March 31, 2020

First day the quarantine has gotten me down, the day being too rainy and cold for me to do any gardening. Even finishing off the revision of Jason of the Apes (and being happy with it) didn’t take the edge off. Cooked, not interested in eating what I cooked, just sick of seeing the ingredients in the fridge. Not interested in the lurid biography of Merv Griffin R lent me. Two packages sit unopened on the table.  Planted yesterday, zinnias, snapdragons. Was going to garden today, but the carton arrived on the front porch just as the bitter rain came down. At 7 tonight some of us read the Passion for Palm Sunday, each Zoom-ing from our own houses. One should probably put a shirt on. One observes that the kind of people who love minding other people’s business are now in seventh heaven, being able to admonish about distancing and staying home and what have you with no one–yet– telling them to shut up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be too bored to look at social media and that irritation will be gone. Trump continues his by-now-beyond-miraculous streak of never doing or saying the right thing. He may be the world’s forever champion.  Irritated by the beautiful music on the radio.  Maud breathes contentedly at my feet. I’m going to do as she does and wander from spot to spot, flopping down every few feet to nap. Watched the neighbor’s cat watching the fish in the pond. Actually refrained from cleaning out the filter, so I’ll have something to do tomorrow. The songs of the birds before dawn is Paradise.

March 29, 2020

Summer hot, as was yesterday. The house is cooler. You wear a jacket inside and shed it at the door. Planted zinnias, betting that the weather will not be as treacherous at the microscopic world. 

March 28, 2020

Rose and walked in the empty neighborhood, up around Mount Vernon Circle. A great din of woodpeckers. Stopped at DJ’s, but he could not be roused. Stood in the middle of the street and talked to my sister on the phone: this technology still amazes me.  Most beautiful morning. Took up the garden tools and planted cosmos, and then, when the Fed Ex guy delivered them, two pink roses.

March 27, 2020

Orlando Gibbons on the CD. If you ask Alexa to play Orlando Gibbons, she gives you a rapper who must have a similar name.

Random recollections: Tony came to mow. I regretted it a little, as all the heads of the blanket of violets would be lopped, but the yard looked like a battlefield, so mow he did.  He was careful around each island of daffodils and grape hyacinth.

Realization: the organic limit of how many days without a shower is set by the onset of jock itch.

George Auten is dead. One of the finest men I ever knew. There was no shadow in him.

March 26, 2020

Mother has been dead 46 years. She died at age 49. Each year the numbers grow more absurd. I can scarcely think of her without thinking of the myriad ways in which I might have been a better son.

Shopped today, and since I didn’t really need anything, bought mostly chocolate, which I don’t actually like. At the liquor store you tell them what you need and they bring it to you, so you don’t touch anything. Went to Reems Creek Nursery, which was doing a lively business, everyone getting the last of their gardening supplies before Buncombe County’s total isolation measure goes into effect tonight. I secured a truckload of mulch and one Mexican sage bush.

I always mistrust displays of government power, though it’s hard to argue against the necessity of this one. Is there a normal to go back to now?

In touch with Sam.

Warm, beautiful day. I spent part of it just standing in my garden, as though some narcotic power had come out of the daffodils and made it impossible to move.

I could certainly die of this. On the other hand, I could certainly have died of any of a number of things.  Best to keep moving forward with as much caution as still falls short of morbidity.

March 25, 2020

Make myself hot toddies in the evening, influenced by a posting that said hot beverages can kill Covid-19 while it is still in the throat. This crisis all has an air of unreality. You’d have to go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis to find something so pervading, and before which we seemed to be so helpless. Instantaneous and universal communication makes it better and worse at the same time. Sleeping excellently, with long and elaborate dreams.

March 24, 2020

T said, “You must be approaching sixty by now.”

Governor Cooper spoke yesterday, his calm and fact-laden presentation being in sharp contrast to the self-justifying, fantastical meanderings of our President. I think he really doesn’t see a difference between his wishes and the truth. No one would allow himself to be so absurd knowingly.

Time takes pity on me by making me drowsy a couple times of day. You nap, wake up, and it’s an hour gone.

I have more food in the house than I have at any other time, except the day before a party. I have never had food in the freezer before.

Revised the singing novella, making great progress on Jason.

As of today, I’m a patron of the New Theatre in Dublin.

Terence McNally is apparently the first high-profile victim of Covid-19.

