May 31, 2020

Pentecost.

Some weeding, much contemplation of the horrific state of things. Our president has no thought but for himself, so things fall apart around him. The police riot. The police are buccaneers and murderers and fight hard for the right to remain so.  Provocateurs break windows and set fires, hoping. . . what? America is at a worse point than I could have imagined at any other time. The worst American in all history is our President. A close runner-up is majority leader in the Senate. Cops are automata of arrogant violence. Racists feel empowered to drag themselves out of the ground where several decades of civility had buried them. I look around for people who are faithful to their task, and of course there are some, but they aren’t making the evening news. Yet, was it not the most beautiful day?

May 30, 2020

Declining hours of a shining day. Stayed up very late watching You Tube videos, and so rose when it was almost 9. Weeded. Pulled out dead roses. Drove to Reems Creek and used part of my gift certificate to buy flowers to put into the empty spaces. Planted, dug, weeded. Spent the afternoon waiting for people who wanted bamboo to make trellises, but didn’t come because they got “wound up” in something else. They have no way of knowing how infuriating that is to me. DJ said there was a groundhog under his porch, and I remarked that meant in a few days I would have a groundhog under my tool shed, and, lo, today it came to pass. I stood on the step and said to the groundhog, “I will have to choose between the garden and the groundhog.” He pokes his head from under the shed and whistles, strongly, rather lovelily I remember that folks in Ohio called him wejack or whistling jack. He is not spooky. I can stand quite close and say, “Move on, little brother. The exterminator comes Monday.” I am divided about this. One is divided about everything..
Assessing the damage of the last round of infection. Perhaps I’m at the point– I’ve been close to it a long time–when I’ll have to buy two pairs of shoes in different sizes, for the left foot, swollen, cannot take anything bought to fit the right. Most cuts of pants will not accommodate the swollen left leg. Just one charming novelty afer another. No one had knelt on my neck until I died. . . .
Sat on the back stoop writing poetry. That’s when I saw the groundhog. My thrushes chased each other through the crowns of the hemlocks.
Reports say that white cop provocateurs actually started the fires and the rioting in Minneapolis. I have no idea how to live in this world.

Wrote some notes concerning the police.

We call for immediate demilitarization of all police forces. Military operations should be conducted by the Army or the National Guard. Large armored vehicles, aggressive SWAT tactics, military-level artillery have no place in the enforcement of civil law. Those situations which call for military-like operations (riots, etc) have in most cases been caused by the police in the first place, and their presence in the suppression of those acts of civil protest makes the issue, ultimately, worse. Military tactics and equipment should be used by the civil constabulary ONLY in cases of bomb threats or terrorists attacks, never on civilians .

We call for radical changes in the training of police officers. The idea that a police officer must control a situation shall be replaced with the idea that a police officer must calm a situation. The police shall think of themselves as officers of the peace rather than as warrior chieftains who must rack up a victory at every encounter. We call for an end to Cop Culture, the conviction that the police are a separate fraternity (one might say gang) set apart from and with different goals and priorities from the general public. The police officer’s only concern must be public welfare. The priorities of the police must in no wise differ from the priorities of the populations which count on them for protection.  The “blue wall” that protects the corrupt and prevents officers from demanding justice and uprightness from their fellow officers shall not be tolerated. Whistle blowers and officers who call their lawless brethren to account shall under no circumstance be disadvantage, fired, or vilified.  Concealing police corruption shall be cause for immediate dismissal.

We call for the establishment of a civil review board for every police department, to be the authoritative body for every accusation of false arrest or police misconduct. The idea of police policing police was always absurd, and has revealed itself to be invariably corrupt. The civil review boards must have access to all police records and possess complete autonomy, and their authority concerning police misconduct must be absolute, and not subject to review or modification by any police authority. Police bodycam footage must be surrendered to the review board fully and immediately should there be an accusation of illegality or misconduct. Persons related to or associated with the police must not sit on this board, though they may attend in an advisory capacity.

We demand that charges of police brutality or overreach where the officer’s bodycam has somehow been turned off must be decided in favor of the civilian plaintiff.

We counsel that the police officer keep his hand off his gun. It shall be illegal to use, draw, or menace with a firearm except in cases where the officer’s life is demonstrably and actually in danger. Use of or reference to a firearm in a traffic stop or in an instance of trespassing or other minor crime shall constitute abuse of authority and be referred to the civilian review board. Using firearms as an instrument of terror has resulted in too many unjustified deaths.  Putting civilians in danger, even during an arrest or other police action, or humiliating civilians for the sake of “officer safety” shall be forbidden. In most cases, the heavily armed and excitable officer is the only actual danger.

