January 30, 2020

Thursday afternoon, Classical trumpet music from downstairs. Attended what might be–what will probably be–my last departmental promotion/tenure meeting. There was some controversy, not that much about the candidate, but about another colleague who felt badly served by the process in the past and kept directing our attention to the unfairness we showed her, making sure we were at least equally unfair to our present candidate.  That, at least, is over. Two astonishingly excellent stories from the creative writing class. Everyone languishes around in transports of exhaustion. Someone told them this is an excuse for not doing their work.  An Age of Silver came out at blinding speed even for me, though in fairness it has been gestating since Exeter. From time to time I follow the advice I give my students– let go, let the story lead you. I have no interest in singing Disney at rehearsal tonight. I think I will tell the studio people that I will not pay rent until they fix the roof. If they throw me out, then that decision will be made without my having made it.

Reading an email from SS I realized how to finish Invisible Husbands.

January 28, 2020

Early morning, though less early than I thought before I looked at the clock. Guest speaker in class last night. Not what I expected. Exhausting, but the kids responded well. My impatience to have my time my own is out of proportion.

January 26, 2020

I believe I finished An Age of Silver just now, while listening to Arvo Part. Something Daniel asked led me to look into journals from the early 90's. I have had a catastrophic life. There is now no way to redeem it. It’s OK. Have a cocktail, watch some TV, go to bed.

January 24, 2020

Tremendous rain on the roof.

Drove to Marshall to look at a studio in the old school building on the island. It is perfect in many ways, but the drive is just too far. Beautiful Dave showed me the space, and I was tempted to take it just to be near to him. Those things never work out the way you hope. Lunch among the locals in the café on the corner. As foreign, actually, as Dublin or Rome.

Suddenly inspired revision and enlargement of An Age of Silver. Much good writing saved from long ago, much bad writing from long ago fearlessly axed. The new story flows. Gushes, in fact.

January 23, 2020

Climbing the steps from the street to Karpen, I dodged a great shadow passing over my head. It was a juvenile redtail, all creamy white beneath. He perched on a branch, preening as I watched, so fierce and handsome. I accepted the blessing and let it linger in my heart all the day.

Student, told that she uses too many words, retorts, “I LIKE to use too many words.” Where do you go from there?

January 22, 2020

Delicious irony of receiving a no-thank-you from an agent for the book Moonshine Cove had just taken. Had no recollection of sending out the query, which was an added stroke.

Coffee with Justin, who will be speaking at my class Monday night. He loves C.S. Lewis with deep love. It is always fascinating to be with those in love.

Got Circe’s ashes from the vet yesterday. They will sit on my dresser for a while. I looked for Titus’ ashes from long ago and couldn’t find them. Brought my bust of Shakespeare home from school, where it has sat looking down on my deeds for thirty five years.

January 20, 2020

Bitterly cold when I went out in the morning, so I went out no more. Didn’t intend to spend the day revising Sam-sam to this point, but that’s how it was spent. Maud curled on my foot is the one sufficiently warm spot. Sadly consider that my time with the Magnetic Theater was probably a brief bright moment. Their selections for the next year–and their probably permanent preference–is for the rollicking. I have many virtues as a playwright, but rollicking is not–or only so briefly–among them.  All day with Baroque opera coming out of the speakers. Never gets old.

January 19, 2020

Martin Luther King Day at church, hence otherwise unheard spirituals. Annual meeting. The rest of the time doing really solid work at the keyboard. Just now I was typing in a handwritten-in-the-café chapter of Sam-Sam. Great wind pulling on the attic doors. Incredibly quiet without Circe, though I don’t actually remember her making noise.

January 18, 2020

Kyle’s birthday at Rendezvous. Festive. The best brandy Alexander I’ve ever had.  We stayed far too late and the staff was kind.

Maud rustling around in the furniture, finding secret cat ways between shelves and drawers.

Bitter day after our lingering autumn. Sat in High 5 beside a couple who took shelter there because, apparently, most of Woodfin lost power early this morning. He had the most beautiful hands, huge and strong. They looked underused turning the pages of a book.

