December 30, 2018

Suzzy Sams has died.

Sent a copy of my father’s birthday poem (New Ohio Review) written on the spot to de Sandro’s in Venice. Somehow I can’t imagine mail getting to the right places through that chaos of streets.

Gray now towards evening. Thinking back on the year. One great shadow was the Demon, about which nothing can be said. The other great shadow was anemia, which affected me more than I realized. I didn’t travel in any significant way, and pretty much lost interest in social activities or being on stage. Even resented the art shows because I would have to gather myself to move the art around. Now that is righting itself, and I have some conception of the cost. Glad in any case that it wasn’t “old age,” as I feared it might simply be. Odd that it took so long to get back on course– three years, easy, of periodic debilitation. I think I assumed, in my gloomy way, that it was really something worse and that nothing could be done. Live and learn.

Three art shows in a year came as a surprise. This third will be the best.

My first novel, maybe my first two novels. No way of knowing how all that will turn out.

Two women singled me out as anathema in their lives, and I’m still trying to fathom why. One of them is simply silly and privileged. The other was– perhaps is this hour–rabid in hatred, gathering temporary allies around her whenever she can spit out her story. I didn’t do any of the things, say, or even think any of the things she accused me of, but I am not so delusional as to think I did nothing at all. But what? My conscience is clear, so enlightenment must come from elsewhere. All could have been amended, perhaps avoided outright, if she had spoken to me of her anger rather than cutting a swath of prevarication and madness through the general world. In my world tattle-tales deserve nothing. Still, whether she tattled or confronted me like a grown woman, there was something I did she found so enraging that she has dedicated untold hours to the (futile) effort to harm me. It is genuinely baffling. Nothing I think of on my own could be sufficient cause. The rest of the issue is that someone has given young women–young people in general-- a program of outrage uncoupled to any process of discernment. Someone has let them think that their perceptions are best when they are immediate and unconsidered, and to imagine that any correction– or, God help us, opposition– is sexist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, etc, according to the banner they are carrying at the moment. Reason has no more place than it does with, say, a religious fundamentalist or an alt-right bigot. Like all dogmatists, they believe the voice of moderation is the voice of Satan. Deliver the Message by rote and expect immediate compliance. They would be horrified by the comparison to the religious Right, but it is point-to-point. Nor do they consider lack of education, experience, discernment, or standing a bar to having their say, even to having their say treated as judgment. Like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, rule by the least prepared. I adore my students. Letting them think they are what they are not is the most repugnant dereliction of our duty toward them. I said earlier than patience is not a virtue. Maybe it is in the case. One must turn aside without striking the blow.

Excellent day painting. Baked butterscotch cookies.

Vivid dreams by night. Last night I gave lectures on terraces overrun with flowers. They lectures were meant to explain–well, I think it was poetry, because I kept quoting Keats-- finally and succinctly, so that everyone could understand. I was dismayed that some still were scratching their heads and stalking away unfulfilled.

December 29, 2018

Baked peanut/chocolate pie. Painted well, though the studio was filled with the smell of gas. Someone had turned on a gas jet and not turned it off. Visitors from Cleveland. Met a new studio neighbor– handsome in a potato-resembling way.

I’m the Featured Poet in the Fall/Winter 2018 Halcyone, as well as having supplied the cover art, a hovering halcyon. Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers is listed as a “new release,” though I’ve seen no trace of it. Patience is not one of my virtue. I’m not even sure it IS a virtue, though it is clearly a strategy. 

December 28, 2018

Note from Colorado:
Hello Uncle David,
Thanks so much for the gift for Clara. This is her first teddy bear! She really likes it, we already named him “ Bamse” - Danish for teddy bear. Hope you are well and thanks again.
Best,
Beka

Bigger floods today than on the says we were warned about flooding. The river roads were closed and I had to find a circuitous route to the studio. Painting on Daniel’s fish picture  in the rain-dark. A family from Paris paid a visit.

