December 31, 2021

Palestrina on Pandora. 

Cool day, sun and rain squalls alternating. 

The headachy ickiness I felt at the beginning of the week was possibly Covid. D and L both Face Book that they have it, and are quarantining. I assumed a big gathering like the one at Christmas would be a cauldron of it. But, if that was it, it wasn’t much. I thought it was phlebitis and gobbled unnecessary anitbiotics.  My socializing is so slim I won’t worry about deliberate quarantining. 

During massage, Z told me about his new reading habits, and how he’d finished a number of books. For one wild moment I thought he was going to comment on OBN, but, of course, not. The most influential read in his life turns out to be a self-help called No More Mr Nice Guy, which suggests ways, I gather, to stop being everybody’s doormat and dare some self-assertion. Haven’t read it, but the change in him over a two week period was miraculous, from mouse to peacock. Peacock suits him. He has the equipment for it. His beauty should have obtained for him a more exciting life than he has so far had .

Do I overestimate the worth of personal beauty? I think of Dickinson’s poem, “Success is counted sweetest. . . “ 

I am probably not an intuitively good audience for No More Mr Nice Guy

The file “Play Submissions” sits on my screen. I have made 90 submissions of plays in 2021. Two have resulted in productions or future productions. And, as only one of them has actually happened, only one is sure: “Alfie and Greta” in Australia, my first work there. Only four have received outright rejections.

O, what a year.

Lost Circe the angel cat. Bitterly wept for her. I hope she knows. 

Sweetboi and Denise came to lord it over my garden. Maybe the best thing of the year. 

My garden was the best it ever was. It will be better this spring.

Lost trips to Greece and Israel.

The One with the Beautiful Necklaces and Washington Place appeared in print. The Ones with Difficult Names is all proofed and edited and ready for the next step. 

Wrote volumes, the mass of which I have not come to terms with myself. Sat at the green table and wrote a brief story this morning, before coffee. Maud is the hero of it. 

Went back on stage, in a live play, a ballet, and an oratorio, all of them brand new. I’m prouder of that than I was when I began to type the sentence. 

Getting ready to leave the house, I heard a tiny scratchy sound on the walk. The sun was low and in my eyes, so I had to adjust for a moment to see the truly massive flock of turkeys that had gathered under my magnolia. Almost the best imaginable sign for the coming of the new year.

The overture to “The Flying Dutchman” is my earworm at the moment. What sign is that? Travel. A love-curse. 

 

December 30, 2021

Brahms’ 4th on Alexa. 

Intermittent but wild pain in my left knee. 

 December 29, 2021

Encountered AS at the bagel store. We chatted. When I inquired about matters at UNCA, she made the face all faculty make when asked that question, a complicated play of disgust, disappointment, remote hopefulness. It cannot get better without a radical revisioning along exactly those lines which any presently conceivable administration would reject out of hand.

Red-bellied woodpecker is the sunny ghost of my yard.

Dreamcatcher

 

December 28, 2021

Rose shocking late, for me. Drove to the Rice Pinnacle trailhead, which by reason of vacation and fine weather was packed. Had to hover for a parking space. I took a trail not taken before, to the right of the main (and partially paved) one. A near constant barrage of mountain bikes made it a walk rather than an actual wilderness experience. Off to the right of the trail someone had created a sylvan fetish with carved face and clothing and dangling dreamcatchers. People shot by on their bikes at such speed that I may have been the only one who noticed, though the presence hung no more than 100 yards from the rail opening. 

Escrow weirdness causes my mortgage to go up $300 a month. I don’t even call for an explanation. 

 

December 27, 2021

J commanded me “Wash your car,” a comment relative to how long we’ve gone without a good, driving, wash-your-car rain. 

Christmas Eve service at the church was expectable and expectably lovely. Came home, watched a little TV, drank DJ’s egg nog. Off to Atlanta early the next day, survived the gigantic family gathering, many times larger and more disparate than Dr. Fauci would probably advise. I simply did not get the enjoying-the-family gene, so dominant in my sister. I brace myself for an hour or so before I can relax into it. I do well in formal social situations; informality is a process with me. My sister glows the more as the mayhem increases. But it was lovely, all the nephews and their spouses or near-spouses, M’s parents and grandparents, who apparently all travel as a team, even A, whose friendship with J is odd and fortunate. Food was eaten, gingerbread houses made, anecdotes shared, gifts exchanged. D got me a bb gun to defend against the bears. I can’t imagine using it for that, but I’ll load it and keep it at the ready in case someday it comes to pass. Beka’s flight from Denmark was discussed. She blames Denmark, but among all countries Denmark is probably unblameable. I think she found her paradise in Colorado and wants to go back to it. No blame there. Cannot sleep in my sister’s house. Who knows why? 

The long drive each way, unremarkable.

On the schedule: wrestling with Allianz over a refund for the Jerusalem trip; testing the weather outside to see if it’s hikeable. 

Christmas Eve

 

December 24, 2021

J and DJ and L and I keep Christmas with many drinks at Rye Knot. We discussed how, no matter how many times we hear A Christmas Carol, it still lands its blow.

Renewed the seed trays and the suet, that the birds too might have a merry Christmas. A great hawk (red-tailed, I think) sat in the tree across the street studying the hawk buffet thus created. 

The Internet issue was solved (or at least addressed for the moment) by re-installing the whole apparatus, taking the wire from a different pole and burying it underground. I don’t know how the technician achieved this in the time it took– I went hiking, to get out of the fury-cauldron I’d created around me over this issue–but when I got back from the mountain, it was accomplished. I’m ashamed to be undone by small, temporary things. I whisper my thanks that I have small, temporary things to be undone by.

Handel and Bach in the half-lit rooms. 

 

December 23, 2021

The AT&T workman’s meter said the cable break is twenty feet from the inbox, putting it in the attic. Workman says, “I don’t go into attics.” We’ll see how this comes out. 

Tightness in the chest. . . betting this day ends in the long-awaited heart attack. 

Cleaning lady and technician arrive at the same time. Chat with cleaning lady. She observes that it’s hard to take on new hires these days. I ask her about the petite young woman whom I’ve seen here several time. “Oh, that’s my daughter. Five weeks ago she was in a horrible traffic accident right over on Merrimon. Lady pulls out of Ingles while on her cell phone. My daughter was five months pregnant. She lost the baby. She was on her way to work. Now every time she walks into a house, she remembers, so–.”

Technician says, “I’ll have to replace that whole friggin’ line.” He’s very grumpy. I can’t get past my own rage to feel for his dilemma much below the surface. He crawled into the attic after he said he wouldn’t. He called the original installer to bitch at him for leading the line into the attic. Neither of us at the time of installation could think of an alternative. He blamed squirrels for all six of my failures. “They rub the cable with soy oil and that really attracts the squirrels,” says he. My responses– stop doing that, rub it with something nasty afterward–seem so obvious it would be rude actually to say. You think in this technical age you won’t have to go through this, that there’s always a quick solution. I’m not good with the repetitious nuisance. I said “Can you do without me?” He said, “Yeah, we have so much stuff already I won’t take any of yours.” I drove off to the first overlook toward Pisgah and hiked slightly north on the MTS trail. I found a log to sit on, and there discussed with the Lord my realization that I have not been as kind as I could have been, throughout my life. I have fought for principles, for my own autonomy, for time, against stupidity, but so seldom tempered those battles with mercy–or even proportion– that I had to sit in the wilderness and think about it for a while. When I got back the Internet was on. 

 

December 22, 2021

In the dark of the darkest night–almost, in fact, at the stroke of midnight-- two bears were on my porch. They’re so silent I wouldn’t have known had I not been looking out the window at the hard moonlight at exactly that second. They’re two of Ruth Bader Ginsbear’s cubs from this year, big, hungry teenagers, funny to watch. The corn I left out for the birds didn’t interest them much. They checked to see if I’d restored the birdfeeder they disembowled at their last visit. I had not. They didn’t get the suet box, which is as high as I can reach, and higher than they can.  I am glad they have each other. Private marauding must lack the crucial element of shared experience. I took them for omens of the night, and their behavior, being playful, a good sign for times to come. 

Past day of anger at an agent’s flip rejection of Jason. “I was not as excited by the opening pages as I anted to be.” Wanted to slap her stupid face. But, early this morning, sat down and wrote a far better opening page, a whoring opening page designed to catch attention rather than to begin the story, but that’s the way it is. 

When I was walking the woods around Lake Powhatan, I realized my inner voices had become tangled, superabundant, nasty. I stopped on the path and bade them Silence! Relief came to my heart almost instantly. The forest had voices that only in my silence could penetrate. The blessed silence held for a few seconds before I realized “I am working hard on being silent before the voices of the sky,” which was itself a voice of distraction, if a purely descriptive one. This is the task for the coming year: achieving emptiness without congratulating myself on emptiness, listening without singing inside “see me listening!” My approach to all things is narration; this will be difficult. 

Again, inconceivably, the Internet is out. My rage is comic. How may different ways can AT&T be consigned to hell? Had to drive out and park on some street to call Spectrum and sign up for their service, as my phone was out too, for reasons not entirely clear.  Two hours of run-around from nice people with Indian accents on whom I could not release the full force of my fury. The AT&T “supervisor,” to whom I’d demanded to speak, left me a phone number which connected to the J.P Morgan/Chase personnel office, which offered me (electronically) a job application. Trying to think of Kentucky, trying to think of Yemen, places where my little inconveniences look like the head of a pin. Even rage over the head of a pin sometimes cannot be avoided. Playing de la Rue and Obrecht on the DVD player in the living room. 

Solstice

 

December 21, 2021

Longest night. Draw on, sweet night!  Baked two other batches from the same old cookbook, one alleging to be Charles Hartshorne’s favorite oatmeal cookies. Had no raisins, so used vanilla chips instead. Crows gathering strangely in this tree, then in that tree. Strange, pure emotions: I will be convulsed with grief at certain times during the day, at remembrance of things passed. This is not depression, but quick, deep, pure in ways difficult to explain, parting like clouds and letting the light back almost immediately. 

