December 30, 2019

Early dark morning, waiting to take Circe for her procedure. She crawled so gently into bed and up against my chest that I didn’t know she was there until I woke.

Thought about what I should remember of this year. On the good side, I brought out two novels. They have not made much of a splash, or if they have I’m late in hearing about it, but they are good and I am proud of them. That they have made less of a splash than many MANY not as good as they is part of my old argument with the clouds. Not in the mood just now. But, I set them as a seal upon my heart.

Finished Diving into the Moon, Tub, and Jason of the Apes. What their fate may be cannot be imagined, but they too are good. To them I have done justice. Maybe I should summarize all with that: I have done justice.

My garden was excellent.

The sweetness of people extending their time and talents to realize my plays.

Unusual number of testimonials from former students, and friends. Maybe they sensed my need.

Made an important journey to the Holy Land, which I continue to contemplate.

The worst of it was witnessing the death of the university to which I dedicated my academic career. It may continue as a degree-granting apparatus, but its relevance as an institution of higher learning is gone, or at least interrupted. You cannot at once falsify and stand for truth. You cannot serve both authoritarianism and free thought. You cannot reward mediocrity and claim to honor excellence. You cannot move forward with the administration more important than the thing administered. You cannot pretend forever to be something you have stopped being. I have been a voice crying in the wilderness, and I am not good at it. It never occurs to me that anyone hearing the truth might hate it.

December 29, 2019

Saint John, Holy Innocents– I don’ know what today is. Holy Family, I think. Circe goes up and down. Added to her symptoms is ceaseless slobbering. I remember this is what Theseus had when he died. The knot in my chest is anxiety.

Baking, preparations for Tuesday night. Doing some writing.

Why is it I still think lesbians kissing in public are showing off? I started to say, “You don’t see men behaving that way,” but you don’t see men in Asheville publicly displaying physical affection much at all. A difference in culture, I guess. Gay men have gone underground here. We have domesticated. Gay women have not.

Here is the truth of my life, following me into another decade. (--too bleak to share--)I do expect some compensation from this, some gift from the Almighty that would make it all right. It would be hard to imagine what that would be. In any case, it hasn’t come.

December 26, 2019

In some ways the sweetest Christmas in recent memory. Circe was better. I did some baking, but mostly lounged half-asleep with Christmas music from classical stations shimmering on the air. Completely restful, rather magical. I am still able to think pure thoughts.

December 25, 2019

Happy Christmas to all. Circe walked down the steps, ate her pills in a glob of tuna, and does not have her head stuck in a corner. I count that a victory.

Services last night were quite beautiful, I think, and we sang well enough even for the occasion. Gave Sean and Alden the presents I had intended as a joke for David and Daniel, seeing that I will not be driving to Atlanta this morning. 

December 24, 2019

Cloudy Christmas Eve. Circe could be lured out from hiding, gobbled tuna in which I had hidden her pills. She climbed the stairs and tried to be in the study for a while, but Maud, not recognizing her in this state, hissed and growled. I don’t know how lasting her rally will be, but my little cat’s being that much better will allow the spirit of Christmas to reign over me, as it does now, listening to sad Christmas music on my computer. For the divine spirit comes about her body to sustain it in complete cat.

DJ and Russell and I into the masses last night to see the 9th and, as they say, the last of the Star Wars epic. I thought it was a moderately entertaining mess. Some of all those millions could have been spent upon a story.

Toward evening– Circe continues to improve, even wandering a little. I spent the afternoon semi-conscious, in a state of bliss brought on by the flood of unexpected sunlight and carols coming at me from every direction.

December 23, 2019

Bought my altogether too expensive flight to Ireland.

Listening obsessively to “The Christ Child’s Lullaby.”

Andrew Finn McGill and his friends gave a concert at All Souls– Christmas carols on violin and guitar, cello, hurdy-gurdy-- of shining excellence and giving deep satisfaction. I closed my eyes and went elsewhere, praise.

