December 30, 2020

Received a greeting card from Governor Cooper.

Revision of An Age of Silver.

 

December 29, 2020

The actual price for Childhood is $1000.00. $800 for paperback, though I don’t remember there being a paperback. ABE books offers it for $2000. I have no idea of the math that went into this. Turns out I myself have only one copy. Hope it’s on the hard drive somewhere. 

Reading through OBN– “thought” for “though” and close quotes at the end of something that wasn’t a quote. But it does give me pleasure to read it, as I have observed before, as though I’d never seen it before. 

Paid off the Toyota with one mighty check. Biggest check I’ve written since I paid off 62. 

Cop murders– which is to say, murders committed by cops-- continue and continue. No one seems to come to what seems, barring the perfection of human character, the clear solution. The firearm. If it is at hand, it will be used. Make sure the cop does not leave the car with a weapon in his hand. Make sure he does not patrol the neighborhood or the playground with a weapon available. Make real penalties for conducting a traffic stop for a dead taillight or a wide turn with a weapon in hand. Make real penalties for drawing, ever, regardless of what the officer “thought,” on innocents, or those being merely “suspicious.” Make sure the weapon is defense and never intimidation. Cops have a hard time talking to civilians without a hand on their weapon. This is universal and almost unconscious intimidation, and penalties must make the offender mindful. Make sure the weapon is hard to get to, so he must think twice about using it, bypassing the instant reactions of panic and ego. The immediate outcry is But what about the officer’s safety? This will enhance officer safety. Frightened people will not assume, accurately, that contact with the police will likely prove fatal and therefore lose nothing in shooting first. What about citizen safety? Can you imagine a citizen barking to a cop, “Take your hand off that gun for my safety!” Every police jurisdiction should enact the law “Don’t kill anyone who is unarmed or who has, objectively, offered no threat to you,” and that the violation of that rule be treated as murder. Do pause long enough, officer, to approach objectivity. Take that extra second to decide if a cell phone is a gun, if a toy is a weapon. If you are too scared to be on the street, you need not be on the street. It should be easy enough not to shoot people. Just don’t do it. Just don’t do it. If you’re panicky or arrogant, leave the gun in the car until you actually need it. It is not your place to be obeyed.  It is NOT your duty to get home at night. It is not even my duty to get home at night. Our corporate duty is to look out for one another. Actually, truly, serve and protect, so we can stop sneering at the irony of those words.

Holy Innocents

 

December 28, 2020

Ice has closed the Parkway almost everywhere and in every direction, but I did manage to get to the Headquarters and Visitors’ Center (where I had never been) and follow a trail that leads from there to the MST, which I then followed for about fifteen feet before turning around. Cold, gray, overcast, the complexion of winter as I remember it from my youth. The advantage of going early and cold was that what was clearly mud yesterday had frozen solid, walkable. The mud immortalized the tread of the shoes of the last one who had passed. 

J says that Childhood in the Milky Way is $400 on Amazon. I could pay off my house, then, with the copies I have on the shelf. 

 

December 27, 2020

Morning light on the back of my head. Bach on CD. Have been dreaming enormously since retiring, the dreams tenacious; even getting up and going to the bathroom does not always interrupt the narrative. Last night I had applied to college, and the college was a colossal atrium, with all the classrooms surrounding a central space. It was exciting to stand in the center, hearing the hum of learning all about. It was a standard anxiety dream, in part. I’d registered for a particular course, and couldn’t find the room where it was held. The course was called “Yule.” Diane Zabik–of whom I have not thought since high school– found me and said, “David, the professor called your name and everything!” I transitioned from dreaming to thinking, and wondered if I would like to teach again. The answer was yes, under certain conditions. Still partially in the dream, I told Diane that colleges had gone from providing educations to selling degrees, and until that was reversed there would be friction between me and the system. That remained true when I stood full awake. Diplomas used to be the sign of wisdom–or at least expertise– acquired. Now they are purchased with as little regard to the training as the institution can get away with. I’m not sure most college administrators would even deny this. Everyone gets a trophy for participation. 

Spilled a bottle of vitamin D tablets, and decided to swallow all the ones which spilled. This was a mistake. Mildly nauseated all morning, a feeling just now easing away.

Bad ending to yesterday. It came from watching a renowned cast enact a filmed version of a play, whose mediocrity, blandness, and predictability they treated with solemn respect. Anything I have done would have been better. Anything. Yet there’s no work of mine with Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney and Michael Gambon featured on Netflix. I guess you could call this envy. Or you could call it amazement.

The INSTANT I finished writing the disgruntlement above, Facebook went “ding” and the following was messaged from K: Finished The One with the Beautiful Necklaces last night.   What a spectacularly beautiful book.   It needs multiple readings.  I look forward to returning to it. 

And from SS: “Beautiful” is the word. It’s in the title, it’s used more frequently in this book than any I’ve read before, and it earns all those “beauties.” Gotta admit, I found myself deeply resistant in the early going, because mystical/magical elements tend to repel me. But the story and the enormously appealing language kept me going till you beat down all of my defenses. Soon enough, I was completely won over. And, my god, the scope! The smooth movement through era after era, from one character’s rich, engaging story to another’s as rich or richer. I loved so many of these people you’ve conjured that, once I realized they would leave the story almost as quickly as they entered, I was a bit saddened: what happened next? But once I caught on to the internal rhythms, that bothered me not a jot. I was too busy being engaged by whom I met and what happened next. And it held not just beautifully but majestically all the way through. Also, more than even before with your work, I was soothed and comforted sentence by sentence. Once upon a time, I felt similarly about Robert Stone; though, in the last decade and a half of his work, I was far less taken with the novels overall than I was with, say, A Flag for Sunrise and, perhaps more than any other, Outerbridge Reach, I was still so taken with his sentences that they made me feel better no matter my mood. Your work, of course, is very different, as are the sentences, and yet they give me a similar feeling of having the world slowed down sufficiently for me to enter wholeheartedly into it. It’s a gift. So: bravo! And deepest thanks.

OK then. Never hurts to ask. 

Longish videos on You Tube of driving around Akron at various times in the past. Mostly I know where they are. 

 

December 26, 2020

St. Stephens Day. Wrote some before the light.  In a spasm of detective work I think I found most of the data wanted by the mortgage company. This is uncharacteristic behavior for me, who usually waits and frets and finally does it late in a flurry of resentment. My social security payments are remarkably small. There must be a reason for that. Some interchange of waking and sleeping made me think it was a day later than it is. Joy to find it is only Saturday, the day after Christmas. Drove the car into a sunny spot and let the sun thaw it out for me. Nearly berserk with entering user’s name and passwords, not knowing them, extracting them from the site in an agony of application and redirection. This affliction is likely to increase with time rather than lessen. 

 

December 25, 2020

Feast of the Nativity. Snow began late last night, but with such ferocity that a white Christmas was assured in half an hour. Great whirls of it against the street light, cars spinning their tires trying to get up Lakeshore. What I did upon waking was get out the colored pencils and begin to draw. In five minutes I was back in artist mode, and the change of medium didn’t seem to matter so much. Minutes with the pencils taught me things I didn’t learn from the facility of oil. Fed the birds. Fried a pork chop. Made hot chocolate for myself from scratch for the first time in forty years. Watched the birds that used the dogwood outside the window as a stop before the feeder. That was my Christmas. I was perfectly happy.

Red-shouldered hawk

 

December 24, 2020

Red-shouldered hawk perched on the wire opposite the window where I was typing. He looks a little redder than the photos on the Internet which mean to identify him. A bold, decorative animal. The weather was so bad the crows left him alone, and as I watched through the binoculars I saw him shake rainwater off his feathers.

A dismay of the season is how many composers make bank from ruining Christmas music, adding a discord there or a momentarily interesting rhythm there and calling it an arrangement. There are certain situations in which one does not long for novelty.

This is the first Christmas Eve in 33 years when I will not be singing at the Cathedral. It is a loss, though being able to sit on my house looking at the festive lights while sleet storms whirl is a blessing. 

Went to REI to buy a sports watch. While I was there, my mortgage rep phoned with an offer of a reduced rate, etc, and there I stood among the sleeping bags relating intimate financial information. December 24 will be from now the day when my insurance is renewable and the day when that refinancing hell began again. He kept asking me how much money I make. I truly, honesty don’t know without rifling through papers. The last refinancing was less than a year ago. I signed the forms just before I went to Ireland.  While I was at the story a crazy lady came and wanted to shop without a mask (I think that was the issue), and there was terrible conflict at the door. 

I am as happy–or at least as without anxiety– as I have been for many Christmases past. I sheltered in place, and the sheltering was productive. I take an hour each morning after waking and before rising to inject by imagination the tenderness that was lacking in my actual life. It has made a difference. I scarcely dare look at old journals of Christmas, for I was always miserable. I am not miserable tonight. 

 December 22, 2020

Blue dome scoured bluer, brighter by hard winds. My senses want to call it a perfect winter day. Took a late afternoon hike at French Broad Park. Not a bird in the trees, but there was a dog park filled with happy dogs. Met the homeless walking along the bank, from the assortment of tents and lean-to’s visible now from the far bank of the river. Met with WB as he was jogging. He looked to be the God of Health, even with his ordination postponed by Covid. 

Treva’s husband has died. This is shocking to me in ways difficult to explain. I met him perhaps six times, but we had a lively Facebook relationship, and Treva and I were charter members of the same clique at Ellet. It’s like losing a relative.

Radio on loud with select Classical Christmas music. 

Conjunction

 

December 21, 2020

Some time in the morning day it became winter, the world turning toward the light. I need that. My inner Newgrange felt the sudden warmth on its inmost wall.

Day three of thumb inflammation. It’s not steady, the pain, sometimes hardly noticeable, sometimes almost unbearable, nauseating. This makes for an interesting night of waking and falling back to sleep. Don’t think it’s gout, because touching it doesn’t make it worse. 

