Cappuccino

 

April 15, 2021

Planted mullein and tickseed.  Added to the stone cairn. Pulled out honeysuckle. 

Walked enough at Lowe’s and in Biltmore and the River Arts District to get all my steps in. Inclined for half a minute to look for a studio, didn’t. For the first time in 13 months sat at the terrace of a café and drank cappuccino. First cappuccino since Dublin. Drank coffee in a space I realized used to be the Asheville Arts Council. Where has that gone? Does it still exist? Is it still irrelevant to Asheville arts? 

Sweettboi perched on the kitchen limb with me standing right beneath him. He screamed for a long time. I think we were having a conversation. I posted the video on Facebook and somebody responded, “Boy, he has a story to tell you.”

SS sets the release of WP for May. FA sends me a list of questions from his book club for when we Zoom discuss FW on Sunday. Excellent and thoughtful questions, actually, and though they might not do so for others, they reflected to me one of the conditions of my life as an artist: absolute isolation. Everything I have written or published I have done so without an editor, without a circle of readers, without a single reader, without exterior agency of any kind, and this is not a brag but a lamentation. I’m sending smoke signals from the world’s weird rim. Editors accept and publish while scarcely making a comment. Can they actually have thought it was perfect? Material I send to people from time to time wondering what they think disappears invariably without comment. A couple of times former students or local colleagues and I have set up reading circles, for which I critique their work in detail and they say “I’ll get right back with my comments” and they never do. I have only my own critical faculties. Though I try to stand outside myself and read objectively, it doesn’t always work. Or ever work. How would I know? The one exception to this is when a play goes to production a certain degree of critical exchange must happen. I probably have terrible habits and nobody points them out to me. To go by actual comments made, maybe ten people in my circle of friends have ever read anything I’ve written. I’m sure it’s more, but a dome of reticence falls over everything. I’ll tell FA and his club, “That happened because I had not one to suggest it was problematic and I didn’t think of it myself.” 

The thrashers tear out deep beakfulls of suet. It’s a pleasure to watch them.