A police officer is not competent to judge when a person is being nervous or furtive or suspicious or possessed of the wrong attitude, so we demand that all stops and detainments be based on the commission or the immediate and visible threat of the commission of an actual crime.

We demand that police undergo training in recognition of bias based on race, origin, gender, age, sexual identity, to achieve nullification of that bias. The tested ability to separate private biases from public action shall be a qualification for employment as a police officer.

We demand that a police officer who kills or causes the death of an unarmed person shall be tried for murder. Confusion, misunderstanding, stress, power tripping, misidentification of everyday objects shall not be acceptable excuses. A police officer’s life must actually be in danger to justify the use of deadly force. Fearing that an officer’s life is in danger or a reflex based on the fear that an officer’s life is in danger shall not be an excuse for homicide. An officer will take that extra second to determine whether that object is a gun or a cell phone. A police officer is not a doctor, and misinterpreting or ignoring physical distress that leads to death shall be considered criminal. Failure to obey police commands shall not be a capital offense, and death on the basis of failure to obey police commands shall be considered homicide. A civilian’s life shall not be counted of less value than a police officer’s. If the preservation of your own life and safety is your central concern you should not become a police officer. Teachers, doctors, firemen, social workers, numerous others face danger every day without requiring the privilege of pre-emptive murder.

We demand that the police serve and protect. 

May 29, 2020

Rose and baked cookies for DJ’s birthday. Scratched around to see what could be done without going to the market. Will’s ignorance of botany makes DJ’s yard interesting. The eight foot pokeweed is actually kind of beautiful.

May 28, 2020

Minneapolis on fire. We who were alive in the 60's thought we’d seen the end of the burning of cities by angry crowds. The burning cannot stop until the injustice does. I’ll not forget the look in the eyes of the cop kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck– vacant, maniac murderousness, the eyes of a weasel in the hen house. The eyes of the woman in Central Park calling in a false report to the police: sharp, hard, malignant. They must have thought they would get away with it. I think without the cameras they would have. I do not have these feelings of blind hatred toward colored people, so I cannot explain them to myself. One Facebook post thanks awkward white allies, but suggests we get out of the way and let the black community handle this. That would be a relief, for I honestly don’t know what to do. I can try to interfere with some unfolding injustice, but I must see it to help it. I often thought I’d be a failure as superman because evil so seldom unfolds in front of me– the sort of evil, I mean, which is amenable to pure and immediate intervention. Amy from Central Park is more explicable: we are turning out generations of her kind in our classrooms. Students received from high school firmly believe that they need endure no reality check to curb their emotional attachment to a cause or a situation. Their feelings are to be considered above context, above truth, above actual fact. We get students who are not prepared, but who have been “accommodated” into a high school degree and expect that to happen again in college. And in this they are right: it will. To suggest that a teenager’s immediate reaction might somehow need to be better informed is looked at as a kind of oppression. I might be wrong, but to indict my sovereign selfhood by saying so is a brutality This is current (or at least recent) educational dogma. It reaches a level of absurdity pretty quickly, and in the people on their cell phones reporting innocent activities of people who should automatically defer to them I see the acting-out of spoiled brats who are not getting their way, a tantrum with far direr consequences.  But, what else should they do? This is what we teach them. The girls who harassed me two years ago assumed– insofar as it was anything other than malice that waited until later to find its reasons– that their declaration of ineffable hurt would triumph over any revelation of the facts. Fat Karen said as much in the interview–it didn’t matter what happened; it mattered how the complainants felt about it. The surreal posting on my Wikipedia page was the call to the cops. Anyway, we created the privileged white women on their cell phones, and we did it on purpose, if ignorant of the unintended consequences . Maybe we have left off that. Maybe not.  In any case, it will be a long struggle. I have always been an ally of civil rights, but even now I learn things about the depths of oppression that had been theoretical through most of my life. When I see cop brutality on the videos I define what I’m seeing as illogical and berserk. I do not automatically see racism–because I’m white, of course, and never had to trace racism through its forms in order to survive. Breach of reason is not the same as blind hatred. Late times teach me, and the lesson is appalling.

Restless, went to Tractor Supply and bought tomatoes and eggplants. Planted them. Trellised them. I had not dripped with sweat since All This began. Zoom rehearsal for AGMC.

May 27, 2020

Renaissance on the CD. Soft day.

Larry Kramer is dead.

Cops murder a man in Minneapolis by kneeling on his neck until he suffocates. God has given us the cell phone so these atrocities no longer go unwitnessed. People stood around admonishing the cop’s colleagues to get him off, but the cops looked dazed and stunned, as if, like hyenas at a carcass, unable to pry themselves away from their murder.

Aggressive weeding. I felt good afterwards.