Music from the Court of Burgundy on the CD.

In a nap dream I had body aches and chills, and was certain I had the virus. When I woke everything was fine.

March 23, 2020

Dark rain in the dark of the morning. The indomitable Republicans try to pass a Covid-19 relief bill which aids the corporations and leaves the workers and the people to struggle on their own. There is no end of this mindset in them, that wealth must perpetually flow up and the powerful must look after the powerful. They must be removed, every one, taken out by the root, hung to dry as an example for the generations.

March 22, 2020

Lamentations of Jeremiah on the CD. Grayish evening outside.

Yesterday was one of the great gardening days of my life. I planted a few things, pulled privet out of the wet & yielding soil, but mostly enlarged the front garden by easily 1/3. I note that I got through it with the initial exhaustion not only not getting worse, but clearing up as I worked. Sore muscles after, but they felt like virtue. Felt strong and accomplished. A day’s work done.

TH calls me via Facebook (never figured out how that works) and we were able to talk for two hours, face to face. I don’t know what he thought of my face, but his retained evidence of the beauty that stopped the breath years ago. He has had a very hard time of it, and emerges from the hard time defeated as a man. I don’t know what to do about that, except to do what I do as a teacher: suggest alternatives. I felt myself loving him as though we’d been friends in contact the whole time– which must be, by now, twenty-five years. He broke out crying three times. He is truly on the edge, derelict and void, as they say of Jerusalem. He told me of his fifty days homeless, out of which he pulled himself finally by his own bootstraps. He reminded me of incidents in our mutual life which I had forgotten. I remember him from here as a golden boy, beautiful and talented, maybe a little impatient with glories less than his. He remembers that himself, which makes the present worse. “One time when I was helping you move a futon, I dropped it and gashed your brand new pick-up. I was horrified. I thought, ‘Oh God, I have made David Hopes angry!’” I assured him I had no recollection of that whatever. I wanted to embrace him. Not only miles but a virus forbids. What an age this is! What shall we be when we come out of it? Right now we have time to answer the ring and listen.

March 21, 2020

Conversation with MA on Facebook. He hears I’m retiring, and launches into that sweet speech about how much I meant to him as teacher and mentor. I find I need that speech more than I’d anticipated, as my last “official” review of 37 years was that I was a sexual predator–or at the very least a thug– for whom sensitivity classes were being prepared. Maybe I should have taken them. Maybe they would have helped me get the issue out of my mind.

Two raggedy rabbits graze my ragged grass at dawn.

March 20, 2020

A week ago at dawn I was in Dublin.

Delta canceled my flight to Charlottesville because of weather, and keep reminding me of my rescheduled flight, which I guess was yesterday. Tried to cancel the whole thing, but Expedia didn’t, and doesn’t, respond even to the most heartfelt plea. Times of crisis let you know whom to trust and whom not.

The first day of spring was a calm glory. My yard is pink and gold. I shopped at two nurseries and planted, planted, though I doubled down on old space and have not yet dug the new gardens I have planned. Both nurseries received huge delivery trucks as I stood, so they are planning for a season. Bought lunch at the Wayside, took it to eat in the park beside the French Broad, where there was plenty of space between the picnickers. They didn’t give me a fork for my macaroni salad, so I had to squeeze the plastic container and render it into a scoop to get the food into my mouth. Kept thinking how odd it was that there were no squirrels or scavenging birds to throw scraps to in the little park.

You pick up habits in a time of plague. The shower I took yesterday afternoon was the first in a week, the first since the day before I left Ireland. Stephen had warmed the water up for me on that last morning, but I wasn’t in the mood.  I checked every day, and I don’t think I stank. Maybe somebody will tell me different.

Am sitting now in the study, so there will be no excuse not to start the day with writing.

Reading the New Yorkers that came while I was away. All the reports on theater and concerts! Those pages must be blank this time. What on earth will they report about?

Theaters will have to reestablish themselves. Can they? Will they? Will the old ones die of their wounds and new ones rise in their place? Will everyone be doing Greater Tuna and Annie forever to get their money back? Should I start now to organize a gala that will be the Phoenix Rising on the last day of the Plague?

Discovered that there is no record in my passport of my ever having been in Israel. How did that happen?

