discussion from the Board. I wonder if Barry was there.

August 15, 2018

The days have had the wondrous golden smoothness of summer. The Atlantic seaboard drowns and California burns, but we are in paradise.

Monday I gave to school business from 6 AM on. Got George his independent study. Hammered a likely schedule together for the coming months. Left just as the departmental retreat–which I had forgotten– began, so I had to turn around and go back.  It is remarkable that in my 35 years of teaching, almost no department meeting has been given over to the discussion of material, or how best to deliver that material to students. It has, instead, all been of ways to accommodate the superfluous and often onerous requirements of the administration, of ways to do the right thing while still pretending to be obedient to their directives. To have education you need a teacher and a student. Everything else is an add–on, in the fullest sense unnecessary. I believe administration’s perception of its superfluity drives it more than anything else. So long as we jump thought its hoops, fill out its forms, it believes it has a place. I have accommodated myself to this largely by ignoring the whole thing and, whenever possible, doing as I believed was right, below or despite the radar. This was wrong. I should have fought– though, now that I think of it, fighting caused the Humanities debacle. Fought, perhaps, with more subtlety. A true academic politician never believes, as I believe, that the right side must win. That would have been knocked out of me had I engaged early on.

I’ve aged out of the community in my department. They are all younger than me now– by decades-- and pretty much ignore me, though saying that makes it sound deliberate, and it isn’t. They are all young and ambitious and untenured and raising families, and what would we have to talk about? They don’t reject me; they don’t actually see me. I understand. Still, I feel lonely.

Cheryl came to my studio to buy a bird painting. Being there to greet her caused me to paint much and well. We talked of Akron. We never talked at school, but that seems not to matter now.  We manage to have the same memories.

Rose today determined to take another stab at the garden, and did so. Planted Echinacea and butterfly weed and black-eyed Susan. Weeded and mulched a tiny portion of the fence garden. Strove mightily against the rogue half-acre of mint, and got, miraculously, all of it pulled, though the next step must be to dig out the roots. It is amazing the volume of plant material left over after such a project. I rejoice every time I am able to exert over a period of time without exhaustion. I don’t think I worked very much harder than I did today even in the days of my might.

August 12, 2018

Huge achievement in weeding and mulching this AM. Kelly strolled by and I showed her the garden. Big nap then, during which my dreams seemed to have been about pricing and setting out to best effect items for an expensive yard sale.

August 11, 2018

Triumphant Saturday, which is not yet over. If Sam-sam is a novella. I finished it before dawn. If it’s a novel I have to wait to see where it goes next. Painted rather brilliantly in the studio. Dragged the stepladder out of the closet and changed those hellacious bulbs-in-a-can-in the ceiling. One of them had been dark before I moved here. What possessed Steward, or whoever it was, to put them in? Discovered that there are at least three different kinds, requiring three different sizes of replacement bulbs.

I have so little to write here when I’m writing other things!

After many years, I can sleep flat on my back again.

Johnny Secaur’s birthday. I wonder if he remembers me at all.

Neither my bunny nor my frogs trust me to approach them closer than several yards. This is disheartening. This is tragic.

August 9, 2018

Slept amazingly well. Went to the studio and worked hard at The Empress and the Cabybara, having to quit because the paint needed to dry before I could do detail work. A couple from Knoxville appeared, and wrote down my recommendations for places to eat.  When I came to Asheville there was ONE restaurant– Three Brothers– downtown. You could walk down Patton or Biltmore in unspoilt solitude. If you were downtown at all it was because you were gay and passing from one bar to another, or waiting for a ride from a kindly stranger. One thing passes away; a dozen things take its place.

August 8, 2018

Not a day of achievement. Planted forlorn hyssop that languished on the half-price table at the nursery. Did end it at the Wayside with the usual suspects, gin and laughter. I was on the massage table in Biltmore for most of the time North Asheville was blacked out by a lightning strike. Fascinating getting home without traffic lights.

August 7, 2018

Woke from happy dreams, though I don’t remember them. Excellent day at the studio. Painted well. Students from Roanoke arrived with their teacher. They helped me change one of the figures in a painting from a tiger to a capybara (the piece is now called The Empress and the Capybara), signed the back of the piece, and the group ended up buying three paintings. One of the times when everything was worth it.

August 6, 2018

Intending to do something else, got accidentally into play-submission mode. Fully ½ the notices on NYC Playwrights are “women only” or “women or trans only.”  Does anyone think this will make better theater?

