June 28, 2020

Day of the greatest exertion since the Plague began. Finally my university office is packed up, that tremendous load of books either boxed or distributed across the various departmental bookcases. Next is to get everything down to the car. I learned I really can’t do it on my own, more than a few boxes at a go. Will consider the handcart. The job was agonizing and endless, I thought while doing it, but when I looked at the clock realized all had been accomplished before 11 AM. Tedium outstripping actual extent.

Uncovered objects I thought lost, or simply hadn’t thought about in years, first volumes from my students, old scripts with my speeches marked and blocking scribbled in the margins, postcards from people I don’t remember, Christmas cards in Irish, photos of long-ago sojourns by the sea.

June 27, 2020

Last night ended in a blackout. I was very drunk, but, judging from the spent matches, I apparently tried unsuccessfully to light a candle. A curious thing is that this computer seems not to have gone off. It does not restart itself after being turned off, and it was running when I came upstairs a few minutes past.  I do remember that it was wondrous dark, a deep glory and perfection of darkness.

Naomi has left All Souls. There is a tone of acrimony which nobody– at least nobody at the Zoom party last night–understands.

Waterlilies of white, gold, and red blooming in the pond. Vervain and deep velvet purple gladiolas The first orange zinnias, already riddled with beetles.

SS is publishing Washington Place. The labor and self-education that he’s put into this project is, to me, remarkable. I realize I’m not much of a detail person. It’s hard to know where this will lead, but, as Pound says, to do rather than not doing, that is not vanity. 

Yellow haze. The African dust storm.

Maud crosses the room to sleep on my foot. She is happiest there. 

June 25, 2020

Long, productive day. Made progress revising The Nurseryman’s Wedding. The beginning of it is very good indeed. Off then to school, where I put another dent in the move-out. Despair of ever seeing it finished. Workers were installing sanitizer dispensers outside the classrooms. Wren says nobody knows exactly what will be happening at the university this fall. Had a drink at High Five along the river, where I sat in the shade and started a poem. As I wrote, a shaggy red dog cavorted in and along the river. He barked at a stick, trying, I suppose, to provoke it into action. His master came along and threw the stick into the river a couple of times for the dog to fetch. When his master was tired, the dog rolled in the grass and threw the stick into the air himself. One seldom sees such pure joy: a dog, a stick, and a river. Ordered from Pomodoro, and as I was eating it I saw a shape on the porch. At first I thought it was the biggest dog in the world, but it was a bear, lumbering calmly about. He moved to the pond and had a drink, nibbled at a waterlily, moseyed around the garden. He grabbed a peach from one of the peach trees, but it was green and probably nasty. I think he was familiar with the ground, for he exited from the tunnel in the lilacs that is hard to see unless you know it’s there. Maybe it was one of the babies who visited here with their mother two years ago. When he was drinking, his utter blackness at golden sunset plunged in the midst of the red waterlilies, he was vivid and beautiful.