Merganser Lake

 

December 20, 2021

Rose early and drove to the Hard Times trailhead. Walked to Lake Powhatan, which I want to call Lake Merganser because I see two pair of hooded mergansers almost every time I go. Caught them this time not only from the fishing pier, but from a loop of forest, and they no more than forty feet away, sporting in the silver water. Mallards too, unusually shy. Heard a kingfisher but didn’t see it. For a while, it being early and cold, I had the paths and the lake to myself. One woman standing at the cultured edge of the lake talking on her cell phone was unbelievably loud. I walked a long way trying to get away from the sound, and never did until I sank back in the forest. 

Expiration

 

December 19, 2021

Turned my Pandora on to the adagio of one of Beethoven’s late quartets, the most sublime music I know. Sat at the keyboard and wept. Baked cocoa drop cookies, varying the recipe by emptying out jars of Marischino cherries and what have you that had been sitting in the fridge. Threw out a can of Crisco that expired in 2012. It was expired when I moved it from one house to the other.

Proofing

 

December 18, 2021

Proofread the new book– some astonishing bloopers, I think by them. Consistent confusion of hyphens and dashes. The poems are strange to me, as if another intelligence wrote them. But also, I think, quite beautiful. My thinking so is enough to last this night. 

 

December 17, 2021

Red-bellied woodpeckers lead the parade to the new suet, and a birdseed wreath studded with berries. I entered the Wild Bird store for supplies, praying that the lady wouldn’t ask me, for the 9th time, if I wanted to join the birdseed buying club. She didn’t, making the whole day blessed. I think it must have been 70 degrees at some point.

 

December 16, 2021

Joyful tasks of Christmas, visiting here, bestowing there. Bought supplies to bake cookies I am now out of the mood to make. Using the Hiram Women’s Faculty Club cookbook of, it must be, around 1971. Margarine appears in recipes then as it never would now, as does a great variety of salads involving Jello. Recipes are terse, without wit or anecdote. Spices are limited to the four or five I remember from my mother’s spice rack. Some things you are just expected to know. 

Maud curled in a corner which somehow amplifies her purr, which fills the room, sounds like the purr of a tiger. 

There is a Taco Bell Quarterly actually soliciting literature concerning the fast food business. 

 

December 15, 2021

Kelsay sends proofs I can’t bear to look at now– though the cover is gorgeous. One crow does not bother to move when I approach. Will work on this until one day maybe we will touch. 

 

December 14, 2021

Return to poetry, not a river, but a laughing merry stream. One of the poems is about the house on Tonawanda Avenue that was always the prize for Christmas display in East Akron. I wonder if the people who live there now know that. It would almost be worth the trip to see if the tradition were preserved. Or if they know there are poems written about them. 

Mendelssohn

 

December 12, 2021

Mendelssohn in the morning, “Behold a Star from Jacob Shining,” a perfect work of art, soul and cunning construction in exquisite balance. 

Afternoon returned to the Cathedral to hear a concert by Finn Magill and friends. Finn was pretty wonderful, especially his intricate adaptations for violin of un-violin-like carols such as Patapan and Carol of the Bells. His friends were less wonderful, a C-grade singer-songwriter and a male quartet with balance problems. The bass in the quartet used to sit beside me in choir at All Souls. All I could think of was how he’d lost the shocking beauty of his youth. Still, I was glad I dragged myself out of the house.

Chaotic Good

 

December 11, 2021

Heron down on the lake, on a stick near shore, hunched over like an old woman complaining about the cold. 

Reading Byron, finding his impression of Valletta to be exactly the same as mine 200 years later– damn the streets that are all stairs.

Not only did Necklaces not win the Thomas Wolfe, I was not one of the five finalists invited to read at the ceremony. I misjudged that memorably. 

Coffee out of the first mug Kit ever sent me, perhaps twenty-five years ago. I knew there was carving on the side, but I took it to be free-form, or perhaps a mistake. Looked at it in propitious light this morning, and it is my name in an arch over what might be a phoenix or a tree or a crucifix or, most likely, the star shape with which I used to sign letters, back when I wrote them. . 

Read about the “Nine Alignments.” I am Chaotic Good.

Dog with White Eyes

 

December 10, 2021

Someone--maybe Freud–asserts that dreams are wish fulfillment. If so, I wondered why so few of my dreams are fully or fulfillingly sexual. Last night’s was, extended, vivid, lyrical. My partner was somebody I sort of know, but transfigured the way dreams do, and the identity for the moment forgotten. 

For no good reason bought Japanese porcelain at Biltmore Antiques. 

My tiny play The Dog with White Eyes accepted for publication

Revisions and additions to the Parish Profile submitted. 

Shying from delving into a big project, though three or four sit in the computer waiting to be delved. 

Office cleaning. Documents from before the move finally found their way into the recycling bin. 

AW continues his decades-old program of defamation and slander. I admire his diligence, but wonder at the place I continue to hold in his psyche, whereas I never think of him unless I receive word of another subterranean attack. He might have done something useful with all the energy he expended on me, though probably not. 

Two different broadcasts of ancient Christmas music from two different rooms.

 

December 9, 2021

Trip to Hendersonville to avoid the cleaning lady. Breakfast at Main Street Cafe, where they served their eggs Benedict with melted Velveeta in place of Hollandaise. Waitstaff merry and unafraid to laugh back in the kitchen. Everywhere you go in Asheville people are masked, but it was rare in Hendersonville, and in one store something I said made the owner launch into a diatribe against vaccination. Her main argument seemed to be that the formula for the vaccines is imperfect and some future effects remain unknown. My main argument–which remained unexpressed–is that they keep you from getting sick in the short run, and that’s all I can expect to have control over. Bought a bear and a banner with quotations about Valhalla. 

My rewrite of the Parish Profile seems to have received general approbation. 

 December 8, 2021

Video night with DJ and R. Ordered pizza from Papa John’s. when I arrived to pick up, they had no record of the purchase, but made me a pizza on the spot and did not charge me. Sweet kids. I’d brought no cash so I couldn’t put anything in the tip jar for their efforts.

Bears visited last night. Didn’t see them, but one bird feeder has the bottom ripped out and the suet holder has literally vanished. 

I figure that, had things been different, I’d be in the air now, having left Tel Aviv for Charlotte. Seems at the end of it like such a tiny moment in time. I am, all in all, grateful that things turned out the way they did, thought I figure I will have lost $8000. I’ll pretend Bruce had gotten me into another Broadway show.

The slacks I ordered to wear in Israel arrived today. 

 

December 6, 2021

Bad dreams through the night. In two cycles I had sunk under two different circumstances and I could find no way out and it looked like my life was ruined. Then I clawed into consciousness. Took a minute to realize “it wasn’t real!” Maybe that’s what death is like. 

Combing You Tube for Irish music. Guess I want to go there again.

 

December 5, 2021

Lovely Lessons & Carols this morning. A tune on the radio flooded me with the Christmas spirit, so long gone. 

 

December 4, 2021

Parish Profile arrives. That it is an undistinguished document could be excused if it hadn’t taken two years to create. You wonder if it’s worth the exhaustion of watching select committees aim low and still miss the mark. Don’t know what to do. People are probably tired of my sharp mouth already.

Shining Rock

 

December 3, 2021

Walked in Shining Rock and Graveyard Fields in the purest blue air that has ever been. Gille na gille, brightness most bright. I considered that I likely have not walked there in this century. I was purely alone heading our early, though I ran into outgoing hikers as I headed back to the car. Two very old men in camo had gotten there, amazingly, in a truck. I don’t think they were hunting. What would you hunt there on the roof of the world? When I approached they were packing camp chairs and putting them back into the truck. I think they may have just been sitting there facing the Majesty. Stopped and turned around at a patch of ice that went on farther than I could see. Slipping and falling was not on the morning’s agenda. Ate ice broken from stone, cold, stony, refreshing beyond words.  Lauridsen’s “Sure on This Shining Night” was my earworm for the journey. That was well. Every ten feet or so, streams have cut deeply into the roadside. The slope to the north doesn’t look high enough to generate all that runoff. Juncos were with me, and down in the gorge I heard ravens calling their unmistakable call. One of the lines from the Agee text is “all is healed, all is health.” That is how I felt. 

Wash Creek Overlook

 

December 2, 2021

Fine warm day. Rose and drove to Stony Bald Gap, where I began to climb up and to the south, the wood gleaming pale and azure around me. The rocky unevenness of the path defeated my knees, though, and it was not a long walk. At the overlook I encountered a pale man-bunned, sweet boy, from Detroit. We remarked on the splendor of the day. He wants to move to Asheville and open a printing service. Unfortunately I could offer no wisdom on those prospects. He said Mount Mitchell is closed because of ice. I told him go on to Pisgah, which was unlikely to be closed. Ouching on my knee, I advised him to stave off old age as long as he could. He promised that he would. At the Wash Creek overlook I saw a black cat. He must have been abandoned by someone, for no cat would climb there on its own. I got out and called to him, but he ran into the woods. I stopped on the way back, but there was no sign of him in the sun-struck woods. 

 

December 1, 2021

Picked up the intriguing amounts and varieties of trash that gathered on my lawn. Left the big bear mess at the entrance of the lilac tunnel for another time, not having the stomach for it right then. Got all my art supplies together from house and office and set them on the front porch for Allyson to pick up for her school. Empty drawers and shelves. The oils might be too sophisticated for gradeschoolers, but teacher may use them herself.  Painting “51" in orange on my mailbox may be the last time I have an oil brush in my hand.  AT&T cancels my technician because there’s a systemic outage and, I imagine, all hands must be on that deck. No satisfaction to me. There was no hurricane, no earthquake, and a systemic outage does not excuse the loss of nor return my Internet to me. Wild with rage and sadness. Do not intend to be patient. Do not intend to be forgiving. Do not intend to be rational. Why do companies offer services they cannot provide? The house is silence and isolation.  In the same vein, the Discernment Committee has not completed the Parish Profile three weeks after the absolute and final deadline they set themselves, ten months after any rational end point. I’ll be the one who has to say, “The Discernment Committee clearly does not intend or is not able to provide a Parish Profile. Should we not do it ourselves?” and then get blamed for hurting everybody’s feelings. 