March 19, 2020

I have behaved since this began as though I were certainly a carrier, avoiding contact, going out only when I needed to or when I would likely meet nobody. I don’t know my Covid status. I have no symptoms, and so cannot be tested, as things stand now. It wasn’t rife in Dublin, so the place I might have picked it up was the airports, especially the swarming Petri dish of US Customs. Eight days remain before the accepted incubation period elapses, when I can be more sure. Would I survive the disease? I am elderly (as these things are counted). Do I have other problems which would exacerbate the effects of the disease? I’m not sure. I do know that for the last couple of days in Ireland and to this moment I have felt better and stronger than I have in months. I’ve almost given up trying to figure out how these things work. I do sleep like a baby after exercise, but I do accomplish the exercise–which is now mostly digging.

Thought I would get more writing done. I’ve been rather dazed by the extent of idle days before me, when epics might be accomplished. I remember this feeling from Exeter, where I was stymied by the abundance of opportunity.

Cannot look at my stock investments. Yet I remember that, months ago, 4/5 of my investments went into savings accounts, by God’s grace. All that is safe.

The cleaning lady insisted on coming today. I bet she needs the income. I’ll be in the study or out in the garden so we don’t infect each other. Bought a salad I didn’t want from 828 Pizza, just so they would make a sale.

March 18, 2020

Hauled off to Reems Creek and got the materials needed to work and enlarge the garden for the next month. Bought a cactus and a scarlet camellia, together with instructions on how not to kill this one. Sent messages to my students on how we will continue. We will all cut as many corners as we can. My LAST SEMESTER is thus annihilated. Perhaps it’s for the best.

March 17, 2020

Blessed St. Patrick.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Online department meeting, where we were all very much ourselves, and where we agreed that the semester is, essentially, over. I face the fact that there will not be for me the retirement reception that there has been for every other faculty member in the department. I will disappear like a ghost, unhonored and unnoted. I sort of assumed that would happen, though I did not foresee this particular circumstance.  Ah, well to 37 years.

Attacked wild honeysuckle and bamboo in the garden, extracting a bamboo runner twelve feel long and as thick as my thumb. Satisfaction as it pulled inch by inch out of the soil. Heavy rain came to settle in my pear and my roses. The pear that I thought was dead stands covered with buds, so there is an extra rather than a replacement. Unexpected blessing. Tiny blue flowers everywhere just above the dirt.

March 16, 2020

So, upon return the magnolia and the nectarine and the peaches were blooming, and there were as many daffodils as I remembered planting. This is the first time in five years the magnolia blossoms were not blasted their first day by a freeze. The grape hyacinths have made a little island. Drove to Reems Creek and bought a pear tree to replace the one that failed, planted it in one of the places I never thought of planting it until I was home looking at the ground. Waiting for God to water the tree and the roses.

I understand the precautions every takes to prevent the spread of the virus, but I fear something. It is not the disease. . . rather something in the precautions themselves. What if we never pull back from “social distancing”? What if people who have always hated intimacy use this as a pattern for all times to come? This sudden unanimity– though it seems so salubrious– would make totalitarianism even easier than it has proven lately to be. Not that we should rebel. . . not that we should open the discos. . . perhaps just that we could be more publicly regretful of the lost quality of life. I take on faith that isolation is the way to fight this disease. I remind myself that I am in the group of those in special danger.

March 15, 2020

Planted roses in the half-rain. Drove Alden’s little Ireland shirt to him, but didn’t knock on the door. Russell phoned later to see if it was me. UNCA’s planning for the virus hiatus is contradictory and chaotic, as its administration has been for a decade, now.

March 14, 2020

Home, still dark outside, Maud on my foot, purring. She hollered at me for ten minutes when I came through the door, angry at my having left her. We cuddled in front of the TV until she was satisfied. Maria left a photograph of Circe cuddling with Alden when he was a baby. Unpacking is far more irritating than packing, and more likely to be left for later. I’m trying to think of what to say about this sojourn in Ireland, I don’t even know the humber of which by now. Too sad and not sad at all. A terminus and a bridge.

Had such pleasure the last night from Stephen and his friend Conner. Will have to find some way to remain in the company of young men.

Rich brought me soil and fertilizer for my roses. I don’t know why. When I approached him he moved back, saying he had to keep six feet from everybody. He has to live because his lover would be a pauper if he died.

Went to Ingle’s, where every aisle was filled with suppliers restocking the shelves, and where potatoes and onions–alone, so far as I could see–were vanished. Bought what I needed, which wasn’t much. Why I came home with two jars of peanut butter cannot be fathomed.