June 23, 2020

A bad habit I’ve developed during Quarantine is spending hours watching You Tube cell phone videos of police misconduct. I can’t explain the fascination. It’s like picking at a scab or repeatedly putting your tongue into a sore in your mouth. The practice has not brought me peace. Here are some thoughts after this admittedly low-rent research project. Police are capable of almost unbelievable violence and dishonesty. This violence and dishonesty is endemic, repetitive, widespread (I stopped myself from typing “universal”) and given almost complete impunity by the policies of municipalities and the power of the FOP and other police unions. “Qualified immunity” prevents even those proven to have been brutalized from seeking redress in the courts. Being white, I am not the best person to evaluate racism, but it is hard to miss the fact that black people are automatic suspects; that black youths are never kids, but rather threats; that black lives do not in fact matter to the thin blue line. I accept absolutely the argument that not all cops are like that, but I’m going out on a limb to assert that most cops are. Few cops would hesitate to lie to get out of trouble or secure an arrest, few will curb the brutality of a brother-or-sister-in-arms; few are strong enough to overcome hurt feelings or wounded vanity–or mere impatience– so as not beat the hell out of someone who irritates them. Unless someone has a camera. On that subject, one’s heart shudders at the certainty of GENERATIONS of brutalization gone unanswered because cop fiction was automatically believed. Since even the likelihood of being recorded does not stop all cop crime, imagine the depth and multiplicity of abuse when there was no reasonable expectation of being called to account. Whatever god you worship, whisper thanks tonight for the cell phone. Almost all the incidents now causing such inflammation in society would have gone unreported, unredressed, if someone hadn’t caught them on the phone. Corruption throve in obscurity, and every cell phone is a prophylactic. Another issue is the immediate and reflexive resort to firearms. Cops draw their weapons to tell people their taillight is out. Citizens end up being shot because their taillight was out. A drawn weapon is a weapon aching to be used, and once it is used, you go into fabulist mode trying to think of why it was necessary. It must become illegal for the police to draw, touch, refer to their firearms in any situation but one which an objective person would recognize as dire. Every shooting of every unarmed person MUST be treated as a murder, at least for a while, until the trigger-happy cop becomes a demon out of old legend. It should be simpler than it seems to be simply not to shoot people in the back who are running away from you. Don’t shoot into houses or cars, Even if you “think” there may be trouble, wait until there is. Is that really so complex? Don’t murder people. Just don’t do it. I’m perplexed at why that is so hard. If you “fear for your life,” back away. Get into your car. Wait for the next thing to happen, or drive away and leave people to their lives. Policing attracts brutes. There is no way around that. Those who are not brutes by nature are trained by brutes to be brutes, to “get control” of the situation rather than to solve it, to be obeyed rather than to be right. In my own dealings with the police, there has not been a situation in which lying did not play a major role, in which the attitude of the cop was other than sneering contempt, and I’m a fairly prosperous looking white guy. The house is rotten to the foundations and renovations will not work, is currently my belief. Build anew, with an utterly different paradigm. There is no room for the warrior cop, the soldier cop, the bigshot cop, for the brotherhood of blue, for anything that allows an officer to think of himself as distinct from the people he serves. It is true that the police represent our customary shield against chaos and lawlessness. The irony of our times is that our shield against chaos and lawlessness is, arguably, the most successfully chaotic and lawless element in society. I suppose we need to ask ourselves if we think this is necessary–if we think we must be defended from lawlessness by the lawless– or if we have the courage to trust some new vision. I think of the Irish Gardai, whose very name means “guardians of the peace,” and who are a little embarrassed if an encounter ends in an arrest, because that means the peace has failed. I’m glad to take this time to work things out in my head. I am going to try not to watch any videos tonight.

DS lectures me on Facebook. Maybe he forgets that I know him, and that his instructing or correcting me on any subject whatever is risible.

June 22, 2020

Instantaneous and furious cloudburst after a lovely day, upon which I can look back without any sense of accomplishment. JS called to say how much he liked Night, Sleep. Eyes itching with pollen. Unable to stay awake for more than a few hours together. Backlash from the police, wounded that they might no longer murder with absolute impunity. It’s hard to have sympathy.  All that’s necessary is not to murder people. Do not shoot people who are unarmed. Do not shoot people fleeing away from you. Keep your hands off your gun. Do not touch your gun. Forget that you have a gun. If you fear so much for your own safety, do not interfere with other people’s lives.  It seems to me miraculously easy.