Woke and again had to search for the vanished Circe, who’d found another place to hide, head jammed into a corner. She is now at the All Pets. I have spent $900 on a cat’s infected ear. I expect the same today. As I said, exhausting. You get an infection. You get treatment, the infection gets better. I confess myself baffled.

Depression and uncertainty over Circe made me switch into self-anesthesia mode, and I have slept most of the day. The Lord was just in keeping me from being in charge of any humans in their crisis.

December 22, 2019

Pastyme concert last night. Exquisite, but now and then a little precious, tenuous, the texture stretched a little thin. They need a few more voices. The concert inspired me to return to poetry, which I had abandoned during the great flood of prose. Could I get back? This morning told me, “yes.” Sat in High Five with my face to the wall, weeping with gratitude at having the door of poetry yet open.

The next phase of the day was realizing that Circe had seriously relapsed. Couldn’t find her until I looked in the remotest corner of the house, where her head was jammed into a corner. My vet was closed for Sunday, so took her to REACH. REACH is the only game in town after hours and on holidays, but there is something creepy about them. They charged me $500, and I suspect, from my poor cat’s unchanged condition, that they did none of the procedures they charged me for, but sent me home with amoxicillin to jam down her throat, hoping for the best. The illness of another is as exhausting as one’s own.

December 21, 2019

In the mail:
jennifer@tuliptreepub.com
Attachments
Dec 20, 2019, 3:39 PM (15 hours ago)
to me

Hi David,
I would be honored to include "Approaching Dollywood" in the Fall/Winter issue of TulipTree Review. The payment is $50 and a free copy of the issue. If you agree, please fill out and sign the attached permission form, and I'll also need a bio.

Thanks, and congratulations! :)

Jennifer

Circe’s road to recovery has been detoured. She can’t, or won’t, move. Like a warm rag doll.

December 20, 2019

Back to the studio, with small but correct results. I freeze with rage when somebody remarks on how beautiful the light in the studio is. Realized at the end of the day I had eaten one baked potato.

December 19, 2019

Sold two copies of NSDL from the back of my car after choir last night. They are still apparently unavailable in any normal marketplace. I repeat the old cry to heaven, why can’t anything go right? 

Slowly breaking down my school office is tedious, but bringing the unexpected joy of having some beloved objects around me again. My mother’s ceramic jack o’lantern beams quietly at my back, as it has not done in the thirty years I’ve had it. The book of poems I had when I was a child lies on a shelf in plain sight.  Today, I think, I redeem and repot my Christmas cacti.

The Akron Beacon Journal has this to say about The Falls of the Wyona:

The coming-of-age story of four boys in the High Country of western North Carolina after World War II, “The Falls of the Wyona” is a poignant, lyrical novella by Akron native David Brendan Hopes.

Arden Summers is the narrator but not the main character. In the beginning there are three boys. Arden, his best friend Vince Silvano and new kid Tilden: “We were one person, sometimes.” But then there were four, as another newcomer, Glen, arrived. Instead of the usual mild hazing that new boys had to endure, Glen was immediately accepted when Vince drew him into the group.

Their sacrament was a pilgrimage to the Falls of the Wyona River, a mystical and dangerous place that only a few had seen. Arden says that the “Falls claims one every generation,” so the adults keep its whereabouts a secret. The boys are horsing around at the Falls when Glen does a showy, reckless handstand at the very edge. Afterward, Vince confides to Arden that he “feels funny.”

The boys camp in the winter, sleeping close together for warmth. One night Arden awakens to see Glen and Vince kissing passionately. Tilden, too, is awake. They quietly agree to say nothing. Vince’s father, the football coach, fosters a pervasive attitude of homophobia among his athletes, and decks his son for performing in the school talent show.

Vince becomes the star quarterback recruited by major colleges, and has a glamorous blond girlfriend, but his spirit isn’t the same. In this remote town, which has had electricity only a few years and is just learning about television, it would be easy to say that people hate what they don’t understand. But while Arden and Tilden don’t understand the current that runs between Glen and Vince, their acceptance and loyalty show they don’t need to understand to love.