Laundered the unthinkable bedclothes. 

Working hard on the trimmed and revised Tub. Lost 7000 words.

 

November 30, 2021

Beyond credibility, my cable is out again. Five times in a month. Jimmy calls and says they’ve found the problem, on a pole somewhere remote from here. Can it be fixed tonight? No. It must be fixed tonight. We’ll be there first thing in the morning. I need it to be fixed tonight. It will not be fixed tonight. The grief I feel has something to do with solitude, and little do to with the actual service. It’s like being in constant panic and having the drug that covered that panic suddenly removed. 

Ruby-crowned kinglet

 November 29, 2021

Dream before morning: Some dastardly crime was committed against me, and people came to me and said that if I didn’t protest or bring anyone to court, it would be all right, that everything would be made well. I shut my mouth and let it pass. One day a young man showed up, Hispanic, I guess, with beautiful liquid eyes and a gentle manner. Without any particular conversation between us, he began to accompany me everywhere, help me with daily tasks, be at my side. People noticed him, but hesitated to ask who he was or what he was to me. I wouldn’t have been able to tell them, except that his name was Angel (AnHEL) and that he anticipated what I needed and helped me with it. He slipped a credit card out of my wallet and bought groceries. He bought what he was used to rather than what I was, so the table was laid with exotic delicacies. I made up the guest room for him (in a house that was not this house) but he slept with me, holding me in his arms until I fell asleep. It was a beautiful dream. I was glad I waited for blessing instead of insisting on justice. 

Noon: Set out walking from Bad Fork south (and up) on the MST. It was too cold, and I never warmed up so as to prolong the walk the way I wanted. But two ruby-crowned kinglets gladdened the path side as I passed. I’d never seen them so close before. They instantly became, for a day anyway, my favorite bird. Not one person on the trail with me, no joggers, no dogs walking with their owners. Just the kinglets and two pileateds and I. The swelling of my feet makes boots impossible, and the sneakers I must therefore wear convey the cold and the edge of every root and stone into my foot. But, gasping and ouching and leaning on the cane, one moves forward. 

Advent

 

November 28, 2021

First Sunday of Advent.

Israel closed its borders Saturday, in response to new Covid cases. That means that either we would have been turned back at Ben Gurion, or we would have been put in quarantine. Perhaps we would have had trouble getting back into the USA. In any case, the Holy Spirit was brooding over our journey, and ended it before a series of potential disasters.   

 

November 26, 2021

At about this hour I would have been packing up the Prius for the journey to the airport in Charlotte. Extremely high winds here; if there too, the flight might have been cancelled anyway. I’m both in mourning and not. I’m glad to be sitting here with coffee rather than beginning a 20 hour travel ordeal. But. . . Jerusalem. . . .

Peaceful Thanksgiving. I made a roast, and out of it the most delicious gravy I’ve ever tasted. Watched TV until the wee hours without guilt, knowing that today– which would have been spent rushing anxiously from one place to another–could be full of achievement.

2:30: Given my need to be early, I’d be at the airport now, looking around for something to do until it was time to board. 

The items I ordered for the trip– slacks and a foldable cane– did not arrive. 

 

November 24, 2021

The Arbery murderers found guilty. Sigh of relief for the soul of the country.

Tall Masai-resembling Jeremi cleaned my gutters and installed leaf guards. 

Dan Jones sends news reports of the terror attacks in Jerusalem that ended our journey. Eliyahu Kay, a South African immigrant, was one who was murdered.

 

November 23, 2021

Disoriented after the blunt change of plans. But a clench has relaxed in my stomach, which was the dread of this voyage, both subconscious and inexplicable. 

Returned my shekels to Wells Fargo. Lost $50 on that transaction. 

Tolkien’s Beorn-resembling Ryan arrived from Leaf Guard, to convince me to replace my gutters and put those little roofs on them so they don’t fill up with pine needles. I had decided to do it before he arrived, so when he pulled out a thick notebook chocked with transparencies explaining the various excellencies of the product, I literally begged him to skip the sales pitch and get to the price. This he could not do. He said he’d “hit only the highlights,” but you could tell it was agony for him to edit out even a fragment of his long and, in this case, unnecessary speech. I was frantic with impatience. It reminded me more than a little of the process of acquiring a new Dean at the cathedral. Some want to get to the task. Some want to wallow and languish in the preliminaries. People who feel pushed never consider that they have been an impediment. So, I heard the whole spiel, and can lecture on the difference among the roughly 50 ways of installing covered gutters offered by Ryan’s competitors. Somewhat to my surprise, the actual workers are not so leisurely, and intend to arrive tomorrow. I got discounts because 1) I’m old and 2) I didn’t care if they did the work the day before Thanksgiving. 

Cancellation

 

November 22, 2021

Cold day. What winter will be. 

The most interesting item is that the State Department has raised the threat level in Israel to 4 after intensifying Hamas attacks on the Old City, and Bishop Jose has cancelled our trip. I’m still looking at the email with stupefaction. So much of my energy in recent weeks has been directed to this, remembering fondly my first journey there, getting the right COVID documentation, printing out directions to Charlotte Douglas, buying needful items, preparing myself psychologically. I admit that anxiety prompted me to wish, on several occasions, for exactly this outcome, though I expected COVID to be my savior rather than bombardment. The last emotion before the email was elation and excitement, so I am devastated. I may be relieved as the hours go by, though that time is not yet reached. The projects I thought would end temporarily Thursday night stretch again into the future.

 

November 21, 2021

Christ the King

Smiling at myself for FB messaging V, who was the handsomest man at Hiram College when I was a freshman.

Last night was dark. I prayed the most desperate prayer I ever prayed, even more desperate than praying to die. 

 

November 20, 2021

Scraped half a ton of pine needles out of the pond. 

Maud came to me and solicited affection, which she got in double measure. 

The DC holds back the Parish Profile for reasons of their own, after the Vestry was told Monday night it would appear the next day and we had only 2 or 3 days to appraise it before the December 1 deadline. The Committee has had twenty months to do–Lord forgive me– what could have been done in a weekend by people wedded to the task. I would like once for the discussion of an issue not to be sidetracked by the discussion of how people feel about what people have said about the issue. It never gets back on track. Once derailed, it’s always thereafter about resentment and hurt feelings. 

Took time to look for publication opportunities. Most independent publishers looking for gay fiction specify lesbian fiction. Others long for Trans. Publishers peek into my files so they can specify desire for whatever is not there. 

Bully wrens sing from every branch. This is blessed. 

Footsteps on the roof. They always sound bigger than a squirrel. 

Kerstin

 

November 19, 2021

Sang for Kerstin’s memorial service at the Cathedral. She was one of ten or so full and solid artists I’ve known in my life, and a saintly person as well. Her daughter said she had great respect for me. Her beautiful banners and vestments thronged the sanctuary. 

Two young bears crossed Biltmore in front of me. They must have been on the hospital campus. They made it, but just barely. I wonder if we could build those wildlife bridges for them over the busier city streets, or teach them to use the crosswalks.

L says if J’s dad doesn’t die in the next two days they won’t be going to Israel. They’re the ones who ensnared me into the whole mess. 

Long-haired Dave from AT&T was here a 8:30 to, once again, address my Internet outage. When I got home from church it was fixed, or at least functional for the moment. Fear will go with me in this matter until I am out of the country. 

Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts. God have mercy.

As I drove to church I listened to a radio program about Asheville writers who work with children in the city schools. Children were reading the poems they had written as part of the class, poems introduced by the gushiest superlatives available to the language. The poems were, to a one, to a line, awful. My comment would have been, “How is this a poem?”  Dancing is my happy place. I like to dance, because I do that when I’m sad. My life has been hard, so I dance and I can feel better about everything. Perfectly legitimate conversation, but not on the same continent as poetry. I would have fired the “teachers” for failing to present even the most rudimentary principles of literary art. Yet the enthusiasm in the instructors’ voices was genuine, and no voice on the radio interrupted with “Now just wait a minute—”. I grew up convinced that art must be judged on its developed qualities, how good a poem is it, how skillful, how illuminating: does it increase the sum of human understanding? Is there a moment of surprise or recognition? None of that mattered to the people on the radio. They were judging poetry on the basis of the person who wrote it. Every child is genuine and needing to be encouraged, so every poem that comes out of them must be considered beautiful and brave. They didn’t say that considerations of craft or depth or metaphor were elitist, as some do; they didn’t mention them at all. I realized furthermore that I could not, at that moment, make an objective case for my side. I BELIEVE that only mindful and crafted art is worthy, but I couldn’t think of a way to prove that to a person who believes that the genuine expression of any soul is, perforce, art. It’s a faith controversy. One side says art must be good as a theorem is good, that it must prove its point; the other side says that art is automatically good if a person presents it as the testimony of his soul. I’m glad that at this exact moment I do not have to fight that fight. 

Received undelivered mail that I sent out on June 30. 

Peter Quince

 

November 18, 2021

First two hours of the morning spent connecting new printer, to expunge from my memory the HP that was, all in all, the worst purchase of my life. The new printer failed at the first three methods of connection, finally yielded to the fourth. What happened to plug it in, connect the cables, go. The man at the Staples where I took the murderous printer said “Recycling?”

“Yes. Worst piece of shit I ever bought.”

“HP” he said without looking.

Incredibly, my Internet is out again. Jimmie the cable guy solemnly swore I’d never have to deal with that again in my life. At a time when I MUST have internet to complete the work to get out of the country. Unbelievable. God probably is trying to teach me a lesson, but He never learns His, so we’re at a draw. 

Of course the printer I just installed depends on Internet connection. 

Lord, if you kick a dog and then punish him for snarling, it is your sin and not his.

Without TV, watching Rupert Everett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on video. Peter Quince is my double. .

 

November 17, 2021

The attic contains yet another huge cable worker, my Internet service having gone out yet again. You’d think self-preservation would incline these men to slenderness. 

