December 30, 2020

Received a greeting card from Governor Cooper.

Revision of An Age of Silver.

 

December 29, 2020

The actual price for Childhood is $1000.00. $800 for paperback, though I don’t remember there being a paperback. ABE books offers it for $2000. I have no idea of the math that went into this. Turns out I myself have only one copy. Hope it’s on the hard drive somewhere. 

Reading through OBN– “thought” for “though” and close quotes at the end of something that wasn’t a quote. But it does give me pleasure to read it, as I have observed before, as though I’d never seen it before. 

Paid off the Toyota with one mighty check. Biggest check I’ve written since I paid off 62. 

Cop murders– which is to say, murders committed by cops-- continue and continue. No one seems to come to what seems, barring the perfection of human character, the clear solution. The firearm. If it is at hand, it will be used. Make sure the cop does not leave the car with a weapon in his hand. Make sure he does not patrol the neighborhood or the playground with a weapon available. Make real penalties for conducting a traffic stop for a dead taillight or a wide turn with a weapon in hand. Make real penalties for drawing, ever, regardless of what the officer “thought,” on innocents, or those being merely “suspicious.” Make sure the weapon is defense and never intimidation. Cops have a hard time talking to civilians without a hand on their weapon. This is universal and almost unconscious intimidation, and penalties must make the offender mindful. Make sure the weapon is hard to get to, so he must think twice about using it, bypassing the instant reactions of panic and ego. The immediate outcry is But what about the officer’s safety? This will enhance officer safety. Frightened people will not assume, accurately, that contact with the police will likely prove fatal and therefore lose nothing in shooting first. What about citizen safety? Can you imagine a citizen barking to a cop, “Take your hand off that gun for my safety!” Every police jurisdiction should enact the law “Don’t kill anyone who is unarmed or who has, objectively, offered no threat to you,” and that the violation of that rule be treated as murder. Do pause long enough, officer, to approach objectivity. Take that extra second to decide if a cell phone is a gun, if a toy is a weapon. If you are too scared to be on the street, you need not be on the street. It should be easy enough not to shoot people. Just don’t do it. Just don’t do it. If you’re panicky or arrogant, leave the gun in the car until you actually need it. It is not your place to be obeyed.  It is NOT your duty to get home at night. It is not even my duty to get home at night. Our corporate duty is to look out for one another. Actually, truly, serve and protect, so we can stop sneering at the irony of those words.

Holy Innocents

 

December 28, 2020

Ice has closed the Parkway almost everywhere and in every direction, but I did manage to get to the Headquarters and Visitors’ Center (where I had never been) and follow a trail that leads from there to the MST, which I then followed for about fifteen feet before turning around. Cold, gray, overcast, the complexion of winter as I remember it from my youth. The advantage of going early and cold was that what was clearly mud yesterday had frozen solid, walkable. The mud immortalized the tread of the shoes of the last one who had passed. 

J says that Childhood in the Milky Way is $400 on Amazon. I could pay off my house, then, with the copies I have on the shelf. 

 

December 27, 2020

Morning light on the back of my head. Bach on CD. Have been dreaming enormously since retiring, the dreams tenacious; even getting up and going to the bathroom does not always interrupt the narrative. Last night I had applied to college, and the college was a colossal atrium, with all the classrooms surrounding a central space. It was exciting to stand in the center, hearing the hum of learning all about. It was a standard anxiety dream, in part. I’d registered for a particular course, and couldn’t find the room where it was held. The course was called “Yule.” Diane Zabik–of whom I have not thought since high school– found me and said, “David, the professor called your name and everything!” I transitioned from dreaming to thinking, and wondered if I would like to teach again. The answer was yes, under certain conditions. Still partially in the dream, I told Diane that colleges had gone from providing educations to selling degrees, and until that was reversed there would be friction between me and the system. That remained true when I stood full awake. Diplomas used to be the sign of wisdom–or at least expertise– acquired. Now they are purchased with as little regard to the training as the institution can get away with. I’m not sure most college administrators would even deny this. Everyone gets a trophy for participation. 