“The Falls of the Wyona” (203 pages, softcover) costs $15.95 from Red Hen Press. David Brendan Hopes is an alumnus of Ellet High School and Hiram College, and is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina in Asheville.

Steve Williams has died of colon cancer.

December 18, 2019

Circe clawed her way up the comforter to sleep with me last night, so normality is restored.

Dedicating the day to revising Jason of the Apes. Tinkering is a better word, taking out a word there, putting in a bit of explanation there. It is the most exciting time, as page after page rolls away and it is still good, it is still all right.

For a few days, everything below the waist hurt. Today, nothing hurts, spry as a teenager. I see why people developed the theory of evil spirits coming and going as they will.

Deep cold last night. I pitied the wild things huddled beneath the dead leaves.

December 17, 2019

Forty-one people in line when the post office opened. Getting some Christmas tasks done, buying a few gifts, ordering gift certificates on line. The day is warm as summer.

December 16, 2019

Circe has been under the weather for several days. Took her to the Vet. An infection. $400. But I stopped under the dark sky in the vet parking lot and prayed, “Let this little spirit stay with me a little longer,” and the prayer was answered. I’ve never been to that office when they have not been having a computer crisis. Circe is still angry and won’t come out of the corner. But she was so sweet at the office, pushing her forehead against mine, not squirming when the doctor manhandled her.

Exhausted through the day, sleeping mightily. Foot pain joined for a while by gout, though now all of that ebbs away. . . an interesting amalgam of pain.

The day was warm as summer. I was grateful. Cold would have been the last insult.

December 15, 2019

Put on my episcopal regalia and impersonated Saint Nicholas this morning at the Parish breakfast. Word is I did OK. Actually, being Santa is within my skill set, someday.

AGMC concert last night at Grace Covenant, and again this afternoon. I personally did much better this afternoon, but in any case the audiences were at capacity and everyone seemed to have had a good time. For an hour it was truly Christmas, and I was happy.

December 14, 2019

Inexplicable foot pain still crippling me. It’s better with shoes on.

Gathered my gear and went to the Bookfair at Lenoir-Rhyne, where I sold three books and gave two away. There was free iced tea. I suppose the point of it all along for us who remember each other from the literary scene gone by was to reconnect, and that happened. Laura, Keith, and Alan each told me detailed summaries of their novel-in-process. I couldn’t reciprocate (or retaliate) because I never know where my novel-in-process is going beyond the page I ended on. Sometimes I barely think I could tell them the plot of the ones which are finished. There may have been five visitors who were not themselves writers with wares on the table.

December 13, 2019

Pre-dress rehearsal better than I expected from myself. Wonders may be achieved by listening madly.

Foot still tender and inexplicable.

Student phones me at 10 PM (while I was watching “Project Runway”) begging me to rescind the “F” I’d given him for disappearing before midterms and taking exactly one of six exams and not doing the big final project. “You said I could turn things in late,” say he. “Not after the semester is over, not THAT late,” I respond with wonder in my voice. He goes on about what a terrible year he’s been having. This is his last semester and his girlfriend miscarried a baby, and then she left him, and I inquire why none of this could have come out in the last four months, but only just before midnight on the last day the college is open. “I know” he says, accepting all blame, throwing himself on my mercy, but adding, “all my other professors said it was OK,” which I doubt. ANYWAY. . . this morning I petition to change the assigned grade, agreeing with him, finally, that a failure in Arts 310 should not prevent you from going on with your life. I realize “no” was the just answer, but that mercy operates outside of justice. He was always surly. Maybe his surliness arose from having a hard time. Who, finally, knows the truth of anything?

Actual dress rehearsal in two hours. I am not yet having fun.