War with heaven last night. Had nothing to do with the thumb. 

Grumpiness dissolved when I took my new binoculars to the riverside to watch birds. There were not that many, but the highlight, and the sighting that paid for all, was bluebirds. Song sparrows dominated the thickets where I probed. 

Went out to watch the Conjunction. Caught it by looking through holes in the trees on Mount Vernon, but as the evening passed it could be seen perfectly well from my front porch. For a while I leaned against a parked car, staring through my binoculars. When I dropped the binocs, a woman was looking at me. It was her car I was leaning against, and though she wanted to leave, she was afraid to say anything. Told her about the conjunction and she looked where I was pointing, but I think she was humoring me. I assumed Jupiter and Saturn would appear to be crashing into one another, but their stately, dignified, loftily separate procession was better. I contemplated how much cold I was looking at, those unimaginably cold worlds, the frozen space between them and between them and my little self with glasses glued to my face. Maybe I should have worn a heavier jacket. 

 December 20, 2020

Blue jay, crow, mourning dove, hairy woodpecker. 

Early evening, listening to Andrew Magill play the violin at All Souls over the airwaves. The mic picks up the ringing of the bells in the tower at the hour and half hour. Andrew looks great, square and rangy, but maybe more than one musician might have filled out the hour more fully.

Ruined a batch of spice cookies. Had the recipe (which was at fault) from Amy Vanderbilt’s cookbook, which got me through grad school and adult life. This is the first time she let me down. Noticed the little tag at front, “drawings by Andrew Warhol.” In 1960 he was drawing cakes and kitchen apparatus.  

Asked a lady in Ingles where the cookie sprinkles were. Neither of us knew. But a few minutes later she returned and told me, having gone in search of them on my behalf.

I’m not good at recognizing people behind their masks, and they almost always have to speak first, even tell me who they are.

Woke up determined to do whatever I need to do to paint again. Bought a table to put my painting stuff on beside the easel. Thank God Cheap Joe’s was not open, for I failed to buy the water soluble oil paints that seemed the solution to my fumes problem. By noon the whole idea seemed exhausting. 

Messiah

 

December 19, 2020

Suzanne sent me a link to somebody’s (quite good) video of Messiah (with theorbo) on You Tube. Have heard it a hundred and sung it a dozen times, yet this time I was curiously moved. When the baritone let loose with Why do the nations so furiously rage together? I burst into tears. The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed. I wave my little banner, brandish my blunt sword in the army of the righteous, hoping it avails. 

Pulled over at the French Broad overlook, went down the hill and caught the opening of the Shut-In, but it was cold and I wasn’t really in the mood. Did stop for a happy little skunk crossing the path maybe five feet ahead. I swear to God he said “howdy!”  

Picked up OBN and read, re-affirming my odd (is it odd? Maybe it’s common) ability to read my own work as though it were a discovery and I hadn’t written it at all. I enjoyed it. Tolkien and Lewis conspired to write the kind of books they wanted to read; I seem to have happily written books I like to read almost incidentally. Whatever else, sentence to sentence, it’s good writing. I can rest for a moment on that.

Put the new binoculars to use from the front porch: flicker, phoebe, song sparrow, titmouse, brown creeper. 

 

December 18, 2020

Revised The Prince in the Tower. The deepest revision was needed, of course, in the very first story. I do sabotage myself. 

Wishing for someone to see my beautiful Christmas trees.

Sedentary, isolated, having to look at the clock to see what time it is. This is not a complaint. 

The New Yorker sends a rejection for poems submitted four years ago. 

Ordered taco salad delivered, barely put a dent in it. 

Kit sends a beautiful mug in the color I favor most.

Trying to remember if I’ve been out of the house this day. I think not.

Found Samoan song on the Internet. Didn’t know there was any. Lovely. 

Waiting for the Witch

 

December 15, 2020

Waiting for the Witch gets a production in Florida in January, to start the new year right:

Frank Blocker <theaterfilm@artsbonita.org>

3:03 PM (1 hour ago)

to colleennicoleodoherty@gmail.com, dhaddad82@netscape.net, raciccarone@gmail.com, odedgross@sbcglobal.net, terifoltz2@gmail.com, me

I have gotten agreements from all of you before, but didn’t have a date or show to slot yet and then came even more COVID.  But we have been back doing productions at the Center for a few months and we’re ready for a January 15 show of FUNNY SHORTS LIVE!  These six plays are what we’ll be doing.

Bold Dorothy, Retired: Colleen Nicole O'Doherty 

Cliff Dwellers: David Haddad 

Intervention: Richard Ciccarone 

MacLear: Oded Gross 

December 15, 2020

Waiting for the Witch gets a production in Florida in January, to start the new year right:

Frank Blocker <theaterfilm@artsbonita.org>

3:03 PM (1 hour ago)

to colleennicoleodoherty@gmail.com, dhaddad82@netscape.net, raciccarone@gmail.com, odedgross@sbcglobal.net, terifoltz2@gmail.com, me

I have gotten agreements from all of you before, but didn’t have a date or show to slot yet and then came even more COVID.  But we have been back doing productions at the Center for a few months and we’re ready for a January 15 show of FUNNY SHORTS LIVE!  These six plays are what we’ll be doing.

Bold Dorothy, Retired: Colleen Nicole O'Doherty 

Cliff Dwellers: David Haddad 

Intervention: Richard Ciccarone 

MacLear: Oded Gross 

Waiting for the Witch: David Brendan Hopes

I would have said something prior to auditions, but in these times we don’t know who we’ll get to show up and that’s how I end up casting—with who’s available.  And if I’d said something earlier, we might not have been able to do your play and I am really tired of disappointing artists with cancellations this year, and don’t want to break any more hearts.  We’re cast and starting rehearsals this week!

It’s a one-time performance at 7:30pm at the Moe Auditorium and Film Center on the campus of the Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs, 10150 Bonita Beach Road.  You can get telephone, website, etc., below if you have anyone to share the news. 

Frank Blocker

Film and Theater Coordinator

Centers for the Arts 

Bonita Springs Center for Performing Arts

10150 Bonita Beach Road

Bonita Springs, FL 34135

Tel 239 495 8989

Web www.artcenterbonita.org

Worked nobly on GB.

 

December 14, 2020

Spent the morning getting new insurance policies for house and vehicles. When I go through something like that I realize (to my horror) how much of regular life I put to one side to live the life I want. I had no idea how much I pay for house insurance (comes out of escrow), and discover that the mortgage company had me grossly over-insured. Didn’t remember what I paid for car insurance, though I actually write those checks. How many square feet is my house? I don’t know. What is the mileage on my truck? I don’t know. The guy on the phone (his voice sounded handsome) said I will now save $1300 a year. I lie down and take a nap. 

 

December 13, 2020

Watched the end of the season’s Crown, whereupon Princess Margaret haunted my dreams. In the dreams she was witty and funny and overdressed. Also conceived the idea that I’d had a stroke. Apparently not, but I took an aspirin with morning coffee.   Linda called. I happened to be standing beside the land line or it wouldn’t have connected. It was she who’d sent the lovely binoculars that I couldn’t remember buying. Told her I’d already used them, which was true. May take them on the trail today. She outlined problems with the new Covid19 vaccine that I had never thought of and which are, for understandable reasons, downplayed by official sources. I’ll still get it when it’s available, for dying of Covid is worse and surer that the side effects she warned of. Younger people, though, who have long lives to suffer with complications, might think twice. 

Wrote on GB, then went to campus for the first time since I finished moving out of my office. Parked at the Reuter Center and found the wooded paths that snake around the considerable mountain on whose south side the campus lies. Pretty, crowded. Never once went while I worked below. 

I think this was my grandmother’s birthday. 

Bull Gap

 

December 12, 2020

Drove to Bull Gap and hiked a little, though my heart wasn’t in it.  Mostly to work out a stiff knee. Very dramatic skies, out of which never came the heralded storm. Met an old, old man on the trail. He was bent over, with one hand holding him up from the path. I said, “Are you all right, sir?” He straightened up and said, “Just stretching my back!” For a second I wondered how the hell I was going to get him back to the road.  What good would I be in a wilderness emergency? Forfend that I ever find out. 

 

December 11, 2020

Did some paperwork (including writing recommendations for TB to fiction programs, ten years to the very week after writing him recommendations to the script writing program at Tisch) and then drove to the Parkway. From the parking lot I climbed Hard Times Trail till it came to Owl Ridge, then took that. The air was thick and radiant with moisture. Unless I’ve forgotten (I don’t think that’s likely) that was my first time on Owl Ridge. I must have kept setting it aside for some other time. It’s very beautiful, with mysterious (clearly planted) pure stands of pine just before it intersects with Rocky Cove. Hard Times, Owl Ridge, and Rocky Cove are all listed as “difficult” trails on the Arboretum web page. My accompaniment (maybe because of the steepness of the climb) was “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” I used to get to Rocky Cove some other way, where on summer nights I would find 1) an off-duty cop who liked to have sex in the dust of the road and 2) more flying squirrels than I have seen elsewhere in the wild. At twilight the red sky would be filled with their antics.  I love the long deep vistas winter in the forest affords. Exceeded my step count–actually my best day ever, with over 12,000 steps. Many more women than men on the trail. 

 

December 10, 2020

Countertenors on Youtube. 

Bizarre tumult last night. Wondering if it was as simple as drinking a caffeinated beverage before sleep. It followed me into the day in the form of problematic bowels, which required two emergency stops, once at the river office and once at the Arts Council in Marshall– where, to pay for using their facilities, I bought a handmade whisk broom. I’d gone to Marshall– I realize now, having kept it from myself– to test if anybody had read OBN, set partially in their town. I always arrive at everything too early, so no one had appeared before I set my face again to the south. I’ve heard scarcely a word about the book, it too disappearing into the great maelstrom of indifference that sweeps all adjacent shores. 

