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.