June 21, 2020

The Spirit of Reorganization fell upon me yesterday, and I cleaned out and reorganized until two boxes of stuff went to Goodwill and several cupboards and shelves opened up. I  arranged things rather inefficiently when I moved in, and acquired oddly– eleven thermoses, for example. The energy continued today, when I went to school (empty, empty) and took a few more boxes of my stuff out of my office. Forgot I had several books, such as the Complete Poems of Archibald MacLeish, whose spines had faded in the light and could no longer be read from my chair. My mind continues its retrospective critique of my experience at UNCA. All the pedagogy was good and all, or most, of the administration was bad, at least after a certain point. I remember Jane walking in to the summer faculty meeting–her first appearance–and saying ‘We are moving from a teaching paradigm to a learning paradigm.” We should have fired her then and saved ourselves the long decline. The faculty and a well landscaped campus was all UNCA had, and though the landscaping is still pretty, administration did everything it could to destroy the faculty. I think it succeeded. But, time is long. Wait and see.

June 20, 2020

Thrush song in the mist outside the window.

In dream last night I sang in the choir of a great church in New York City. We were trying to find a way to sing in time of plague, and lit upon the plan of sitting in long rows down either side of the main aisle, which seemed safer for some reason. We had our robes on, and wigs or hats which made us all look the same. We milled around but never actually sang anything.

Finished the revision of Jason just before tuning into the Magnetic One Act festival, featuring my “Person Contemplating Madness.” My director dealt with the problem of rehearsal and proximity, etc, by recording the voices of the actors and having them represented on screen by an animated fish and an animated bird in an animated gallery featuring the painting in the title. It was actually engaging, if more surreal than I had in mind when I wrote the piece. . . . though, of course, it features Magritte, and Magritte is a surrealist. . . perhaps it all came out well. I almost certainly will not hear if it made sense to anybody else. Didn’t see the rest of the festival, tuning into the Usual’s cocktail zoom just after my play, which was the first in the program.

The Forward Indie people sent me a plaque and a roll of book stickers that assert that I won the silver medal in their contest.

RK says there’s a waiting list to get The Falls of the Wyona from the library in Jacksonville.

June 19, 2020

Oddly military dreams. I was in a squadron of three among other squadrons of three, who manned a sort of tiny airplane which fired on the enemy from above. The fights were exhilarating, but we spent most of the time finding and fixing a certain part of the apparatus which seemed to be faulty. Many quarrels about who was to be in which part of the plane. I forget now which parts were choice and why. One squadron was blue and the other red, and I was proud to be in the blue. 

June 18, 2020

Tansica from Red Hen writes that I am on the fiction shortlist for the RBA (Rubery) award (for independent writers and presses; final decisions in July), and that I have won the silver medal for LGBTQ from the Foreward Indies association. Never heard of any of that, but I have now, and will rejoice as much as I can.

Replaying the Beethoven sonatas. They are conversations which must be held a number of times.

One gladiolus blooms. Little galaxies of anemone. The spring blooms are done and the summer not yet upon us.

The end of the present upheaval cannot be seen. People abandon precautions against the pandemic long before the pandemic is ready to depart. Reminds one of victims of the Black Plague going out and dancing before the city walls in the midst of it, the Todentanz. Our danse macabre is on a beach, in bars. Last night I dreamed I had Covid-19. I would move from house to house, and each house would explode around me. It’s hard to explain how I know that was about the epidemic, but I do.

I’ve watched the video of the latest murder in Atlanta twenty times. The man said, “I could walk to my sister’s house.” Why didn’t they just let him? Has no one ever suggested that the easiest solution is sometimes the best solution? People want to defend the final action, but there is no way shooting into the back of someone running away from you at full speed is an act of self-defense. I cannot find where the history of policing in America has been anything but the history of a predatory and violent gang. People like me tended to underestimate the violence and the lawlessness because, for the most part, it was our interests they claimed to be protecting.  We could run up to Officer Friendly and expect a ride in a police car home because we were the right people. My own experience with the police is that they are universally liars. I would like to have some other conviction, but direct and repeated observation is difficult to overcome. They are violent not only because they were allowed to be violent, but because they were encouraged to be, as their violence was directed to those their patrons hated and feared. I think only white people can turn this around, because white people are largely to blame. Policing is corrupt to the root. It must up uprooted, then, and rethought. The policeman must think, “How do I restore peace?” I would be surprised if one in one hundred thinks that now. They think, “How to I exert control?’ People trained to think that probably cannot be changed.