After weeks (maybe months) relatively free of it, inflammation returns. Part of last night’s sleeplessness was agony in my shoulders, and when I woke it was as if I wore a scalding body stocking of pain. God provides that aspirin does a good job of pushing it back, but one still wonders about cause, and why sometimes and other times not. Weather? Does it come with the cold? I have not been systematic in my inquiry.

Did some walking, with Irving Berlin in my head, especially the horrible “The Girl that I Marry” from an album called Pat Boone Sings Irving Berlin that my father bought when he was in his stereo phase.

You go out to fill the bird feeder. A memory or a bit of an old song lands on you like the tip of an arrow. You stand on the cold bricks and weep. The birds stare at you and wonder what could be wrong, when you’ll get back into the house so they can feed.

Phoebe

 

December 9, 2020

A phoebe perched on the table on the back stoop long enough to look my fill, he fluffed and ready for the cold.  

 

December 7, 2020

Pearl Harbor. Idleness. Sent off books and cards. OBN too is going to disappear without a trace. 

Strangely pinkish hawk in my tree.

Coffee with AH. We sat in my car to keep from freezing. It made me nervous to be so close, though he’d tested negative the day before. I drove home with the windows open to blow the virus out into the light.

Saint Nicholas

 

December 6, 2020

Saint Nicholas. I kept a pair of shoes on the porch, but, nothing. Kept the tree lights on all night. Maud sits in sunlight under my chair, thrashing her tail slowly in what appears to be pure contentment. 

Found the opened window where the neighbor’s gray cat had been entering my basement. He watched me seal it up, perhaps plotting how to get around me some other way.

ZOOM critique from Raleigh of Antigonus. The level of discourse was so ignorant it was all one could do to keep countenance in front of the camera. Nothing is worse for the arts than a self-satisfied amateur. 

Christmas Spirit

 

December 5, 2020

After pecking at the keyboard for a while, was overcome by the Christmas spirit and set up and decorated two trees. I must have skipped last year. I might have skipped this year, except, why not? Now I’m happy. 

  

December 4, 2020

Cold hard rain on the roof. Drove to the Parkway in the afternoon. The boy I had seen feigning yesterday was there, and I rolled down my window to say “where’s your bike?” though in he end I said nothing, and rode on by, squinting at his sign, still illegible. Rain began to pour as soon as I got to the French Broad overlook. I considered walking in the rain. Turned around and came home. 

Made two tapes for the AGMC show, told them to chose. One of them was e e cummings. I was reluctant to use my own work, because my work is serious and we no longer are. 

Sauron

 

December 3, 2020

The Guggenheim people ask for writing samples. I send Washington Place, Uranium 235, The Falls of the Wyona.

I’d always had trouble justifying the apparently abstract evil of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. What could he want that could be achieved in that way, with so much manifest waste and ugliness? He seemed a merely literary trope. But, oddly, actual history helps with the understanding of this. Donald Trump– a real person if an absurd one–helped me understand the motivations of the profound narcissist. He was indifferent to creating Mordor, so long as Mordor served and adored him. Better to rule in Mordor than serve in Paradise. 

Set out in the afternoon. Stopped at a light, I watch a cyclist get off Brevard Road, stash his bike in the highway landscaping, and set up as a beggar boy at the bottleneck where 19/23 exits on to the Brevard Road bridge. He looked athletic and eager on his bike, frail and downtrodden when he got himself in place with his tiny piece of cardboard saying God knows what. It’s hard for all beggars when one is revealed as a fraud. Drove on to the Parkway, but it was closed beyond the French Broad overlook. So I lit out from there on foot, southward and upward. I had forgotten how much I love to walk the Parkway when it’s closed to traffic, a vast avenue through the wilderness, always with more visible wildlife than the deep woods. Two huge crows (at distance I thought they were, together, an enormous dog) fed on an annihilated opossum. Pelt and head lay on one side of the road, still not wholly consumed innards on the other. I climbed a good while, and when I came down I’d fulfilled my number of steps yet again. I thought the east-facing slopes especially blessed, because they would receive glory in the morning. I stood in shadowy calm under one old grove and prayed a prayer I have prayed twice in my life–that I remember–and both times in 2020– “Lord, thank you for my life.”

. 

 

December 2, 2020

Sidney writes this to the Guggenheim people:

Dear Guggenheim Fellowship Committee:

There is no finer candidate to document the panorama of American history than the brilliant David Hopes. This is not hyperbole. This is my own experience. I had the wonderful opportunity to direct THE LOVES OF MR. LINCOLN for Sunnyspot Productions at the June Havoc Theatre in New York. It was an event of unparalleled joy for me. The play covers Lincoln from his arrival in Springfield through his assassination at Ford’s Theatre with a focus on some his deepest interpersonal relationships, Joshua Speed, Mary Todd, Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, and his valet, Tobias. The play is delicately seasoned with songs from the Stephen Foster Songbook. The collaboration with David on this project is one of the high points of my life. His dedication to the storytelling meshed beautifully with my own. His knowledge of and enthusiasm for his subject; his tireless work ethic; his committed listening; his strength tempered with sensitive adaptability among so many other gifts that make him such a fine playwright, all provided impetus for magical accomplishment. Frankly, I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of FATHER ABRAHAM, his trilogy on Lincoln and WASHINGTON PLACE, an intimate and expert telling of the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

I highly recommend David for a Guggenheim Fellowship. The boost this would give him to create and refine his deep grasp of American history into terrific theatre would be a boon to us all.

Feel free to contact me early and often. It is easy to be articulate about the talent of this man.

Thank you.

Yours,

Sidney J. Burgoyne

I don’t know what the Guggenheim people are looking for, but I’d give me the fellowship on the basis of this kind and thoughtful recommendation. 

Zoom rehearsal for Christmas music. More useful than I would have supposed.

 

December 1, 2020

Veil of snow on the ground at waking, considerable snow falling now. 

Song Sparrow, my source for peonies, is going out of business. 

Writing to Marin Marais.

 

November 30, 2020

Postcard to JG, who was kind to me in Baltimore, and whom I never forgot. 

Blustery, wintery. David and Daniel sent me a gift card which tuned out to be unexpectedly hard to spend. 

Business at the Post Office. Two women led a very long line of customers, and these women were having frustrating mornings, having come to the PO unprepared, loose boxes flying hither and thither, questions asked and answered multiple times, the pitches of their voices betraying ever-tightening cords of panic. They were universally hated. They must have felt waves of hatred hitting the backs of their heads. That couldn’t have helped. I’m the sort of person who thinks, “A few moments of preparation before going out in public could have avoided all this.” That must read as pitilessness. The second woman seemed to be mailing about twenty individual boxes of greeting cards to the same address. THESE HAVE TO BE THERE TOMORROW she shrieked.  Why she didn’t come in yesterday with them already packed stands outside my imagination. But it did allow her to fumble them and drop them and have them fly open and explode and disarray as though it were a comedy sketch. I remember the passage from The Magician’s Nephew where the crow says, hearing laugher, “I have made the first joke.” “No,” Aslan says, “you have been the first joke.”

I don’t believe America understands the bullet it dodged at the beginning of this month, the barely sufficient detour from the road which must lead to tyranny and civil war, and the probably permanent, probably just loss of America’s prestige in the world. We’re too engaged with reconciliation to note our imminent danger as it ought to be noted. It’s like the aftermath of the Civil War, when voices that wanted a return to normality outshouted voices that wanted justice and political self-examination. Millions of people voted for a demon and demonic policies, which didn’t even bother to disguise themselves. If I could think of the word of waking to utter, I would utter it.

Throwing away my 2020 American Express journal without a single entry in it.

 

November 28, 2020

Made my step count again. Did so though it was a gorgeous day on a holiday weekend and all the pull-overs were crowded. I did find solitude to walk in. Found a single wand of lyre-leafed sage blooming pale sky-blue in the middle of a path. Watched a father and his tiny son walk hand-in-hand under the trees, I envying the memories they were making, blessing them with great blessings beamed at the backs of their heads. The music of the walk was Copland’s “Old American Songs.” Came home to find two messages of praise for OBN, messages I desperately needed to hear, fearing with frozen heart that one more of my children was going to drop into oblivion. DF said they had read Kindle versions, but re-ordered because “it’s the kind of book you want to hold in your hands.” SH said it was engrossing and asked for my address so she could send me something. Is it too much to ask for that everyday? Suppose it is. . . .

 

November 27, 2020

Hiking has been oddly connected to music this season. A few days ago I heard the Taize “Within our darkest night” as I walked. Later on the same hike it had turned into Ravel’s setting of Rilke poems that I sang in college. Today, briefly, on the steep road between the Bent Creek gatehouse and Owl Creek, it was “O Jesus I Have Promised.” Because of the situation, they all become more or less marches. I needed today’s hike grievously, apparently, for I felt hugely better afterward. The roads were full of people looking for something to do in a long holiday weekend with the sky clear and the temperature at 70. Brevard Road coming north was bumper to bumper–maybe there was a hold up on 26. But I found a place to park at the entrance to the arboretum and set out on the upward grade of the Hard Times. A couple things need to be said. One is that I was going at a good rate, uphill, long even strides, without being the least short of breath. I keep remarking on this because the degree to which I let a curable affliction afflict me continues to amaze. I am wondrous slow, but that’s OK. I have achieved, I say with some wonder, the biblical three score and ten. I turned when I came to the fence and the gate. I could have gone farther but one of the effects of a diet rich in root vegetables, as I have been having for the last week, makes it prudent never to be too far from modern plumbing. I actually looked around for a place in case the event could not be staved off, but the winter woods are open, everything visible, for acres on every side. Coming down the light was softer, somehow, and understanding my remaining energy made it possible for me to linger and peer into the forest. At the top of a deep, beautiful wooded valley a profound, random emotion came over me. I thought of my mother. Forty-five years after her death, I missed her again. I stood at the roadside and wept, grateful that few were venturing that high. I wondered if I would see her in the life to come, and then I wondered if she wanted to see me. Did I make her proud in any way? Did she love me? Kindness and forbearance may have seemed enough like love. I have no one to ask. I have no memory that can guide me firmly. I wept deeply, bitterly, thinking of her. I am of a mythopoeic frame of mind, so what happened next is explained by that, I suppose. I saw her. She came to me out of the forest and took my hand. I had not been thinking of her at all until her image clove my heart, so the unexpected encounter meant that she had been thinking of me. I blessed the merciful spirit of the place. In one thing at least I have been answered.

