September 29, 2019

Rose long before dawn and walked, making unsuccessfully for the Starbucks at Ingall’s. Got there all right, but they were not operating. Two men were setting out jogging in black clothing. I thought I’d walk back in the rising light, but it was still dark then and is barely gray now. The season of long nights approaches. Counted on the walk to relieve some anxieties, which it did. The anxieties seem to be centered on the university. My mind says “it’s not your problem anymore,” but does not quite communicate this to the nerves.

Tried to make coffee at home but the Maxwell House had turned into stone at the bottom of the jar. Took Or Did a Sea of Fire out of mothballs and finally found a suitable denouement for Nighthawks. I think I can get The Christmas Count back into shape, my first play ever to appear in New York, on Theater Row while the Twin Towers still loomed over.

September 28, 2019

Stand with hose in hand, trying to help the newest green citizens through this drought. We had a rag of somebody else’s thunderstorm yesterday which barely got the pavement wet.

Having missed too many rehearsals–and being too idle to learn the music on my own-- kept me out of Pride celebrations today, which was a disappointment, but which also gave me a day to my own devices. A mighty sending out of play scripts. Also, I went to the riverside office and prowled around for David Garrison in my Baltimore journals. Found him. Also found that my first Baltimore address was 1615 E Baltimore Street. Google puts this in the middle of the street, in an area I don’t recognize, so maybe urban renewal destroyed it, or I copied the address down wrong. I find that my stipend at Johns Hopkins was $222.22 a month, which was evidently sufficient. I met Rosa Ponsell on October 22, 1972. I sang on National TV before Aaron Copland on November 3, 1972. It was something difficult and not one of his popular pieces. He was kind and very tall.  I also applied to Phillips Exeter to be the Bennett Fellow 10 years before they chose me. But about David:

May 4, 1973: Talked to David, who is Barry’s friend, about Spanish and British poetry of the Seventeenth Century, and about religion. Missed a Journal Club meeting.
May 9, 1973: Socialized with Rangl, Barry, lanky David, Cro-Magnon Jack. David is like a minister you meet at church camp, smiling and calm. He is from Seattle
May 18, 1973: I shut my eyes. There were Titans with their eyes open in their sleep, and their eyes were fire and jewels. David Garrison, the Hispanophile, invited me to supper with him and his wife Sunday evening. He lives in Pumpkin Court Apartments.
May 20, 1973: Went to the Garrisons’ in Laurel for a delicious supper, curried chicken with broccoli afloat on it. A second guest, an Indian woman, was being deported and couldn’t make it. We talked. For a while with them I felt like a regular person.

Also was amazed by my dedication to the journal, pages and pages tightly handwritten, in a hand that was then still quite legible. I recorded everything. I was a vampire, a wolverine, tearing apart Civilization to devour it, to make it my own. I can barely eke out a terse paragraph or two now.

September 27, 2019

Woke too early, in anxiety about the state of the University, only little by little convincing myself that it is no longer my problem, and if it were my problem I wouldn’t know what to do about it. Though the causes are manifold and complicated, the symptoms not always easy to identify, the solution is quite simple: faculty governance. Roll back the size and power of the administration. End administrative oversight of curriculum and faculty affairs, and return it to the material support of education, which is the administrator’s only excuse for existence. All bad things in the university–this university, anyway-- arise from the administration, all bad ideas, all thwarting of good ideas, all unnecessary complications and absurd social enthusiasms. It is really that simple. If this were seriously presented, the Administration would enlarge itself, form a committee made up only of itself, and decide against it, finding jobs for all the new personnel by creating tasks, and therefore oversight, out of thin air. Administration would plead mandates from the Legislature. The Legislature is far away.

September 26, 2019

Partially exquisite, partially infuriating day off. Went looking for bookshelves to store the books I have to remove from my office. A comedy of errors.

Received a note about some students from the “accommodations office,” saying that certain ones have been granted “accommodations” for wandering the halls at class time, coming in late, missing class, not turning in the assignments– things that used simply to be called “bad behavior.” I will not live (or my career as an academic will not live) to see the pendulum swing back toward some notion of discipline and accountability. You want to cry out about it in a story or a play, but the official stance is so spinelessly absurd no one will credit it outside of academia, and no one in the world will credit it in five years.