December 27, 2018

With the worst of my anemia goes my long-standing, and otherwise inexplicable, craving for radishes. The last bag sits slowly dwindling in the fridge.

Rose early (for vacation) in the rain and went to the High 5, determined to read Charlie’s book. I read one page then set it aside and began a play about reading Charlie’s book. This is why I get so little reading done. The café is peopled largely by incredibly good-looking men, often by themselves.

This day has been a paragon of days. After coffee and writing, I went to the studio and painted rather heroically. I will be ready for Perimeters I think Jhierry was mistaken to say we’ll need 30 paintings, unless I’m misremembering the space. He may get 20. Also many errands completed, diving toward the new year. I was happy all the day. I felt useful and fulfilled.

After putting me through days of quite despair, the stock market jumped the most it ever has in history. My retirement is back on.

December 26, 2018

Home from the darting sojourn to Atlanta. Things mostly well there. The eldest is reportedly going awry, though I don’t see it- the two or three times a year I lay eyes on him. The rest go from strength to strength. Have promised to paint a wilderness scene including a fish for Daniel’s cubicle. Brown trout, most likely, which we agree is a natural masterpiece. Two of my nephews have become cubicle jockeys. Daniel mentioned that in his whole family, any way you look, I was the only one who turned to art. I reflected silently that I may have overdone it a bit. Bekka sent me a framed portrait of my grandniece. When the festivities were over and people scattered, I went back to my home-away-from-home Hyatt, walked across the parking lot and saw Aquaman. I liked it. It brought back a simpler, more brightly colored time. As I walked back across the parking lot to the hotel I thought, “this is the least turbulent Christmas, the one least fraught with regrets and bitter memories, in what of life I remember.” I took a satisfying piss in the shrubs just outside the windows. The two men running the hotel on Christmas night could barely be torn from their cell phones to check me in.  But, there was chilled lemon water, and no canned carols. All was well.

December 25, 2018

Stupendous moon as I hit the road, then, upon Beaver Lake, three Canadas floating in motionless state.

December 24, 2018

The music is done. The ears still ring with it. Christ gave himself a radiant, if imperfect moon, for the eve of His birth. It surprised me to sit on the sofa for a moment before bed thinking “all is well.”

December 23, 2018

Bright winter day. The moon in brilliance last night. Party at Jack’s, where I was unusually sociable.. Steeleye Span’s “Thomas the Rhymer” from You Tube. Sitting at the computer still wearing my Santa hat.

December 22, 2018

Rose and ran at the Y, determined to get everything back. It was snowing when I went out into the morning dark. Baked fudge pie for Jack’s party. Rehearsal of the Vivaldi with strings. Bought Maud her own litter box, to see if that will solve our recent bathroom problems. Giant Mexican lunch annihilated me. Discovered the “If You Grew Up in Ellet” Facebook page, which featured a video of a car driving down Goodview to Pilgrim to East Park, part of the route I walked to school for five years. Someone asked “Whatever happened to Jeff Oxley?” something I have wondered about too. We played under the big strange tree in his yard. He invited me to a birthday party where we ate at Burger King and then saw Swiss Family Robinson. I looked over my shoulder the whole time, thinking his inviting me was a joke, because I treated him so badly most of the time. He locked me in his toolshed once, and I determined to beat it to pieces if he didn’t let me out. His grandfather heard the din and let me out, scolding me rather than Jeff for the event. He followed me to Boy Scouts. A Twitter feed insists I have an interest in the Iowa Hawkeyes. Daniel wants me to paint him a picture of wilderness to look at in his depressing accountant’s cubicle.

December 21, 2018

Driving gray rain for the Solstice, dark, so that the Longest Night be even longer.

Merry AGMC party at All Soul’s, light and loving. The degree to which my increasing strength leads to increasing interest in social things is quite remarkable. My cookies were a hit. Among the gratifications little talked of is that of a cook seeing people gobbling up his wares. Hungry Milly joined us, and we got to slam Trump for the latest atrocities.