Spilled a bottle of vitamin D tablets, and decided to swallow all the ones which spilled. This was a mistake. Mildly nauseated all morning, a feeling just now easing away.

Bad ending to yesterday. It came from watching a renowned cast enact a filmed version of a play, whose mediocrity, blandness, and predictability they treated with solemn respect. Anything I have done would have been better. Anything. Yet there’s no work of mine with Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney and Michael Gambon featured on Netflix. I guess you could call this envy. Or you could call it amazement.

The INSTANT I finished writing the disgruntlement above, Facebook went “ding” and the following was messaged from K: Finished The One with the Beautiful Necklaces last night.   What a spectacularly beautiful book.   It needs multiple readings.  I look forward to returning to it. 

And from SS: “Beautiful” is the word. It’s in the title, it’s used more frequently in this book than any I’ve read before, and it earns all those “beauties.” Gotta admit, I found myself deeply resistant in the early going, because mystical/magical elements tend to repel me. But the story and the enormously appealing language kept me going till you beat down all of my defenses. Soon enough, I was completely won over. And, my god, the scope! The smooth movement through era after era, from one character’s rich, engaging story to another’s as rich or richer. I loved so many of these people you’ve conjured that, once I realized they would leave the story almost as quickly as they entered, I was a bit saddened: what happened next? But once I caught on to the internal rhythms, that bothered me not a jot. I was too busy being engaged by whom I met and what happened next. And it held not just beautifully but majestically all the way through. Also, more than even before with your work, I was soothed and comforted sentence by sentence. Once upon a time, I felt similarly about Robert Stone; though, in the last decade and a half of his work, I was far less taken with the novels overall than I was with, say, A Flag for Sunrise and, perhaps more than any other, Outerbridge Reach, I was still so taken with his sentences that they made me feel better no matter my mood. Your work, of course, is very different, as are the sentences, and yet they give me a similar feeling of having the world slowed down sufficiently for me to enter wholeheartedly into it. It’s a gift. So: bravo! And deepest thanks.

OK then. Never hurts to ask. 

Longish videos on You Tube of driving around Akron at various times in the past. Mostly I know where they are. 

 

December 26, 2020

St. Stephens Day. Wrote some before the light.  In a spasm of detective work I think I found most of the data wanted by the mortgage company. This is uncharacteristic behavior for me, who usually waits and frets and finally does it late in a flurry of resentment. My social security payments are remarkably small. There must be a reason for that. Some interchange of waking and sleeping made me think it was a day later than it is. Joy to find it is only Saturday, the day after Christmas. Drove the car into a sunny spot and let the sun thaw it out for me. Nearly berserk with entering user’s name and passwords, not knowing them, extracting them from the site in an agony of application and redirection. This affliction is likely to increase with time rather than lessen. 

 

December 25, 2020

Feast of the Nativity. Snow began late last night, but with such ferocity that a white Christmas was assured in half an hour. Great whirls of it against the street light, cars spinning their tires trying to get up Lakeshore. What I did upon waking was get out the colored pencils and begin to draw. In five minutes I was back in artist mode, and the change of medium didn’t seem to matter so much. Minutes with the pencils taught me things I didn’t learn from the facility of oil. Fed the birds. Fried a pork chop. Made hot chocolate for myself from scratch for the first time in forty years. Watched the birds that used the dogwood outside the window as a stop before the feeder. That was my Christmas. I was perfectly happy.

Red-shouldered hawk

 

December 24, 2020

Red-shouldered hawk perched on the wire opposite the window where I was typing. He looks a little redder than the photos on the Internet which mean to identify him. A bold, decorative animal. The weather was so bad the crows left him alone, and as I watched through the binoculars I saw him shake rainwater off his feathers.

A dismay of the season is how many composers make bank from ruining Christmas music, adding a discord there or a momentarily interesting rhythm there and calling it an arrangement. There are certain situations in which one does not long for novelty.