Thanksgiving

 

November 26, 2020

Thanksgiving. Bought a cooked turkey breast from Ingles, forgetting how awful turkey can be. Threw it to the crows. Started a hike up the hill south from the Sleepy Gap pullover, but the steepness (and the mud) defeated me, and I didn’t make it to the top. Excellent exercise, though not that many steps. Kelly brought over a Thanksgiving plate for me, full of portions from the delicious meal she had served to her family. She reported remarking to her mother how her neighbor (me) was her age, and yet had just brought out a book. Most people have indeed finished their careers by this point. I have been tardy in everything. 

 November 25, 2020

Second day begun at the Toyota dealership– they installing the part they ordered yesterday. Barely opened my notebook before they were finished. As yesterday, drove to the Parkway and took as much of the Hard Times as I thought I could before the rain. It was both raining and not– like standing under a gigantic gray block of ice while it thaws slowly. The forest is bare, and one may peer deeply into its secrets; that’s how I like it best. Someone had tied apparently lost keys to a branch. Almost no traffic, except for two grim women on bicycles, close together on the way out, widely separated on the way back. The rain began in earnest just as I got back to the car. I am lucky in that way– however catastrophic the large passages of my life, in small things-- finding the parking space, getting to the plane at the exact last second, never losing my keys– I can call myself lucky. Watching the movie Genius on TV, an excellent study of Thomas Wolfe with a faultless small ensemble of actors. I thought how I would pass out dead if I were ever fussed over as an author the way he was. Am I better than Wolfe? Well, more concise. Infinitely less self-referential. And I have more than one subject matter. But someone would actually have to read me for it to make any difference. When I was a kid I thought his own Maxwell Perkins came to every author. . . . 

 

November 24, 2020

Drove to Fred Anderson Toyota to get the damage to the car’s undercarriage seen to. Turns out the fuel tank cover was ripped to pieces by my running over something, I can’t think now what. Diagnosis today, repair tomorrow. Sat in the waiting room, wrote a little, then read Poets in Their Youth. I never thought either Delmore or John B that interesting as poets. Perhaps their fame was set because they were at Harvard. The difference between contemporary poets and poets of the past (so far as I judge) is that actual achievement, actual quality in the work, has little relationship to the renown of the contemporary poet. Since I was already almost there, drove to the Parkway and hiked up the MST, from just north of the French Broad bridge northward. Almost no old-growth forest, except on the sides of mountains, anywhere I’ve hiked this fall. Yet again achieved my steps goal, and passed it. Fourth time, I think, three times in two weeks. Counter tenors one after the other on Youtube. 

 

November 23, 2020

Drove to Marshall to pick up the painting I bought in the art center. Left copies of OBN for LB, and for the lady at Penland Dry Goods, where, apparently, books are sold in town. In the window were copies of Madison-County-themed books, dusty and faded. She wanted to read the book before she agreed to sell it. I can foresee opposition from the local history crowd, for the book can be perceived by the literal minded as claiming to present history without actually doing so. “Now, where’s Two Mountains again?” People hereabouts are very careful about who tells their story. Plus, it alleges a lynching right there in front of the courthouse. Perhaps that isn’t so shocking. Made a thick savory soup out of root vegetables. Unexpected laxative properties. . . . 

 

November 22, 2020

The Anniversary. I was sitting in Mr. Tucker’s history class.

Turned north and wandered through the woods here and there. It was the Day of Non-vascular plants. Didn’t go far under the melancholy sky.  Maud is in her bury-yourself-under the-covers mode.

 November 21, 2020

Bad night last night. I was freezing and couldn’t get warm, even though the furnace worked as it always worked. Plugged in the electric blanket, which solved one problem, but gave me a kind of fever dream of my trying to figure how a dozen different warming apparatuses could be shut off, when there was only one. Finished a thorough revision of The Nurseryman’s Wedding. Beautiful Necklaces got its first review, from M, who said it’s the richest and most beautiful thing I’ve ever written. The last box of peonies arrived. I planted them and a witch hazel, stored the tools in the shed for winter.

C forwarded a recording of himself singing with the Boston Camerata. Voice of an angel.

Chestnut Gap

 

November 20, 2020

In September four checks were stolen from my mailbox, the envelopes slit open with a razor and the bills the checks were to pay left behind. I thought this deeply weird. Today I received an envelope with my address and “Grace Station Lost and Found” handwritten on it, and containing those four checks and the note “Found in the PO parking lot 11/18.” The checks are in perfect condition, not creased or stained in any way, so I doubt they just randomly appeared in the parking lot. When I reported the incident, the supervisor said of my mail carrier, “Yes, he was off that day.” Perhaps he didn’t mean he was absent, but something else. Someone in the post office pulled this prank, but it’s a failed prank because I can’t figure out the point of it. 

After some computer work, drove to the Parkway and began hiking at Chestnut Gap, heading north, the exact slope that defeated me a week or so ago, and inspired me, once again, to get to the root of my weakness. Made it today, all the way to the top. I’d stopped before less than a tenth of the climb. All the traffic was three young men hurdling past me at a full run. They did stop before the last and steepest slope, because running down that would be like running down a wall. The actual image that came into my head was Patroclus running the walls of Troy. I have never had the wind to run uphill like that, nor the confidence to run down. A tree at the top spreads out at the base, and one may sit as if enthroned in the woodland. Dropped a paper beside that tree, with Jonathan’s name and address on it, to see if by some wild happenstance it came back to him. Note in a bottle at 3 thousand feet. The walk was less than 1/4 of yesterday’s, but equally tiring, because vertical both ways. 

Have agreed to stand for Vestry. I did so, finally, because the “Vestry Retreat” that always sounded so awful to me is made impossible by the pandemic. It took real thought to say “yes.” Can I do it? Should I do it? Only one way to know for sure.

 

November 19, 2020

Some writing in the morning, then I set out for the forest. The coats I had in the car were barely enough for the first chill of morning. Wandering the tangle of trails around Bent Creek I broke my record set earlier this week, my phone counting 11,000 steps, quite the longest hike I’ve taken since the thin blood set in. It was too long, but the complainant is not the pneumatic system, but the feet, and that because I hadn’t planned on going so long and wore the wrong shoes. Years of debility SEEM to have been largely undone in a week. I think back. . . . dumfounded. . .I was so sick I figured it couldn’t be iron deficiency, but something much worse. It wasn’t. I have lost years of vigor, and it’s nobody’s fault but mine. You think you’re being realistic, you’re putting yourself past surprise and dismay when you assume the worst. Sometimes you’re just an idiot. Down by the road I ran into AM hiking with some of her neighbors. She introduced me as “the famous writer.” The Bent Creek forest is really quite poor in animal life. Maybe too much human traffic. The path kept crossing the Bent Creek Road, upon which I strolled, remembering coming to it for the first time 37 years ago, when I looked to the trees and the river and the changing light, but also for sex. I recalled the pine alcoves and rhododendron thickets I crawled into to meet pleasure. Sat on a bench that now looks at a Liriodendron grandiflora against which I braced my back while strangers knelt on the ground in front of me. These things cannot be spoken of, not because one is ashamed, but because one cannot imagine the proper audience. But I smiled thinking of it. That, anyway, I would go back and do again. 

Face of Apollo

 

November 17, 2020

Cartons of my new book arrived last evening, in fact as I was entering the shipping numbers to trace the shipment, deeming it lost. The book is substantial, fine to look at. I found 3 errors (two of them errant periods) in the first 20 pages. We worked so hard on that! But mostly I noticed that it reads well, and that–as I noted with my other books– I can find no intimacy with it, no conviction that it is actually mine. This is a good thing, allowing discovery of the thing I made, which is the reason for making. Good early word of mouth from others who have ordered the book, and in general received it before I did. I have a good feeling about its prospects. It’s not a better book than Wyona, but it’s friendlier. I think my oeuvre is destined to be like a family, some familial similarity, but wide variety from each to each. Variety caused confusion in my reception as a painter. I think it will do less harm here. I never strive for it, never try to seduce variety into my words; it merely comes to me, like beauty to the face of Apollo.

 

November 16, 2020

Rose early. Intended to write, but the weather was too good, so I drove to the spot where Hard Times runs closest to the Parkway. I had taken Hard Times Road many times, but maybe only once the trail I did select, blazed but rough, heading north between Hard Times and the road. It would have come out, had I continued to follow, at Bent Creek at the Arboretum entrance. It was very beautiful, clean, serene. Tulip and holly reigned. I was happy. For the third time I achieved my steps goal, for the first time in a single hike. Met two handsome, sweaty, blue-eyed men, one of the by-products of going to the trouble. One had a dog who was frightened of me. I’m dismayed when a dog fears me, and I can never imagine why. Most dogs adore or ignore me on the trail, but the ones that shy and bark are remembered. Trying to put It down as canine misapprehension.

 

November 14, 2020

Fascinating phenomenon that people have received their copies of Beautiful Necklaces, and shown them to me on Facebook, and I have not seen it yet. How will I know what excuses to make? They did not after all, I think, include the genealogy. Doing an edit of Nurseryman, making explicit my conception that Sam-sam descends from the lost Columba Keenan. 

 

November 13, 2020  

Pointed my identification app at Maud and it said “Domestic Cat.” I thought that was hilarious. Christmas fern. . . . striped wintergreen . . . . 