Good painting, though Elizabeth came with the news that we are, at last, being evicted. Do I soldier on or not?

January 17, 2020

Closed on this house six years ago today.

I announce the brute fact as my books get published, but I don’t yet have a brief way of saying what I really mean. These are stories I have loved and told over many an hour, bits of creation that I wove into the creation I found around me. They are important to me. Precious to me. Contributions to a thing so large I cannot myself name it. To think the stories would go untold, or at least unshared, was despair. To have them told is joy. I don’t even mind fighting the weirdnesses of the publishers. I don’t mind doing most of the work myself. The One with the Beautiful Necklaces is the most full of stories of all, many so strange I thought they would never be heard. Bless, and bless.

Students: She who was Sarah is now Charlie.

January 16, 2020

Christopher Tolkien is dead.

Read in Zach’s office the checklist on what you should be able to do at my age to insure a healthy and independent life. I fall short on every single thing except sleep. I still sleep like a champion.

The cat spirit in the house was basically Circe’s. Maud and I creep around in silence, like an old bachelor and an old maid.

The acceptance of Beautiful Necklaces continues to be a joy and an astonishment to me.

RE from AGMC says he finished NSDL and–

12:35 PM (3 hours ago)
to me, Richard

and my soul wants to imagine the rest of the story.

I read a lot, I have bookcases filled with the husks of tales I have devoured.
This is one of the few that will always be more than an empty husk

I know your voice, your physical voice. I hear it when I recall your incantations of poetry.  I never heard it when listening to the narrator.  How did you do that?

I love that he didn’t hear my voice in the book. It wasn’t me. He also outlined the ways in which he was related by blood to my fictional characters.

January 15, 2020

At one point I was saying to the black air, “Tumors do go away. Cats do recover and go on. You could do this. Nobody would notice. The Balance need not be thrown off. I would be silent as fog. Please. Please.” But, no. For a moment I pitied God, hearing this from a million hearts every moment of the day, and, for whatever reason, being unable to say, “All right, this time.” I see her wherever I look, and I whisper stay, little ghost, as long as you can. I come in from school, and for the first time in fifteen years, she is not there to greet me. This will begin to look foolish. I will not mention it in public again.

January 14, 2020

Rain pours from dark skies, though it is curiously warm, not wintery at all.

Today at 2 PM Circe the Cat crossed the Rainbow Bridge and continued on her journey. Something in her glance last night told me it was time for it to be over. I came home immediately from class and held her in bed all morning. She still had the strength to climb on the stool I placed for her onto the bed, though she had stopped eating and moved only between my side on the bed and, curiously, the waste bin in the study. Last night she did as she had always done, sat on the floor and stared at me in that unfathomable way, though one eye was swollen shut. Her eyes and her fur were beautiful, and her soul was the gentlest in the world. I have wept almost non-stop for two days, one in anticipation, one in desolation. Of course I made a fool of myself at the vet’s and crept out the backdoor so I would not be seen by the people in the lobby. I noted that though I can control anger and fear and modulate hatred and joy, in the face of grief I am helpless. It was good to drive home finally and simply give myself over to it. Exhausting, though; I can hardly move. There are her toys, there her stool, there the place where she lay in the sun. I am happy in those things. They will encourage a remembrance which, after bitter grief has worn off its edges, will be wholly sweet. No creature in the world ever loved me more. I must sit for a while with my face to the wall.

An hour of the day was taken up with a department meeting. Worried about Circe, I resented it, but also I felt it as I had not since I decided to leave it. I want friendships with W and E and K, but I will never have them, Our ways are parting too quickly, and I do recognize they feel themselves of another generation, and do not spontaneously look at mine with thoughts of friendship. No one in that room had read my books, or thought they ought to, and were bragging about reaching into far countries for texts and qualities I would provide them–better–a few feet down the hall. I blamed myself for being unattractive or personally uninteresting, but perhaps it is the general case that one looks far afield for what one might have had at home.