Damaged my elbow while pulling the comforter over myself last night. 

Jimmy, the cable worker, couldn’t find the cause of my outage, which was somewhere outside and down the line. He just put in another cable. Hilariously, two account reps appeared at my house while he was here trying to sell me AT&T phone service, offering new services while the one I already had was down for the second time in a month. I said I’d call them back. Bobby and Rob. I gave them books. 

Old

 

November 16, 2021

Clouds outside the tiny study window. I edged the thermostat up an degree last night, unable to get warm. Finally only a hot toddy would do. 

The first word from Kelsay is that they want me to move all the lines of my poems to the left margin, I having given them half an inch indentation. As far as I know this means going to each line and backspacing them one by one, a tedium which made me seriously consider cancelling the publication. So far I’ve done three poems. It’s better in one way, though: some of my lines are so long they had to be split; the new margins allow me, in most cases to restore the original cadence. The poems, reading as I edit, are smart and dry, and unlike my other collections. Everything I’ve done has been unlike the one before, which is probably a fault, brand-wise, but out of my control.

Linda called to chat yesterday, and I confessed my unease about the Israel trip. The truth finally came out of my mouth: I don’t know how to be old. 

Listened to the recording of the 125th anniversary Evensong, ruined, I thought, by a microphone’s being right in an alto’s mouth and she pretty much all that can be heard. It was an event fully predictable. Not that she sounded bad. She sounded fine. But–

Tremendous progress on The Garden of the Bears. Fully joyful at least in that.

Evensong

 

November 15, 2021

Brilliant cold day. 

All Souls’ 125th Anniversary Evensong last night. I longed for a more festive festivity, but COVID and the Terrible Transition bit into that. But the shadowy room was full of echoes, and the spirits there were happy. 

The last few days inflammation and leg pain made me totter about like an old man. Today that is gone, or in abeyance. The search for cause and effect leaves me baffled. 

The power going on and off made working impossible earlier in the morning.

DFL

 

November 14, 2021

DFL lies behind me. It was a good experience without being a good show. Drew has a future as a composer and musician (and, now that I think of it, a patient and kind man) but I don’t think the show has a future. The guy playing Absalom pointed out that the music is sophisticated and the books and lyrics are not; it would be hard to imagine an amateur production wanting to deal with the music or a professional one wanting to deal with the book. It comes apart like a Parker House roll. In the lobby afterwards, though, at 11 PM, nobody got past the criticism, “it’s too long.” People didn’t believe me that they cut forty minutes between dress and show. I did, finally, get to do the scenes which had been left unrehearsed. Absalom startled on stage because he’d never heard my voice before. I did my own best chorus work at performance, hitting about 85% of the right notes. Everyone said the chorus sounded terrific. One takes their word for it. At one point I realized I was on the edge of falling asleep on stage. The fault was not mine. 

If consulted during the creation of the piece, I could have cured one problem in half an hour. Don’t do the full story; take a piece of it. David and Jonathan seemed to be the hot point: do that and leave the rest out. There’s material there for a dozen operas, especially if you’re going to spend your time speculating about matters ignored by the text and probably not of interest to the historical people mentioned in it. The Absalom story would be good, and how Solomon overcame his brothers to get the throne– any of that, but not all of that. 

 

November 13, 2021

Most of the revision of Bears so far has to do with taking out stuff I put in to explain matters which were best left unexplained.

 

November 12, 2021

Before I got home from rehearsal last night, the new (and very heavy) bird bath bowl had been bear-toppled and had smashed the (very expensive) planter beneath. Must re-evaluate lawn decor.

Pretty much all I could think of at dress rehearsal last night was “This is too long.” We hadn’t even vaguely gone through the show when contractual obligations with the orchestra forced us to stop. We've never once gone through the show, nor even rehearsed all the dialog scenes (which, in truth, could probably be omitted). I did get one of my two never-before-rehearsed scenes in. The other will just have to premiere opening night. 

Picked up The Garden of the Bears and began tinkering with it. The writing I did on it was so good. I wept in gratitude. 

 

November 11, 2021

Shopping at the Farmers’ Market today, I was asked twice if I were a Veteran. 

Went to Jesse Israel and bought a replacement for the bear-annihilated birdbath bowl. Could barely lift it. Imagined it sitting in the back of the car for all eternity. But, step by step, it got back into its pylon, and now supports its burden of peanuts. The jays rejoice.

If someone asked me if I were sad, I’d respond, with some surprise, “hell no.” But I do feel moments of the most piercing grief, which being both specific and unendurable, is a different thing. Grief is the emotion over which one has no control. At least I don’t. Also, it’s my reason to assert that not everything about us has to do with evolutionary necessity. 

 

November 10, 2021

Blazing day. Looked out the back window to see a heron flapping out of my garden northward. 

Started a Facebook page called The Last Poet. Couldn’t believe nobody had that name. Wiley Cash being interviewed on the radio inspired it. I’ve done almost nothing to sell my work because–absent a reading tour–I don’t know what to do. Maybe this is it.

Each time I hear DFL I like the music better. Though the libretto does contain the line “It’s all about we.” Last night’s rehearsal seemed ghastly, if better than the night before. People listening from the theater insist it sounds wonderful and that on stage you don’t get a good idea of the actual effect. I want to believe that. I do recall that from other appearances at the Wortham. I’m literally the only second bass, holding down the down part myself. Fuzzy grandpa next to me sings sometimes when the note is F–he must like F–and Jose beside him refuses to open his mouth because he can’t “hear the note.” I want to tell him “sit by me,” but that sounds jackass-y. I got most of it last night. The baritones to my right are strong, and that is helpful. The lines are repetitious, and that is helpful. Conductor/composer Drew is very patient and very musical, however many plates of spaghetti he should be given. We have one more rehearsal and I still have never rehearsed my actual lines– which are, incidentally, among the hundred or so that could be cut without harm. It’s good to be back in the Wortham. My name appears twice in the show tiles on the ceiling of the green room, once for The Normal Heart and once for Six Degrees of Separation. I managed not to point that out more than once. The kids seldom address themselves to me. I remember well that in the theater you don’t notice anyone who’s not in your age group. It’s all right. You step from one scene into another. Young David– Brendan– and I had a lively conversation on the night street walking to our cars. He had done terribly one rehearsal and fine the next, and was deservedly excited. 

Exhaustion. Achy inflammation of every joint. 

Drew says in an email: I know some of the chorus can't hear a lot on stage with the cacophony of sound that is happening, but I can hear the bass section loud and clear and you all sound fantastic! So, I am somewhat at rest. 

When I entered the front door this afternoon, Sweetboi, airborne, screamed at exactly the right second to fill the room with wild, reverberating sound. I thought for a moment he was inside. 

David and Jonathan

 

November 9, 2021

Blazing morning. Gin in cut glass. 

Rehearsal last night reminded me why I got out of the business (as minimally as I was in it) of producing theater. Heard in almost its entirety now, DFL sounds way more Broadway than I thought at first. This is good. But the rehearsal was a disaster the likes of which, had I any responsibility for it, would have kept me sleepless, and I am never sleepless. As far as I could tell, the orchestra was fine. Though David, Jonathan, and the Witch of Endor sounded quite good, none of the soloists was confident. The chorus was a disaster. My excuse is that, though I listened through the midi files and got a general flavor, I’d rehearsed about 1/5 of the music in the one rehearsal since I was invited aboard, and was literally sight-reading the rest. The print is small, most of the tempi are very fast, and I kept blowing steam on my glasses over the top of my mask. Plus, all of the baritones were absent and I was the only functioning bass. Fuzzy grandpa never makes a peep that I can hear, and the big Hispanic (whose speaking voice is glorious as Solomon) moved next to me so he could follow me. I wasn’t bad at pulling pitches from the air, and he usually (though not always) joined me a measure or so into a phrase. A consequence of this is that I blew my voice out trying to bellow. Drew scolded Young David right at the beginning for not knowing his music. He should have saved up for a more general diatribe, for though as a soloist Young David stood naked in disgrace, the rest of us foundered repeatedly. Nor did we actually get any help from the conductor/composer, who might have given us an entrance now and then. I realized eventually he would look hopefully in your direction when it came time to come in. The long baton beat the air like a threshing machine. 

The libretto is fixated on an issue which, so far as I can tell, never comes up in the bible. Jonathan ties himself in knots–in at least three arias that come to mind-- wondering if his and David’s love is unnatural or needing to be hidden. Samuel doesn’t mention this, so far as I can tell. Love between warriors probably wasn’t noticed in a warrior society, or if noticed, commended. 

In an email, the director informs me I have a speaking role, along with instructions as to how to extricate myself from the chorus to get downstage.  

Wolf'sbane

 

November 8, 2021

Purple wolf’s bane seeds arrived from Russia. Some say plant in spring; some say plant in winter, but all agree they should spend some time in the fridge. 

Though scheduled for tomorrow, the giant Mexicans arrived today to replace my pool motor. Early? Good fortune difficult to fit into one’s vision of the world. 

Got an appointment for the Covid test that Israel insists must be given just so many hours before stepping onto the plane. That was the one thing weighing most heavily on my mind, and having it–for the moment–settled was a relief. Now the NEXT thing has its chance to weigh most heavily. . . .

Revised The Christmas Count. It’s actually pretty damn good. My first big production, Break-a-leg Productions staged it at Theater Row in June, 1999. I was so proud, so clueless as how to use that start to move forward. 

Listened to the midi files for DFL. It is more coherent and better structured than one rehearsal led me to believe. It concentrates on the triangle of Michal, David, and Jonathan, though “concentrate” is an imperfect word to describe a presentation so diffuse. The music is derivative–  Sant-Saens orientalism peppered with dissonances– but the composer is still in college. I think an audience may come away satisfied. I don’t want to say it’s easy to sing, but the bass part, anyway, follows a few basic lines with minor variations. I am grateful. 

 

November 7, 2021

First frost that I noted. The late-blooming sulphur cosmos had at least a few weeks of glory.