At the end of two days remarkable in a way my life has not been remarkable for a long time– for physical achievement. Yesterday I did the nature walk around the main building at the Arboretum. Many of the items labeled for the visitor have either died or disappeared for autumn. Made me imagine a park that labels things long passed away but which may have stood once upon that spot: Cycad, short-faced bear, tyrannosaur. . . .Too many walkers to allow one a taste of wilderness, though I did take a side path that allowed me to hear the passing of Bent Creek two hundred feet below. Drove from there rather aimlessly, but found myself in Brevard, at the trout hatchery. Did their little nature trail, fed the fish, which looked huge to me. Stopped at a Chinese buffet on the way home and made myself sick with gluttony. Today, though I’d intended other things, the weather was so perfect I set out again, arriving at Walnut Gap. Took the path leading south from there, as I had taken the one leading north several days ago. The notable thing about that is that the south paths goes directly uphill, steep, long, something I would not even have attempted during the last five years of my life. Went slow, rested often, but made it to the top. The top is one of the wonder-places of the Parkway, a wide hill with a long path across it, traveling the roof of things for maybe half a mile. I remembered it from before as one of my magic places, as it was today. I lingered and lingered before I climbed down again. There at the world’s rim I uttered perhaps the purest prayer I have ever uttered in my life. I was a tiny, happy animal under a dome of gleaming blue, giving thanks for its life. When I came down I was not even exhausted; plus, I had learned me lesson about the Chinese buffet.   

Veterans' Day

 November 11, 2020

Veterans’ Day. There’s little record of service in my line. Dad was disabled by polio, and his dad was a coal miner and deemed necessary to the domestic war effort. Uncle Walt was a Seabee in Germany; Aunt Marian a Marine in I’m not sure where. Uncle Richard was, I think, infantry in Korea. That’s it, so far as I know, on either side. Danny tried to join the Navy but was sent home for some unspecified maladjustment. I hope we did what we could to keep the home fires burning.

Wachet auf

 

November 10, 2020

Wachet auf on CD

My front porch pumpkin had developed a fungus spot. Last night somebody delved through that and ate the inside of the pumpkin out. Not a bear, I think, for the pumpkin was hollowed but not moved. Maybe raccoons. 

Madison County

 November 9, 2020

Venetian coronation music. 

Drove to Mars Hill and Marshall, to take in small town to the north, and to alert people that my book is set in their town. Sat under a tree on the Mars Hill campus and wrote a little on my book. A few professors walked by, looking very tweedy and pleased with themselves. I don’t think I enjoyed the professor-y part of being a professor as much as I might have. No scarves, no tweed, no pipe, no memberships in quaint organizations. Ran, improbably, into Keith Green on Main Street in Marshall. He has an excellent, big dog. Skinny boys in dirty T-shirts running between stores and trucks. BB said “You are a Pagan of the Old school, like Schiller, Mozart, Beethoven.” I have seldom been placed in such exalted company. 

Iris

 

November 8, 2020

Planted a crate of forgotten-and-late-arriving iris. Even slightly after dawn it was warm enough to work without a coat. Last night I heard fireworks and the din of celebration from downtown. I knew I’d missed most of it, but I walked downtown this morning to soak up the remnants of the vibe. Went to Blue Spiral to see Julyan’s show. I figured the pieces would be out of my price range, but I’d failed to consider by how much.  Frustrated that my book does not appear on the Amazon site simply by typing in its name. You can find it, but with more effort than I’d expect from a casual reader. There’s always a glitch, pointless and wasteful. The gardening must have exhausted me into huge, satisfying afternoon naps. I must have been in a mood when I ordered, for most of the iris were black.

 

November 7, 2020

I hadn’t thought myself as open to agitation from the political world as the last week proved me to be. The hours when it looked like Trump might be re-elected were dark. I wondered how to live in a world like that. The remembrance that millions have, in various tyrannies and dictatorships, didn’t help. I’d not planned that for my life. I didn’t have the resources. Would I be a rebel? Would I take up arms? Would I hide? I’d thought America, whatever the swings of its political pendulum, immune, ultimately, to the end of its Democracy. No. The razor’s edge. Worse did not come to worst, but the election was close enough to be almost as dismaying as a loss. Nearly half the people in my country voted not only for a bad choice, but for the worst conceivable one. One time might excused because we didn’t know better. But now he is an abomination self-exposed every day as a greater abomination, and the excuse of ignorance, even of mischief, is gone. Sanity already seeps back a little. The offal-tossing gibbon is replaced by the grandfather. Even after a moment one breathes better. The game now is to sit back and see how much damage the Abomination can do before being pried from the Oval Office.

The official publication date of The One with the Beautiful Necklaces is, then, the same day Joe Biden is declared president-elect.

Hit “goal achieved” twice on my step-counter, largely from walking in the woods. Heading for Lake Powhatan– deflected because I’d have to pay to get in– I found the Hard Times trailhead. I didn’t know it existed. That the trail began somewhere did not enter my imagination, thinking of it as a kind of wooded infinity. Hadn’t walked long before I realized that my hiking and biking in days gone by had brought me to within 1/4 mile of the trailhead, had I just known in which direction to continue. The Bent Creek road and the Hard Times, coming off the mountain, meet at a bridge and a falls of Bent Creek, where I’d been a dozen times before. I oriented. The forest began coming together as a map in my head, after two decades’ neglect. Returned today with a new app on my phone, which identifies organisms you point the phone at. The app is kind of stupid– I started with things I knew but it apparently didn’t, a holly tree, a white pine– the closest it could come was “Vascular plant”-- but it has something to do, I think, with the way I was holding the camera, for it also gave me smooth alder and mountain doghobble, which were new to me, and which it knew pretty quickly. 

Daniel and Michaela came for dinner Thursday, a happy time. Made peanut butter pie for dessert, which, being both easy and delicious, may be the death of me. One minute it’s death by tyranny, the next death by dessert. It’s a perilous world!  They each do things for a living that are difficult to present in a sentence, or even a shapely paragraph. She is a sort of medical concierge; he. . .  does IT. . in some way related to sales. . . . I don’t know. I think a small evil lurks behind a job that cannot quite be put into words. Maybe they are both spies and didn’t want to tell me. David phoned while I was already high on the mountain this morning, so I will see him and Lara next time. 

 

November 3, 2020

Night. Victoria on CD. I’m usually not up in the study at night, but the TV downstairs is full of election reports, and I don’t feel I can watch until the end is known.  All stands at the crossroads, all hangs in the balance, and yet I have been merry through the day; perhaps that is a sign, either of good tidings or resilience in the face of bad tidings.

Cleaned the pump and filter and ladled several pounds of needles and leaves out of the pond. 

Began walking the MST at Beaver Dam Gap, heading north. It was not one of my usual haunts, so it took me a little while to remember it, to regain the rhythm of the land. I’d received disappointing news in emails, so I went up with the intention of a Grand Confrontation in the wilderness where only we two could witness it, but by the time I got in position, all the energy, all the rage had gone, faded into the silver wood and the silver air. I resented it a little, but I felt the Lord already knew what case I would and must present. I am right in this, but even the right thing needs not always to be said. The air forced itself into the lungs. It was a little too cool for how I was dressed, but this made me pick up the pace, and needing to pick up the pace signaled to me that I could. Hiking stopped when painting began. I have noted this before, mostly to add that I am happy to be hiking again. It is different now. I am different now, some great conflagration spent and guttered out. Before under the greenwood I was often boiling with rage. Now, not that at all, but a spirit passing, calm under the cool dome as a child. I stood beside the trail and blessed the wild and beautiful spirits of the mountain, and I felt they felt me blessing them. The last music on the radio before reception failed was Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, so I walked through the woods to the beat of “The Dance of the Knights,” an odd but pleasing effect.

I painted for the same length of time as it would take to raise a child. Perhaps that was given to me instead of a child, to spend my time and energy and money upon. If so, it was a thankless child, who came pretty much to nothing. I suppose parents too shrug and say “let it be.” Why did I want it so bad? Why do parents want children so bad? Make something. Leave something behind. Continue after–.

Drove south until I came to Pisgah, where I walked one of the trails that leads from the Pisgah parking lot to the top on the Bull Gap tunnel. Great icicles gleamed from the north-facing cliffs. I plucked one and put it into my mouth. It was a new adventure in thirst-quenching, pure and cold and airy, with a delectable stony after-taste. Many people speaking Spanish in the parking lot. Met, one each on each trail I took, a woman in an orange jacket, each with a dog. A black dog and a red dog. We commended the excellent day to one another. On the slope of Pisgah I watched a vole–excellent in tininess-- scurry from one side of the path to the other. Each time in the woods–in this dispensation– I’ve seen an iridescent black beetle scurry among the fallen leaves. Different ones, I suppose. If the vole and the beetle are being presented as my spirit animals, I know I am in for a time of condensation, concealment, hidden ways. This is well.

All Souls

 

November 2, 2020

All Souls. Victoria Requiem on CD. 

Evensong lovely last night. Glad for my voice to be back in the saddle. Woke up sick from undistributed Halloween candy; freezing will not avail; it must be out of the house. 

All Saints

 November 1, 2020

All Saints.

Morning dream: I’m exploring an ancient Italian city. I get too close to a wall, which crumbles, and I fall into an electric aqua river. The river is barely chest level, and warm, and beautiful, and I know it flows past my digs, so I decide to walk in the river till I get home. I worry about my leather jacket, but even in the dream I figure that, it being a dream, all will be well. Everyone is there to congratulate me when I climb out of the river. 