This is the first Christmas Eve in 33 years when I will not be singing at the Cathedral. It is a loss, though being able to sit on my house looking at the festive lights while sleet storms whirl is a blessing. 

Went to REI to buy a sports watch. While I was there, my mortgage rep phoned with an offer of a reduced rate, etc, and there I stood among the sleeping bags relating intimate financial information. December 24 will be from now the day when my insurance is renewable and the day when that refinancing hell began again. He kept asking me how much money I make. I truly, honesty don’t know without rifling through papers. The last refinancing was less than a year ago. I signed the forms just before I went to Ireland.  While I was at the story a crazy lady came and wanted to shop without a mask (I think that was the issue), and there was terrible conflict at the door. 

I am as happy–or at least as without anxiety– as I have been for many Christmases past. I sheltered in place, and the sheltering was productive. I take an hour each morning after waking and before rising to inject by imagination the tenderness that was lacking in my actual life. It has made a difference. I scarcely dare look at old journals of Christmas, for I was always miserable. I am not miserable tonight. 

 December 22, 2020

Blue dome scoured bluer, brighter by hard winds. My senses want to call it a perfect winter day. Took a late afternoon hike at French Broad Park. Not a bird in the trees, but there was a dog park filled with happy dogs. Met the homeless walking along the bank, from the assortment of tents and lean-to’s visible now from the far bank of the river. Met with WB as he was jogging. He looked to be the God of Health, even with his ordination postponed by Covid. 

Treva’s husband has died. This is shocking to me in ways difficult to explain. I met him perhaps six times, but we had a lively Facebook relationship, and Treva and I were charter members of the same clique at Ellet. It’s like losing a relative.

Radio on loud with select Classical Christmas music. 

Conjunction

 

December 21, 2020

Some time in the morning day it became winter, the world turning toward the light. I need that. My inner Newgrange felt the sudden warmth on its inmost wall.

Day three of thumb inflammation. It’s not steady, the pain, sometimes hardly noticeable, sometimes almost unbearable, nauseating. This makes for an interesting night of waking and falling back to sleep. Don’t think it’s gout, because touching it doesn’t make it worse. 

War with heaven last night. Had nothing to do with the thumb. 

Grumpiness dissolved when I took my new binoculars to the riverside to watch birds. There were not that many, but the highlight, and the sighting that paid for all, was bluebirds. Song sparrows dominated the thickets where I probed. 

Went out to watch the Conjunction. Caught it by looking through holes in the trees on Mount Vernon, but as the evening passed it could be seen perfectly well from my front porch. For a while I leaned against a parked car, staring through my binoculars. When I dropped the binocs, a woman was looking at me. It was her car I was leaning against, and though she wanted to leave, she was afraid to say anything. Told her about the conjunction and she looked where I was pointing, but I think she was humoring me. I assumed Jupiter and Saturn would appear to be crashing into one another, but their stately, dignified, loftily separate procession was better. I contemplated how much cold I was looking at, those unimaginably cold worlds, the frozen space between them and between them and my little self with glasses glued to my face. Maybe I should have worn a heavier jacket. 

 December 20, 2020

Blue jay, crow, mourning dove, hairy woodpecker. 

Early evening, listening to Andrew Magill play the violin at All Souls over the airwaves. The mic picks up the ringing of the bells in the tower at the hour and half hour. Andrew looks great, square and rangy, but maybe more than one musician might have filled out the hour more fully.

Ruined a batch of spice cookies. Had the recipe (which was at fault) from Amy Vanderbilt’s cookbook, which got me through grad school and adult life. This is the first time she let me down. Noticed the little tag at front, “drawings by Andrew Warhol.” In 1960 he was drawing cakes and kitchen apparatus.  

Asked a lady in Ingles where the cookie sprinkles were. Neither of us knew. But a few minutes later she returned and told me, having gone in search of them on my behalf.

I’m not good at recognizing people behind their masks, and they almost always have to speak first, even tell me who they are.