Reading about the Sikhs. I am, of course, a Sikh.

May 25, 2020

Intermittent fireworks in honor of Memorial Day. Beautiful sweet days.

States “opening up” are experiencing, in several cases, severe spikes in Covid19 cases and deaths. This statistic is blandly reported and not, that I have heard, much remarked upon. There is no sense of the collective. My guess is that people will assert, without shame, that the freedom to shop without a mask balances the death of hundreds unknown to them. Perhaps age should be described as the time when you begin to discern all those horrors you cannot fight. You do not exactly withdraw, but you relax a little, waiting for the battle meant for you to drop its weapons into your hands.  Still, my garden is glorious. The first giant calla blooms. The first white rose. The butter-yellow roses like resting butterflies. The scent of peonies and rose in the front yard alternates with that of the carrion flowers. The white waterlilies floating on black water. Tremendous progress on The Nurseryman’s Wedding. The days seem as long as two days, but for some reason I don’t mind.

May 22, 2020

Watched the Olivier Hamlet. Trim, swift, surprisingly unmannered, his performance immaculate.

Intermittent rain. Other parts of the country lie under water.

B and I having coffee under the picnic shelter out at the Offices at Riverside. The river at flood, the crying of geese. He had Covid 19, he says, which gave him a cough and tightness in the chest for a couple of days.  He says that FoW is “nice” and that the mountain setting is not too oppressive. He’s writing a comedy centering on General Sherman.

May 21, 2020

MA writes from Nashville:

Dr. Hopes,

In lieu of throwing you 1,000 parades,  I wanted to share some thoughts on the impact you've had on my life.

You blew my world wide open. You were the first person to show me that beauty and kindness could be a WAY of being. Sitting in your classes, it felt like you were sending lightning bolts directly into my brain. When people talk about "mind-blowing" experiences in colleges, they often talk about taking acid or seeing a band for the first time. When I talk about mine - I talk about you.

For my crew, you were IT. We would drive around the blue ridge parkway going through the things you said over and over again. We would sit and smoke and read the writers you told us to read, and then we would stay up all night talking about them. We all had lights coming out of our heads, and you put those lights there.

It was a big deal every time you would come over and meet with us. No other teacher gave a shit enough to do that, and we wouldn't have wanted another teacher there - because you were the only one that we gave a shit about. You were the only one who wanted us to see that life could be far more magical and far more beautiful than we ever imagined. You were a guide - we knew it was safe to go into the deep waters because you had gone there.

To me, you were like the father I've always wanted. You were impossibly kind and patient with me. Your generosity and spirit of openness always made me feel like I mattered and I knew I did because you were always there. The time you visited me in Ireland, going out of your way to show me around, putting me up, taking me out, was one of the most meaningful and FUN experiences I've ever had. Being in your company was like being golden.

It still is. Even in our infrequent chats now, you still are generous and fucking hilarious.

I think about your line, "A man moving towards his prime," on an almost daily basis. This is what I want to be.

That's the thing - reading your novel now, The Falls of the Wynona, which is lovingly written, it strikes me that that's the reason you won us all over all those years ago. We read your work and said FUCK THIS IS GOOD. I still remember Owen, Brian, and I passing copies of Blood Rose and The Glacier's Daughter between us and saying, Hopes is the real deal. That's why we hung on your every word - your words mattered - they still do.

Love,

Mike


The All Souls choir Zooms, and then observes Compline together. It filled the heart.

May 20, 2020

My sister sends a message :

David I had one of the most vivid dream I ever had about you and I facing a dragon. I got up and put the dream in writing to send to you.

I had a dream that was my birthday David, Daniel, Jonathan, and Beka were there with my brother David .The four kids were children in the dream and we were visiting my childhood home.

We were in the house in Akron on Honodle street near the Goodyear Park that we played at and went sledding as a child.  This was my favorite home growing up though we only lived there a few months. We lived only a block from Adler Park where my dad and I spent many evenings walking after work. 

In the dream, I remember how much I loved the porch, the small living space which meant Dad, Mom, David and I had more time together and everyone seemed happy. 
David, you came over with a gift for my birthday. It was a picture album of previously hidden photos from our childhood .

The book contained stunning beautiful  pictures of forgotten moments In
our childhood .Each picture awaken a precious moment in our childhood.  I thanked you over and over for the precious gift.

Daniel who was maybe 4 in the dream you and I walked out of the house and down the street and sat in a convertible  parked in the parking lot of Adler Creek.  We talked and laughed for several minutes watching the sunset set create a red violet sky with folder streaks giving the sky a memorable glow.

I looked up and saw a huge dragon tail that was the size is a city block swinging back and forth in the fading light of sunset.