Listened to a colleague meet her first class. I would have shot myself in the head had I been her student.

As if the day were not remarkable enough, the following letter:
Publisher
Attachments
1:21 PM (3 hours ago)
to me

David,

Thank you for giving us the chance to read your manuscript. It is an unusual work and well-written. We think it will be a good fit for our future publishing plans. We therefore take great pleasure in attaching our current publishing contract for your consideration.

As part of our normal publishing program, we will produce a print edition and an E-book edition. Our contracts with distributors and wholesalers ensure that the book will be available throughout the United States and in many other countries including most European nations, Canada and Australia.

To accept our offer to publish your work, sign on the last page after filling in the blanks on the first page. To return the agreement to us, you have the choice of either scanning the signed signature page and attaching it to a return email or signing two printed copies and mailing them to the address at the end of the contract. I will return a copy with my signature for Moonshine Cove Publishing in the same manner. It is important to include the mailing address we are to use for sending royalty checks. Please also list a phone number and, if royalty payments are preferred through PayPal, list the email address used for your PayPal account.

If the completed contract is being returned through regular mail, please send an email to that effect so in case the letter doesn't arrive, we'll know to contact you. As a highly selective independent publisher, we publish only a limited number of books each year. We are currently trying to decide on future publishing contracts, so your decision affects other pending works. Please let us know your decision in a timely fashion.

We look forward to our work together turning your manuscript into a published book.

Best regards,

Gene

Gene D. Robinson, publisher
Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC

The book in question is The One with the Beautiful Necklaces.  I’m too emotionally exhausted to be as elated as I ought to be, just now. The first thing I did was search the Internet to see if Moonshine Cove is a real publisher, like Red Hen, or some other laborious thing, like BMP. It is real.

January 11, 2020

Something led me from one Internet search to another, until I found myself reading B’s online reviews. Turns out that he’s a bad doctor as well, snotty and disengaged and slipshod. The curious effect it had was to make me inclined to pull back from war with him over the chorus, that being the one thing by which he seems to be fully engaged.

Circe sits on the floor and stares at me. I pray she is not asking why I don’t do something to end her pain. The one thing I know to do is too final to think of now.

January 10, 2020

Surprised at having joy in singing old Disney standards at AGMC last night. The music is nothing, but the memories are sweet. Downtown is still lit up for Christmas. I’m grateful for that.

Circe has energy enough to climb the steps and join me in the study, flopping herself heavily into the trash bin, where I suppose she feels protected.

From Billy Carestio, a student from long ago:
I hope this finds you well and you're not to a taken back by this out of nowhere information.I former student of yours Greg Brown, a poet and a person with whom I discussed your poetry and the poetry of others, passed away at the age of 43 due to complications of Renal Cancer. Greg Brown was a kind, gentle soul and he and I worked together after UNCA on the Children's Psychiatric Unit of mission hospital. We would work long overnight hours and talk poetry and share. He was amazing with kids suffering and those that has been exposed to trauma, he definitely influenced my pathway into Mental Health nursing. He was very much inspired by you. Thought you should know. 
B

Met Vance–who says I helped her with her senior project, but I don’t remember– at High 5 to talk about a career as a writer. Was amazed that I had so much to say. Was amazed that she seemed to think it was helpful.  Vance is a psychologist helping people at the Vanderbilt Apartments with end-of-life issues, mostly dementia. She is careful to say “a victim of suicide” instead of “committed suicide.” We agree it should be our own choice when enough is enough. Enjoyed her company.

January 9, 2020

Poetry at the café, then a brief trip to school, where I realized I didn’t have to do my syllabi just yet. Retrieved my two Christmas cacti, which have not been prospering in my office window. Repotted them and set them in the dining room. Cleaned the pond drain. Cuddled Circe, which causes her to purr. Realized the Virginia Woolf biography I was waiting to read is mostly crap. The Phil Mechanic has again changed hands. Have been happy so far all this year. I put it down to kissing correctly at the stroke of midnight. Amazed at how long I can sit in some public place and not see anybody I know. It didn’t used to be that way. Brilliancy dividing the day with storm.