December 12, 2019

Watched last nights tremendous moon rise before rehearsal, and hit the zenith as I dragged home after cocktails. Beautiful last-month moon, last of the year, last of the decade. I remember lying in bed in my grandmother’s house, hearing from the TV downstairs, “Happy New Year 1960!” knowing that I had lived through a decade, thinking that was a wondrous thing. Now a decade passes and I hardly notice, except to remember a little boy trying to sleep in the bedroom that was his mother’s when she was a little girl.

“Approaching Dollywood” is a finalist for the Tulip Tree Review’s genre contest. Is that a publication? Wait and see.

Actually applied myself to memorizing the music for this concert. Hoping it will make a difference. If my throat is in mucous mode, memory will be no use.

December 11, 2019

Though the pain in my foot diminished almost to nothing during the day, it was back this AM, less than yesterday, but still debilitating. Still mysterious.

Last Fantasy class. The students’ Faeries are hugely matriarchal, and also, I would think, dystopian, unlike the visions of magical perfection I rather expected when I made the assignment. Curious, and better than expectation.

Lin Lifshin has died, apparently of a fall. She was famous in our graduate school days for having poems in e very single magazine anyone had ever heard of.

December 10, 2019

Woke with an injured right foot. It must have happened during the night, as I have no recollection of what I might have done. Feels like someone dropped a piano on it, though there’s no appreciable swelling beyond what is ordinary for me. Dizzy and sick with pain. First trip to the bathroom almost un-achievable. At the edge of what can be muscled through. It was a vision into my future, when, one day, I will wake and not be able to move and there will be no one to help me. Have been awake for two hours, and after a powerful anti-inflammatory and moving about by hanging onto walls and furniture, I am able to walk and climb the stairs to my study. Perhaps gout, but it doesn’t feel “right” and I can’t associate the pain with a joint, but with the whole blade of my foot. Nevertheless, rolled out the garbage and the recycling in the dark rain. In the mailbox was my prize check from Red Hen. My reaction was, not so curiously now that I think of it, grief, at something so small being made to be such an issue in my life, all the unnecessary frustration, all the inexplicable malice that made a small pleasure into a large, dark fury. I remembered weeping with rage and frustration about this same issue back when I was also fighting the Title IX slanders. That was thirteen months ago. Pointless and cruel, the smallness of it increasing rather than diminishing its pointlessness and cruelty.

December 9, 2019

Wrote before dawn at High 5 what might be the beginning of a sequel to NSDL. Off in the bitter rain to the studio, where I painted happily and entertained a trickle of unexpected guests. My painting was triggered by vast, strange dreams before waking. I remembered huge paintings I had done, and hung in galleries that recurred in dreams long ago, but which I had not entered for a very long time. I longed for them. They were like firmaments. They were like Charlie’s paintings in NSDL. I do not know what is to become of me in any passage of my life. I do not know where any of the paths I try will lead. I barely understand where they have led. Bought cheese that the package said I should eat out of the center of itself with a spoon. That is a life lesson, if only I can figure it out.

December 8, 2019

Made $25.70 from the Halloween play. Who says I’m not a professional?
Lessons and Carols in the morning, very sweet, very Anglican.
Circe and I slept heroically in the afternoon sun.

December 7, 2019

Stephen’s invitation for me to stay at his place decided Dublin for me for spring break. The happiness I felt once the decision was made told me it was right. AGMC sang for the Dickens Christmas in Biltmore Village. S had to stop in the middle of the street to rehearse the baritones. One kid said, “Why didn’t they rehearse BEFORE they performed?” His dad put his hand over his mouth, but the kid was right. All part of life’s rich tapestry. Ran into Barry in the bakeshop on the corner. It was a dance of absurdity for us to pretend not to see each other in that little space. Occasionally the tapestry is too rich. Janis said she loved TJ and Linda said the book was a “good read,” but the first detailed response to NSDL comes from Tom. He liked that Charlie dived into the depths. I was happy to have it pointed out to me that he had. Repeatedly I am shown how instinctive my writing is. My theory is that ALL decent writing is instinctive– that’s what I tell my students–but how am I really to know? Organ music from downstairs.