The tail had a spearhead at the end of it and though it was large and beautiful and terrifying to see. The
body and head were hidden by the trees. I pointed at the tail putting my finger to my lips to signal that silence was needed.

Daniel, you and I looked up and watched the dancing motion of the tail waving back and forth as the dragon flew effortlessly in the dwindling light of evening.

I looked at you, David and we nodded to each other telepathically reading each other’s thoughts.We knew what needed to be done.

We would get Daniel safely in the house and lure the dragon away from the children toward the sledding hill of Goodyear Park.

I told Daniel to quietly sneak out the car and crawl through the grass  into the house. We waiting until he was out of site and going safely up the stairs to the house. I was confident in the dream that he would be safe.

David and I got out of the car looked up. We could see his whole body with the penetrating green eyes of the terrifyingly beautiful creature following us with his eyes and his body getting closer as he circle our location for a better look

The dragon was looking Intently  at us as he landed on top of the hill head moving back and forth in hungry anticipation of our arrival.
David we held hands as we walked away from the house and towards the waiting dragon.. We covered the large open meadow and headed up the hill meandering as though we didn’t have a care in the world talking about how much fun we had that day. The dragons beautiful glowing green eye reflected a body that covered the entire top of the hill .

I looked at You, David and asked do you think the kids are safe? You Nodded yes.

I paused and asked is this is the end?

You smiled at me the most loving smile and said yes it is and it is perfect. We held hands and walked up the sled riding hill at Goodview towards the dragon at the top of the hill. We were both so filled with joy knowing that we were together at the end.

The funny thing was that it was a dream full of joy. There was no fear or dreading of death.


Great rain continues, intensifies.

May 19, 2020

News from Red Hen:

Dear David,

Congratulations! The Falls of the Wyona receives an honorable mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

See the list of winners here:  http://www.hofferaward.com/Eric-Hoffer-Award-winners.html#.XsKvjWhKiUk  

All the best,

Tansica Sunkamaneevongse
Marketing Assistant

P.O. Box 40820, Pasadena, CA 91114
O: 626.356.4760 / redhen.org / @RedHenPress

Dear Author/Publisher:

Congratulations. Your book was a finalist in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. The list of category finalists may be viewed by entering the “Awards” menu option at www.HofferAward.com, and enter the “finalist” section. You may also or alternatively have been a finalist for the Montaigne Medal, da Vinci Eye, or First Horizon Award. Those finalists are also accessible through the “Awards” menu option.

There are a variety of options to show off you Hoffer Award status. We offer gold foil stickers to finalists. You may order these on-line at http://www.hofferaward.com/gold-seal/HAGoldFoilSealPurchasePage.html. On the book award page, you may download our official Eric Hoffer Award finalists’ logo. Feel free to employ this in your digital marketing. (We’d love to attach the logo and order forms, but that would send this correspondence directly to your SPAM folder.)

Please remember to use Twitter #HofferAward, so that we can re-message your success social media.

In the coming months, share your Eric Hoffer Book Award success stories, and we will post them on our website: http://www.hofferaward.com/Eric-Hoffer-Award-success-stories.html. Many authors parlay their honors into increased exposure, book sales, and author engagements.

Again, congratulations on your Eric Hoffer Book Award distinction, and we wish you continued success in the future. The Eric Hoffer Award was created to promote writers, authors, and independent presses. Please consider sending entries in future years.

Finally, we strive to keep our registration costs low. Please consider sponsoring the Eric Hoffer Book Award, which also exposes your book to our mailing list of nearly 25,000 people as well as tens of thousands of visitors.

Questions? Please contact info@hofferaward.com.

Sincerely,
Christopher Klim,
Chair, The Eric Hoffer Award

May 18, 2020

Gout joined the party last night. Gout cannot possibly be caused by what the literature says it is. Woke in pretty fair discomfort, took a pill, all was well. Dreamed of my dream Sligo and my favorite café, which isn’t there. Asked Alexa for “Sufi Music,” got something very odd but oddly calming.

May 17, 2020

Perfume in great tides from a cloud of new pink roses. A thrush flew down while I sat on the porch, and he perched on the rim of the planter where I put the peanuts.  He made sure I saw him. He flew away and I got up and got the bag and filled the planter up with peanuts. The local wildlife brag about how well trained I am. The thrushes are not, like the jays, built for opening big seeds, but they persevere.

My leg is now snakeskin, wrinkly and dry and ready to slough off. Hard not to scratch and scratch. Maud rubs up against it, and though it’s normally not even felt, now the sensation is tingly and itchy and provocative. 

May 16, 2020

Russian liturgy on the CD. Bored today, though I did good work on what is now called The Nurseryman’s Wedding. I’m going to need to find something more to fill the hours. The garden works on its own for a while now, and forcing writing when one is not in the vein is counterproductive.