Friday evening and Saturday devoured by Vestry meetings to rehash and organize our thoughts concerning the Parish Profile. I couldn’t detect in the others the banked fury I felt at such a staggering expenditure of time. My basic perception (and I know this to be true from my own notes in preparation for the ordeal) is that we spent ten hours arriving at a place known and sufficiently discussed before the meeting began. Our conclusions and determinations were essentially the same ten days ago, though worded differently and, by dint of wider participation, perhaps worse now. Was this to “get everyone on board”? Was this to “show the work” as they used to say in high school math classes?  Something about the process seemed to comfort people. I have my suspicions about “process.” In nature, process is necessary and majestic. In human institutions it’s nearly always a scam.  E, our facilitator, said once and implied several times that we would never do this right, never get a decent Dean, if we didn’t proceed exactly as she wanted with exactly the steps she laid before us. I assumed from the first that she’d found a commodity to sell, sold it convincingly, and our parish spent a good deal of money buying it. We bought it to avoid controversy– Oh WE didn’t do it. . . it was the PROCESS of DISCERNMENT, as though such a thing could not be itself perverse.  But it was an ordeal and, in the end, not necessary, and hurtful because it prolonged a struggle which went on much too long as it was. I don’t imagine E thinks of it as a scam. She knows she has to keep tight hold on the reins to keep out any critique of her sacred process. I was Cassandra, unheeded, feeling every grind of the slow wheel as it made its way crab-wise across the desert 

Having finally an in-person meeting was a different story, informative and invigorating. It’s better to be able to see a person. I think the terrible quarrel that led to three of them demanding my resignation and one of them attempting to resign because they didn’t receive it would not have happened had we been face-to-face. It turns out that my great and implacable enemy D is, though a bit of an adolescent, companionable and funny and possessed of a mind that did not glaze over with exhaustion near the end of things, as mine did. I liked him. That outcome would not have been foreseeable had we not met face-to-face. 

After church, this day must be spent listening to practice files for David: the Faces of Love. We perform in six days and I’ve had one rehearsal, covering maybe 1/5 of the monumental score. Were it Bach or Schubert, maybe I could sight-read. Not this. 

Sang Lauridson this AM. Made two mistakes I”ve never made in 10 years’ acquaintance with the piece. 

Planted poppies I’d forgotten I’d ordered, Sweetboi screamed at me as I worked. 

 

November 4, 2021

Finished the revision of The Frankenstein Rubrics by the gray light of dawn. I sobbed when I finished. I suppose that’s a good sign. I can say that few pieces have been more thoroughly transformed by the revision process. 

All yesterday the poems of Marvell ran through my head. 

The crash in the dark last night was a bear finishing off the pottery bird feeder. Didn’t even bother to pick it up today. Maybe he’ll come and cart it away. It would be the polite thing to do. 

Read in an article about Stephen Crane that he was the sort of artist who caused controversy without intending to, without noticing he was doing so, and, when confronted with the brouhaha he caused, stood genuinely astonished. This is also a perfect description of me. 

Today is the birthday of J-- my first buddy who didn’t live exactly next door–a date which I remember for the last sixty years. When I learned about election day, I assumed it and J’s birthday had something to do with each other. We were inseparable until Little League came along. I remember standing at the edge of the woods saying, “I think you like baseball better than me.” He answered, “Yes, I do.” I never again put anyone to the test. Some lessons are learned quite early. 

Maud’s eccentricity deepens. She now hides in the bathtub, drinks out of the toilet. When I tried to cuddle her this morning, she ran and hid behind the bathtub. One eats the same dish forever.

 November 2, 2021

Third day without Internet. It’s surprisingly debilitating, I suppose in part because it’s accidental rather than purposeful. I intended no such austerity at this point. No TV to rest before after a jangled day; no radio, no Alexa to tell me the time or the news, no way to research anything as I write, no access to pornography, no way to submit a manuscript or keep in touch with such society as one has on line. Had to relearn the use of my video player, and to wonder again at my choice of videos.  AT&T promises to come today.  

My first (their third or so) rehearsal of DFL last night at All Souls. I see why they invited me, for through the evening I heard not a peep out of the other second bass, though beside me sat a strong baritone who helped when we had the same notes. I’m as good a reader as the others, so that was an anxiety relieved. One Brunhilda-ish soprano tops the ensemble, piercing even from the far side of the room. The composer/conductor is stick-thin and possesses the energy (and concentration) of a squirrel. My question to the universe is why do conductors ALWAYS think of a million things to say AFTER the pitches have been given?  How is the piece? I heard just what I heard last night. It’s very long– the score 215 pages–and the bit of the libretto I managed to see was flat-footed, not the biblical text, but a paraphrase many shades paler, likely depending on the music to raise the level of interest. The music is interesting to sing. My guess is that it will be trying to an audience, who will endure it for the sake of facing the “new” head on, rather than any hope of actual enjoyment. I may be wrong. What we sang last night was– the composer called it “crunchy”; the audience will call it “ugly”– dissonance piled on dissonance toward no end that I fathom at this point. The composer/conductor spent fifteen minutes parsing out a chord that needed to be parsed out because there was no logic to it, no aesthetic, just a big blatty sound needing to be explained. Luckily for singers, it is quite repetitious. You could lose forty pages (and you probably want to lose forty pages) by taking out variations and recapitulations. But, this is one night. It may all click into place. I am, though, tired of composers who allow themselves to imagine difficulty somehow takes the place of vision. 

Another thing that must be said is that I enjoyed the rehearsal, enjoyed meeting new people, enjoyed doing something– performing a new piece–I haven’t done in a while. I felt healthier walking out in the dark toward my car. Made myself a hot toddy, watched Bing Crosby flicks, and went to bed. The Lincoln’s Birthday blackface in Holiday Inn sends racial signals that no one in the 21st century can read. 

2 PM: Big handsome Paul Bunyan-resembling guy rooting around in the attic, trying to splice the optical cable the squirrels have apparently gnawed through. Jake the AT&T guy grew up in Cruso, the site of the terrible floods, but his dad’s land lay high enough above the river to survive.

 

October 31, 2021

Halloween. 

Choir Camp weekend. When I got to the turn off from 40, a blazing rainbow stood over Canton, and remained a good twenty minutes, pure and dazzling. Of course I made a wrong turn, which got me into Cruso, where I was able to see the devastation wrought by recent floods. The beds of the Pigeon River in all its branches was scoured white, the great boulders strewn about. Houses and sheds lay stacked by the roadside, now but piles of splinters. Among those splinters, a great number of TRUMP signs. This should be some kind of lesson, but I doubt that it is. With a brimming bowl of blasphemies I got back on track, made it to choir camp. I hate Lake Logan without being able to say why. Maybe the sunken town cries out to me. I note the curious lack of wildlife around there– the lake should teem with fowl but does not. Something’s amiss. Nice chat in the next cabin over after Saturday rehearsal. In the middle of Sunday rehearsal my cup ran over and I left before mass, returning here to find that my WiFi is out and even an hour on the phone with the helpful Indian lady did not get me back on track. Technician comes on Tuesday, so she says. A dead bear lay beside the roadside near Canton. I allowed myself to think that it was either a bear or a gorilla. A hill slopes up from the dining hall at Lake Logan to the practice area, and when I had to walk that hill going at the pace of others (and not my ambling self) I was breathless and unwell. This bodes badly for Israel, where we will be doing much walking and I can’t expect everyone to keep my pace. Don’t know what to do. I am trying not to think of this as, all in all, a wretched weekend. Feel shaky now, as though I’d run a long way. 

 

October 30, 2021

Awakened with the first actual bellyache I recall from my adult life. Considered that no one would believe I was actually ill, but just found a way to get out of choir camp. I blame bean dip. Vivid dreams, fleeing away from consciousness now like blown leaves. Thinking Claire Claremont should be in my play. 

 

October 29, 2021

Sang for Robin Boylan’s funeral. The church and the hall were packed with hundreds of respect-payers. His daughter gave a supreme remembrance. Everyone looks so elegant in black. 

Sound of creatures in the attic beyond the office walls. I imagine it to be bears, but I suppose only squirrels could actually get in. Tumult in the chimney as well. Really bad weather makes them seek shelter of this kind. So far screaming and pounding have sufficed. 

October 28, 2021

Spent the morning stuffing envelopes for the church pledge campaign. I can be a machine.

Never EVER give anyone the benefit of the doubt or assume a “professional” is on the ball. Weeks ago the pool guys removed my motor, promising to replace it, and today when I finally called to inquire, the owner said, “I was just now contemplating the motor, wondering whose it was and what I was supposed to do with it.” 

Walgreen’s does not have, and may not get for a long time, the antibiotic I need– I think I’m not overstating the case–to keep on living. It’s an interesting world.

Can’t get an appointment to fix my breaker until December. You’re not supposed to rage against things that can’t be helped, but I wonder what else there is to rage against. 

Ones with Difficult Names

 

October 27, 2021

Sent the formatted The Ones with Difficult Names to Kelsay. For the moment, nothing to do but wait. 

The turkeys strutted into my garden late in the morning, and were still there at 4. They may be there now.

Feeling odd and vulnerable, as though I neglected some important duty, but can’t remember what it was. 

Anxiety about the Holy Land alternates with excitement. My anxiety has to do with the flights, with delays and problems with my vaccine documentation, etc: things I am, at this moment, simply making up. 

One truth arising from my professional experience? Anyone who says, “Trust the Process” is up to something. 

Cain

 

October 26, 2021

Put on a shiny yellow shirt– like a sports uniform top-- that I’ve had for decades and never worn. It’s smooth and comforting against the skin. Trying to figure out why I never wore it. I imagine long neglected garments sighing with relief when they’re finally pulled out of the drawer. 

News report of an Ingles employee fleeing from and being shot at by a perp at Ingle’s on Merrimon. I in fact heard the shots– 4: 2, space, then 2 more–and wondered what was happening. Life in the city. 

