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.