November 27, 2019

Stupendous rain on the roof in the morning dark. Whatever I was planning (like, going for coffee) must wait a while. Vivid, satisfying, narrative dreams.

Finding errors in Night Sleep, errors which I might never have caught (though I do now) but which an actual editor, or any editor at all, would have found. I think with nostalgia of the sometimes annoying thoroughness of the Red Hen ladies.

The lights flicker on and off in the storm. Working on Sam-Sam I have to save after every paragraph.

Tom’s mother dies. Pictures on Facebook of the family, he with the shocking young male beauty I remember from our first meeting.

G publicly fights cancer. She who proclaimed me a racist from the steps of the library and– completely irrelevantly–in a review of Childhood in the Milky Way. Who on earth thought her capable of writing a review anyway? Only the CT. I contemplate this; I make a donation to her medical bills fund. 

November 26, 2019

Woke at 2 AM (the odd Tuesday ritual) took a sip of cold lemonade and was instantly transported to the wonderland of chest pain. Wrong side, breathing unaffected, and in other ways didn’t seem like a heart attack, so I waited, and it went away. Was it a very deep muscle spasm occasioned by the sudden cold? It came again when I rose before 6, and I drove first to the university health center and then to MAHEC, but all the doors were locked, as it was still dark, dark morning. Passed by Mission Emergency because I didn’t want to get into that mess, and was convinced by that time it wasn’t a heart attack. It went away again. Must be spasms. It’s always something new, isn’t it?

Somber day, finally. Listening to Samuel Barber. Deciding what to write.

November 25, 2019

Contemplating the profitability of my vocation, concentrating on The Falls of the Wyona. It took $20 to enter the contest. I won the contest. The prize was a thousand dollars, which, nearly two years later, I have not received. Have twice gone to AWP (Tampa, Portland) to read or sign books at the Red Hen table in support of the book, something over $2000 each time. I went to New York to read in a tiny gay bookstore. Another $2000, I have bought 150 copies of the book (at a reduced price, yes) to aid in publicity and distribution. I sent them more than $400 so they could enter the book into contests. Have they done so? Who knows? I have been given the honor of going to the Virginia Festival of the Book, for which I will need to pay all my own expenses. I know people do make or nearly make their living in such a way, but, I, somehow, got a start down the wrong path.

Made cheesecake for a reception for our seniors.

November 24, 2019

Scarlet and Bill took me out to dinner at Posana, a sweet gesture from former students, who spent an uncomfortable portion of time praising my role in their lives. They told the maitre d’ that they couldn’t believe he didn’t know me. Much talk of former times. They are, in middle age, very much in love. I believe when I look back at my career it will be mostly ripe fruit and very little canker, though, unfortunately, the canker came at the end.  I wish I knew how to assure certain people of their smallness in the world, but even the attempt to do so enlarges them.

Walked into the new art museum, bought a membership, and think I convinced the gift shop lady to carry Night, Sleep.

November 23, 2019

Spectacular rain on the roof. A lullaby. The cats can’t walk ten feet without flopping down for a nap. The torrent will allow us not to march in the Christmas Parade this year, and for that my heart is thankful.

Have been typing for 50 years and still I have to stare at the keyboard.

November 22, 2019

Built bookshelves from a kit. Maybe I have a bit of a sense of accomplishment, but mostly a sense of a lot of time spent.

Yeats in class today. One student observes, “Yeats was a complicated person.”

Passed out copies of NSDL at school.  Carlos’ ordering procedure frustrated a few buyers already.

Received a carton of books from Red Hen, with extreme Evangelical tracts hidden in the bottom.

Fifty years ago part of America ended,

November 21, 2019

Dreamed last night of painting. KK was in the dream. Rose in darkness and went to the Racquet Club, the second time this week I’ve worked out. Millie M was there, preparing for a class. Weakness and anemia have prevented this for a year and more, though I wonder if I could have started back sooner had I pushed myself. Sat in the café with terrible coffee and watched the swimmers and wrote, as I have loved to do.