Woke up determined to do whatever I need to do to paint again. Bought a table to put my painting stuff on beside the easel. Thank God Cheap Joe’s was not open, for I failed to buy the water soluble oil paints that seemed the solution to my fumes problem. By noon the whole idea seemed exhausting. 

Messiah

 

December 19, 2020

Suzanne sent me a link to somebody’s (quite good) video of Messiah (with theorbo) on You Tube. Have heard it a hundred and sung it a dozen times, yet this time I was curiously moved. When the baritone let loose with Why do the nations so furiously rage together? I burst into tears. The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed. I wave my little banner, brandish my blunt sword in the army of the righteous, hoping it avails. 

Pulled over at the French Broad overlook, went down the hill and caught the opening of the Shut-In, but it was cold and I wasn’t really in the mood. Did stop for a happy little skunk crossing the path maybe five feet ahead. I swear to God he said “howdy!”  

Picked up OBN and read, re-affirming my odd (is it odd? Maybe it’s common) ability to read my own work as though it were a discovery and I hadn’t written it at all. I enjoyed it. Tolkien and Lewis conspired to write the kind of books they wanted to read; I seem to have happily written books I like to read almost incidentally. Whatever else, sentence to sentence, it’s good writing. I can rest for a moment on that.

Put the new binoculars to use from the front porch: flicker, phoebe, song sparrow, titmouse, brown creeper. 

 

December 18, 2020

Revised The Prince in the Tower. The deepest revision was needed, of course, in the very first story. I do sabotage myself. 

Wishing for someone to see my beautiful Christmas trees.

Sedentary, isolated, having to look at the clock to see what time it is. This is not a complaint. 

The New Yorker sends a rejection for poems submitted four years ago. 

Ordered taco salad delivered, barely put a dent in it. 

Kit sends a beautiful mug in the color I favor most.

Trying to remember if I’ve been out of the house this day. I think not.

Found Samoan song on the Internet. Didn’t know there was any. Lovely. 

Waiting for the Witch

 

December 15, 2020

Waiting for the Witch gets a production in Florida in January, to start the new year right:

Frank Blocker <theaterfilm@artsbonita.org>

3:03 PM (1 hour ago)

to colleennicoleodoherty@gmail.com, dhaddad82@netscape.net, raciccarone@gmail.com, odedgross@sbcglobal.net, terifoltz2@gmail.com, me

I have gotten agreements from all of you before, but didn’t have a date or show to slot yet and then came even more COVID.  But we have been back doing productions at the Center for a few months and we’re ready for a January 15 show of FUNNY SHORTS LIVE!  These six plays are what we’ll be doing.

Bold Dorothy, Retired: Colleen Nicole O'Doherty 

Cliff Dwellers: David Haddad 

Intervention: Richard Ciccarone 

MacLear: Oded Gross 

December 15, 2020

Waiting for the Witch gets a production in Florida in January, to start the new year right:

Frank Blocker <theaterfilm@artsbonita.org>

3:03 PM (1 hour ago)

to colleennicoleodoherty@gmail.com, dhaddad82@netscape.net, raciccarone@gmail.com, odedgross@sbcglobal.net, terifoltz2@gmail.com, me

I have gotten agreements from all of you before, but didn’t have a date or show to slot yet and then came even more COVID.  But we have been back doing productions at the Center for a few months and we’re ready for a January 15 show of FUNNY SHORTS LIVE!  These six plays are what we’ll be doing.

Bold Dorothy, Retired: Colleen Nicole O'Doherty 

Cliff Dwellers: David Haddad 

Intervention: Richard Ciccarone 

MacLear: Oded Gross 

Waiting for the Witch: David Brendan Hopes

I would have said something prior to auditions, but in these times we don’t know who we’ll get to show up and that’s how I end up casting—with who’s available.  And if I’d said something earlier, we might not have been able to do your play and I am really tired of disappointing artists with cancellations this year, and don’t want to break any more hearts.  We’re cast and starting rehearsals this week!