September 25, 2019

Finally got the classroom computer glitch worked out. Glad it was an actual problem, so I didn’t look like a fool.

Second attack of hives, much less severe, during class last night. Wonder if they caught me scratching my armpits like mad. Did I buy the wrong deodorant?

Thirty six years and I still wonder what the brains behind those eyes out there in the classroom are really thinking.

Forgot lunch with Kermit.

Resurrected an old play, which I’d mothballed because all the characters are lesbians, and I wondered, “do I dare?”

September 23, 2019

Woke this morning with a rather terrible case of– what? Hives, I suppose-- redness over my entire torso, nickel-sized welts in several places, an agony of itching. The attack was over in an hour. The Internet said I had to have contact with something, or have eaten something. I was asleep, so I hadn’t eaten anything. Had something bitten me? Rushed the bedclothes to the washer in case I’d brought something back from New York. Never had hives before in my life. Interesting playwriting class, finding ways to share our work because IT won’t walk across campus to fix our computer. I will be blamed for being insistent; they will be blameless for being dilatory. The lad on the phone says nobody can help us after 4. Their webpage says help is available till 8. One shrugs, looks forward to retirement.

Can nerves bring on hives?

September 22, 2019

Fitful nap arriving home, the downtown to the reading of The Testament of Major Rathbone. The neighborhood was submerged in Goombay, so we didn’t have the conducive ambiance we had for the other plays, though it added a certain richness and cultural interplay. It went well. The triptych stands. There are points where it is so good I can’t credit having written it.

September 21, 2019

Writing in the Delta Sky Lounge at La Guardia.

Battery Park, empty when I got there, later brimmed with environmental protesters led by that Swedish girl who rowed across the ocean (or something). Subway from the Battery to Columbus Circle, where I fell in with the Hare Krishnas. Being in their presence and being, for a while, laved in their chanting was a real comfort. I had a spiritual experience there at the edge of Central Park which is difficult to tell of now. Went to The Great Society at the Vivian Beaumont. I arrived early to take in the evening ambiance of Lincoln Center. One of the things I saw was a man seated near the fountain with a script of The Great Society open to a page heavily highlighted in pink. The man’s eyes were closed and his lips moving. I thought if the actors were still memorizing their lines it was a bad sign. He turned out to be playing General Westmoreland in an ensemble cast, so maybe he was tapped to fill in for that role at the last moment. My seat mate was a young man (three years out of college) named Zach, from Los Angeles, whose mother had given him the money to come to New York to see Sea Wall because he was attempting to write monologs. There’s a supportive mother. I was just wondering why people bring backpacks and giant parcels to the theater when in he walks with a duffel bag, which somehow he manages to get completely under the seats. It crossed my mind that it was a bomb, but there were guards searching every bag at the door. Zach is an intense young man concentrating on writing scripts, who blames Kerouac’s The Subterraneans for infecting him with paranoia. I told him to go see Edward and Gaveston when it opens in his home town. The play was essentially a dramatized documentary concerned with things I remember from when they really happened. Zach had experienced none of it, and was having an altogether different evening at the theater. My history plays are better. I kept imagining the better use they would make of that extraordinary space. Otherwise, my luck held, and I caught a taxi the instant I hit the street.
Lying in bed to catch the 4 hours of sleep left to me before my limo to the airport I thought, “everything this trip has gone well.” One fears to say such things before one is home under one’s own roof.
However liberal my ideas on immigration might be, it’s irritating when your driver speaks only Chinese, and on top of it tries to carry on a conversation. We did finally connect when he turned the radio on and I said “I like that music.” He said, “You young. Only young people like that music.”