Have been accepted to the Virginia Festival of the Book. Monica at Red Hen says it’s a great honor. So, Charlottesville in March.

TIAA-CREF calls. My retirement situation will be way less desperate than I feared, slightly less cushy than I hoped.

Drove to Black Mountain and, against expectation, the books were ready. The first thing I noticed was that the book is pretty. The second is that THERE IS AN ERROR IN PUNCTUATION ON THE COVER. Decided to say nothing. What can be done now? Carlos never thought to give the cover over for proofreading; I never thought to request it. I was so exhausted from yesterday’s disappointments that I wasn’t very celebratory. I think this disappointed Carlos. It could not, at the moment, be helped. Pick a copy up every now and then, open a page to find an error or a bad sentence. None yet.

November 20, 2019

Bitter dream last night. It wasn’t bitter at first. Two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, showed up at my door and lured me out into the sunshine to play. They wanted me to follow them, and I did, through a golden wood. As we walked a certain familiarity infused the scene, and I realized they were my unborn children. I could not endure it.

Carlos said Night, Sleep was ready, and asked me when I’d like to pick them up, and I told him. When I got to the gallery in Black Mountain, he was not there and neither were the books. The lady said that she had read it and thought it was wonderful, and I tried to let that mollify me, but it did not. I walked into the parking lot and had a, for me, rare fit of ungoverned rage. Rage turned into exhaustion, and once I was home I lay in bed until it was time for rehearsal. I waited beyond four years since BMP said “yes” to the book, had to use my own money finally to get it printed in my lifetime. Someone might say one more day shouldn’t make a difference, but it made all the difference, an affront calculated,  petty, cruel, mean, gratuitous. God is a bad friend and a bad Father.  I could barely stir from the bed.

Note from Red Hen that my check– for a prize won in 2017– was delayed still further because my address on the W-4 did not match the one they had on file. I think I wrote, “Use any address you want, send the fucking check.” I don’t know if I really wrote that.

November 19, 2019

Today, for instance, I am a horse. Rose in the dark and went to the Y, where I did well and was never breathless. Finished And When He Fell–” Exhausted by my students, who feel that their failures should never be counted as failures, but erased because of circumstance– in one case, “Sorry I missed the exam, but it is very hard for me to get up in the morning.” A girl missed the exam, asked for a make-up, then cheated on that, looking me straight in the eye because she knew I could not prove it to the satisfaction of a spineless administration.

November 18, 2019

Good night with my playwrights. They said they would be sorry when the class was over. If I am interpreting correctly, I had an ulcer episode last night that left me weak and disoriented in the morning. It is painless, so I might be making everything up and my weakness may be a natural rhythm of the body, for on some days I am a horse. Did nothing but go to class and sleep. Delicious sleep.

November 17, 2019

When I come home at night, my headlights illuminate a cat perched on the end of the picnic bench. It stares at me with eyes demonically aglow. It wonders what I’m doing invading its solitude.

November 16, 2019

Theater last night with Jack. We saw Hnath’s A Doll’s House, part 2. Skillfully acted. Jack thought the set distractingly bare. Unfortunately, Nora’s perspective couldn’t be made (or the playwright didn’t want to make it) anything other than self-serving. Drinks at Claddagh afterwards. I had to tell the server what the Claddagh is.

The November moon has been following me, lighting my nights and mornings with extraordinary graciousness.

Invited to the Magnetic for the reading of a play by a former student. She provided champagne with raspberries in it. The play was carefully wrought and exhibited planning and intelligent application at every turn. It was, nevertheless, inert, with all the smooth and confident vices of over-planning. The author is a therapist and had invited mostly her therapist friends, who praised the play in ways that would seem good–or at least correct–only to a therapist. I decided to say nothing and to sneak out, affecting a coughing fit.

November 15, 2019

The last time I wore pajamas: after my first night of college. The only pair of pajamas on 3rd Gray got hidden away at the back of a drawer for the rest of the quarter. Quite good presentations in Lit class. They’ll do anything to get out of a 15 page paper, and sometimes it’s good. .