It’s a one-time performance at 7:30pm at the Moe Auditorium and Film Center on the campus of the Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs, 10150 Bonita Beach Road.  You can get telephone, website, etc., below if you have anyone to share the news. 

Frank Blocker

Film and Theater Coordinator

Centers for the Arts 

Bonita Springs Center for Performing Arts

10150 Bonita Beach Road

Bonita Springs, FL 34135

Tel 239 495 8989

Web www.artcenterbonita.org

Worked nobly on GB.

 

December 14, 2020

Spent the morning getting new insurance policies for house and vehicles. When I go through something like that I realize (to my horror) how much of regular life I put to one side to live the life I want. I had no idea how much I pay for house insurance (comes out of escrow), and discover that the mortgage company had me grossly over-insured. Didn’t remember what I paid for car insurance, though I actually write those checks. How many square feet is my house? I don’t know. What is the mileage on my truck? I don’t know. The guy on the phone (his voice sounded handsome) said I will now save $1300 a year. I lie down and take a nap. 

 

December 13, 2020

Watched the end of the season’s Crown, whereupon Princess Margaret haunted my dreams. In the dreams she was witty and funny and overdressed. Also conceived the idea that I’d had a stroke. Apparently not, but I took an aspirin with morning coffee.   Linda called. I happened to be standing beside the land line or it wouldn’t have connected. It was she who’d sent the lovely binoculars that I couldn’t remember buying. Told her I’d already used them, which was true. May take them on the trail today. She outlined problems with the new Covid19 vaccine that I had never thought of and which are, for understandable reasons, downplayed by official sources. I’ll still get it when it’s available, for dying of Covid is worse and surer that the side effects she warned of. Younger people, though, who have long lives to suffer with complications, might think twice. 

Wrote on GB, then went to campus for the first time since I finished moving out of my office. Parked at the Reuter Center and found the wooded paths that snake around the considerable mountain on whose south side the campus lies. Pretty, crowded. Never once went while I worked below. 

I think this was my grandmother’s birthday. 

Bull Gap

 

December 12, 2020

Drove to Bull Gap and hiked a little, though my heart wasn’t in it.  Mostly to work out a stiff knee. Very dramatic skies, out of which never came the heralded storm. Met an old, old man on the trail. He was bent over, with one hand holding him up from the path. I said, “Are you all right, sir?” He straightened up and said, “Just stretching my back!” For a second I wondered how the hell I was going to get him back to the road.  What good would I be in a wilderness emergency? Forfend that I ever find out. 

 

December 11, 2020

Did some paperwork (including writing recommendations for TB to fiction programs, ten years to the very week after writing him recommendations to the script writing program at Tisch) and then drove to the Parkway. From the parking lot I climbed Hard Times Trail till it came to Owl Ridge, then took that. The air was thick and radiant with moisture. Unless I’ve forgotten (I don’t think that’s likely) that was my first time on Owl Ridge. I must have kept setting it aside for some other time. It’s very beautiful, with mysterious (clearly planted) pure stands of pine just before it intersects with Rocky Cove. Hard Times, Owl Ridge, and Rocky Cove are all listed as “difficult” trails on the Arboretum web page. My accompaniment (maybe because of the steepness of the climb) was “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” I used to get to Rocky Cove some other way, where on summer nights I would find 1) an off-duty cop who liked to have sex in the dust of the road and 2) more flying squirrels than I have seen elsewhere in the wild. At twilight the red sky would be filled with their antics.  I love the long deep vistas winter in the forest affords. Exceeded my step count–actually my best day ever, with over 12,000 steps. Many more women than men on the trail. 

 

December 10, 2020

Countertenors on Youtube. 

Bizarre tumult last night. Wondering if it was as simple as drinking a caffeinated beverage before sleep. It followed me into the day in the form of problematic bowels, which required two emergency stops, once at the river office and once at the Arts Council in Marshall– where, to pay for using their facilities, I bought a handmade whisk broom. I’d gone to Marshall– I realize now, having kept it from myself– to test if anybody had read OBN, set partially in their town. I always arrive at everything too early, so no one had appeared before I set my face again to the south. I’ve heard scarcely a word about the book, it too disappearing into the great maelstrom of indifference that sweeps all adjacent shores. 