September 20, 2019

Sitting in Flanagan’s Bar on 14th Street, having a $6 vodka tonic, and who should walk through the door but Lynda Sarver Gaug, whom I have not seen (though we have corresponded) in forty years? An amazing moment. We caught up as much as we could, then off to the reading at BGSQD on W 13th. There’s a church nearby, and every niche and stairwell was filled with homeless people claiming a place protected on at least one side for the night. The reading was in a little upstairs bookstore, and though I thought I’d come a long way for so small a venue, it proved convivial, and the praise from the Red Hen people for my book was gratifying. I believe I was triumphant. Walked Lynda back to Penn Station, where she caught her train to Babylon. Along the way we filled each other in on mutual friends who have died or otherwise been subtracted. I keep to myself the conviction that I am just now–as my peers retire and fade away–beginning my proper career. Dragged myself to the Marriot lounge, where I sat beside Pat, who is here to start a cruise up the Saint Lawrence. Her family has lived in Florida since the beginning of the 19th century.

Writing in the lounge in the morning. Just now met JP, a dead gorgeous brute of a man who used to work in secret government ops (I guessed that from the look of him before he told me) and who is now an official with the VA, on the phone with urgency in his voice at the crack of dawn. He asked why I was in town, and I told him, and this elicited the information that he, too, was writing a novel, and would I like to look at the first few pages? I did, and somewhat against expectation they were very good, exciting, intriguing, like the opening of a better-than-average best seller. I said, “If I were an editor, I would read on.” I hope that’s what he wanted to hear.  I gave him a copy of Wyona, though his style and mine could hardly be more different.

Subway to the Battery, where I sat under the sycamores at a table where I could see Ellis Island, and could have seen Liberty without the big fat loading cruise ships.

September 19, 2019

Thirty stories above Time Square in The Marriot Marquis, which I long admired without ever thinking I’d be inhabiting. It’s itself a towering city which, in bad weather, one need not ever leave. My customary digs at the Paramount lies just across the street, so this part of town feels firmly like “home.”  Hit the Rum House, a usual haunt. Men have always tended bar before. Women did last night, and the difference was palpable. The men are fully focused on their customers; the women bartenders are intensely protective of and interested in one another. One felt that one was negotiating for a drink, which would be denied of one had not behaved. Wandered half drunk back onto the street, passed the theater where Hadesville was playing, walked in and asked if there were a ticket for half an hour later, and there was. It is a version of Orpheus, and my mind shot back to Peri and Monteverdi. Hadesville is a genuine addition to this succession, over-produced (it is, after all, Broadway) but with genuine sentiment, lively in action, and with one spectacularly god-like boy in the chorus. Its thesis is the O and E were a reflection of the love affair of Hades and Persephone, and the histories of lovers is a long succession of the same beautiful stories over and over. I thought, as I always do, of what I would have done to improve the script. The seats are small and the giant man next to me was conspicuously miserable. Afterwards, a stroll through Times Square, where The Hulk wanted rather aggressively for me to take a picture with him, then to my room to watch the next installment of Ken Burns’ Country Music.

This morning took my necessary walk to Bryant Park, feeding the necessary brown birds. Headed south from there, down Christopher Street, draped in rainbow bunting, but nearly empty. Sit now on Times Square under an umbrella, calm in the midst of all, having walked from the hotel to the Village. I’ve done that before at greater speed, but the doing of the deed is what matters. A kid plays Pachelbel on a little stage at the end of the plot of chairs. Grimy sexy construction workers have their lunches at the next table. Wandered through a beautiful little garden near the corner of 7th and Christopher, where I gave a copy of The Falls of the Wyona to the people collecting donations for the upkeep of the garden. They said they’d come to the reading tonight, but who knows?

September 18, 2019

Asheville Regional Airport, my good luck bloody Mary in front of me. The swelling in my ankle becomes so vast that it is an issue for the TSA, who must probe around on it to see if it is a bomb. They ask if it hurts and I say “yes,” though it doesn’t, just to see how it affects the process. They are probably past noticing contempt by now.

September 15, 2019

The reading of Earthly Power at the Block last night was brilliant. I am gratified by the impression the Lincoln plays seem to be making on their audience. The plays are better than I imagined them to be, and that is a testament coming from the author himself. Jack and DJ and I trundled over to Aloft for refreshment afterward. The burger was disappointing, but after a successful night of theater, how could it even be mentioned? Asheville can be lovely of a Saturday night. Gorgeous Richmond on the balcony with us.