Attended the gala intro to the Magnetic Theater season, which had not been called off. Everyone was proud of themselves for appearing in public. Daithi was there, and I told him–as I did three years ago-that I had gone to his theater on Essex Street. I did not add “for your sake.” He said, “you look different from before.” I waited. “Happier,” he said, “You look happier.” A tight bluegrass band played. The dulcimer player tuned loudly and talked on his phone while others were trying to speak onstage. The tastes of the theater lean more and more to the silly. The Christmas show is a dramatization of the movie, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. One wonders how one can conceivably fit in. The play she favors next of mine is the worst one I have available, recommended to her taste by being somewhat rollicking.  One moves forward, hacking the tangles away with machetes of the spirit.

March 13, 2020

Five in the morning, ready, as ever, in plenty of time to go down into the cold and wait for the taxi.

Went out last night to Fitzsimon’s, the Norseman, Lundy Foot’s, to hear music and be with people. People were in short supply even in the Temple Bar, what with all the talk of epidemic. But, it was enough. I listened to the music and was happy. Came home and had wine with handsome Stephen and his handsome friend Connor, who asked interesting questions, which I have forgotten in the passing of the hours. Two toothbrushes by the sink tell me what happened after I left.

Father’s 101st birthday.

Dublin 6

March 12, 2020

One bit of news in the air everywhere. I think it not impossible that I will get the Covid-19 virus. And, statistically, anyway, I am rather likely to die of it. Still, I do not know what further precaution I can take till I’m home and can insulate myself. I could have it now, though it’s not rampant in Ireland, and it would be a bit of weird luck. The Internet is useless. If you don’t exhibit exactly the degree of panic or exactly the degree of skepticism as the writer of a particular post, you’re deluded. There must be some point of repose between PANIC and RELAX.

            

Waiting for Stephen to come home from the gym (he cannot miss a day) to have a farewell drink. The price for the AirB&B was not much less than a hotel room, and the inconvenience level much higher. I suspected this would be the case, but getting reacquainted with Stephen weighted the evidence.

            
Wandered north through the open air markets (selling flowers and tangerines, notable Irish produce of the season) to the Hugh Lane, getting reacquainted with old, old friends. The cycad in the garden that was a sprout when I first knew it is now nearly my height. The morning was bright and cold, though now, again, bitter rain slashes down. I wandered and looked, and drilled what I saw in my brain, it being by no means unlikely that this is the last time I shall look upon Dublin. I am old. The Covid-19 virus may kill me, or everybody. But of those times when I have been in singing bliss, Ireland has had more than its share, and Dublin her grand portion. Bless her, then, whatever betide. I have been happy here. Maybe the percentage of happy moments compared to the dull makes it the best place I have ever, for a moment, called home. Erin, hail and farewell forevermore.

Dublin 5

 March 11, 2020

Across the street in the Acting School, two bearded boys are doing a scene, racing about and shouting at each other, while a middle aged woman watches and takes notes. People bundled up and hunched against the rain foretell the day.

            

Lunched with Loretto at her favorite Italian on South Frederick. Caught up on each other’s lives. Almost bought a tiny Yeats, realizing that my fire to own things, even beautiful things, burns quite low. Looked at the terrible rain and decided not to go to the Gaiety, wasting my ticket. From 3:15 for an hour this dark morning I was seized by vicious diarrhea. Blamed lunch, though Stephen had the same thing and seemed to be all right. I am glad I made this trip, but the ways in which it was not the ideal time to do so almost even things out.

Rehearsal in the Gaiety School across the street. They are so good looking, so serious.  

Did exactly what I ought to have done: rose up out of sloth, crossed the street to Lundy Foot’s, had a drink and listened to old Dublin music about how things were better in the former times. Spirit restored.

Dublin 4

March 10, 2020

Sometimes rain, sometimes clear Delft blue. Wandered up Grafton Street into St. Stephen’s Green, where I had spiritual encounters with the coot and the moorcock and the swan and the holy gray heron and lovely Old World diving ducks (black and white with a blue bill on the male) I didn’t know the name of. Talked with a Japanese girl studying in Denmark, who had never seen a heron, she said, but conceded that storks appear in Japanese art. Talked with a couple from Virginia whose first day in Ireland this was. Was photographed—rather extensively—by two girls doing a photo-essay on “People in Ireland.” I told them I was an American, but it was all right since I was, in fact, in Ireland. I think my purple hat attracts attention.