Good workout at the Y in the darker dark of the morning. Talked briefly with godlike Nat. Merely shaking his hand sent electricity through my body. I wonder if people who have that effect on others know that they do.

Ladybug on my lamp. I wish her well, not knowing how her kind pass the furious winter.

Peter Warlock going through my head.

The coffee grew cold as I wrote my Solstice poem.

Evening: dark again, darker still. The rain continues. Baked. Slept. Waiting for the Kindling.

December 20, 2018

Baked cookies for the AGMC party. Ate a steak and nothing else, inspired by my roomy tuxedo pants to go further.

Gave my blackswan.org domain to a women named Calisha Owen, so she could use it for her community arts program in York, PA. Hadn’t touched it in years.

December 19, 2018

Gradual procession through all the grays in the sky outside my window.

Snowed-out Lessons and Carols finally happened Sunday morning. It was sweet, and better, I think, than had it been a special evening service.

The second iteration of the AGMC concert was better than the first, and more richly attended. I believe we offered a real addition to the festivity of the season. High celebration at Avenue M afterwards. We brought the restaurant impressive added business, but also slammed the poor servers who received the wave.  “Just warn us next time,” Terri said.

Ruth said, “You’re the basso continuo that holds the group together."

Jack and Leland and I took down Night Wings and hauled it all back to my studio. Conflicting emotions about that. I was glad to have the work back, having felt a strange anxiety at its being spread across the North. I was glad to have THAT over with and the freedom to get on to something else. Yet, not one thing sold. I can’t believe that’s usual, even for a backwater like the Weizenblatt. NOT ONE THING. Hard not to attribute a sort of cosmic unfairness. I am HE WHO IS NOT MONETIZED. BUT, have painted well (and quite differently) all the mornings of this week. Tuesday an electric outlet in my studio burst into flames. When I pulled out the lamp plug that was in the burning socket, it caused a considerable blue-white explosion. I may have screamed, for the girls came running from their studios. Extremely tall people from Durham wandered through. The spiders one finds lurking behind one’s paintings are the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen which were not outright tarantulas. I try to concentrate on their elegance rather than their size.

Sudden flash to the fifth grade. We had a substitute, and I remember her looking out over the class and saying, “I have seen just about as much nose-picking as I can stand for one day.”  It was hilarious then; it’s hilarious now.

December 16, 2018

First concert went extremely well last night, appreciative crowd, no vocal calamities, festive cocktails at Avenue M afterwards. I think Jon and my commission piece is a true victory. Joy in the entire evening. I have lost considerable weight since I last put on my tuxedo.

December 15, 2018

Jon D attended dress rehearsal last night. We did badly, I think out of anxiety at his presence, but the main criticism he had to make concerned tempo, which was not the singers’ fault. I left my water bottle on the altar. Hope someone thinks it is an offering.

Auditioned as an actor for Magnetic’s upcoming season. As my stamina returns, I want to gain back fragments of my life which I’d had to let go. I was the first audition, it turned out, those who signed up before not appearing. Thought I did well enough, but who knows what’s happening on the other side of the lights.

Circe limps out of her den for food and water. That progresses, anyway.

Sat in High 5 and wrote a poem.   Colossal Cinemascope dreams continue.

December 14, 2018

Circe screamed quite horribly twice in the night. That, or I dreamed it. But in the morning she had stopped moving even to piss, so I lifted her from a pool of her own urine and took her to the Vet. He found a skin infection which might be serious enough to change her behavior. While she was at the Vet’s, she began to limp horribly. Dr Eddie put the limp and the screaming together and wondered if she might have “thrown a clot.” But I brought her home. I had to lift her out of the litter box, where she had taken up residence, twice, and opened a little cave for her in the bathroom cupboard. She was sitting at the edge of the cupboard this morning, looking bewildered. The limp is still bad. Either she did “throw a clot” or she got injured somehow in the car. She head-butted like mad to get comfort from me in the doctor’s office.  A few hours ago she left her cupboard-lair for the first time, to eat and drink. I think that is a good sign.