People in time to come will not credit the degree to which a traitor and sociopath has been allowed to run rampant from the White House. I lived to see the end of the American Century. That was not among the things I wished to see, or anticipated seeing. The complicity of millions is, of course, more distressing than the pathology of one. I cannot on my own find the reason for this. We have not been taught to think of anyone but ourselves, or even that to do so is laudable. I will stand on the capitol steps with a machine gun in my hands if my whims are not honored, to the expense of all else. I will destroy education if what I already believe is not repeated slavishly in my ear. I will strike out of fear before I have even taken thought. I will uphold ignorance because it is my ignorance and therefore sweet to me. I will allow the rich to devour me because they point to someone they want me to hate more, and like a slave I do. I think maybe if a prophet should arise, but who would listen to him? The fact that he is right and they are not would infuriate the people of whom I speak. I think I could be patient like others and wait for the election, but for the first time in American history, that may not avail. If you allow the Beast to do as he has done, you will allow him to be dictator as easy as slipping down the stairs. We have allowed that already, though we hardly dare to say so. Sometimes I think it is my place to find out what to do and how to do it. Mostly, I do not. My leg is too swollen. Vodka calls from the freezer. It is the hour of evening when the thrushes make their last foray.

May 15, 2020

Thought I would miss no days during the quarantine (seeing there was nothing else to do) I was wrong. Mornings I wake to fantastically rich dreams. Yesterday I woke with the phrase in my head “remember the spice.” I’d been eating the Gingerbread of the Gods in the dream, I think-- a luxurious medley of Hindu phantasmagoria brought on by reading of the Vedic gods before sleep.

The disease withdraws in recognizable stages. The leg, red and itchy-stingy is what chiefly remains. That, and exhaustion, and the inability to bring my thermostat quite up to par. I chill easily and end most evenings with Dale’s Afghan wrapped around me.

Yesterday I drove to the Carrier water parks along the river and walked not only farther than I head since the disease, but farther than I have since leaving Ireland. Full May lies upon the riverbanks, overrun with flowers and birds and a delicious disharmony of perfumes, honeysuckle and wild rose and whatnot hidden in the undergrowth. A pileated woodpecker sailed the near bank. Came home and chopped bamboo, and by those two thing I was annihilated, but happy.

AGMC Zoom rehearsal last night. People say choral singing will be one of the last things to return. The Chinese I ordered Wednesday remains unconsumed in the fridge.  Ready to take the next step with Sam-sam. I’ve let it revolve in my head like a growing crystal.

Sat on the front porch. Ants crawled in a long single line up one of the cement urns. As I watched, a mockingbird landed on the far side of the urn, where he couldn’t be seen, and began harvesting the ants. But he really couldn’t get them without becoming visible to me, so he let out a little chirp and flew to the utility pole, his body language reading “as soon as you go away I can get those ants.” So, I got up and went inside and let him have the ants. I suppose I would never be able to convince him he was perfectly safe gathering ants at my feet, I am so very big and loud.

May 12, 2020

Still too cold for spring, me dragging around with Dale’s comforter over my shoulders.

An odd sensation– thinking on my life as a painter fills me with unaccountable–if mild– disgust. It’s even disturbing having my old work in the house. I don’t know what’s going on there at all.

Phone calls to social security (inspired by some panic from the UNCA HR people) unexpectedly informative and uncomplicated. All is well with me as far as medicare.

*** writing the above lines made me look once more for Dale, of whom I lost track long ago. An online obituary (where had that been before?) told me he died in January 2006. The sad mourning statements should have included mine, but of course they did not. Dale and I met in Lucille’s the first night of my first trip to New Orleans, and we were lovers to the extent that I would allow us to be. One year the King cakes stopped, and when I called there was no answer. He had both AIDS and MS. For what good it does– and I must believe it does some good– Dale, I remember you.

May 11, 2020

I could tell when the fever receded from my subconscious. The hour before morning was again filled with the rich and random strangeness of whoever rules that realm, instead of the sickening, rhythmic, repetitive barrenness of the hallucinations. I wonder if it is a backstep that I have barely been able to get out of bed all day, exhausted, cold to my bones. It would help if spring were allowed to be spring.

May 10, 2020

So through the night Young Aengus walked the perimeters of the garden, steam rolling from his shoulders, and when I rose not one blade of tender seedling was lost.