December 6, 2019

Exhausting AGMC rehearsal last night. Everyone came or was soon in a bad mood. My voice was gone at the end.

Gave perhaps my last Enlightenment to Modern exam this AM. Graded it already, and there were grades of 40 out of 100, with only a few doing really well. If you mistake Tennyson for Frost, Yeats for Hopkins, how can you make your way in this subtle world?

The prize check from Red Hen that I’ve been awaiting for two years still had not, after an apparent flurry of activity, arrived. Sent a bitter email. The accountant’s explanation that it had been sent on November 20 to the correct address was unconvincing, but the only explanation I have. For that, of all things, to be lost in the mail is exquisite. I don’t remember anything being lost in the mail before.  Whatever the truth of it, it sounds like an excuse. I wait still.

December 5, 2019

Finding more errors in NSDL. Hatred of circumstance which allows–compels– things to be imperfect,

Getting chores done, some of them left over from the move-in now years back.

Sang quite horribly at a charity estate sale last night. It was all right, as nobody was listening.

December 3, 2019

Rather brilliant presentations of my students’ Faerie Worlds. They say it’s the best assignment they’ve had in college, and what is remarkable is the sheer volume of work and thought they put into their creations. The truth is that we ask too little of our students, rather than too much. Nice to learn that in my last semester. Saw two donuts on the Common Room table, ate them Trying to find the place in my soul that allowed that to happen.

December 2, 2019

Maud purring on my foot.

Day began in blinding snow, none of which stuck, bright for a while, looking like storm again toward afternoon.

Last day of Enlightenment to Modern, probably the last day forever. I lectured while three of them got up and wandered the hall. No one ever smacked their noses and said “No! No!.” Drove one to a commune (just up the road) after class. She had interviewed to join the commune, one of the attractions of which is free love. I refrained from saying, “the last thing you need is another distraction.”

Cleaning out bookshelves I came across four copies of Timothy Liberty, which I thought was lost, and acting scripts for most of the plays I’ve been in since The Man Who Came to Dinner.

My cheesecake was apparently a hit at the senior reception.

December 1, 2019

Advent 1. Calm Italian Baroque in the darkening hours of evening.. A warm summery day that the news says will yield to snow before morning. Anecdotes from Kyle’s Paris sojourn at lunch. Such a ferocious afternoon nap I’m only now recovering from it.

November 30, 2019

Began a new and near-the-end chapter for Sam-sam in High 5. Talked with Alex. Coffee and a bit of breakfast with Tom, who is not yet exhausted by political indignation.  Back to the studio, finding it was warm enough and dry enough. Worked well and happily. The Bosnian neighbors across the hall move out, having sold, essentially, nothing. Those terrible stairs are the difference between solvency and despair.

November 29, 2019

Back from Atlanta Thanksgiving. The Family prospers, the same girlfriends in the holiday pictures two years in a row, which begins to look like commitment. Linda packs up mother’s–quiet extensive– painted ceramics oeuvre and makes sure they make it into my car. Not one person on planet earth would spontaneously imagine me with a collection of large ceramic leprechauns and Easter bunnies.

One observes again the family dynamic in which, when one is answering the questions “What’s up with you?” the answer “I just brought out another book” brings on dead silence.

Daniel feels his honor is redeemed by having beaten me in chess. After last year, I was over-confident.

I remarked to Linda that this is the first time IN MY LIFE that I looked forward to traveling on an important holiday. It was not only all right, it was anticipated and enjoyed. It this all connected to the release of retirement? Am I giving credit to that for too many good things in my life?

Jonathan’s Beagle puppy, with a cone around his head to keep him from nipping at his stitches, was the life of the party.

I was alone for a while with the staff of the Hyatt in the hotel lobby, drinking and buying them drinks, thinking to make up for their missing Thanksgiving with their families. When I got the bill at check-out this morning, the charge for all that was cancelled. It was they who gave me the lovely surprise.