November 14, 2019

Lovely Thursday, my day off. Wrote an act of a play in High 5. The play is about Title IX absurdities, so the task is to keep it from being absurd. The café gets turbulent long about 9 AM, when late-sleepers arise. Wasted time at the bookstore in the Mall, so as to avoid the housecleaners. Thought I might look for Wyona, but when it wasn’t even under “local authors” I gave up. I will hold your feet to the fire, Almighty, until you allow one thing to come out right.

Have I waited too long to dig up the begonias? One of my Christmas cacti at school bears one magenta flower.

Here is an interesting issue: I’ve noticed before that when I’m fasting, the inflammation seeps out of my body. I’ve had nothing but coffee and a salad today, and though I was achy, stiff, and inflamed when I rose, I’m limber and without pain now, without the use of pills. Is that sufficient experiment? But I’m also grindingly hungry. Will the next issue of my life be finding the ground between inflammation and the distraction of hunger pangs? There are certainly worse things.

November 13, 2019

Tennyson this AM. What did they really think? Were they too submerged in the worries of semester’s end?

Extension of a Tuesday tradition of waking at 2 AM. Why? Woke finally while my character in the dream was holding a toy animal and singing a song called “Piggy, Piggy.”  I may have been singing out loud, for Circe was looking at me.

Went onto a web site for opportunities for playwrights, have been scrolling down for several minutes without finding ONE “opportunity” for which I’m eligible.  Women, yes, yes, and yes; lesbians, yes; rank beginners, yes. So far, not one for me or anyone like me.

Venice underwater. Now that I know that magical place it is a personal tragedy.

November 12, 2019

JC brilliant in playwriting class, using each student question as a plot point in the Great Story. I understand his writing far better now, and look on as a conviction what I had thought to be a deficit.

Discouraging department meeting. The Frost line comes to mind, “what to make of a diminished thing.” I try to tamp down my–is it glee?–at not being present for the coming darkness. The Administration sets this disaster up, and then wrings its hands that nothing can be done.  How trusting I used to be that the Administration had Education’s best interest in mind. Perhaps at one time it had.

November 11, 2019

Veteran’s Day. Filled out my last State Health Insurance questionnaire. I never did know exactly what I was doing, just ramming through to get it out of the way, to satisfy the people in HR. Disastrous exam on the Romantics. Anything of any degree of specificity throws them off. Radiant blue day. Last night annihilated the roses at last. Six messages from the City about boiling water. John comes to class today, and so far as I know, nobody went to see his play. If they read it, we are saved. I suspect they did not read it. They can never do the work at hand because they have so much OTHER work to do. One is patient with that for a very long time.

Second day of the Arts Stroll was like the first, though I did get a little discouraged. Sold two books.

November 10, 2019

Saturday spent at the River Arts District Studio Stroll, with the unusual and unexpected result of never being impatient with it. Did my work for hours and hours. Few people came in, no one bought, but for some reason that did not affect me. Muscles stiff from standing in pretty much one position. I have never received a review of my art work. From anybody. on any level. Experience suggests it has nothing in it to make it popular.

November 9, 2019

Theater last night, enjoying the lively downtown scene. Had disappointing Prosecco at Isa’s on my way, excellent house red and scallops at Zambra’s on the way back. The production of John’s play was about perfect, lively and expressive, utilizing every hidden potential of that sad little space. I admired the play’s heterogeneity, intermingling song and discourse and varying tone without a shred of shame, perhaps intentionally to add interest in lieu of a discernible plot. It would be fun to be in. Ordered my students to see the show. None were there last night.

November 8, 2019

Still-night morning, before class, full of crosses and trials, followed by the kind of bellowing tantrum that makes you grateful, for once, for living alone. Sitting in my office before class I heard footsteps in the hall, and prayed most sincerely, “Please let it not be K with orange juice and an update on her hysterectomy.” It was K with orange juice and an update on her hysterectomy. Gave an exam, Have not read the exam, but, glancing at a few answers, wondered if anyone hears a word I say. Came home and napped, and woke in a blaze of blue winter light. Last night’s cold got the chaste trees. Pricing flights for the March break. Ancestry.com suggests my great-grandmother was Australian (out of Ireland). Did William Keenan go to Australia (from County Clare) before coming to America? More digging. . .

