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.