Took my newly delivered phone to the Spectrum office at the Mall, where my data was transferred by a charming young man named Cain, who just graduated from Pisgah High (we commiserated on the loss of his senior year of football) and, having landed the job with the phone people, bought a house near his parents in Haywood County. I tell people I don’t miss the university, and it’s true, except for the parade of young people past my desk, their various beauties and strengths and webs of dreams. When I got back to the car I prayed mightily for the continued well being of curly-headed and cologne effusing Cain. 

 

October 25, 2021

Perfect storm of apparatus failure: the microwave caused a breaker in the kitchen to flip, and it cannot be flipped back; printer refuses to print, or does so only after negotiating a maze of error messages; new phone refuses to charge. Went to the Mall and began the process of getting a new phone (much less exasperating this time than the last; it all depends on who’s manning the desk) got, after 3 tries, the battery changed on my watch; began moving appliances away from the exploded circuit to ones that still work. Sat in the empty Food Court and had beef teriyaki while I waited for my watch battery to be changed. 

But before this, when the light was barely the light, I went to back garden and dug up peonies that had been overshadowed by other things and moved them to open space in the front. Planted new roots around them, and daffodils between the roots. Hard work first thing. 

Worried whether I’ll have the stamina for the Jerusalem trip. I tire fast, and though I recover, my days are over early. 

 

October 24, 2021

Pat Verhulst is dead.

Maud comes to me when I sit at the downstairs desk and makes me hold her while she purrs and purrs. It is the most necessary thing that happens in my day. 

Gospel reading was of Bartemeas the blind beggar. Will asserted that he was the perfect disciple because he cried for help, “Son of David! Have mercy on me!” If that is the case, I too am a perfect disciple.  

Online fundraising gala for Red Hen. People talking about their books should be more fascinating to me than it is. I love hearing the STORY of their books, but that’s almost never what they choose to talk about. Maud appeared repeatedly in the ZOOM screen and aroused comment. 

Production Night

 

October 23, 2021

From The Asheville School:

Leiner, Kathy Meyers <Leinerk@ashevilleschool.org>

Fri, Oct 22, 3:56 PM (16 hours ago)

Hello David,

I hope you are well. We look forward to seeing you tonight and having a seat reserved. We are happy to accommodate any guests too.

Thank you for your work. Our students and faculty have responded with such enthusiasm to your play. Tonight might be a light audience since many students and faculty came on Wednesday and Thursday due to sporting obligations. But, our cast and crew are thrilled that you are coming to the performance.

I wish I could bottle up the responses for you to hear. Please know the impact on our community has been so rewarding to witness. I am grateful John found your play and brought it to our stage.

I have gone down quite the research rabbit hole and found so much inspiration from your glimpse into the lives of the women of Washington Place. My research led me to create a lobby display that shares some background on the event and honors those lost in the fire.

We hope you will join us for cake and conversation with the cast after if you have time.

See you soon!, Kathy Leiner, Chair of Fine Arts, Dance Program Director, Graham Theater Manager

Asheville School

The production was quite good–polished, one might say, in ways not necessarily expected from a secondary school. The actress playing Yetta could walk unblushing onto a college stage. The actress playing Gussie could, too. She chose over-the-top–which turned out to be workable. Essie and Lucia had beautiful singing voices. The sets and SFX were quite professional– though set-pride caused scene changes to be longer than they needed to be. I kept thinking “school,” where the techies and set designers need to have triumphs as well. A beautiful set of the skyline of New York from the roof was pretty much unnecessary, as the whole seen could have been played abstractly on one of the ample wings. No matter, it was gorgeous on its own, and one heard gasps from the audience. Maybe no one but me minded the wait, the bumping and scraping behind closed curtains. The actress playing Rosario was an international student (Japan, I think) and for the most part could not be understood. She was also clearly terrified. Everyone wore a mic, which meant from time to time mics would be rubbing on costumes or would go out when the connection flagged for a second. Projection and elocution must have fallen from the syllabus– I observing that projection and elocution are pretty much what a playwrights thinks are most necessary. Just say the words, it will be all right. The overall experience was solid, gratifying, and inspiring. It appeared the kids thought so too. 

I arrived early, of course, and sat in the parking area watching sunset on Mount Pisgah from a direction unfamiliar to me, one in which it appeared flat and smooth, like a stage set of tremendous size and remoteness. 

When the air warmed enough I was outside, gardening. Front garden trimmed of its spent, giant cosmos and Mexican sunflowers, the raised bed moved, and about 50 square feet opened up to cultivation. I’m running out of things to plant. Terribly bitten by ants I didn’t know I’d disturbed. 

 

October 22, 2021

Unexpected frenzy of housecleaning, brought on by finding mildew on some wallets I’d stored in a drawer. Unexpected satisfaction. Days like days in a movie of the Perfect Life, blazing and yet clement. I’d not filled the feeders since spring, so the birds are slow in coming back. The downy woodpecker will not just fly onto the dish, but must climb up the pedestal and into the dish, as though it were a tree.  I realize I’ve been a vegetarian for about a month, not on purpose, but because when I think of what I want to eat it has been vegetables. More corn-on-the-cob than in the last decade. 

Between Sleep and Sleep

 

October 21, 2021

Praying mantis longer than my hand on the dining room window. 

Beautiful moon lo these many nights, my back garden a bowl of profound blue just before daybreak. 

The kids at Asheville School sent me a card with their names and little messages. I’ll go to see the show tomorrow tonight. The kid playing Avi acknowledged my foreshadowing-with-a-hammer. If you’re not around high school kids, you forget they’re different from us. Rawer, with thinner skin needing less of a touch to send out sensations. Now that I have no students and my friends aren’t interested, I face the remainder of my time going to these things alone. 

Meeting with Katie and my director, whose name may return to me before I finish writing. They both saw the play’s weaknesses (though they didn’t put it that way) and made sound suggestions. Primarily, it gives me time to rewrite the damn thing. “Writing” in any sense is a jubilant word for me today, as I’d gone through a time of not being interested in writing and not being able to think of anything to write. Sitting down to play with the beach novel brought me out of that, as I figured it would. When I’m not writing the days drag on; when I am, there never seem to be enough hours between sleep and sleep. 

 

October 18, 2021

Blazing perfect autumn day. Fed my (now eight) flock of turkeys from the bag of corn I bought for them. 

Reread The Frankenstein Rubrics in preparation for our meeting tomorrow. It may be the worst play I’ve ever written. It’s like someone else’s first work, full of quips and ironies and the scintillant absurdities which stand in the mind of the young for depth. Clever, witty, directionless. But will I cancel the production? No, of course not. Indifference has so often greeted what I thought were masterpieces, maybe the irony will endure and what I consider a bit of an embarrassment will triumph. 

 

October 17, 2021

Attended three services at All Souls today, to give my Stewardship Testimonial. 

    This is the Sunday when we announce the Joyful Season of Pledging and Stewardship, and I am its Herald Angel. Our Stewardship Theme this year is WHY I GIVE, and In succeeding weeks you will hear from this lecturn and read in the Parish Epistle the testimonies of your peers sharing why they give and why we earnestly urge you to do so as well.  In order to share my Why I Give story, I must begin with confession. You may have thought the desire to be a superhero ends with adolescence. My confession is that it does not. My unshared and only partially coherent desire to be Superman or Wonderwoman or Thor righting the wrongs of the world has been compromised partially by my lack of any powers whatever. By when I nevertheless  imagine myself one of these figures, I realize I wouldn’t do much good because I seem never to be where there are wrongs to be righted. I’m never the first at the burning building or at the bus hanging over the edge of the bridge. I’m never there when the purse is being snatched. To adapt the metaphor slightly,  I want to one of the saints of God, but I am bewildered as to how to do so. My life has turned out so that–and I give thanks for this–I am almost never at the point of greatest need. I cannot by myself heal the sick or uplift the downtrodden or comfort the fearful–not very much, anyway– so I must rely on somebody who can, somebody who is there when the storm hits or the famine lays waste or the homeless freeze under the bridge. This is where our beloved Cathedral comes in. I trust the corporate wisdom and compassion of this parish to allow me to do good even when I can’t find the occasion myself. All Souls knows where the need is, better than I ever could, and puts my resources there.  I read over the list of grants the Outreach Committee intends to make this year, and I realize I knew exactly one of the recipients. This is exactly right. My money will reach need that I never could find on my own. The Cathedral does good, searches for good to do, parries the Adversary way beyond my personal vision and capabilities. So, I give to support this extraordinary building and the our excellent clergy and staff and the beautiful music Kyle provides week after week, but also to do the good I couldn’t find on my own. I write my check to stand for my Christian concern when I cannot be there myself.  To a child putting a slice of bread into her mouth, or a mother with a home after months of living on the street, I am, by the simple act of making a pledge, a saint of God, a superhero.

At 7:45, John’s homily concerned the moment when the sons of Zebedee try to make Jesus promise to seat them at his right and left hand in Glory. He pointed out that some vaingloriousness (such as that of James and John at that moment) is pretty obvious. Other types are not: the lust for honor, for instance. Bullseye I do not lust after riches or power, but I realized at that moment that I do lust after honor, and that a huge proportion of my daily energy is involved in fulfilling that almost unfulfillable desire: admire my work, mention my work, read my book, comment on how well I sounded at rehearsal, give me that prize, remember how smart I am, what a great writer I am. . . .if I calculate how much of the sorrows of a day arise from frustration at not receiving these honors, on some days the tally would reach nearly 100%. I sat there dumfounded with recognition, realizing simultaneously that I have no idea how to pull back from that obsession. How is it different from fighting for a place for my work in the world, which I have thought of as a sacred duty? I suppose one can do one’s best work and then calmly let the world decide its fate, but I rebel against that as a job half done. I rebel deeply, perhaps irrevocably. Some power other than my own will have to lead me toward this particular light. 

Almost unendurable pain in my legs caused me to stumble about this morning like a centenarian. Aspirin took it away in a matter of moments. That is miraculous to me, and makes me feel foolish that I forget and leave the house incapacitated.

Intended to go to Marilyn Keiser’s organ recital at 4.  Woke up from my afternoon nap at 4:20.