            

All right, I concede that Irish men are, by and large, the homeliest in Europe. It never mattered to me.

            

Stephen and I have lunch. I am happy. We talk about our lives. A great circle that began in 1995 bends slowly to a meeting and a close.

            

Walk before evening up one side of the Liffey and down the other. I am happy. Clouds of gulls dive for crumbs of bread.

The Virginia Festival of the Book has been cancelled.

Went to the New Theater to see Killing Grandpa, a play about the battle between Balor and Lugh. I love all that ancient Celtic mythology, but couldn’t figure how you could do the Battle of Moytura with two actors on a stage the size of an American kitchen. Turned out actually to be pretty wonderful.  Realized that I met the director of the theater in his opening season in 1997, when he was handsome and arrogant and had bright colored shoes. I mentioned all this to him, and he wondered at my memory. Maybe I’ll find the relevant journal passage and send it to him.

Dublin 3

March 9, 2020

            Late, late, just coming back from the bars I stopped at after the theater. One guy was singing his heart out with Billy Joel. Beggars are more numerous and strident than in times past, and more clearly bogus. Rain all day. It looked thicker in the lamplight than it felt. Walked to the National Gallery. In the Jack Yeats room I burst into tears. For the Road and The Singing Horseman in particular remind me of the high and great times here when I believed I could be an Irishman loved by an Irishman. As close as it came, it was never quite real. I wept for that. I wept for the decades when I thought I would be a painter and stand in a company with Jack Yeats. That too did never come to pass. The pain was sharper, deeper at that moment than it is now. Blessings on that. Visited Loretto at the Trinity Gallery, gave her a copy of FW and made a date for lunch on Wednesday. The play at the Abbey was The Fall of the Second Republic, and though it ended on the wrong foot, it was funny and clever and well done. The actor Andrew Bennett, whom I’ve seen in every visit to Dublin, played the rotten Teaschocg. Can never cross over to America, because of its concentration on the Irish parliamentary system – a mystery to Americans--and its luxurious use of the word “cunt.” Walking home from the theater reminded me why I love Dublin so much, young and alive and grubby, unwholesome, elemental, eternal. 

Dublin 2

March 8, 2020

Met Jack, Steve’s former lover. If there was ever a pair of Alpha Gays in the world it is they, both beautiful and elegant, like men in advertisements for cologne. They broke up as lovers weeks ago, but still hang out together as best friends. I can’t figure it out, and neither can Steve, but it apparently suits them. It would make a good sit-com. Jack and his mountainous biceps sell real estate and Steve and his Apollo face work on line for his brother’s business in Australia, which provides a number of services connected with staffing. When they went for drinks with friends probably as striking as they, I went for a 9 euro vodka tonic at The Turk’s Head. It was fun. I bought crisps and came home.

            

Read Dostoevsky while waiting for a falafel platter.

            

SM remarks, “My dad is sick all the time, but then, he’s seventy.” I say, “I’m seventy,” exaggerating by 6 months. The look on his face was worth the price of the flight.

Evening/Night: Sitting in the room, wrapped in everything, unable to get warm. Cappuccino in Rosie’s just down the hill from Christ Church. Walked to Saint Patrick’s for morning service. Went from there to Dublin Castle and the Beatty Library. Didn’t actually see any of the exhibitions at the Library, but ate a vast and leisurely lunch, napped in my chair, rose and returned to Saint Patrick’s for Evensong. In St Patrick’s Green a boy was throwing a ball for a lively Jack Russell. The dog began to carry the ball to other people roundabout for them to throw. I got my turn, and as I threw the ball, I realized that a joyful spirit had blessed me, and now was chasing after a ball I’d thrown. Happiest dog in the world just then, shedding a little golden light around. Evensong was exquisite, if less well attended than a service at All Souls. Toddled back up the hill, had a Bulmers at Lord Edward’s, watching Manchester United with the lads. I could have four Bulmers in a night once upon a time and stagger amorously on to the Sauna. This one made me sick; still trying to metabolize it. Thought Steve might meet me at Evensong. He confessed to never having been in Saint Patrick’s, and only once in Christ Church. Someone that beautiful does not have to add beauty to his life, is my theory.