Chat with Cody in Dallas. He asks me advice on the next step of his journey. I put my mouth in the hands of the gods and do my best.

June 17, 2020

Revision of Jason of the Apes. The first paragraph was the weakest, because I strove so hard to make it perfect. Maybe nobody ever read on from there.

Tony brought his son to show him how to mow my lawn. The kid was unsure and I was nervous, so I went upstairs where I wouldn’t have to see. One of his clients complained to Tony how her garden didn’t succeed, and he mentioned me, saying that nothing ever dies when I plant it.

June 16, 2020

Bloom’s Day

Igor Levit’s Beethoven sonatas.

Cold rain. My windows are shut, my ski cap on. Black calla and purple dayflower look especially dreary in the gray air. Catbirds fly almost invisibly.

At that point in the Quarantine when every article of clothing and every piece of dish or glassware is disgusting to me. I’d pack them up and get rid of them, except replacing them would be more disgusting still.

June 14, 2020

Ecstatic Sufi meditation last night. Don’t actually know when it came to an end, but an hour ago I woke in my bed.

MT came to get one of my extra copies of The Cantos. His usual animated conversation, me enjoying his company. They don’t teach you how graciously to accept long waves of praise, which is what he sent my way, for my teaching, for my friendship, for my writing. You smile and say “thank you.” It is not enough.

June 13, 2020

Birthday of William Butler Yeats.

Weeding, watering. I look in the grass for the motion of a snake, but there never is one.

Made a cold salad of cucumber, tomato, onion, vinegar, and dill, and felt the gout which had been afflicting me for a week fade palpably away.

June 12, 2020

Radiant cool morning, my house like a crystal slowing turning, so the eastern light comes in here, and then comes in there.

Visiting the university to move my little bits of life from one place to another allows moments of contemplation, especially of topics unprofitable to be thought upon while I was still employed. What I thought about the last trip was how much energy Academia wastes on enterprises we know to be misguided, but deep into which we plunge nevertheless. From the day I was hired the department presented– with vigor, with sweaty determination– the dogma that instructing Freshman Writing was a special skill equal to Literature and Creative Writing in intellectual status and necessary achievement on the part of its faculty. Pretending to believe that “rhetoric” was a special skill only other “rhetoricians” could recognize caused us to hire and endure our weakest faculty. EVERY department meeting for years involved a session when the Composition people (those who later changed their name to “Rhetoric” or “Comp/Rhet) would cry out their suspicions of inferiority and suggest some new way for us to prove that we honored and appreciated them. Being a writer made me an automatic rhetorician. The fact is that most of us could teach Freshman Comp just as well as the Rhetoricians when we were grad students. The only virtue rhet/comp requires more of than academic pursuits is patience, and I do honor that. Most of us were hired to teach some rhet/comp, and most of us were eventually “rewarded” with Lit classes. Our actual values were hard to disguise. I stopped teaching rhet/comp thirty years ago, not because I asked to, but because, I suppose, my skills were needed elsewhere. But I taught enough to know that rhet/comp is not a special skill, though it is tedious, and it is true that “anybody can do that.” Someone actually was bold to say “anybody can do that” (remarkably, it wasn’t me) and the aftershocks seemed like never to end. Wouldn’t matter except so much energy went into supporting a kindly fiction, when clinging to kindly truth and proportion would have made us a better department.