Sang my first virtual service this morning. My fear that I was oversinging was not borne out by the videotape. Neither was my fear that I’d be caught digging at and readjusting my mask all the time. We men of the choir actually sounded pretty good. John’s sermon suggesting that the “blessed are”’s in the Beatitudes indicates “you are the apple of God’s eye because of this” was helpful. Cold, brilliant day. The anxiety in the pit of my stomach is, now that I plumb it, probably the election, not only the most consequential of my lifetime, but consequential in ways never before imagined. I’d always considered the contest between parties as a slight–sometimes less slight– disagreement about proper application of generally agreed-upon principles. Not this time. Democracy itself hangs in the balance, the rule of law, the simple survival of civility. Except for the mitigating truth that the bigger the gun the bigger the coward, there’s a real chance of armed insurrection. The Great Rat has allowed all the little rats to snivel out of the woodwork, where they had been held in check by real men. I know which side I’m on, but I’m not clear precisely how to make a difference at the vital moment. I suppose I could stand in the street and chant Morley or the Russian liturgy. Who knows what will avail in the end? 

 

October 31, 2020

Halloween. Was lit from room to room last night by a blazing blue moon. 

My watch sits ticking forlornly on the dresser, where it was laid down on March 13th and not picked up since.  

Feared something all evening without understanding what. Maybe it was just Halloween.

Hurricane

 

October 29, 2020

Flood this morning, though the afternoon is hot and dazzling. Deep water under the railroad bridge in the River District, almost didn’t get through. The barriers came up almost behind me. The Swannanoa was level with the road in most places, over it in others. Swannanoa River Road was blocked, and I had to flee uphill into Kenilworth. Drove to the Crafts Center on the parkway, but the Parkway too was closed, so I hiked in the rain and the half rain and then in the clear air. Fields of amaranth beside the pavement. In my garden a single nasturtium fights into the final light. Marked the day because it was the first time I met (and exceeded) my step count since Folley Beach, and the first time I did so without cheating.

 

October 28, 2020

Hurricane Zeta pouring itself against the roof. 

The All Saints Evensong will be beautiful, I think, and I’m glad to be singing again. I don’t think my voice got rusty, though someone else would be a better judge of that. It sounds OK to me in that unwonted emptiness.  Jonathan caught me on the church lawn and poured out the news of his wife’s advanced and apparently hopeless cancer. What on earth does one say? I hope some service was done by merely listening. One prays, but then asks what is the nature of intercessory prayer. Does God not now she has cancer? Has God not already taken thought for it? One does what one can, hoping good intentions make stupid gestures look less stupid. Wandered about in Biltmore Village, hoping to raise my footstep count. Looked through the window’s of John’s stores in commemoration. 

John

 

October 27, 2020

John Cram is dead. I wonder who else remembers when he and I were the Asheville Power Couple? Few people I have known directly have done so much good. I should have been more observant about our friendship. I should. . . I should. . . . 

Long, successful session by the river in Woodfin, writing, strolling, writing again. Maybe the riverside will be my office as long as the weather allows. 

Ste’s book arrives, huge rambling, often incomprehensible, but a gift of the new age, which allows you to make a book whenever you want to, and not wait for curation by minds that may not understand.

Looked up iron deficiency, and while I don’t have all the symptoms, I have several: exhaustion, the inability to take a really nourishing breath, dry skin. I’d even suspect my craving for radishes is related to the warning about “strange cravings.” I do not have constant headaches or anxiety. This is scarcely news. . . why do I not commit to an increased and constant regime of iron pills? Because it makes my stool weird. My pre-New Year’s resolution is to get past that. 

The final, final proof of OBN is in email. I fear to look.

Monteverdi on CD. Opera at its peak the very first moment of its life.  

 

October 26, 2020

Sick to throwing up last night. . . I think it was the half a hot sausage sub that I gobbled down in front of the TV. Smooth and restful sleep afterward. Dreamed that I had become Neptune’s assistant. The name referred more to the planet than to the sea. When Neptune needed me, he send a summons and I’d take off in a space ship and rendezvous with him on the planet. The planet and the dream–and Neptune himself- were all white and blue and silver, very beautiful. Neptune’s wife was his adversary, and I took an apartment neat her palace (on earth) to watch her movements and report to Neptune anything untoward. 

Made a breakthrough with The Garden of the Bears.

 

October 25, 2020

Went downtown to stroll and rack up steps on my little counter. Haunted the Blue Spiral, figuring no one there would know I was there the night it opened. Had great red wine again at the little wine bar attached to the gallery. Everyone striding down the sidewalks wore a mask. The girl at the wine bar recognized me, mask and all, and quoted back to me what I had said about the valpolicella weeks ago. Listened to a conversation outside the AC Hotel between a young couple, deciding whether they were going to try to move to Asheville or not. I tried to send “No” telepathically through the air. 

 

October 24, 2020

I keep thinking a certain day will be my last day in the garden, but maybe it will be this one. Planted the last shipment of peonies. Dug out rascal stands of bamboo and put Shasta daisy in the wounds thus opened up. Went briefly to the river, where I watched my beautiful duck dabble and nibble. Finished the “intermediate proof” for OBN.

Flashed on an image of myself walking the Hard Times trail a few days back. If this planet has a recollection of me, it’s probably that– a child walking in a great wilderness, under the rising moon, or perhaps a vault of trees, alone, maybe singing, stopping every few strides to listen-- fully, in those moments, happy. 

Bard and Bull

 

October 23, 2020

Morning spent on a mountainside in Crusoe. Candice had everything planned elegantly, a plan thrown off by my arriving, as I always do, early. She made me mint tea. She and Ken live off Sharp Mountain Road, in a place which any taste would consider paradise. They have two red dogs who romp inexhaustibly. The larger of the two is a love machine, who crowds up against you until you hold him, and he lingers in your embrace with a blissful look on his face. You don’t get that from cats. They live on the banks of the Pigeon River, whose stones we crossed to get to the mountainside where she wanted to film, because of the morning light. Adam appeared and helped direct me through it. This is only the second time in my career when I’ve done much on camera, and the first seems (blessedly) to have disappeared. I did the “This battle fares like to the morning’s war” soliloquy from Henry VI . It made me wish I were doing it on stage night after night, for a little of the bliss came back of being able to realize repeatedly the same words, and get something new and different and deeper out of them each time. This happens mostly with Shakespeare. . . and with me. (Grin). I was nervous about it, but I ended up enjoying myself. They assured me my stage experience was not causing me to overact for the camera, but I wasn’t sure. Will decide when the time comes whether to watch the broadcast of “In Our Solitude.” When we began to sing, five bulls walked up from the forest. Formidable as they appeared, they turned out to be much like the dogs, curious and friendly, though weighing half a ton and with horn untrimmed. Beautiful animals, immense deep, sad eyes.  

Leaf Fall

 

October 22, 2020

First experience of singing through a mask. Less remarkable than one would have thought.

Wrote some by the river– a lot, now that I think of it– then drove to the Parkway and walked high up on the Hard Times trail. On such a fine day I knew I would not be alone, and I wasn’t. It was dog day, dogs walking or jogging with their masters, and one observed personalities among them as varied and often more evident than their masters’–those that trotted obediently, even fearfully by their masters’s side, those who  had to be restrained (who wanted them to be?) from pulling away and investigating the new person, those allowed to trot on over and allow themselves to be petted. One especially elegant white dog with blue eyes padded over, sniffed, allowed her fur to be ruffled, then went on. When she and her mistress returned the other way, the dog nodded, as if to say, “It was nice to meet you, but let’s not make a big thing out of it.” Watched an iridescent blue beetle make his way among the fallen leaves. In times of silence, there was no silence, but a perpetual whisper, like to rain, but rather the falling of a million leaves against a million leaves.

 

October 21, 2020

Walked along the river memorizing my piece from Henry VI. Like Romeo & Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream, the language is languishing, silken, exquisite, sometimes sharp and wounding as finding a dagger in your lover’s pocket. I stood by a wetlands pond and a little black duck came up out of the water and looked at me. I apologized for not bringing bread, but she didn’t look like she was begging. She looked at me and I at her, each wondering, I suppose, what it would be like. 

Kyle wants the men to do “Salvation is Created” for All Souls. First time I will have entered the church since February. Found places on line where you can sing along to the scores of Renaissance pieces. I’ve still got it, at least the lower register.

2020! Closed my studio and stopped painting (maybe). Went to Ireland as it was closing down. Retired. Retired with a  bitter taste in my mouth, which nobody wants to hear about. Sat behind castle walls because of Covid19. Did almost nothing of what I did before, but was tolerably (if not perfectly) happy. Realized I was born to be retired, the hours like red fruits hanging from a tree in a perfumed orchard. Grateful for my companion Maud, who is the one other visible soul in this house. 

Persimmon

 

October 20, 2020

Plucked a persimmon from my tree. Astringent almost past bearing, but the taste under the astringency sweet and melon-y. If there’s another, I’ll wait till after the first hard frost, as the old ones say one ought. Lonesome for my bears.

 

October 19, 2020

Unquiet night. Reminded of the choice I make between taking iron for my anemia and suffering the intestinal disruption caused by taking the iron. 

I have a good feeling about The One with the Beautiful Necklaces, that it may be the one to catch on and turn attention toward me. I want to say, “even though it is not characteristic of me at all,” but how do I know? Maybe it is exactly characteristic of me, and everyone will know it before I. 

Student coming at noon to sit at the picnic table and discuss Stoppard. 

Yesterday another big gardening day, finishing everything that I had planned before the snow flies, though other projects formed in my head as I worked. 

Finalist for the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction from the U of Missouri, Kansas City. 

 

October 18, 2020

Excellent gardening day yesterday, in the crisp cool sun. Got most of what remains done, and the path open for the rest, which will but labor and repetition. Mental exhaustion–maybe from the sprint toward the end for OBN– seems to be eroding today, and maybe there will be some writing. 

