September 29, 2018

Morning was given over to poetry. Then downtown to perform for Pride. The day was glorious, and the performance not so painful as it might have been. We couldn’t be heard. We can never be heard. Tenors in the front row with the mics against their mouths can be heard. I did hear a recording of my solo, and I have a shocking big voice. The plaza was full of happy people in extravagant costume. I complain at the prospect of it, but the thing itself is sweet and good. Bought the best lemonade that there ever was in the world. Tried to buy a parking sticker at the hotel, but the man gave it to me free.

Home to gardening, and now, in darkness, back to poetry again. Tried to put together a book of travel poems, except that it will not cohere. My Irish poems are song-like, simple, unlike my other work. Not only that, they name the names of lovers, something I had forgotten, so long has it been since I looked at them. I was a different man in Ireland. That’s what I wanted.

September 28, 2018

Beethoven from the radio downstairs. My students are giving their class presentations, and they’re by and large horrible, superficial, disorganized. Every year someone does Gesamtkunstwerk without bothering to take even a stab at German pronunciation. I blame their high school teachers for instilling in them the notion that the least is enough, without really knowing if they’re at fault. Perhaps I’m at fault for not exploding in their direction.

Evening, returning from the garden covered with dirt and scratching mosquito bites, but having done yeomanly. Every year I think I’m going to plant an ocean of daffodils.  My big handsome bullfrog gave me full sight of himself at the pond’s edge, disappearing only when I turned my eyes away.

September 27, 2018

Trip to Eden brothers, hungry to buy all the seeds, all the bulbs.

Meet-and-greet with our majors yesterday. Festive. It’s always surprising to hear oneself praised.

Last Men’s Chorus rehearsal before Pride. We forget that in that din no one will hear us at all, let alone the little nuances we try to put into the music. All I want to do is put on a tuxedo, stand in a line and sing the best music in the world. We’re donning diamond tiaras and singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” doing a kick line, waving flags. I’ve managed single-handedly to hold off the burning batons and evening gowns, but how long will that last?

September 26, 2018

Woke from a strange dream. I wanted to include a new element in my painting– wind. Wind made visible. I gathered from the air tiny bits of tornadoes and hurricane and attached them to my canvas and incorporated them into the composition. Sometimes they whirled and sometimes they were just gray cloudy masses. As I painted, an old fashioned gypsy-like caravan rolled up on the lawn nearby. The caravan was occupied by a pretty young girl. She invited me inside, and her caravan was filled with books and clouds, the same bits of clouds I had been collecting. She offered me tea. One thing led to another, and soon we were having sex. I did not forget who I was even in the dream. I reached down to see if I were really aroused, and I was. We made love four times, it being important to her to do it in four different positions, facing the four cardinal directions, which seemed significant to her. When I woke my body was still–notably–aroused.

September 25, 2018

Bill Cosby, the symbol of wise manhood once, sentenced to jail at the age of 81. Nothing better illustrates Fortune’s inexorable wheel.

Kavanaugh, who looked like a sure thing behind the shield of monsters such as McConnell, may have to withdraw from consideration for the Supreme Court. One would think even corrupt men could choose a guiltless one and avoid the sturm und drang, but like will cleave to like no matter what.

The President is laughed at in the UN General Assembly. At least publically he is too stupid to comprehend the humiliation. I want to live to hear him say the words “I am a failure. I am a buffoon whom the whole world either laughs at or reviles.”  Any variation on that would do.

Continued miraculous enthusiasm in my playwriting course.

This semester’s comprehensive exams the worst I’ve ever seen. Someone let them think they needn’t even try. It’s partially our fault. Lazy and irresponsible programs such as Humanities cynically allege that they are teaching “skills” rather than “knowledge.”  This gives students the idea that if they answer correctly the question “do you feel that you have a sense of the history and significance of (fill in the blank)” they actually have mastered that subject. That they have mastered anything. What I wrote to my colleagues:

OK, for what it’s worth, here is my take on the badness of the comps this semester. Part of it is rhythmic and passing; it was just an off semester. Part of it is we don’t get to transfer students quick enough to prepare them. Part of it is an attitude that has crept into education (not us, so much, but so prevalent all around us that it is hard not to be tainted) that we should be teaching skills rather than “things.” Theoretically, this is fine, but it is almost never what happens. When lazy or irresponsible programs (such as the current iteration of Humanities) say “we’re teaching skills” what is meant is that they have given up on teaching actual subject matter and are satisfied if the student can answer positively a set of vague and useless queries such “do you feel you have a general understanding of the course and significance of” whatever the issue is. “Teaching skills” sounds excellent in conversation, but as it manifests in this university at this time, it is an admission that one has given up on–or failed at–teaching subject matter. Of course we are tempted by the current assessment culture into framing things exactly that way. Since there is no real way to assess the value of writing, or understanding, a poem, for instance, a rickety fiction grows up in which the student is encouraged to assess her own feelings about her progress as a scholar. Do you have the skills necessary to understand “Leaves of Grass”? God forbid if she should ever be asked actually to EXPRESS or PROVE her understand or appreciation of it.  Details, facts, names and passages are thought of as being fussy or elite in some way, and to be done without if a student can be confident in an abstract air of attainment. To me, this is the deliberate avoidance of academic principles, wherein the general is ALWAYS founded upon and derived from the specific. You do not have a general feel for the Harlem Renaissance unless you can quote Langston Hughes. You have no general knowledge of the Roman Empire if you can’t speak specifically about at least a few emperors. You have no useful general understand of literature if you don’t know what century Tennyson wrote in or what a dactyl is. There is no skill without application. There is no understanding without specific analysis. I do not mean to be excoriating US, because I think we’re as blameless in this as you can be in a community given over to it. I mean to say it is our task to hold the line and teach the way we ought to, and not be dismayed if we are, from time to time, a shock to our students. That’s what we ought to be: a shock and a correction and an open door.  

September 24, 2018

Wordsworth this AM, maybe the best I’ve done on him. Mike Oppenhein took photos of me in the Botanical Garden in light rain. He said the gray soft light was perfect for a portrait. I couldn’t take my eyes of the infinity of native flowers.  Terror House magazine in Budapest takes my Budapest poems– which I submitted by email last night.

September 23, 2018

One of my favorite days of the year. Who knows why? Maybe something wonderful happened on September 23rd.  Cleaned the pond filter, released a pinkish-goldish fish that had come out with the gunk. Hacked bamboo. Weeded a little. Dug holes for daffodil bulbs, not accomplishing what I meant to. Progress on Sam-sam. Regretted something with all my heart, but was unable to pin down exactly what it was. Miss Sam. I hope things are going as he planned. Watching Jason on Face Book. When I knew him he wanted to be a better-and-better artist. Now he has become a professional VET, nursing a never-ending grievance, which though genuine will not uphold him. One shrugs where only God can see.

September 22, 2018

Rose yet again in darkness, drove through the end-of-summer farmlands to Lake Logan and sang as much at choir camp as I could. Almost fell asleep during the round after lunch. Must see about this. The trees around the lodge are familiar to me, almost old friends. If they move, you look for an animal, but either the animal is invisible or it is only the wind.

September 21, 2018

Equinox. Nevertheless, sweet summer evening. Good class this AM, saying goodbye to Blake. I mean to write a little and then go put the tools away that I left strewn over the lawn after today’s gardening. Much digging and mulching, much mulching of what was dug and planted earlier. The only new things into the ground are daffodils.

Jon and Simone and I seem to have got the commission lined up in a way that profits all. It always surprises me when working with composers that they will not start a piece until the funding is in place. I go ahead and write it, assuming I can use it for something else if the commission goes awry. My friendship with Frank Ferko almost ended because I didn’t understand this. I have paid too little attention to getting paid, and it has had consequences.

Choir camp tomorrow. I’d weep if I thought too much about it.

I leave for school when it s still fully dark. This morning there were odd sounds in the black mass of trees between me and the next house. I thought it might be a bear. If it was, it never came out of the trees. Seeing a bear in your yard is the end of a kind of innocence.

September 16, 2018

Though it rained gently through the night, no sign of anything like unto a hurricane. Quite silent outside, except for the night insects. As I write dawn pales greenish gray.

September 15, 2018

The sky just before dusk is gray and gray and darker gray. Rained some, though whether that was part of the hurricane I doubt. We’re meant to be getting it full-on tonight. Did good work at the studio. Revised two plays. In a nap dream, Robert Mueller was anxious for me to try a recipe he had just made. One mishap after another kept me from ever tasting it.

September 14, 2018

One evening I looked out the back window and saw a cloud of dragonflies hovering and towering over the lawn. They seemed not to be interested in the pond. I had never seen such a thing– like a vertical migration.

Fleas on me, but not, so far as I can find, on the cats. I spray and they’re gone for a day or so. I check every twinge, every tickle on me to see if it’s a hated black speck. Almost never is, but often enough to keep the energy up.

Not very productive days–much napping, much achievement of minor chores. Good classes, I think, though what are they thinking behind their smiles or blank visages? One girl sleeps through most of class, misses the exam (for no particular reason), then can’t make up the exam because every moment she’s not in class she’s practicing with the track team. I say, “skip something.” She says, “I’ll talk to my coach.” She’s sweet, and her sweetness deflects wrath. You get into trouble if you say, “drop now; you can’t possibly succeed,” though it is the truth. Neither class remembers being told that “amount” is for measurable things and “number” for countable.