After weeks (maybe months) relatively free of it, inflammation returns. Part of last night’s sleeplessness was agony in my shoulders, and when I woke it was as if I wore a scalding body stocking of pain. God provides that aspirin does a good job of pushing it back, but one still wonders about cause, and why sometimes and other times not. Weather? Does it come with the cold? I have not been systematic in my inquiry.

Did some walking, with Irving Berlin in my head, especially the horrible “The Girl that I Marry” from an album called Pat Boone Sings Irving Berlin that my father bought when he was in his stereo phase.

You go out to fill the bird feeder. A memory or a bit of an old song lands on you like the tip of an arrow. You stand on the cold bricks and weep. The birds stare at you and wonder what could be wrong, when you’ll get back into the house so they can feed.

Phoebe

 

December 9, 2020

A phoebe perched on the table on the back stoop long enough to look my fill, he fluffed and ready for the cold.  

 

December 7, 2020

Pearl Harbor. Idleness. Sent off books and cards. OBN too is going to disappear without a trace. 

Strangely pinkish hawk in my tree.

Coffee with AH. We sat in my car to keep from freezing. It made me nervous to be so close, though he’d tested negative the day before. I drove home with the windows open to blow the virus out into the light.

Saint Nicholas

 

December 6, 2020

Saint Nicholas. I kept a pair of shoes on the porch, but, nothing. Kept the tree lights on all night. Maud sits in sunlight under my chair, thrashing her tail slowly in what appears to be pure contentment. 

Found the opened window where the neighbor’s gray cat had been entering my basement. He watched me seal it up, perhaps plotting how to get around me some other way.

ZOOM critique from Raleigh of Antigonus. The level of discourse was so ignorant it was all one could do to keep countenance in front of the camera. Nothing is worse for the arts than a self-satisfied amateur. 

Christmas Spirit

 

December 5, 2020

After pecking at the keyboard for a while, was overcome by the Christmas spirit and set up and decorated two trees. I must have skipped last year. I might have skipped this year, except, why not? Now I’m happy. 

  

December 4, 2020

Cold hard rain on the roof. Drove to the Parkway in the afternoon. The boy I had seen feigning yesterday was there, and I rolled down my window to say “where’s your bike?” though in he end I said nothing, and rode on by, squinting at his sign, still illegible. Rain began to pour as soon as I got to the French Broad overlook. I considered walking in the rain. Turned around and came home. 

Made two tapes for the AGMC show, told them to chose. One of them was e e cummings. I was reluctant to use my own work, because my work is serious and we no longer are. 

Sauron

 

December 3, 2020

The Guggenheim people ask for writing samples. I send Washington Place, Uranium 235, The Falls of the Wyona.

I’d always had trouble justifying the apparently abstract evil of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. What could he want that could be achieved in that way, with so much manifest waste and ugliness? He seemed a merely literary trope. But, oddly, actual history helps with the understanding of this. Donald Trump– a real person if an absurd one–helped me understand the motivations of the profound narcissist. He was indifferent to creating Mordor, so long as Mordor served and adored him. Better to rule in Mordor than serve in Paradise. 

Set out in the afternoon. Stopped at a light, I watch a cyclist get off Brevard Road, stash his bike in the highway landscaping, and set up as a beggar boy at the bottleneck where 19/23 exits on to the Brevard Road bridge. He looked athletic and eager on his bike, frail and downtrodden when he got himself in place with his tiny piece of cardboard saying God knows what. It’s hard for all beggars when one is revealed as a fraud. Drove on to the Parkway, but it was closed beyond the French Broad overlook. So I lit out from there on foot, southward and upward. I had forgotten how much I love to walk the Parkway when it’s closed to traffic, a vast avenue through the wilderness, always with more visible wildlife than the deep woods. Two huge crows (at distance I thought they were, together, an enormous dog) fed on an annihilated opossum. Pelt and head lay on one side of the road, still not wholly consumed innards on the other. I climbed a good while, and when I came down I’d fulfilled my number of steps yet again. I thought the east-facing slopes especially blessed, because they would receive glory in the morning. I stood in shadowy calm under one old grove and prayed a prayer I have prayed twice in my life–that I remember–and both times in 2020– “Lord, thank you for my life.”