Today may be a backstep. I was tireder than yesterday, napped longer, maybe felt ouchier, not by much, but enough to irritate the spirit in me that want to be moving perpetually forward. I walk around, but it’s like having a bag of tepid water attached to your leg that you’re afraid to touch to anything lest it burst. Constant little throb as though the bag were on fire. Maybe this is simply one of those days in rotation when I am especially sick of the quarantine. Two days ago I made this hamburger onion thing, but it is too substantial for me ever to get more than a few spoonfuls down. Water, oddly, upsets my stomach. Chopped bamboo. Sat on the porch and watched thrushes any jays snap up the proffered peanuts.

Not a petal perished, Polar Vortex.

May 9, 2020

Rose early. The garden I can see from the windows seems to have survived the much-threatened freeze.

Comments about my retirement food my Facebook page. Insofar as you divide your life into episodes and volumes, I think I am able now to look on “Teacher” as a Triumph. A+. “Student” was a solid A, but with too many blunders for those extra points.  This contrasts with “Son,” which I’d put at a wobbly “C.”  Lover? D-. I was one of those kids in the back row in math class, addressing themselves whole heartedly to every problem, but always coming up with the wrong answer. There may be something lucky about that in times to come: one fewer thing to hold one to a darkening shore.
Started and drove my pick-up. It’s not been turned over since early March, and it started right up, drove like a dream.

 Achy. The long convalescence begins

The god of my garden became visible to me today. He’s a brawny ginger lad about 6'6". His name is Aengus. Of course he is Aengus Og come from across the sea to the prayers of one of his devotees. He wears a white Irish peasant shirt and white pants drawn at the waist, and he walks barefoot through the grass, smiling. He carried a spade glinting gold in the light. I think I was allowed to see him because last night I was embarrassed when I caught myself asking the Lord of Hosts to shield my garden from the cold. Aengus is exactly right. What he chooses for the garden I don’t know, but in the pure, diamond light of the spring evening he is a tower of white and rose flame.

May 8, 2020

Gray, rainy morning, Eton College choir on the CD. Surveyed the garden and thanked it for surviving two threatened nights of freeze. It laughs at freeze. I staggered out yesterday afternoon with a spade in my hand, knowing the bamboo would have gotten ahead of me during my illness. I’d underestimated the extent of the invasion. I must have gouged out or chopped down forty sprouts, some already as high as my shoulders. Vegetable cancer. Went back in shaking with exhaustion, but, momentarily, triumphant. Every iris, every peony, most of the roses in triumphant bloom, the little sprouts of the annuals helicoptering from the soil.

The Illness passes through stages I mostly recognize. Actual pain and tenderness in the leg is greater than usual. Caught myself screaming when I had to change positions. But, the rest of my body is chipper, even a little frolicsome. Most often even bad things come to an end. Ate half a stack of Ritz yesterday. Soup one day and crackers the next. Have hamburger thawing in the fridge; let’s see if it actually gets fried. Part of my elevation may be lightheadedness from hunger– which is not registering as hunger, actually, but as a sort of gastric euphoria. 

For my retirement (I keep typing “graduation”) reception I put on a white shirt the dry cleaning tag told me had not been worn since 2016. I apologized to it for the neglect. Anxiety attended thoughts of that reception, but I prepared a few remarks in my head, put a cap over my unthinkable hair, and it turned out to be the most remarkable, touching, and fulfilling hour– colleagues, former students, with testimonies I truly did not anticipate. Glad the visuals on ZOOM are so bad, for I was weeping almost from the start. It’s immodest to do more than summarize, but I hope to hold the tenor of the remarks to my heart. I can stand before God and say, “”I was a great an honest teacher” and let the rest fall where it must. That grazes my heart even now like a wing of descending fire. Interestingly,  no one said what I thought they would. They kept mentioning my kindness, and that was exactly where I feared I had fallen short– long on intention but fumbling and stupid in performance. Perhaps not, or perhaps they had read my intention. Mildred remembered her first year when I invited her to New Year’s Eve. “I was alone far from home and he told me to come to his house for New Year’s. I walked through the door and he handed me a bowl of the best beef stew I’ve ever had. In my culture (Uganda) to invite someone into your home and give them food means lifelong friendship.” I hope she heard “Mine too” from my side. No one mentioned my writing, except to express amazement at the volume of it, because nobody had read any of it. An odd quirk of our department. . .Anyway, an unexpectedly exquisite finish to it all.  People went out of their way. Anything I expected was miles short of what was. Use the word “benediction.”

Administration was not represented of course. That culture is so corrupt and self-infected that even minimally professional behavior cannot be expected. Very Trumpian, now that I think of it. That was well, actually, for I worried what I would do or say if my treacherous biddy of a Dean, for example, put in an appearance. Freed from that. 