Completed most of the tasks I’d set for myself today, and some I hadn’t. Except the unused bags of mulch lie all forlorn. 

Thought of dinner last night. I drove to the pizza shop on Main Street in Weaverville: full, families, turbulent, but very sweet. Big handsome boys working in the kitchen and cleaning tables. They gave me a free measure of Montepulciano because there was so little left in the bottom of the bottle. Out on the sidewalk was a shirtless–almost shirtless-- man with a dog. At distance I noticed he was being very kind to the dog. Up close, I noticed the smell of his body was strong, vital, glorious, the smell of a god; leaving out the floral, the best smell I ever smelled. I wanted to stay close to him, but couldn’t think of a way that didn’t require explanation.

Lois Lane to a just-resurrected-from-the-dead Superman in a movie on TV the other night: “You smell good.”
Superman: “Didn’t I before?”

Yes, my attraction to--hunger for, sometimes brutal hunger for–contact with the masculine is because my father was cold and distant. But the effect would seem so much greater and more consequential than the cause. I guess that’s what happens to the tree when the seedling is damaged.  I think my whole career as a singer came from a quarrel with my friend Jesse in the 3rd grade. He had been selected for the Betty Jane choir and I had not. The song they were singing was “My Donkey Deodoro. One day I was walking home from school singing “My Donkey Deodoro,” and Jesse, who must have been lying in wait, jumped out of cover and said, “You can’t sing that! That’s just for kids in the choir, and you didn’t make choir. You can’t pretend you did!” I actually though he must be right. Didn’t try again till 7th grade. Made it then. Made it ever since. Am I still refuting Jesse?

When I mention Jesse, people who know him pretty generally use the descriptor, “mean.” So he was then.

Thinking of Jack in a cowboy costume singing “I’m Going to Leave Old Texas Now.” jealousy in me unable even to say what it was jealous of.

Big wasp nest above my front door. Madame wasp managed to raise her brood without interfering with me once, nor I with her.

August 5, 2018

Two spiders weave their separate webs on my study lampshade.

Outstanding day of landscaping. Weeding, mulching, building the west wall. My body has the once-familiar feeling of being over-tired with labor that is both exhausting and fulfilling.

Back into Sufi mind.

August 4, 2018

Sat down at my study desk and my ankles were instantly covered with fleas. The cats have been treated, and I already annihilated those in the bathroom, so the source of the plague is puzzling. Squirrels? Some creature in the house I don’t detect?

The demon is gone.

Late in the night, when I thought I’d check mail for the last time, I went into an orgy of revision.

August 3, 2018

SS writes: “And I really ought to say this reading spree has proved to me that you are the most shamefully neglected playwright imaginable. Had you lived in New York and played the game, you would not have so many unproduced plays in the drawer and on your computer. You would be celebrated.” I, of course, think the same. I bet, when starting out, that my remoteness from New York wouldn’t matter that much. I lost that bet. It is wrong that I lost that bet.

Picked up a copy of Halcyone, for which I supplied the cover art. Notice of Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers being a “new release” provoked me into emailing a copy of the revision to Carlos. Should have sent it weeks ago, or whenever it was I did it. The reality of its appearance has never quite impressed itself on me. Offered to pay for whatever expenses accrued by my dilation. He might have kept me up to date concerning the process, though. I honestly assumed everything had stalled. Most everything DOES stall. Praying this one thing turns out to be no problem.

Went downtown to see the play Bloomsday at 35 Below.  Unexpectedly sweet. Jason gave me a Dramaturg credit. A few elegant drinks at Sovereign Remedies.

August 2, 2018

LeBron James makes our common hometown proud, and gives an example to all who have been rewarded past the common lot.

Stee O is coming to New Orleans to marry a girl he met on line. He wants me to be his best man. Going to stand back and see how all that unwinds. Most of my friends who are stable are much younger than I. Does wackiness come with age?

August 1, 2018

Finished major weeding and wall-building just as the rains began. They have not stopped since, varying only in degree of intensity.  Lay down on the couch with the sounds of the rain around me, and had one of the most amazing naps of my life, a veritable bath of well-being. Reluctant to arise. Zach said my body was the most relaxed he had ever seen it. Vast progress in writing– must add to that some progress, at least, in publicizing. Goldfinches flitting through the overgrown grass.

July 31, 2018

Weirdly productive day, when every errand came to a successful conclusion. Took paintings to the UNCA Library faculty & staff art show. They seemed to like them. “They’re so small!” they said, in evident relief.