. 

 

December 2, 2020

Sidney writes this to the Guggenheim people:

Dear Guggenheim Fellowship Committee:

There is no finer candidate to document the panorama of American history than the brilliant David Hopes. This is not hyperbole. This is my own experience. I had the wonderful opportunity to direct THE LOVES OF MR. LINCOLN for Sunnyspot Productions at the June Havoc Theatre in New York. It was an event of unparalleled joy for me. The play covers Lincoln from his arrival in Springfield through his assassination at Ford’s Theatre with a focus on some his deepest interpersonal relationships, Joshua Speed, Mary Todd, Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, and his valet, Tobias. The play is delicately seasoned with songs from the Stephen Foster Songbook. The collaboration with David on this project is one of the high points of my life. His dedication to the storytelling meshed beautifully with my own. His knowledge of and enthusiasm for his subject; his tireless work ethic; his committed listening; his strength tempered with sensitive adaptability among so many other gifts that make him such a fine playwright, all provided impetus for magical accomplishment. Frankly, I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of FATHER ABRAHAM, his trilogy on Lincoln and WASHINGTON PLACE, an intimate and expert telling of the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

I highly recommend David for a Guggenheim Fellowship. The boost this would give him to create and refine his deep grasp of American history into terrific theatre would be a boon to us all.

Feel free to contact me early and often. It is easy to be articulate about the talent of this man.

Thank you.

Yours,

Sidney J. Burgoyne

I don’t know what the Guggenheim people are looking for, but I’d give me the fellowship on the basis of this kind and thoughtful recommendation. 

Zoom rehearsal for Christmas music. More useful than I would have supposed.

 

December 1, 2020

Veil of snow on the ground at waking, considerable snow falling now. 

Song Sparrow, my source for peonies, is going out of business. 

Writing to Marin Marais.

 

November 30, 2020

Postcard to JG, who was kind to me in Baltimore, and whom I never forgot. 

Blustery, wintery. David and Daniel sent me a gift card which tuned out to be unexpectedly hard to spend. 

Business at the Post Office. Two women led a very long line of customers, and these women were having frustrating mornings, having come to the PO unprepared, loose boxes flying hither and thither, questions asked and answered multiple times, the pitches of their voices betraying ever-tightening cords of panic. They were universally hated. They must have felt waves of hatred hitting the backs of their heads. That couldn’t have helped. I’m the sort of person who thinks, “A few moments of preparation before going out in public could have avoided all this.” That must read as pitilessness. The second woman seemed to be mailing about twenty individual boxes of greeting cards to the same address. THESE HAVE TO BE THERE TOMORROW she shrieked.  Why she didn’t come in yesterday with them already packed stands outside my imagination. But it did allow her to fumble them and drop them and have them fly open and explode and disarray as though it were a comedy sketch. I remember the passage from The Magician’s Nephew where the crow says, hearing laugher, “I have made the first joke.” “No,” Aslan says, “you have been the first joke.”

I don’t believe America understands the bullet it dodged at the beginning of this month, the barely sufficient detour from the road which must lead to tyranny and civil war, and the probably permanent, probably just loss of America’s prestige in the world. We’re too engaged with reconciliation to note our imminent danger as it ought to be noted. It’s like the aftermath of the Civil War, when voices that wanted a return to normality outshouted voices that wanted justice and political self-examination. Millions of people voted for a demon and demonic policies, which didn’t even bother to disguise themselves. If I could think of the word of waking to utter, I would utter it.

Throwing away my 2020 American Express journal without a single entry in it.