Stopped by Petco, where a woman asked me to help her in with an aquarium with two sizable bearded dragons. “I’m re-gifting these,” she said, “they’re my son’s, but he hasn’t been taking care of them properly.” I was returning flea bombs, which, I discover from the label, would have exploded once they hit my several pilot lights.

Rehearsal at Grace Presbyterian for the GMC concert. We probably did well enough for having another rehearsal before the Big Night. Jon will be here tonight to hear our piece for the first time. Mike the Australian stood beside me; he sounds really good. The men on either side of me are well over six feet tall. It must look ridiculous. Avenue M for cocktails after rehearsal.

Drove to Waynesville to go to a Christmas store I remembered there. Turns out it has been closed for two years. Nevertheless I bought a few things here and there. When I walked into one store someone shouted “Hamlet’s Father!” It was Polonius, recovered from his wounds. 

I have a reading in Los Angeles in September for The Falls of the Wyona.

Massive, vivid, complicated, narrative dreams. Last night– well, I’ve lost most of it, but I was in love and living with a handsome blond man. We lived in a sprawling sci-fi mansion stretched around a fabulous garden. Our life was perfect, even after someone suggested he was probably a robot. He admitted he was a robot, and though I didn’t care, he did, and, I think, faded away. Comforters came to me and tried to get me to write an opera, which they said would take my mind off the loss. I knew, but they didn’t, that he had turned into a sort of ghost, and we would laugh together at my comforters once we were alone.

Trump a step closer to prison, where he would be already were he anybody else. One tries not to rejoice in the misfortune of others.

December 11, 2018

Intricate dream. I’d been doing some important job, and needed a rest, so I decided to go home, to Akron. My father was still alive, but not home, so I’d have the place to myself. When I got to Akron it was gigantic and complicated, like a European city, and I didn’t recognize any of the landmarks. I’d decided to walk home, at night, through the snowy streets, and only with reluctance shifted over to public transportation– a kind of train that was like a strip mall moving. But I realized I didn’t know what stop to take. I also realized that I had not brought my keys, and my father was not the kind to hide a key under the welcome mat. I considered the possibility of breaking a window to get in, but it was winter. I decided to get a hotel room. I looked out the window of the street-train and saw nothing resembling a hotel as far as eye could see. Then I woke, cold, convinced that the furnace was off. It wasn’t.

Before light I re-excavated the car, and bashed my way through the ice wall to get it on the road. Drove it to Starbucks, which was not open. Drove it back, and, needing two tries, bashed it through the wall at the other end of the drive. Walked to the bank, and it had not opened. There was not that much snow.

December 10, 2018

As I foretold, the Armageddon of snow did not, here, come to pass, though other people are bereft of power. My bamboos bent to the ground, and a great hemlock branch from the neighbors’ fell across my drive. I emerged this morning to dig the car out, and felt the incredible weight of the snow. Could hardly lift the trash can lid. Could hardly lift the hatchback. I am amazed that any tree or roof stands up under that. Dug the car out, but as the plows had left a wall of ice at the end of the drive, I didn’t bother to move it. One hears an afternoon thaw all around, and I’ll try again at the end of it.

Threw bread out to the crows in the height of the snowfall. Were they grateful? They ate it.

Listening to “Speaking in Tongues” on You Tube. One wishes that all available examples weren’t so clearly gibberish.

I have not made much of the time the blizzard has given me.

December 7, 2018

Pearl Harbor. Last exam. All but two isolated grades in.

Dabbling on Ancestory.com– my great grandparents had two sons named Jasper, each of whom lived not quite a year. Guess they stopped trying for Jasper. Another son who died young and six daughters who lived forever, many of whom I new.  There is a door a long way behind me. I want to go backward, walk through it, and this time try to remember everything.

The Christmas cacti in my university office are blooming, one flamingo, one magenta. Just as I leave for a month.