I feel no grief at leaving the profession. Will I later? There is sadness at having no new disciples gathered about me, but there is relief also. Since catastrophic attacks from students came so late in the game, they are on my mind. The first thing to say is that the identities of the attackers were always a shock, since I felt no such thing for them. The complaint was–every time– that I was saying things they didn’t want to hear. My first and final reaction to that was “why didn’t they say so when something could be done about it? If I'm wrong in my analysis, why not bring it up in class?” Clearly, the intent was more to damage me than to solve a problem, but I continue to be mystified by such hatred from people for whom I felt–at the time–no comparable emotion. Again, Administration is at fault, enabling liars and gleeful in any opportunity to humiliate the faculty. Miss Jill could have spent her time bringing disagreeing parties together to discuss rather than weaving her absurd little webs of power from behind her keyboard. Altogether hateful, altogether wrong, and the sign of end times for the institution to which I dedicated my professional life. I was praised in the reception for courage, freedom, openness, truth-telling in the classroom, and I suppose resentment of exactly those things should not come as a surprise. The one thing that should never darken the doors of the Academy– Dogma–reigns unquestionable. If I thought I could do anything about it, I was wrong.

ZOOM reception followed by ZOOM AGMC rehearsal. By the end of THAT I could hardly rise from the chair. Our director’s energy and mine are out of synch, and it is up to me to find some way to harmonize that.

I sort of doubt that AGMC will ever take the stage again. That opens the door to questions about the entire field of endeavor chosen for me. Will theaters open? Independent theaters? Will they be able to–or have the will to-- produce new plays? How many publishers will go down the tubes? The ones already committed to me? Here is a strange thing. The unlikeliness–or at least the uncertainty– of anything coming to anything allows a kind of purity. I can do what I do with an unprecedented relaxation. I don’t need anything to put on my faculty record. No one’s getting produced or published, so I’m not falling unjustly behind. I have never written more or better. Let’s just continue with that and see what happens.

Maud the cat lies on the damaged foot, an unexpected comfort. 

May 6, 2020

Rose at a decent time, had coffee, went to bed again and am up again now at 5 PM.

Have eaten nothing since Sunday, and yet continue with deceptive and extravagant diarrhea. There are random eruptions of nausea. Drinking water upsets my stomach. The coffee was an unexpected comfort.  Did manage to conquer–or live through–the hallucinatory voices which are, all in all, the worst part of this. Even as I write I enter the cold sweat stage, which I recognize from times before as a sign of progress. TV shows caused me to say “The fever’s broken,” though whether that’s what’s happening I don’t know. I have been enslaved to this since the 9th grade.

Is pain the only thing that doesn’t lessen with long habituation?

I’m glad I’m too exhausted to take sorrow or indignation very far.

When I got to my email, three huge rejections. Of course. But, my student Hannah writes this: On a completely different note, because this is my last semester in the Literature department at UNCA, I wanted to offer a few things to you.

First and foremost, I want to thank you for providing me with an exceptional and completely hilarious educational experience. I know I didn't often speak up in class but I believe I was able to learn more through my silence than I would have, if I had talked over you or another student. In tandem with the typical note-taking experience, this quietness afforded me the ability to take down, as I saw fit, certain quotes said by you during class time. Since I first began taking them down, it has been in my sincerest wishes to collect as many quotes as possible and print them out for you to perhaps remember fondly or even laugh at; however, due to the current pandemic situation, that has become quite impossible. Instead, I now wish to impart a few of my personal favorites to you in this email. Though I am only providing a handful of quotes, please know that I’d be more than happy to provide more, or burn them at your discretion. One last thing before I get into it; the context for a majority of these quotes has been lost, but I hope that as you read over them, that they provide a nostalgic feeling for you. Without further ado, here are the quotes!

“People often stand back from greatness because they’re scared of it.” - September 27th, 2017

“Ever since I started watching Project Runway, my life has changed; I want to make a pretty dress damn it!” - October 18th, 2017

“I have absinthe at my house, you know. One day I’ll throw a party and we can all drink it and go crazy, or whatever it makes you do.” - October 20th, 2017

“Do women go and weep in the woods anymore? I don’t know, I don’t get invited anymore. I suppose you all would know.” - November 6th, 2017

“There’s a good bet that if Lucifer fell to Earth, he’d come to North Carolina. “ - November 15th, 2017

“You’ve got to be a little pinned down. Am I afraid of that? Well no, I’ve lived too long to give a damn.” - December 4th, 2017

“Be able to recognize the possibility of taking a good idea too far. Reason has its limits.” - January 14th, 2019

“When this poem hit me, I threw myself out of the window, screaming, and onto the quad. Those words ought to have sent you barreling right through that wall into the next room. Those are the only appropriate responses.” - March 1st, 2019

“Susan’s all grown up! Man, what a bitch!” - February 3rd, 2020 (of Narnia)

May 5, 2020

Today no better than yesterday. Misery is, in addition to being miserable, boring.