Six or more visits to the bathroom before finally arising, not little dribbling prostate flows, but gushing bowl-fillers. The reason was that my legs were draining. This morning they are the same size, and except for ravages from the infections, look almost normal. Right now I could slip my shoes on in six seconds. I could wear shorts. I should just sit and look at them to relish the moment. I should also try to determine the cause– what did I eat? Potato salad? What did I drink? A considerable intake of cola and cherry vodka? To discover the secret would be well indeed. My health-history makes me a believer in simply waiting it out. An evening would scarcely pass that I did not end up vomiting into the hydrangeas. In foreign cities– Dublin, London, Istanbul– I would have to look for dark places to throw up in private on the streets. Over and gone. Vicious acid reflux for years– I did address when and what a ate, but the reflux, one day, was simply gone. Haven’t bought a bottle of TUMS in five years. After that came the Era of the Muscle Spasm, when I would have savage, agonizing cramps in the muscles of legs, thighs, stomach, daily, nightly, if I sat down wrong or got up wrong or coughed or bent to pull a weed. The only remedy was an ungodly and constant intake of liquids. That too seems to be gone, though recent enough that I am not yet going to ring the bells. My current breathlessness, if I put it to the test, can be muscled through, which is to say it seems to improve with exertion, or at least gets no worse, and I am able to forget about it. Time heals much.

Long-running police TV shows are getting cancelled because of the Floyd  demonstrations. This is well, because I watch them, and see they present an image of police work that’s good for a TV entertainment program but bad for civilization. One, I think Chicago PD, features a commanding officer who is literally a criminal, murdering with impunity, brutalizing witnesses, lying, cutting corners, behaviors which the viewer is meant to excuse because “he gets the job done.” Also because we perceive those he brutalizes are scum and “have it coming.” That is a trope which does not transfer into real life. Every cop show presents and valorizes “cop culture.” The cops go to the same bar and contemplate their sacrifices to an un-appreciating community. Woe betide you if, among the dozens you’ve murdered, there is a cop. That alone cannot be tolerated. That allows all humanity and discretion to be left in the dust.

June 11, 2020

Marin Marias.

Moved a load from my office. Drove to the Arboretum thinking to rest my spirit in the gardens. Not the best idea, because of the gout (now in its 7th day) I keep forgetting that, unlike most things, gout does not improve if you ignore it nor allow you to muscle through. The Time of Weeding is upon me.

June 10, 2020


Lachrimae Carravaggio on the computer.

Rose before light and went to school, determined to make inroads in the moving process. Succeeded in moving the hutch, which is the one piece of actual furniture, the one time I would absolutely need the truck. Talked with the cheerful police lady and the cheerful custodian. The police lady had been watching Netflix of serial killers all night. The custodian had come early, so he wouldn’t run into anyone. I spoiled that. Moving uncovers fascinating files and remnants. I may go through them, may toss them into recycling without a glance. The birds on campus are wondrous loud before morning.

Afternoon: blessed din of rain on the roof.

Backlash against the Provost’s (or someone’s) plan for reopening in the fall.

June 9, 2020

Many errands in the morning, which I tend to forget having done as the day goes on. Ordered take-out from Metropolitan Chinese, hot and sour soup and shrimp with onions. Opened the sack at home and found wonton soup and beef with Chinese vegetables. Asked myself if I really cared, and I didn’t.

Brought The Nurseryman’s Wedding to within a chapter of completion. The penultimate chapter had to be started three times. You know when it is right. You know because when it’s right it’s easy. If I gave one lesson to my budding writers, I hope it was this. That, and clarity before all.

Have been watching You Tube videos of Karens and tyrant cops and things which, in general, infuriate me. I couldn’t understand why I was doing that, until I felt my fury lessening-- sweetening, maybe– so that if I do encounter one of those situations I might not flare up, might not make it worse by instantly matching the level of rage. Auto-aversion therapy.

June 8, 2020

Woke feeling better than I have at any time since the Onset.