 

October 16, 2021

Sitting at my computer when the rain came suddenly, fiercely, the temperature chilling noticeably in a matter of seconds. House shaking in the wind. 

 

October 15, 2021

Woke to find the back yard littered with somebody else’s garbage, which a bear had dragged from the apartments’ dumpster through the lilac tunnel to devour in safety in my garden. Retch-inducing clean-up. Since I was in the garden already, entered the biggest gardening day of the fall, transplanting iris and canna and lily-of-the-Nile and opening a huge space for the ironweed and joe-pye I hope to sow in the spring. Great yellow ropes of roots endure from the black walnuts which have been gone for seven years. Fine feeling on my skin, the sun hot but never too hot. I felt like a healthy animal. 

Mountain Music

 

October 14, 2021

Early to the Toyota dealership to get a once-over that the car evidently didn’t need, but at which time it was brought to my attention that my hubcaps had been stolen. $36.95 apiece used– but still petty, in my estimation. The creepy part is someone stealing onto my property in the dead of night and having free access to everything. Talked with the cute ginger salesman who said they barely saw new cars any more, and the ones that do arrive are gobbled up instantly. Supply line deficiencies everywhere. 

Since I was close already, drove my hubcapless car to the Parkway and walked the Hard Times south from Bad Fork. At the dusty plaza before the tunnel, a guy had set up a workshop and was repairing his bike. Farther down the road, another guy had pulled over to the side and was playing music very loudly from how white pick-up. The effect of that was surprisingly sweet, though, lilting Bluegrass tunes in the golding wood. 

Very few at AGMC rehearsal. I was–in effect– the lone bass. My secret is that I like that. I’ve about had my fill, though, of singing through a mask. 

 

October 13, 2021

No longer needing to rise at 5 for class, I forget that the hours of morning before daybreak are my favorite time. Rose today in the dark and took the Riverwalk. The river gleamed from the lights on the other side of it. Some botanical perfume that I couldn’t place suffused the atmosphere. A man slept on a bench with his bike tied by rope to his foot. As I turned to go back to the car, the birds began their dawn song. Light gleamed in the Phil Mechanic where my last studio was. It made me think again what a strange interlude that was, like a bad marriage, hopeful, dedicated, full of dreams, in extent of time and expenditure of energy indeed like a marriage. I do not know what possessed me. I wanted to be a painter. I did find the painter inside, but he had nothing to do with the world in which I actually live. So, again, hail & farewell to all that.

My flock of turkeys is down to seven. I sat on the back porch as they marched into the garden. They are very distinct personalities. One picks meticulously over a space another raced over on her way somewhere else. One flops down in the sun and takes a dirt bath in the ground I opened up, picking at only the bugs and seeds she can reach from where she lies. Some fly over the gate, some squeeze through the bars. One leaps to get berries and seeds just out of reach; the others let them be. Two fly into the low branches of a dogwood; the others do not.

Hiawatha

 October 12, 2021

Columbus Day, which has become Indigenous Peoples Day. I was fascinated with Indians as a kid, especially by the Erie and Mingo and Natchez, credited by boyhood reading with sophisticated cultures long before European interference. Repeated readings of Hiawatha instilled a certain attitude which, if problematic, was respectful and creative. Could scarcely believe when I moved to Syracuse that our own sad Onondaga Lake had been Hiawatha’s home. 

Second day of grunt gardening. Continued excavating, transplanted peonies that were not happy where they were, planted allium, broomed the summer’s spider webs off the sides of the house.

 

October 11, 2021

Fell out of bed last night. Lying on the floor I thought “What an odd thing to do!” Thee times in my life I remember falling out of bed.

Dream that T and L visited me, and I was showing them my far-flung house (not this one at all), worrying that they’d have to leave before they saw everything.  A mountain stood far in the distance, flat and shapely, like the Devil’s Tower, but far larger. That was Ireland. 

People speak to me at church as they didn’t before, maybe because of my making the announcements at the beginning of service. I don’t know anybody behind their masks. 

Working hard to get The Ones with Difficult Names ready for publication. The instructions from the publisher are at once quite precise and distressingly vague. 

Morning spent in heroic gardening, re-digging the central back garden to replant and restore. I have a pile of iris and canna bulbs for replanting. Decided to dig out the big tree wisteria, which has prospered without much blooming, and become little more than a gigantic weed. The roots are long, insidious, and a little sickening, like flabby red limbs. Tugged out two long bamboo runners that led from the bamboo stand right into the garden, eight feet or more each pulled with some satisfaction out of the ground, like thread through cake. Disposal will be interesting this winter, given a couple of stands of nine foot tall cosmos that cannot be uprooted but must be dug (I tried), and two patches of Mexican sunflowers the heft of small trees. Tony, from Mexico, did not recognize the Mexican sunflowers. Unexpectedly large Mexicans came for my pond pump, so maybe that chore will at last be done. 

Bears

 

October 9, 2021

Days of remarkable rain. I actually welcome them, as they allow me to work indoors without a sense of regret. 

Writing yesterday I heard a bang downstairs. I knew it was likely bears, but it didn’t sound like window glass or a shattering door, so I wasn’t too alarmed. Went down to find five bears in my yard– cavorting is the proper word. One big cub had another backed into the driveside lilac wrestling for dear life. Ruth Bader Ginsbear found the peanuts I’d put out for the birds, and the old eggs I’d put in the garden for the crows. Two adolescents had joined mama and her two– it was like a mother taking the neighborhood kids to the park one afternoon. As one cub entered the front garden, a rabbit who had been hiding there rocketed out the other side. They moved at some speed. You think of the pace of bears being leisurely. It isn’t in the city. In her effort to get the peanuts, mama bear knocked a big planter off the porch (it’s unbroken) and someone overturned a birdbath onto several ceramic flower pots, smashing them. If your stuff is going to get broken, let it be by bears.

Went to the Asheville School yesterday afternoon to talk with the cast of Washington Place. The Italian and Jewish girls are mostly black and Asian, and Avi the New York Jew is black. I realized as I watched a bit of rehearsal that it didn’t make the difference I thought it might. Arrived in time to see a bit of the rehearsal of the fire scene. One of the actresses assured me that nobody on campus knows anything about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and that the end will be a shock and a surprise. I’d forgotten what a large and imposing institution the Asheville School is– bigger than some colleges, certainly bigger than Hiram. Perhaps I’d never been there in daylight. The kids look happy and eager and welling with privilege. 

D writes me a thank-you note wherein he assures me that the wedding was consummated during the honeymoon I contributed to. 

JU apparently landed at Akron U. 

Brownsville

 

October 7, 2021

Some spirit settled over me and I began Googling people and places I half remembered from my father’s home town, Brownsville. Found obituaries for a couple of the Despots, who lived on the farm across the street, including the mother and a kid (one year older than me) I used to hang out with, whom I lied to about my baseball prowess (which didn’t exits) because I figured he’d have no way of checking. We stayed there one Thanksgiving when grandma’s house was too full. Mrs Depot (their grandma) made me the best ham sandwich that ever was in the world out of their own slaughtered hogs (which I once watched them do). I envied the Despot boys because they could wander in the woods without ever leaving their own property. Tried to find grandma’s house by finding a lone house across the street from a farm, but things must have changed since then. Googled downtown Brownsville, which is a ghost town now, but was vibrant when I first knew it, and vibrant in my father’s memory. Looked for the McCrory’s and the Castle and the iron bridge, etc, which I remembered. Haven’t been there in sixty year. 

Root Cellar

 

October 5, 2021

Realize when I go out at evening and the front door is still locked that I have not left the house all day. 

Binge-watched a Christo-Gothic Netflix production, Midnight Mass to 3 AM. Disturbing on so many levels, but also congenial, as I recognized the tenor of my own imagination so often in that of the writer’s. . .  even the tendency to long exploratory monologs. 

Spring birds back again, I suppose to reap the harvest of the seeds they watched me plant. 

Memory: the root cellar my father had installed at the back of the garage on Goodview Avenue, the dank smell of it. Turns out it was never a very good place to store vegetables, which succumbed quickly to mildew. My father must have remembered such a thing with wonder from his own past. My father was an artist who never thought to use the word to describe himself. 

Dear Professor

 

October 4, 2021

Dear Professor-- 

     I hope this finds you well. It has been about eight years since I've been in your classroom. You were an influential professor during my years at UNCA. I was really moved when you paid for my education eight years ago so I could graduate--this is something I will never forget--I am immensely grateful for this.  

Due to funding issues I was unable to finish my licensure to teach elementary school at UNCA, but because of you I was able to obtain a degree in Poetry and a Bachelor of Arts. This has given me so much. As a teacher you always inspired me to see the beauty in life and to dedicate myself to hard work. I will always remember the classes I took with you at UNCA. Your enthusiasm for education and students has remained with me even after I graduated with my Bachelor in Arts. I enjoyed and respected your teaching style and all the lessons I learned in your class. Your happiness to teach is one of the characteristics that has stayed with me all these years. Even though I was unable to finish my licensure at UNCA I have never given up on my goal and dream to teach Elementary Education. 

 I am serious about my passion for teaching and want to become a teacher. I'm emailing you to see if you'd be willing to work with me to write a letter of recommendation on my behalf for The University of New York at Albany and The City College of New York-as these are my top choices. I am at the beginning of my enrollment process, and understand your time is valuable. Thank you so much for all the work that you do. It is my dream to become a teacher so I can help and inspire students like you did for me. 

Sincerely,

LK 

In a dream, DJ and I ran the marathon at the Olympics, though the dream marathon was largely tumbling and gymnastics and not that much running. DJ knocked himself out near the end, and I was given the honor of telling him he’d come in 2nd. I had dropped out of the race long before. 

 

October 3, 2021

Rain. Sat listening to some animal have the run of my attic outside the walls of my office. It sounded big, bear-like, but maybe more realistically a raccoon. I suppose it would not be impossible to have a bear hibernating in there without my knowing, though an inspection of the outside reveals no hole to get in by. St Francis Blessing of the Animals day at All Souls. The congregation has not restored itself after Covid. The choir lingers at about half strength.