November 7, 2019

Spent the day cleaning up the yard for winter, putting away tools, disconnecting hoses, cleaning the pond, digging little holes for unplanted bulbs or bulbs dug up by squirrels. The roses haul through, defiant of freeze. The official announcement of MT plays for next year hurts me, though I already knew I would not be on the list. The difference was that when K said she wanted to give other people a try, I assumed she meant people who might DESERVE a try. This is not the case. A political rather than an artistic decision. D showed me a play once, which at the time was chaotic but beautiful. If that is his chosen piece, it might be an exception. It’s like someone taking down your painting to put up the third grade drawings she just removed from the refrigerator. You understand it, but have committed to a world in which it cannot be countenanced.

November 6, 2019

What do cats hear when they hear music? Playing Marais, Maud beating her tail against my foot in something resembling the metronome. Holy Stephen comes to my office again to talk. I want to say to him, “don’t you think I can see you texting on your phone during class?” but I don’t, seeing something else is on is mind, him not quite saying what. Janis gives me a giant bag of Mexican sunflower pods.

November 5, 2019

Lunch with Kermit and DJ. Kermit says a second reading of Wyona was even better than the first, because now he’s convinced he knows the characters from his own life. I think of the ways I might have ruined the book had I put it through the last intended revision before it won the prize. Or maybe it would have been better. Who knows now? Got the courage up to ask the second time about my prize money. Monica said she’d look into it.

November 4, 2019

On Facebook from my old school chum Sharon: I recently found some quiet time to sit down and read, The Falls of the Wyona by David Brendan Hopes. It is a wonderful novel, and I enjoyed every single page. One of my favorite passages (and there are many), "The river flows sad sometimes because everything changes and he alone remains the same". It goes on, "Everybody remembers something, and somebody remembers everything, and that's what knits the fibers of the world together." Read this book, and remember how lucky we are to be able to share in David's beautiful creativity. Thank you, "Ancient Friend". Sharon was the hippy girl with the guitar and folk song back in our day.

Good pieces from my playwrights, especially from one who did not present before. He was saving it up.

November 3, 2019

Second stay at church, this time to sing the Faure Requiem. It’s like an old friend now, easy and welcome. My voice is familiar with it, and goes to the right note by long habit. The event was oddly serene, as though we were really singing someone asleep. The change to– or from, I forget which it is–has given me a further hour to wallow in.  Two nights of frost, and the roses fight on.

November 2, 2019

Rehearsal for the Requiem, an extended lunch, then mostly the waste of the rest of the day. Poking around in You Tube got me in a Hollywood mind. I remembered that my mother’s favorite actors were Tyrone Powers and Alice Faye. My father seldom expressed any such preferences, but he did mention several times The Time Machine and Rod Taylor’s performance in it. I contemplate that, trying to derive some understanding. The cold annihilated the last of the zinnias, but the roses made it through. 

November 1, 2019

Had planned to go to the theater, but the certainty of a bad show–not badly done, but badly written, bad in the kernel–allowed me to stay home with a clear conscience. If I were a god, I would insure that good things got better attendance and better publicity than bad things. I’m reading more since I decided to retire, reading for pleasure for the first time in thirty years. Renewed my library card. Bought a book in Los Angeles about the Red Scare and HUAC in Hollywood, noticing that HUAC tactics are indistinguishable from the tactics of Administration relative to Title IX. Lessons are not learned, or learned again and again: don’t know which is worse.

October 31, 2019

Halloween.

Enraged because the housecleaning was taking so long, I let myself in and found Elvis, a sweet Hispanic kid on his first day on the job. He says he loves my house. He says, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” Didn’t even ask why he thought so. Funny how the rage went away when I saw him. He finds white mold under the dining room table. He says he did the houses of Oprah and the Koch brothers in West Palm Beach. He can’t find my house much of a challenge. He listens only to Christian radio. Very curious about me. . . .