Went to school twice. Tiny load of goods taken out of my office.  Lots of construction, but, other than that, a desert. At least statistically the institution is failing, but new and refurbished buildings go up everywhere. Some plan in the darkness, maybe, ready to leap forward. Blue tape arrows have been laid down in Karpen indicating one way traffic in the halls–ludicrous and unobeyable. To get from my office to any classroom except the one across the hall I have to go to the stairway, go downstairs (hoping that the arrows on the first floor are in my favor–I didn’t check) come up another stairway at the other end back onto my floor. I feel almost embarrassed to have chosen exactly the right moment to retire.  I must come to an understanding of why I feel no nostalgia for the place at all, not even a little bit.

June 7, 2020

Rose and drove downtown, where I walked through the morning on essentially deserted streets. Took pictures of the remnants of the demonstrations– most of which were honorific, remembrances of the righteous dead, encouraging admonitions painted on plywood, and like that. Some vandalism. Noted that the redone BB&T is actually quite pretty. Also noted that I was not winded, and I walked for a long time. Will put that to a second test tomorrow. The days are hot and humid; that is the way I like them. Have not had or wanted air conditioning since I left Chunns Cove. Only three nights ago did I put away my winter comforter. I left the back door open when I went downtown, and when I returned, Maud was standing on the east porch, looking bewildered and discomfited. She preceded me inside and then scolded me for leaving the door open. An open door and the garden beckoning her is not part of usual order, and she is all about usual order.

June 6, 2020

Dead-headed the roses.

The bamboo people miss another appointment.

I try to think what I’ve done today. Did nap and have beautiful dreams. Did work on my garden sequence. Did send out manuscripts, in the abrupt electronic way of modern times. Idleness makes me idle.

Zoom last night with the USUAL. Kyle is in the hospital with lesions in his gut.

Police apologists point out how hard it is to be a cop. One does not doubt that for an instant. But it seems to me that NOT creating antagonism in the public, NOT abridging individual rights and forcing opposition, NOT parading around like a banty rooster, NOT murdering the unarmed would be, actually, much easier.

June 5, 2020

The North Carolina Museum of Art wants to reprint my poem from their last anthology.

Return to Fred Anderson Toyota at the crack of dawn– so long ago in this long summer day that when I thought of it, it seemed days and days ago. Am I the only one who’s written tiny little poems and a few paragraphs of a novel while sitting in the FAT Service Lounge? Two huge old man with long gray hair came into the lounge, each pulling oxygen machines behind. Maybe brothers, together for seventy years.

Rain followed by blinding light. I feel the garden supersizing and swelling its sap. Tiny Japanese iris with blooms purple as night. Small water iris with blooms purple as night.

Long, not too severe bout of gout. Strange how that colors everything just a little bit

Notice from UNCA that W will be leaving us for an administrative post elsewhere. In a time like this, one should not notice that relatively minor irony. That she should decide to take on permanently a job she did as badly as anybody I’ve ever known is merely par for a wretched course. Whether she was cowardly or actively malign is difficult to tell from this perspective, but it was one or the other. Strengthens my conviction that university administrators are a sort of caste, helped by one another into a string of positions with absolutely no reference to how well they have done the job. Like cops or abusing priests though their time may be over.

Faces on TV praise the protests but lament the fact that people aren’t honoring the curfews. The problem with curfews and obeying them is that the space police are clearing is public space, and not theirs to "clear." I'm thinking especially of Lafayette Park and downtown Asheville. A curfew for a night or two may be a valuable tool, but, extended or over-enforced, it is an example of the over-policing that is one of the roots of current unrest. The police have no right to make you go home. The police have no right to move you from public point A to public point B. The police have no right to make you go inside from your porches or balconies. The police have no right to decide or control how public space is to be used, or for how long. Of course they may "keep the peace," but, so far as I have seen, the police have instituted turmoil and violence each time they have presumed to assert "authority" over public space. I do not advocate defying curfews right now, for the police are violent and civil authority still has not exerted itself to bring them under control, but I think we should rethink the idea that protest is all well and good, but it should end at the magic policing hour. Two hundred people dancing naked in City County Plaza at 2 in the morning is no concern of the police. We must reconsider over-policing wherever we find it. Nanny-ing public space is not on the to-do list. Is the problem looting? Then station those dozens and dozens of cops in front of the stores. Address the problem; don't fight for power.