January 8, 2020

YMCA first thing. It’s healthy. . . one feels better all day. . . plus one has the sight of beautiful young men all sweated up first thing in the morning.

Ran into Adam K at the High 5, his father and his brother traveling with him to get him set up (again) in New York. Gave me joy to see him. It’s not impossible that, if I end up going with Sophie to Greece, I’ll visit Adam’s father on his island.

Circe seems not only to be no worse, but to be slightly better, opening her swollen eye from time to time, eating lustily, moving from one favorite place to another. I believe that this is well and we can go on as long as it does. If I’m wrong, I hope that gentle spirit can forgive me.

. . .  The surprising realization that I had not, until this moment, read the blurbs on the back of The Falls of the Wyona, where I am compared to Jack London. Never saw that coming.

January 7, 2020

Wonderful day. Lots of PR and manuscript work done. Went downtown and dropped a load of NSDL off at Malaprop’s which seemed glad to be getting them.  Someday I’ll have a REAL publisher which. . .  ah, well. Also lunch with Jason Schneider, whom I’d met at our Red Hen reading in New York. He’s teaching at Warren Wilson’s low-residency these recent weeks. What pleasure I took in his company and in his conversation! He reminds me, if I needed to be reminded, of the advantages of living, as he does, in the Center of the World. I knew none of the gossip, and delighted in hearing it, even of people I didn’t know. We walked through Malaprop’s, with him pointing out his favorite authors. I had invariably never heard of them. He bought a copy of The Glacier’s Daughters, which must be the only copy sold in the last decade. Then deal with WR, who wants me to supply the mortgage for his new real estate adventure. One might have thought practically giving him 62 would have completed my duties. I refrain from mentioning I never see him unless he wants money. Felt my spirit freezing around the syllable, “no.” We’ll see how this turns out. I asked him how much he’d saved (he’d been planning this for a long time) and I assumed his silence signified “nothing.”

Our treasonous President attacks Iran to distract from his previous treasons. Iran responds rather civilly, I think, aiming her missiles at what seems to have been essentially an empty lot.

January 6, 2020

Epiphany. Lilac and cream crocus bloom in my front lawn.

I have been keeping this record for fifty-one years.

Already the meetings are beginning to pile up, and I to resent them.

Vet lady calls with a plan of action for Circe, whose affliction is cancer and whose end is inevitable, but who can be made to feel comfortable for a little while. I don’t know how to ask her what she wants. She wanders into the living room, lies down in the late morning sun, follows the sun across the floor. This seems to me to be joy in something. I say to the Vet, “we’ll do it.” Does she feel miserable? She does little but sleep. Sleep is a joy to me, maybe it is to her? I don’t know what to do.

Twenty years ago I was ill but joyful in Dublin. Ten years ago I was rehearsing The Beautiful Johanna. I think nothing has moved. I think I have gone around in a spiral wide enough to make it look, sometimes, like there was progress.

Curious observation that I have not felt inflammation in days.

Quite good morning writing in High 5, then quite good morning painting in the not-too-cold studio. Began the day doing weights at the Racquet Club, a fact forgotten until this moment. The RC is solemn, far more solemn than the rowdy Y. I look at the handsome men.

January 5, 2020

Tiniest film of snow at waking.

January 4, 2020

Day of intense writing. Assembled a whole new volume of mostly lately revised poetry, Before The Flight. I realize that quality is largely irrelevant, but it is very, very good.

Circe leaves rosettes of bloody drool on the comforter. Yet she rises up, eats, moves from sleeping place to sleeping place, accepts caresses. I don’t know what to do.

Bright for a while this afternoon, now the sky is cold and dark and wintery, I suppose as it ought to be. A wild cat took shelter in the cooler I’d left drying on the porch.