Strange dream. I moved into a large apartment complex, the kind with pools and towel service and elevators and lots of young professional tenants, and a giant busy lobby. This is a recurrence of this dream, which I first had long ago, when it had something to do with TD. He had wanted me to move there with him, I think. Anyway, nothing in the apartment worked, everything was exactly the way I wouldn’t want it, and the manager went on vacation even as I finally found out where his office was. I’d left my car somewhere, and took a bus to go find it, and discovered that the bus was going the wrong way. The apartment was near Hiram, and I watched the skyline of Charlotte lift into sight. I ran through my head if I had enough money for a taxi home. The dream continued through at least one trip to the bathroom, and even after I woke up it ran in my mind as thoughts rather than purely a dream. Makes you question what a dream is.  I need no warning against doing something like that; I have not come close in the past to doing anything like that. My theory has always been that various intelligences mutually inhabit one, and the one that rules dreams is not necessarily connected–in any way that makes sense–to the one that lights daily life. 

 

October 16, 2020

Rain. Went to Staples and picked up my new computer, the old one having died rather catastrophically– after, I will admit, allowing me to back up irreplaceable documents. Even the technicians had to call India (or whatever it is they do) to make it engage one last time. $$$$. This week has been a strain, some of it connected to the mechanics of using a computer (heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs twice JUST LET ME DO IT!), some of it connected to the haste and magnitude of finishing off the proofs for OBN . I was not entirely satisfied with what I read as I proofed that last time, but the problems were stylistic, evolutionary (which is to say, that’s just how I was writing then) and would have taken a complete re-write to resolve. Went to bed last night literally sick from exhaustion and frustration. Better in the morning. Couldn’t have been worse. Of course I was sure it was Covid, but it was just Too Much. Took 5 spent computers or parts of same to recycling.

Walked in Bent Creek yesterday. Too tired to get much put of it, except they’re planting lights for a grand Christmas display.

 

October 14, 2020

Monteverdi on CD.

The bulb in the elephant lamp that lights my writing desk was out this morning, after having burned day and night without ceasing since the day I moved in. 

Long walks beside the river, to take in the autumn loveliness, but also to keep the step counter happy. The swirls and upwellings of just the French Broad are so various and  unaccountable I wonder if anyone could form an image of the whole and actual surface of the Earth. How to measure the surface of an eddy? The river has been near flood stage most of these weeks, the sad artificial wetlands brimming and alive with mallards. 

Gene at Moonshine Cove was serious about bringing out The One with the Beautiful Necklaces on November 7. Chose cover art done by my old studio mate Elizabeth. Would have done it myself, but–. They sent me their corrected version, complaining that my quotation marks had been backwards and that my speech attributions were overdone. They claimed to have made changes, but I didn’t notice them, so they must be well. Corrected it again myself through a long Saturday, finding mistakes which had eluded us, and noticing cruelly my habitually elliptical sentence structure. My guess is that I rewrote 1000 helping verbs and variations on “be”: Why my impulse is to write “She was going” rather than “She went” I don’t know, except that I wish to indicate a process begun in the past and ongoing, an indication which is almost never necessary. I saved that corrected manuscript weirdly somehow, and they couldn’t read it and I couldn’t retrieve it, so on Monday afternoon I took a deep breath and began again. I’m keeping to myself the truth that I was delighted–at least relieved– to have another crack at it. The second revision was far better and more thorough than the first. Delivered it all Tuesday afternoon and they said it was well. We’ll see. 

 

October 10, 2020

UNCA closes because of a credible email threat, demanding that our Black Lives Matter mural be painted over. The long shadow of Trump allows these night creatures to creep out of their holes. 

Spent the day correcting proofs of The One with the Beautiful Necklaces. The book is better than I remember it. The press’ edits were so organic that I didn’t even notice them. 

Rain all day. Began transcribing my play about Artemisia Gentilleschi from my notebook. 

 

October 9, 2020

A moved into my office today. There’s plenty of room to share. This is one of those occasions when you feel the Lord weaving unsuspected threads together, not for your sake, but for the sake of someone else, and it is well. But, it saves me money, and who knows how it will turn out? Maybe it is for me after all. The Great Tapestry. 

Ordered barbecue sauce online, and it arrived smashed to pieces. Hesitated to put it in the trash because a bear may find it and hurt himself on the broken glass. Smiled reviewing all this, me like a papa baby-proofing a hostile environment for my 250 pound baby.  

Last thing before sleep last night I took the Lord to task over Gluck’s Nobel Prize. Not that I think I’d ever come within a million miles of it, but the fact that I wouldn’t needs, between the Power of Night and myself, to be discussed. I am like the man who builds a castle, dark, stately, towering, full of intricate rooms, and reads in the morning paper that the kid who spray painted the lower walls has won a prize. Often–usually– I can say “it is well.” Last night I couldn’t. I turned away from Him in contempt. I hope He felt it.  

Downtown

 

October 8, 2020

Wearing actual tailored men’s pants for the first time, I think, since March 13. They’re pretty loose, too. While most have gained weight during isolation, I have apparently lost it. Doing nothing & eating nothing balanced a little in my favor.

Anxiety about Covid made me cancel plans to go to Ohio. The threat seems to be tightening, though people treat it more and more cavalierly. If all those in the Republican inner circle who have, through their own belligerence and childishness, contracted the disease become at least temporarily incapacitated, we might get through this year with a shred of dignity. 

Went downtown for a haircut. Walked about in the autumn light. Masks were general and ungrudging. I had wine all by myself at a street side café, some tongue-burning Mexican sandwich at the place where the exquisite TABLE used to be. The lady wanted to explain all the exotic dishes to me, but she did so in Spanish, which is why I ended up with the flamethrower sandwich. Almost inexpressibly exhausted 

Louise Gluck receives the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s not that one didn’t see it coming, but that one lives in hope that, sometimes, the worst thing one imagines does not come to pass. All part of the spiraling disaster that is 2020. Gluck and I have met or read together several times. The first time was at Warren Wilson. She was beautiful and dramatic then, like a witch in a TV romance, and you knew that the manifest badness of her work was going to be set aside because she LOOKED like someone who ought to be a poet. Her destiny set, her actual achievement from that point onward was going to be irrelevant. Her poetry was not merely lacking, but bad to the point of parody—which Tom and I did during the drive home, turning the mundane things visible through the car windows into poetry is fully Gluckian as her own. We were making the point that the work is all tone and no substance, and that even the tone has to be laboriously and externally applied but those who trust the effort is worth it. You say the lines as if they meant something, even though they don’t. We are like people in community theater, standing and hollering for bad performances because we have, somehow, invested in them. Or, from another angle, it’s quite Trumpian: a man who provably failed at everything he tried is still passed on as a paragon of some sort until he sits in the White House. Luckily, Gluck can go very little material damage from the eminence to which she has been sadly and predictably raised. It makes me sad for poetry, though, when bad and good are tossed together in one rancid bin as though there no difference between them. Only people indifferent to poetry could make Louise Gluck a Nobel laureate. 

 

October 7, 2020

Various duties throughout the day. One’s definition of “busy” changes at times like these. Having to be in a certain place at a certain time once during the day is an imposition. Coffee with Alan, who may end up sharing my riverside space.  He had the inside track on gossip of which I knew only the periphery. He hates Miss Jill as much as I do, and with more information to build the hatred upon. Skipped the vice-presidential debate. The fragments I heard of it this morning on the radio make that seem the right choice.

 

October 6, 2020

Before dawn trip for service at the Toyota dealership. I started a play about Artemisia Gentileschi on the covered patio while waiting. That taking 15 minutes, I headed off into the mountains, where I parked at Walnut Cover and entered the forest, moving north. All things being equal, I typically head north. Gold-green, wondrously silent forest. The sun broke again and again out of the cover of fog. Even a slight hill debilitates me, and so I must resolve to walk alone, or walk with someone wondrous patient. Dug and gardened when I came home, finishing off the “baby-blue-eyes,” a million seeds of which I bought without really knowing what they are. 

 

October 5, 2020

Note from the Board of Elections that my ballot was accepted. 

Gene at Moonshine Cove tweaks me to get my publication materials in.  Truth was, I never expected it to happen, and now that it is, I run to catch up. What on earth cover would a book like that have? Helpless now that I don’t have a studio. 

 

October 4, 2020

Amazingly vivid erotic dream. I moved to Warsaw to complete some project, and that man in the next apartment was a boxer. We’d say hi at first, and then have a beer together in the evening. He explained in broken English (better than my dream Polish) that his trainer was anxious for him to stay home at night during training, and not put himself in danger at the bars, so would I be willing to have sex with him? I said yes (he was blond, compact, very muscular, beautiful in a way I somehow attach to Eastern Europeans). This worked out well for both of us, and soon his trainer came to thank me for keeping his boy off the street. We all got along, so it became a three-way. The trainer looked a little like a vampire, but that was OK.  Even in the dream I wondered if I were dreaming or writing a short story.

Finishing off a patch of garden, I looked down, and the ground heaved as if some big animal were under it, pushing out, changing its mind, subsiding. Decided not to probe.

Sleepy Gap and Elsewhere

 

October 3, 2020

Hard to justify having no time to record a journal when there should be nothing but time. Moving forward steadily, but not speedily, on two manuscripts, as unrelated as it is possible to imagine. Applying myself nobly to gardening, digging new beds, yanking old ones out of their armories of weed. Bought most of the dirt I’ll need till spring. Yesterday I planted iris and crocus and spring beauty and blue anemone. 