Linda and I sharing ancient gossip about our family, having come into contact with one of Alice’s granddaughters. Forgot that Uncle Albert shot himself. Forgot that grandma’s first child wasn’t grandpa’s. Linda and I differ on whether it was Harry or Ellen. Can’t imagine featuring in any interesting way if family gossip, but I suppose I do.

June 4, 2020

Diabelli variations on the CD.

Conversation with the sanctioned person at TIAA. WAY more complicated than it ought to be. Though, of course, I probably screwed something up at the outset---

June 3, 2020

Time wasted at the Toyota store, miscommunication expanding a 45 minute job into a five hour one– and I have to go back again Friday. Call from TIAA to repeat (and somewhat amend) the work done the other day. Vastly hurt feelings, I gather, because I phoned someone other than my designated helper. Designated helper spends first half hour explaining why my phone calls and emails had not been answered. Anyhow, more information is greater light. . . .except THAT too is not finished, and there will be another round of it tomorrow. Having nothing to do makes one very jealous of one’s time. DJ drove me to the shop, and we lamented the weird awfulness of things.

June 2, 2020

Esther has declared a curfew for Asheville beginning at 8 PM. I haven’t been out of the house after 8 PM in three months; nevertheless, I chafe and grumble, wondering what to do if I need to get out after 8. Asheville’s demonstrations haven’t made national news. They say there are graffiti downtown. I picture myself at a demonstration dragging around on my bum leg, trying to outrun teargas canisters.

Stirred up a hornets’s nest at TIAA. Having received no response from my designated adviser (over a period of months) I called Mr P, who helped me royally. He calls saying that he’s in trouble over some bailiwick issue, and could I please take a call from my regular rep, who, after ignoring me , and after her assistant made an appointment for June 11, emails and wants to speak with me today. This shouldn’t be that hard. All someone had to do was tell me how much, when, and how, and it was harder than it ought to have been to get those answers. Pandemic, maybe. People think I'm abrupt. In my world it's me acting finally after extended periods of delay.

June 1, 2020

My parents’ wedding anniversary.

I prayed for my groundhog to move on, so I wouldn’t have the responsibility of killing him. He moved on. I write this in gratitude. Interestingly, now that he has moved on, I look down the slope and miss him, wondering what was wrong with my garden.

Rose and went to the car wash. Gave the girl a $20 tip and she turned around and vacuumed the car again.

Having received no definitive answers from the people at the university who are meant to ease one through retirement, I assumed there was nothing to it and I was just being flustered.  But, I needed to know if that was the case, so I finally got someone on the phone at TIAA, discovering that it is an extremely complicated, intricate process, involving the filling out of esoteric forms and the rebalancing of accounts, not one of which I would have been able to do on my own. Mr P led me through with sublime patience. I suppose the problem at the university is the Plague, and you can’t corner anyone in her office to get all your answers at once. This is the first time I heard numbers, and though my income will take the expected dip, I observe that I’ve never ended a month with an empty account, so I may be able to scrimp through. None of my investments figured into the calculations except for retirement, so there is a cushion. False estimation is the hallmark of my economics. Operate as though certain accounts don’t exist, so you don’t tap into them. Assume a euro is $2 so you spend them more wisely. When the balance in your account reaches $2000, decide you’re out of money for the month and spend no more.

When the beautiful summer light goes out, one is glued to the television, to see what new atrocity the Orange Tyrant will commit, to see the stretching and pulling tight of the fabric of Democracy. When the police began to kneel with the protesters, I began to hope again.

After all this, all Biden will have to do to be considered a great President is to be a sane and decent man.