Hurricane Florence already hammering the Carolina coast. It’s dead calm here at this hour, but everyone prepares for the worst, buys out the grocery stores. I have liquor, mixers, radishes, cabbage, bratwurst, consider myself prepared.

Evening: after class I engaged in deep gardening, finally getting the round garden in the back dug up, ready to be mulched. No more exhausted than I would have been had I done nothing at all–maybe less. Planted allium and iris. The sky to the north– what I can see from the study window– is flamingo and azure.

September 9, 2018

Strange howling or shrieking before morning, like a screech-owl, but unwavering, and very much louder.

September 8, 2018

Moderate success in the studio. Finished a major work, until I look at it again and see what must be redone. Tony came and not only mowed the lawn but filled up the air in my truck tires. The strange holes dug in the lawn were not a mutant mole, as I’d thought, but him digging out yellow jacket hives. He failed, I guess, and the one I finally destroyed was the same one resurrected. The clumps of grass he left around the blue spruce were not neglect, but fear of the hive. The cats barely move. Maud will go to the shower to lap up water. Circe goes to the litter box and the food bowl, but spends the rest of her time on the green cushioned chair. Circe climbed to the study to me today, and I made much of her for extending what must have been tremendous effort. Old age is one thing that cannot be cured. I must be patient. Maud purrs when I hold her, and I sob.

Blundered upon the news that Pilgrim Hills is to be sold. My spiritual life began there.

September 7, 2018

Crashing like a runaway diesel into the weekend. I believe my classes so far have been successful. Not many sleepers even at 8 AM. The playwrights are unexpectedly eager. I stand and present the things that delight me, hoping they too will take delight.  Because of Miss Jill one replays one’s statements after class, weighing them to see if by some remote chance something maybe be distorted so as to seem sexist or exclusionary. The Inquisition comes to Academia, and we dare not even call it by that name. What complicates that issue is that one agrees with and upholds the stated goals of the very apparatus that torments one. But it goes too far, and takes “you’re going too far” as an admission of guilt.

Bought mass quantities of bulbs to force myself to reduce the outside of the fence to order.

One of the cleaning ladies stops me and says “Thank you for reporting the broken elevator. We reported it every morning, but they never listened to us.”

Sat beside the canoe-expedition-leading giant who just joined Cantaria. He is one of our straight men. He asked, “Why did you throw away all the good will and recognition built up by Cantaria and change the name?” I did my best not to say, “THAT, my friend, is the $64,000 question.” He has a magnificent deep speaking voice, but I didn’t hear a single note out of him during rehearsal. Maybe getting ready– Wanted to skip rehearsal, but ended up having a good time.

Thoughts rush through the head. At night dreaming dreams of astonishing vividness. Have not written in any systematic way since school began. Maybe tonight. I am sitting in the writing chair right now, so if I can just keep sitting--

Every day of lingering summer I bless. The moon last night was the thinnest possible crescent hung over Merrimon Avenue.  Late summer roses in bloom.

September 6, 2018

Joined AAUP after all these years. Why? 1) Because it is right, 2) Because I’m from Akron and have never been comfortable not belonging to a union, 3) Because the spokesman for the group is our absurdly handsome German political science prof, across from whom I sat all through the informational meeting.  You think these things recede with time; they do not, but merely become more subterranean.

September 3, 2018

Labor Day of intense and rewarding labor in the garden– nothing planted, much cleared. The shoulder-wrench which makes it difficult to lift a teapot simply ignores heavy garden work. Moved the raised beds out into the light, thinking of annuals next year.

September 2, 2018

Thunder in the distance, the sky yellow and gray nearby. We could use a drenching. Wrenched my shoulder loading the last of twelve bags of mulch. Had to leave the store to vent my fury– get the gout cleared up enough to function and something else goes wrong, the universe not being content if you go through an ouchless day. Got nothing planted, nothing weeded, not even the mulch unloaded from the truck. The rain will be my excuse. Headed for the studio, but forgot my wallet and turned around and gave up. Did nap. Did achieve that.

The shoulder pain seems to be worst when I’m typing. Of course. That’s what I need to do the most of.

Is it just me, or is it universal to spend one’s maturity looking back and wondering if there was a single moment when one wasn’t goofy or selfish or awkward or petulant or disappointing? I barely have a memory not tainted by the suspicion that I could have–probably did–look like an ass to every other participant. My poor parents. . .

September 1, 2018

Half way through my birthday. Spent it, so far, because the gout had left my toe, gardening. I’ve been opening up the patch against fence, which had been under the great pine and is a morass of tangled ivy and honeysuckle vines and roots: much labor, little progress. Did get yellow native hibiscus into the ground, and a few iris.