Anemia hits again, after what I feel was two days of an ulcer incident, Hard to breathe roaming the streets last night. Hard to get up out of bed for more than a few hours at a time. Time to build back again– though it is the illness that feels kind of nice, sort of warm and watery, an excuse to lie back and draw the covers around you, nothing else to be done.

September 14, 2019

From an email:

Gita Smith
Fri, Sep 13, 6:48 PM (14 hours ago)
to me

Dear David: Long, long ago (1978) I and several other Atlanta poets published your poem in Daimon, our quarterly broadsheet. I kept every edition, and today pulled one out at random and there was your poem.
Still beautiful.
Still needing to be read.
So on Sept. 17, I am going to forward it to 30 friends who value excellent poetry. Each of us sends out a poem on a given day of the month. The 17th is my day.
Thank you for having written it. I know they will love it.
Gita M. Smith

On some days one draws in, wants to sell or give away anything not directly related to Fulfilling the Vision while one can. On other days one wants to gather, stretch, relax, assuming that there will be time for everything. Today is the second of those; yesterday was the first. I suppose this is the uncertain alternation that moves us forward.

September 13, 2019

Reading for Falls at Malaprop’s last night. Tiny audience, but a choice one. I wanted to bitch about attendance, but I realized I had fun, so what the hell. I believe we sold no books. Tom reverses those many months of– whatever it was-- shows up for Lincoln and for the reading and swears he’ll see me at Lincoln again Saturday night. I am grateful, if in the dark.  We had drinks at the Bier Garden until the Panthers game began and nothing could be heard.

September 12, 2019

Planted the rest of the iris order, putting allium in around them for a pleasing effect. Cleaned the pond drain.

Played tapes of 9-11 for my class yesterday. I suppose it is remote to them, but it was immediate and heartbreaking to me.

Wednesday was also a day of student upheaval.  S came to my office saying she needed me to talk to me, “just keep talking” because she was about to “freak out.” That went on until it was time to go to class. She brought her gear to class, but immediately left. An alarm in her backpack went off every five minutes. After the third student got up to wander around during a 75 minute class, I remarked on it and the response was, “are we really expected to sit that long?” I realized that no one in their lives had suggested to them they ought to do something they did not want to do, that some sacrifice of immediate will might lead to greater reward. Simply not part of the picture. Their parents have been helicoptering over them to insure they are never crossed or rerouted in any way. When class ended, S sat in the office tormenting poor Wren. “I’m afraid something is wrong with my cats!” cries she. “Your cats are fine,” says I. “How can you be sure?” Says I, “I just am.” I offered to drive her home or escort her to the health center, but she preferred to sit there “freaking out.” I am the wrong person to come to when you’re “freaking out,” because after I’ve offered a few solutions and you still intend to take the dive, I hear myself thinking, “Oh, straighten up. Stop it.” Today’s student does not recognize any special place outside of their daily drama, where their daily drama should be suspended or sidelined for an hour or two. Class was holy to us. If you were going to have a fit, you would do so outside, before, after, when the lights were back on you. Am I being unsympathetic? I suppose I am, admitting that, in a life sometimes as terrible as any other’s, I have managed not to disrupt anything important to other peoples’ lives. I feel anyone could achieve that much. We have a generation that does not know how to be told “no.”

September 8, 2019

The reading of The Loves of Mr Lincoln last night at the Block off Biltmore was a larger success than even a greedy heart like mine imagined. Stopped at Daphne’s for vodka and salad, fortifying myself for whatever might come. But, what came was a full, enthusiastic house and a reading that did the work justice. I knew some of the audience, but it was by no means “the usual crowd.” High praise from all sides– though, as ever, one assumes the people who hated it wouldn’t draw you aside to tell you so. There are some playwright-y touches that it’s probably too late to excise. But, all in all, huzzah!

Elijah didn’t show up for the performance. I knew when we were reading a couple Sundays ago that he would not. The vibe came off him like radioactivity. John was a fully ample stand-in.