Received a royalty statement from Red Hen in July; still have received no check. It’s all right. 

Washington Place

 

October 2, 2021

  Today’s email from Sublime Press:

To whom it may concern,

Asheville School's drama department is planning on producing David Hopes' play Washington Place on Oct. 21st-Oct.23rd. 

I'm writing to inquire about the royalty fees that we need to pay. 

The auditorium seats 350. We do NOT charge admission for our productions. 

Thanking you in advance for your immediate attention to this matter, 

JC, Director of Music and Drama, Asheville School

And again: 

JC, at Asheville School, was apologetic for the lateness of the request and immediately agreed to the full fee of $375 for three performances. He offered to pay instantly by credit card; but, I’m going to see if he can’t cut you a check, instead, so that you receive every penny.  My initial, thoughtless response to the idea of high school kids acting such a play was that they could never hold a candle to our original cast. Then I thought, “My god, it’s perfect! These high schoolers would come pretty damn close to the ages of the characters.”

SS

 

October 1, 2021

The mental discomfort I’d been feeling resolved in five minutes this morning when I realized my Muse had not abandoned me, but wanted me to do a rework of Jason of the Apes instead of what I was doing. The clouds parted, and I was happy.  Tap. . . tap. . .  tap. . . 

 

September 30, 2021

Beautiful evening. I sat staring into the almost absurd tranquility of my back garden, blue jays weaving among the green of the foliage and the orange of the sunflowers. 

 

September 29, 2021

Found the body of a dead mole in the garden.

Walked in the fog before dawn along the river. Met SL upon his bike. I was happy to see him. He’s all that remains in the Phil Mechanic. He’s having woman trouble again. He said the woman he lived through Covid with is ghosting him now. At least my life has deflected that precise trauma. His daughter Ismay is now his son Adrian.

Saw a cormorant flying up the French Broad.

A single goose flying up the river honked and made the valley walls reverberate so he sounded like a whole flock. 

Managed to get all the chores I needed to do done by 10 AM. 

Der Rosenkavalier

 

September 28, 2021

Serious weeding today in the cool & perfect light, mostly woodbine and poke. Pulled out the largest lady’s thumb I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a whole stand, but it was one plant trying to gobble up the garden. It felt good to be gardening again. Weeding is potentially a kind of meditation.

Napping, I had WDAV playing, and at one point I woke hearing piano music. I said to myself, “That can’t be one player. It must be something for two pianos.”  Then the announcer said it was a Mozart concerto for two pianos. Slept again and woke amid the most intricate and lavish music, which my subconscious mind read as a kind of architecture, thick and strong and glorious. Fully awake, I realized it was dances from Der Rosenkavalier. 

Made chili. 

Every few hours I go into the guest room and cuddle with Maud for a while. She’s either ill or going through one of her phases. She eats and visits the litterbox and rumbles like an engine when I embrace her, so she can’t be too sick. Maud’s frantic horror of leaving her own house renders the decision to go to the Vet dire. I have my own horror of it. Except for neutering, we’ve never visited the Vet where it turned out to be casual, but always the beginning of an ordeal of pain, disruption, futile treatment, and the deaths that leave me howling with my face to the wall. 

 

September 27, 2021

Wrote in the morning, then drove to the mountains and hiked a chunk of the Hard Times. Beautiful dapple of lights, tiny blue and golden autumn wild flowers. 

Long disturbing dreams that endured through several shiftings of position in bed: I got an “apartment” in a basement with a dirt floor, with a cot to sleep on, heated by a wood stove. It was in a kind of homeless camp, though I had my own squalid space, and the owner of it all invited me to tour his shining modernistic mansion on the other side of a creek. I had failed horribly at something—maybe at everything–and the task of the dream was figuring out how to live under altered circumstances. 

Autumn

 

September 25, 2021

Finished the revision of the Covid play. It’s name will change to The Dress. Drove to Black Mountain, but there wasn’t a single parking space in the whole town. Drove to the Flood Gallery to pick up my Larson monoprint, but the gallery was closed, in the middle of its Saturday opening hours. Pulled up black walnut seedlings, carried the smell with me the afternoon. The ironweed seeds arrived. Turned the furnace on. The season of cold is upon me. For five months I will wake freezing and frightened in the middle of the night, wait for the comforting sound of the furnace clicking on. I’ll have to drink hot tea or Bushmill’s to make it to bed time without shuddering.  Need of aspirin pulls me away from the keyboard downstairs. Brilliant day. Fatboi the groundhog is too enormous to fit under the shed. 

Covid

 

September 24, 2021

Walked to DJ’s for movie night with him and Russell. At one point a beautiful, lush fragrance filled the air. I realized it came from piles of dirt dug up in J & L’s front yard to uncover their broken storm sewer. The earth was a perfume. 

Got my Covid booster this morning at Ingle’s. it took me five minutes. The evening news shows long lines and hours of waiting. 

 

September 22, 2021

Begin the day with a call to Citicards concerning four thousand dollars of bogus charges. The California thief bought herself Uber rides, and airline tickets-- Delta and American (and insurance)-- apparently in her own name, so maybe we have her. She also bought an extraordinary quantity of flowers from FTD. This is happening with some frequency. 

I remember father saying that one of the pleasure of old age was thinking of comforting memories. Maybe I’m not old enough, but my memories are at this point a number of things, but not comforting. When I think of things that happened when I was a kid, it’s often with the apprehension that, without my knowing it at the time, I was being selfish or awkward, and didn’t know because people were kind enough not to call me to account. 

Speaking truth

 

September 21, 2021

OJB committed suicide. When he came over to 62 to confide in me about A, I thought he was the most beautiful young man in the world, but so over-impassioned that I prayed for some of the tempestuous emotion to wear off that he might live an abundant life. Apparently it did not. 

First Vestry meeting after THE Vestry meeting. My colleagues mounted a better defense of me than I would have myself, so again I was able to remain silent. D resigned, blaming me. Then he was persuaded to reconsider. That drama is not yet over. Speaking Truth to Stupidity is not really that rewarding. 

 

September 20, 2021

The day gathers its breath, preparing for storm. 

Beautiful men at the spa, long-eyed and gracile, like Tolkien’s elves, the sight of them my reward for rising early and working out. 

One of the artists I purchased from Saturday promised to send me ironweed seeds from her meadow. I’m already watching the mailbox. 

Stock market plunging, and new (urgent) requests for support from nearly everywhere. 

Fruit Bat and Pomegranates

 

September 18, 2021

Went to the Arts & Crafts street festival in Weaverville. Bought some art: a small oil of a fruit bat hanging upside down over pomegranates, a box painted with a turtle, turtles mating inside, a big wooden bowl with its edge inlaid with chips of semi-precious stones. Met with Cyn selling her cityscapes. We compared notes on how we didn’t miss UNCA at all, and how we both look great. 

DJ says of our Thursday adventure that it was the worst vestry meeting ever. 

The Remember January 6 Rally seems to have been a non-event. Sometimes entropy is holy. 

 

September 17, 2021

Drove to campus to get my Retiree Parking hang tag. Proximity encouraged me to walk in the Botanical Garden, which have not done, much past the gate, for many years. Rejoiced in the labeled wild plants, increasing my own internal herbarium. Saw students, saddened that few–or any– among them would know who I am now. Students in these years, so politically uncertain, so rife with Covid, are very unlucky. I hope some good thing compensates them in time to come. 

Went to Connie’s opening at Pink Dog. It’s a cohesive and culminating show, summarizing in simple, nostalgic gestures the compassionate perspective she has been exhibiting through a long, productive artistic life. She wore a mask covered in rhinestones. 

 

September 16, 2021

Here was a day. I needed to have a phone issues addressed (it claimed that its charging slot had impurities) but the Mall doesn’t open until 11, so I walked along the Riverwalk, where I was, apparently, caught by TV cameras and revealed ambling along on the 6 o’clock news. I didn’t see it myself. Once at the Verizon store I was told three times by feckless young men holding the phone as if it were a turd, “We really can’t help you here.” I knew they could, and finally, after they began actually looking things up, I came away with a new phone. The young man who set the new phone up for me used, while he was working for Fed Ex, to deliver to my house. He remembered the address and I remembered him. I complimented him in getting out of the weather. My step app lost all the steps I’d gained hiking in the morning. 

Early in the evening came the special vestry meeting occasioned by the now clearly immortal indignation of those who have decided to be indignant. The first three comments of “general discussion” were calls for me to resign from vestry. Fifty years of professional life didn’t quite prepare me for that. Their rage at my letter concerning the Parish Profile was based pretty much on poor reading skills, but since one of the accusations against me was arrogance, I thought it best not to point that out then and there. The railed against “tone” while themselves unable to recognize it. I imagine they didn’t do well in high school language arts. Clearly, they had not read the text for understanding, but for fuel for their inexhaustible fires of self-righteousness. As all unfolded I noted my own lack of indignation– my calm, if astonished, curiosity, like one watching wild animals rend one another in the wilderness--which served me well, for not only did I not rebut, but I didn’t say anything the whole time, which must have left some kind of impression. Like the lamb who before his slaughterers is dumb. What must be noted is the vehemence and eloquence of my supporters, who were not only in the majority but, unlike my accusers, wise and probing. Attacked by people I don’t respect and defended by those I do, I had, all in all, a good evening. If a curious one. I do have the ability to enrage people and I seldom know exactly why. I almost never mean to. I do understand that “You’re really too stupid for us to have this discussion” will not calm the waters. I want to find in Christ precedents for my own behavior, but I think I misjudged the size of the issue. They are no brood of vipers. They are lawyers and grandmothers and day-to-day people who have found a place for themselves in their own imagination, and resent (as I would and do) being nudged from that security. They might provoke Jonathan Swift, but they cannot survive him. My duty from now on is not to stop speaking the truth but to use my inside voice, even if that leads to the necessity of repetition, which I hate so much. The stupid are not the evil, nor are the frightened necessarily the stupid. John quoted someone saying, “Every prophet is a pain in the ass, but not all pains in the ass are prophets.” I must hold this before me before I speak.