Trying to live up to the expectations of my step-counter. Half the recommended number– about 4400 steps– is pretty much what comes naturally in a fairly active day, though I have taken to strolling the greenways by the river to raise the number a little. This is excellent, considering the extreme physical inertia of the first part of my quarantine. Today I drove to Sleepy Gap to hike on one of my most familiar trails. It being a sunny Saturday of almost unbelievable sweetness and clemency, even the Parkway had traffic jams. Ran into people and their dogs at the opening of the trail, but deeper in came the solitude and almost disturbing silence of the mountain. The paucity of wildlife often disturbs me there, until I consider that on the trail one is nearly at the top of rugged mountains, and all the sensible creatures will be far below, at the deep woods and the creeks. Even after all that I’m only at 58%–5009 steps. Big handsome man ran past me in both directions, going and returning. Admired that he had enough wind to speak to me. Wind is exactly my issue. Wind has always been my issue. From the first time I remember exertion at all–running as a kid– I knew that my lungs shut down long before anyone else’s. Age has not improved that. I do find that there is a plateau, and if I can make it for a certain period of time, gardening or walking–it gets no worse, and even settles back and becomes a little easier. Such it was at the beginning, and evidently will be at the end. I have made a career out of not mentioning this. 

AW interviews me for the GLBTQ archives. I was deep into it at one time, one of the foundations for a while. I wonder who else remember that? 

I do not watch the presidential debates. I understand that neither old man covered himself in glory. The hell-hound’s covering himself again and again in blood and shit seems to make no difference to his ignorant base.

 The hell-hound has contracted Covid, and with him a host of White House personnel and Republican senators–including our own Tom Tillis. So large a slice of karma–all of them virus-deniers and ostentatiously mask-less at rallies– would be implausible in fiction. Everyone is careful to keep the schadenfreude in check, though some of us are surely asking ourselves the question, WHOSE DEATH WOULD MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE? 

Hiking was replaced by painting at one point in my life. One has just so much leisure time, and must choose where to spend it. Painting is gone now, at least for the moment, so maybe the wildwood comes back. I remember noting in those long ago years that I would go into the woods and immediately submerge into a revery of fury, recrimination, debate with God. Sometimes I saw nothing. Today I noted that I was happy, the whole way. No ancient arguments. No blasts against present resentments. The hymn “Immortal, Invisible” played in my ears for a while, I think in response to the rhythm my feet were keeping on the trail. All in all retirement–if that is what is to be thanked–has been congenial to me.  I have wasted hours of it, but not days. 

 

September 29, 2020

Pounding of rain on the roof. 

Bought a pumpkin from Grace Church. Played with a puppy.

Listening to the President trying to lie his way out of his lies. Hope I live long enough to see how the future will regard all this mess. Aaron Burr, Benedict Arnold, Roger Taney, Warren Harding fade to insignificance as examples of bad behavior. They were at least somewhat specific in their malfeasance.  One can scarcely name an activity or office not soiled by the present horror.

I should report the adventures I invent for my characters as true events of my own life. Would make me sound a lot more interesting. 

 

September 28, 2020

Got up determined to put some steps on my step-counter, though my phone’s goal of 8500 + a day has been fulfill able only thrice. Walked the bird-watching path at Beaver Lake, seeing few birds (and, despite the crowded parking lot, few people) but taking repose from the faintly glowing gold of the autumn bog. Watched terrapins at ease in the gray water. Went from there to the Greenway, beginning where it begins under the railroad bridge and walking a piece. Evidence of desperate human existence under the bridge. More jimson than I’d ever seen in my life, interwound with Byzantine purple morning glories. 

E is for Effort

 

September 27, 2020

Freakish effort on manuscripts, getting ready for publication and sending out more, perhaps, than on any other day of my life. I maintain that my work is better than the rest, and so should not be rejected. Nevertheless, I find something to correct and improve every time I go back in. 

Trump’s tax returns reveal whatever every sensible person already knew: that he is a cheat and a disastrously bad businessman, whose only real motivation is finding a way to work every situation, every opportunity to his own benefit– and he’s not even very good at that.

Bear

 

September 26, 2020

The dogwood berry banquet continues. Bubba bear paid a visit. I ran out onto the porch to take a video. I startled him, and he ran toward the street just as a car rounded the curve. He winced and backed like a frightened child, and the car stopped just in time. I never expected–or wanted–to be a danger to a bear.

Good writing, sometimes quite old projects brought back into the light and completed. Not, however, making my step count. Woke oddly ill, which has diminished through the day. Noted that I had no recollection of what happened after our ZOOM meeting last night, and wondered if I’d drunk enough for alcohol poisoning. I looked in the fridge and saw that I had eaten the leftover vegetables, and had no recollection whatever of doing so.  Pull back from that. Water at my elbow. 

Hawk

 

September 25, 2020

Red-shouldered hawk in ruddy, banded glory at my pond. The berries of the dogwoods must have hit perfection today, for the trees bristled with every kind of bird gobbling them up, including the biggest crows I have ever seen. 

Lamentations

 

September 24, 2020

Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transition of power, declaring (already) that the only legitimate outcome is a victory for him. So far as I know, this is unique in American history. It becomes clearer now why he’s anxious to pack the Bench with his choices, assuming that a contested result would go to the Supreme Court. As a naive boy I would have assumed even the suggestion of such a thing was an admission of treasonous intent. Some evil magic surrounds this president. He has survived 10,000 blunders each of would have sunk anyone else who ever held that office. A simple explanation is the determined collusion of the Republican Party, but that is another mystery. In the past, there have been at least a few persons of conscience even among the unconscionable. Does Trump hold a lien on all their houses? Does he have incriminating videos? Is the desire to hold onto power so great that a part would gladly destroy a nation in order to do so?

Facebook overruns with ways in which Trump could steal or invalidate the election. Nothing these days is inconceivable, as such things once were. 

Breonna Taylor’s murder goes unjustified because no one has the courage to challenge the sovereign right of the cops to take life with impunity. Incalculable thousands believe that a cop should have the right to shoot you dead if you do not obey his orders, however corrupt or illegal they are. Incalculable thousands have never experienced the event they insist on having opinions about. 

Sent a query to a long-time publisher of gay material, who said he’s getting out of the business, but gave me a list of 4 or 5 other places to try. Every one of them is out of business or not accepting manuscripts until such-and-such a time. 

It is the worst of times but not, for anybody I know, the best of times. Maybe I’ll sink back into Middlemarch.

Napped. Woke with the first movement of Brahms’ 4th on the radio. One ray of light.

 

September 23, 2020

My furnace has been on for two nights and already my voice is ruined. Causality is, at least, established.

Tiny feet on the roof above me. Tiny cat feet on the stairs.

 September 22, 2020

Autumn. I know its beauty, but, still, alas. 

The police called about the stolen checks. The cop sounded young and sweet. Told him the story and said he needn’t fill out a report, only be aware that such things were happening. He said, “We used to patrol that area a lot, but now we dn’t feel wanted anymore.” 

Took a walk along the Greenway in the River Arts, surprised at its being so extensive and so fully connected. You’re inconvenienced by the construction, but it doesn’t occur to you that the construction leads to anything.  Perfect bright autumn weather. I sat on a bench and contemplated the tangle of herbage, jimson and Jerusalem artichoke and convolvulus. 

 

September 21, 2020

Disturbed by a sound in the night until I realized it was the furnace turning itself on after a sweet summer. Love the sound, hate the prospect of the coming cold.

Odd financial disharmony to the events of the day: the lady at the river office said they had not received my rent check from me for September. I wrote it and mailed it, but something happened in between. So, I drove to the complex, wrote a new check, sat by the river a while watching the water flow and talking to two people from Louisville– both of whom, so they said, had survived Covid. Was able to steer them to all the landmarks they wanted to see, most of which were off the River Road within a couple of miles. Got home from that adventure, checked the mailbox, and the mail I had left there this morning (all bills being paid) had not been collected. Instead, each envelope was cut open and the checks removed. Total: somewhat over $3000. Frantic calls to two banks. Unless the thieves were very fast, I think I’m OK. But they do have my account numbers. I thought it odd that they should leave the envelopes, which would alert me immediately to what had been done. Maybe it wasn’t simple theft.

Got my flu shot.

Agreed to meet Denny and Kit in Ohio on October 26.

Autumn

 

September 20, 2020

The sky is the most stainless, serene azure from horizon to horizon. The air is on that line between cool and a little too warm, cool in the shade, too warm if you’re exerting in the sun. The upsides of the leaves flash with white fire. Two remarkable days in a row. I’ve stopped listening for the sea and worrying about waking the others in the house. Two days of effort in the garden, the most this year by far, and the thing to say about that is that I have done so without being out of breath and being no more tired than a man of threescore and ten ought to be. Yesterday when I began my labors, I felt a tightening where I presume my diaphragm to be. I had been stretching, so thought maybe it was just soreness, but it disappeared, and its disappearance was like a tight band being loosed of a sudden from my chest. I have no more explanation to give than that, but must report faithfully that I have worked the last two days as I could before the weakness and poverty of breath came upon me, before the anemia and whatever else has been ailing me. Stopped when I finished, and not when I could stand no more. Yesterday I cleaned out the west garden, behind the dogwoods, and began a new shade garden. Went to Reems Creek for hydrangea and camellia and turtlehead and anemone and other shade-lovers. Came back also with joe-pye and spice bush that love the sun, but there was room elsewhere for them. Today I tackled the honeysuckle tangle that the northwest corner had become, ripping out vines to a pile the size of a haystack, freeing plants I had forgotten were there. When I was tired of that, I went back and finished off, for the moment, the shade garden, watering, planting spring bulbs, mulching, ripping out the tangle of vines that shielded against the house. Something in the weather or the soil has made extreme weeding conducive, the stubborn vines pulling out to the last micron of their roots.  

Meanwhile, in the hours of dark indoors, I wrote well and productively.

I’d been thinking of returning to painting, wanting to, literally dreaming of it, but realizing that if I wanted to return to oils, I’d have to have a dedicated space, as it’s too messy and too fumey for either home or the river office. When I rose this morning, I found my colored pencils and gave myself a tutorial, discovering what they could do, how they could shade and bend and produce other effects of painting. The experiment was exhilarating. Maybe that too shall return to me.

Went to clean out the almost-spent zinnias, but a cloud of goldfinches was still harvesting their seeds, so I let be. Sat so still on the porch that a thrush drank from the urn five feet away.