Probably New Year’s Resolutions

1. Stop wasting time on manufactured outrage. Purge it from yourself, have no patience with it in others.

2. You know after an exchange or two what discussions are trivial and time-wasting. Sign off.

3. Ignore the non-life-threatening errors of others as you would have them ignore yours.

4. Clarity straightens and smooths all roads. Practice it.

5. You’d love to allow emotion to overwhelm reason, conviction to trump evidence. In public matters, though, this is the root of cruelty. Don’t do it. Don’t countenance it.

6. Don’t assign blame in situations where your own understanding is imperfect.

7. Don’t worry about working outside the box. The box is an illusion.

8. Never be ashamed to nap.

9. Kindness rewards the kind and baffles the cruel. Practice it.

10. It is an odd truth the giving almost never impoverishes you, however much you fear it might. Keep this in mind. Keep your hand open. 

In the world of surprises: Ramsey Library wants to give me a show in February, and John Crutchfield will be directing Father Abraham for Sublime. Saw neither of those coming. Look behind for looming shadows. See none at the moment. Rejoice.

December 6, 2018

Gave one exam, finished off one class. Cooked a pot roast against the possibility of oncoming blizzard. My guess is that it will never happen, or be less awesome than is foretold, but if it is its worst, I have a cooked meal that will last at least three days. Bush buried with the absolute maximum of maudlin sentiment in broadcast media, bitter reaction and revulsion in social media. Crows behaving oddly in the sky overhead.

December 5, 2018

Back to the Racquet Club in the dark of the morning. Ran 1/3 of a mile and did my weights. I could have done more. And still I rise. Sat in the café and wrote on Jason. Fluffy snow flew into my headlights as I drove.

The department sailed through a potentially acrimonious meeting yesterday. Nothing much was agreed upon, but incipient grievances were aired and dissipated. I am proud of us. We may be the only department on campus in which there has not been, in my tenure, inner upheaval. 

The news headlines on television have been 1) the death of George H W Bush and 2) a big snowfall which is not expected until Saturday night. North Buncombe schools closed today because it is cold. The gleeful TV weathermen revel in having, for once, the headline. 

As for Bush, most of my Facebook contact revile him and gag at the chorus of praise heaped on him officially at his death. I tend to forget how evil people are. What I remember about the first Gulf War was that on the night it was declared I was listening to it on the radio while driving to Fletcher to spend the night with Carol. He had a tiny kitten then who found places to join in while we made love. I suppose that will never be in the history books.

December 4, 2018

Easing into vacation mode, though the semester is not nearly done.

Each time I receive a letter from Red Hen Press, I initially dread that it’s a letter canceling my contract, because of the libel on Wikipedia. Has not been so far.

High Five writing early this morning. I was able to break through blockages in poetry and in Jason of the Apes. 

December 3, 2018

A mood came upon me, and when it was over, I had erected and decorated TWO Christmas trees. One has only ornaments in the shape of animals. Energy held through it all.  Most places are sold out of trees that are not gigantic, a shortage cause by I forget what. Forest fires? The recession too deep in 2008 for people to plant the trees they’d need ten years later? The Magnetic published its schedule, and In the Assassins’ Garden is set for June.

December 2, 2018

Chanukah. First Sunday of Advent, a day of spring in mid-winter, quite lovely, quite a tease in the midst of the Hibernian days to come. Did a little writing in the morning, but some energy in the air is not conducive to prolonged application.

Considering Miss Z B-S’s accusations. Once I dig beneath the hysterical and insane, the pure libel, I find fury at my taste in theater. I research and see I gave her a B in playwriting. I believe that is the root of it. Otherwise, there is no root at all.

December 1, 2018

Minor discouragement: publication date for The Falls of the Wyona set back to May.

Drove to Biltmore Village last night to see Simone’s chapeaux. Traffic insane. Landed in the middle of the annual Dickens Festival. Cold rain, but sweet nevertheless. I remembered wandering alone through night streets, absorbing that magic of Christmas, happy as a little god. I’m glad I can still do this, but I didn’t imagine I would be alone forever.