Dublin 1

March 7, 2020

Pudding Lane Apartment, West Essex Street, Dublin. My windows look directly into the windows of the Gaiety Acting School and further down onto West Essex. Across the street used to be a table where I wrote The Beautiful Johanna one happy Irish summer. The flight was mostly sleep, but the wait in the airport until I could pick up the key to the room was long and weirdly eventful. I fell asleep. A man woke me by tapping my shoulder. He said, “Don’t you remember me?” I did not. “Martin,” he said. “I work with Steve.” I guessed it was SS, and he said it was, that he was the lighting guy for the theater. I wondered briefly why I had no recollection of this. He asked where I was staying, and when he told him, he knew the individual Markhams of Ennis by name. He said he had lost his bank card and was in desperate straits for the moment, so I got 200 euro out for him. Thinking back, I wonder if I fed him information the way a really good con-man can make you do, and I handed money to a complete stranger. I did supply details where he was vague, setting the hook set more firmly in my mouth Oddly, the first time I tried to get the money the ETM turned me down, and took my card. I tried calling the bank to complain and get my card back, but it was Saturday and nobody answered. But when I looked in my wallet later, there the card was. It was very strange. I blamed my thin blood. SS answers that he knows no such person. I am conned every time I come to Ireland—usually by sexy street boys—but this, I think, was the big score. How did he manage to pick me out of the crowd? I’d say “live and learn,” but I don’t really seem to learn. I am so anxious for a chance meeting to be a real miracle. Anyway, S Markham looks beautiful, as ever, and far happier than the last time I saw him. He spent two years in Australia without my knowing he was gone. The books I sent him sit here in the guest room bookshelf.  I’m waiting for Ireland to kick in. Right now I feel the same as I would this hour in my house, except this is infinitely less comfortable.            

            

Saw a play at Project Arts, The Spider’s House, a creepy thriller with some flaws but much to admire, especially the dedication of the actors. Thrilling at points, but I always think it’s cutting too many corners to postulate madness at the outset.

March 5, 2020

Hung a few saved paintings in my upstairs office. Went to the studio and redeemed my soprano recorder and Peniel. Lamented that more daffodils were planted than have shown above the ground. Last details before Ireland. Realize that it has been forty years since my first trip there, a goodly span. Stephen waits till the last minute to send directions. Fortunately, I know the area. Sat across the street from what would be his apartment writing The Beautiful Johanna.  It’s all well..

March 4, 2020

The new affliction had been an unsettling feeling like a fullness or weight in my chest, like something was building up which wanted to break free. It affected my breathing, my stamina, my tranquility. In defiance, I went to the Y today and worked out as hard as I could, and while I was on the pectoral machine, I felt something break free, gently but palpably, and with that sensation came a rush of air into my lungs such as I had not enjoyed in weeks. I sat on the machine and breathed and breathed. I got up and raced on the cross-trainer. Can one’s blood iron suddenly be all right? Was it something else? In any case, I am full of the most electric enthusiasm for things I dreaded before. I am ready to expand rather than face the long contraction I envisioned for my years. Feeling good makes more difference than one imagines.

March 3, 2020

SC follows me after class wanting to catch up on my life. Something about “all that” makes me feel uncomfortable, so I am not forthcoming. Nevertheless, he confides that he is marrying an artist out in Burnsville, who does paintings of elfin women surrounded by flowers or wavelets. He offers to fix my studio roof. He says that any time I need him I should call upon him. He is trying to exhibit kindness, and our languages are just enough off to make the whole event odd. I think everyone is more worried about my bruised face than they should be– imagining it a symptom rather than an incident. Great recent progress on Sam-Sam, foreseeing the end.

Took some stuff to the riverside office, and found a dead weaver finch balled up in a corner, Have no idea how he got in, but the idea of him beating around in the dark, alone until he died, was grievous.

Hungarian Renaissance music on the CD.

March 2, 2020

Worried that my stamina won’t get me through Ireland. Worried that the coronavirus will mew me up in some airport somewhere before I get home. People still picking up paintings from Studio Forlorn. Valdez says “no” for the 12th year in a row. Each effort at finding a home, at finding a community, gets stymied.

March 1, 2020

Saint David’s Day.

MT said he was afraid to read Peniel because it might be bad and then he’d be disillusioned. He said this after quoting long passages to me. “No, I wasn’t disillusioned after all. It was great.”