Shuffled out to pay Tony for mowing the lawn. “Now, is it David or Daniel? “ he said.  (He does sometimes call me Daniel)
“David.”
“Hello David, how are you?”
“I’m very ill”
“Your peach trees are doing so well. They’re covered with fruit. Mine have nothing. I think it’s colder in Weaverville.”

The left leg is pink as sunburn, painful, especially when lying down or getting up.

May 4, 2020

The bitter anniversary. Fifty years.

After one of the fullest and most accomplished days of the Lock Down, I sat on the sofa realizing I was getting very, very ill. Shuddering chills, projectile vomiting, and explosive diarrhea arrived at exactly the same moment, which made for interesting accommodations in the bathroom. In a few minutes I was so drained merely standing up and going to bed seemed beyond my capacities. I knew it wasn’t Covid, though it sure looked like it, but my old nemesis phlebitis. For one thing, phlebitis doesn’t affect the lungs. For another, it’s bacterial and there are drugs for it, whereby before 9 PM the worst of it was over, though I still had the turbulent, hallucinatory, fever-ridden night ahead of me. It is now early afternoon and I think I will live, though I’m exhausted, maybe still feverish. Not sick enough to sleep, not well enough to move around much. Making mistakes typing in almost every word.

May 3, 2020

Another day of pleasing accomplishment. Wrote well in the morning. Planted what described itself as “red velvet” sunflowers, the last packet of seed in the bag. For the first time since moving here I planted everything I bought.

Over the course of my academic career I forgot how to read for pleasure. Trying to ease back into reading a little now, a little later, lingering in the fictive world rather than trying to ransack it, wring it dry of meaning. Reading Anne Enright’s Actress . Picked it up in Eason’s on Nassau Street in Dublin. It’s the first thing I’ve read for no particular purpose in thirty years.

The quarantine seems to be fraying at the edges. Face masks are by no means as universal as they once were, and the streets of cities fill with people protesting the lock-down for various bad and good reasons. I don’t think Covid-19 will go away just because we’re sick of it.

May 2, 2020

Rose dissatisfied with my work on Sam-Sam last night. Sat down and wrote one of the best passages I ever wrote. Just sleep on it, children.

Evening: Surf Nazis Must Die rapidly becoming a favorite. Technically it’s very professional, the cinematography beautiful. The acting and the script are horrible almost beyond belief, but horrible in a way bordering on splendor– formal, excessive, every gesture and every line so much worse than you expect that every gesture and line arrives with a shivering thrill. It’s like No, stylized and formal. You want to laugh at No first time through, too, until you begin to develop the taste.

One of the best days of the quarantine. The day itself was blue crystal. The wings of the thrushes in sunlight blazed like coals. Excellent, breakthrough writing in the morning. At noon I began gardening, weeding mightily, planting grey stripe sunflowers and cornflower.

May 1, 2020

Brilliant sun when I arose has become troubled and blustery. My yard is beautiful, and almost no one sees it. What is revealed to be date nut bread was brought by “your neighbor Peggy,” whoever that is. Sent a letter to Dawn Deppen, after all these years discovering her married name and her whereabouts. I have no idea what her memories of me are. Mine of her are abundant and contradictory. I think we were rivals for the role of congregational intellectual, though many thought our rivalry was a kind of affection and we were destined to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Her mother was the first adult ever to take me seriously as a person. I think she might have hated me a little, but that was part of the package.

If I get Covid 19 I will die. I can hardly breathe anyway. It gives all of this an added level of immediacy.

Joined a new streaming service, watching Surf Nazis Must Die.

April 30, 2020

Cool in the string of days alternating cool and warm. The boys from Yard Fathers came, five strapping long-haired lads in a truck so full of vaping vapor you wondered how they saw through the windshield. What swagger! I bet they enjoy their time together. They fixed the fence, as I assumed they would, in under ten minutes. Drove to school. The campus is so beautiful in spring, it’s a shame there’s no one there to look at it. Much construction going on. You wonder where the money comes from, since the institution seems to have no money for anything academic. I loaded a box with stuff from my office to take out to Riverside, but a giant truck blocked our whole entrance, so I parked down by the water and watched the muddy, swollen French Broad flow for a while. Drove to take up time while the clean ladies cleaned. Went to the Brevard Road Ingles, where nobody was wearing masks. Nearly everyone at the Merrimon Ingles does. Different cultures within a single city. The quarantine seems to be fraying at the edges. If that comes out all right, all right, but the best minds warn that it will not. The cleaning ladies left me what I assume to be banana bread. AGMC tries again for a rehearsal this evening.