What with the reading at Malaprop’s Thursday and Earthly Power back downtown Saturday, it looks like my week. Not to mention that “16th and Curtis” opened in Tacoma Thursday night.

Maud lies on the floor at my feet. She is dreaming. It looks like a happy dream. The amazing thought that my little cat’s psychic life is as closed to me as the moons of Jupiter.

September 7, 2019

Bright days continue. A flight of helicopters came over as I was digging room for new iris. The sound of invasion.

My first try at begonias has been a resounding success. Dug a new bed for iris, and then put them somewhere else. The new bed was not murmuring “iris.” 

Dreams last night of theater productions, probably related to the big reading downtown tonight. They were doing one of my plays, and one scene had everybody’s head poking through blue plastic. I asked what the hell that was about, and was shown in the script where I had specified that scene happened in the water.

David Lee Garrison writes that he knew me at Johns Hopkins. I was miserable at Hopkins, and assumed I was as invisible as I felt. Delicious to know that somebody remembered. I do not, in fact, remember him, though I’m going to drive out to my office and delve through the Baltimore journals till I find him.

September 6, 2019

Cashed out most of my stock holdings, for the first time convinced by the talk of Recession. I thank Google for $190,000.

Michael Gill writes from Ohio that his son is now the age he was when we met.

Good presentation, I thought, on Deism and Dryden and that golden/tawdry age.

September 5, 2019

The mystery tree volunteering all over my yard is clerodendron. It’s pretty, and butterflies love it.

Went to the Y and worked out, weights and cardio. Survived it. High 5 afterward, where I finished a chapter of Sam-sam, which now I must type up. Talked with JC about the reading Saturday night. All things seem to align.

Drove to Jesse Israel’s and bought a stone St. Francis for the garden.

September 4, 2019

Tom and I had breakfast beside the sinkhole, without mentioning the–year? Two years? –we had not spoken. He was betrayed by the man for whom he was writing the Christian script, as one knew he must be.

Good class on The Crock of Gold.

Summer returns with sweaty vengeance. Let it.

Finished a revision of Diving into the Moon, woke the next morning and revised the ending again.

Snotty students sending snotty emails. 

Sleeping gigantically.

September 2, 2019

Lovely birthday dinner at Maria and Russell’s, their baby asleep in another room. I realize that I’m not used to much ordinary conversation, have to keep on my toes to participate properly.

Harvested persimmons from my persimmon tree. They’re delicious and strange.

Sat beside the French Broad, listening to family picnics and watching the various bugs make their way across my table.

Tom emails to meet for breakfast tomorrow. That Ice Age may be ended.

September 1, 2019

My 69th year under heaven. Even to say the number is shocking. Sophie said, “You certainly don’t look like you’re nearing 70.” Very relative, but better than saying I look exactly like that. Excellent sermon at church, then a season-opening picnic with waterslide. Something at the picnic made me sick, and I didn’t do the waterslide, but I blessed from my heart the happy children who did. One must note that a really good poem appeared in the New Yorker, slipped through, apparently, the sieve that seeks for the worst. It was about a young girl looking at bodies at a swimming pool. Maria is making dinner for me tonight. The day has lain blue and lovely on all things. Almost enough birthday greetings on the Internet to satisfy me. None from school. That says it all.

August 31, 2019

Adequate painting in the morning. I was sad, and the painting made me sad. Looked in the photo albums from the old Urthona Galleries, and saw a hundred of my paintings, exuberant, joyful, exploratory. Where have they gone? As far as I know, all lost. Some were sold, but how can I know if even they are still extant? I destroyed most of them in despair that no one seemed to get them, no one seemed to like them. I did. I miss them. I wonder why I let myself be led away from them.

Also the day my fury at the Administration turned from fury into sadness. I realize that I am defeated. Being fully right and yet fully defeated is a lesson I am given over and over because I never quite learn it. I think that if I had just persevered a little longer, been a little more unanswerable in my reasoning. None of that matters, sometimes. I must learn that none of that matters, sometimes. Sadness is better than fury, for it allows thought of other things. I painted, weeded, then took out Diving into the Moon and started a revision.