There is a war between what is and what pretends to be, and everywhere I look is a battleline or a battlefield. Our President is the archetype of Gluttony pretending to be a statesman; our government is a vandal pretending to protect the world; the corporations try to gobble up the future while giving us enough of the bounty to let it happen; our universities (mine, anyway) allow just enough learning to conceal that they are no longer concerned with learning. Again I must say I don’t know what to do. I have not lost every battle, but neither have I won that many. . . at best beaten a few demons to a draw. Lord, if I knew what to do I would do it. Or, perhaps I do know what to do, and am doing it, and you aren’t helping that much. 

Huge fights on Facebook about the appearance of Jesus. I love that we draw lines and hurl missiles over what cannot possibly be known.

Russell and Maria lovely on Facebook with a rendition of “In the Bleak Midwinter” on toy instruments.

January 3, 2020

Lovely, full day. Rose and went to the Woodfin Y. The thought crossed my mind then and crosses my mind now that I haven’t had to take medication for inflammation since before Christmas. Wish I could figure why. Maybe a Christmas miracle.

Revised poems. When I looked at them, even the ones I could improve, I was pleased. I am the best poet I could possibly be. To be best at a maligned and obscure craft is an ambiguous blessing, but of all the things I wanted, perhaps I wanted that most, and here it is. I do give thanks. I do shoulder the load another day

Almost constant rain. Circe curls in the trash box upstairs. May she find a place to be secure until the end.

January 2, 2020

Read “Ring Out Wild Bells” for the Appalachian Brass concert, I’m told to some effect.

Dreamed I finally met my brother after all these years. He was Sam. Even in the dream I wondered how my brother could be so much younger than me.

Circe rallies to eat tuna and climb the stairs to lie at my feet while I type. Everyone at the party remarked how, sick as she was, she padded out to greet her guests and be made much of.

Dark rain suits the day, for some reason. I have been happy and melancholic at the same time.

Wildly revising.

Looked at the pile of clippings and notices I’d built up through 2019, intending to set them into my scrapbook. Stacked them up and put them in Recycling instead. A burden of vanity off my mind.

January 1, 2020

Early afternoon. Hugely successful party last night, the usual subjects plus a few. I noted about certain travels that a weight of anxiety had come off me, and the same obtained with the yearly NYE party. In the past I’d thought of it as a social duty, something I would be happy I’d done whether in the moment I wanted to do it or not.  Last night I looked forward. I enjoyed my guests. I did not sit in the corner wishing they’d go home. Is this the release of retirement? If so, the University weighed on me far more than I was aware. If it is something else, then welcome whatever it is.  Maria spent a long time with Circe, saying goodby, perhaps. Circe and their boy Alden had special relationship when they came for catsitting.  Russell cried while he described it. Sweet cat will not go unremembered. All cleaned up now. Slept maybe two hours after the party, but made up for it with a lingering late morning nap. First Day bright, clear, warm. Guests arriving last night were greeted by an enormous opossum. I will regard that as a good omen.

Two versions of mushroom soup were brought to the party. Mine was infinitely better.

Resolutions? Part of the gathering of wisdom is to see what is your fault and therefore under your power, and what is not. Most of what’s wrong with me lies in someone else’s court. I could get more exercise. Loins fully girded.

December 31, 2019

Brilliant last-day. The sky light milk poured into a saucer of lapis-lazuli.


Circe has cancer deep in her ear and behind her eye. The vet made the gesture of sending off a sample of weird tissue to be tested, but I’ve been down this road before. As long as this clean-out and excision lasts, she will be happy, and I will enjoy her. The next visit to the vet is likely to be the last. Yesterday, te day of all this information, was almost unbearable. Amazing how exhausting grief is. I went to bed before nine and slept until after seven. But Circe slept beside me for a little while longer. Have a big party tonight; am not sure I have the energy to prepare. After her painkiller, she lists a little to the side when she stands. I had a new vet. I think the previous one was sheepish because, though I told him it wasn’t, he insisted the problem was a reaction to fleas, and thus $1000 was spent curing the wrong problem.


Took an important new direction in poetry this morning at the café.


Have not to this hour given 2020 so much as a thought.