May 26, 2021

Drinks and unexpected dinner at Rye Knot, close enough to walk to, and the place of the moment. Much All Souls gossip. I seem to have been the last affront on Ms NAC’s ledger, that tipped the balance. J wrote her a scathing letter that, if I had received, would cause me never to show my face again. But, then, I am sane.

Maud the Cat was sick last week, off her feed, vomiting. In the past, a cat’s first illness has typically been her last. I was terrified. Being terrified, I realized the emotion I feel least often of all is fear. All the others a couple times a day: actual fear, almost never. But I was afraid then. I found myself praying like a frightened child. When I pray about my own life, I aim to be reasonable, setting out my argument, trying to present my perspective as either just or harmless. Not that time: please please please please, as I say, like a child, with no language but a cry. In retrospect, the prayers seemed clear, pure, uncalculating, as they are not necessarily at other times. When Maud was restored, the paean of thanksgiving was likewise pure and simple, gratitude that had, for the moment, no further thing to ask. 

Rehearsal

 

May 25, 2021

Sweetboi screeching somewhere in the high distance, little birds answering him from my garden. 

First rehearsal of Memory is a Thief at Magnetic. My co-star is a charming kid named Jesse who works at Trader Joe’s. He seemed excited to be part of it. He was fresh air. 

The creek beside the theater was a green torrent with sudden rain. 

 

May 24, 2021

One perfect day follows another. 

Found unused packets of Mexican sunflower seeds in the back of the car, so got out the spade, dug up a weeded-over portion of the back garden, and planted them. 

Essayed the Safechurch program that anyone in leadership at All Souls is meant to take. I withered when told it was going to take six hours. It took me less than five, and, against expectations, was a genuine learning experience. I would NOT until now have recognized dangerous behaviors. Some of it rubs me the wrong way– making a workplace comfortable for some people seems to mean making it stifling and unfair to others–but also helps me to recognize the source of complaints made against me in the ever-receding past. I would never on my own have recognized a joke or a wisecrack as harassment. I do not debate that it is, only that I would never myself have thought of it that way. Confusion over loyalties is laid aside by the injunction “your duty is to think of the victim.” I’m grateful for the way that cuts through complicated allegiances. There was also a quite realistic section on how to avoid false accusations, admitting, basically, that you can’t. Document, document, document. 

Pentecost

 

May 23, 2021

The Lord’s fiery Pentecost. Went to the 9 AM service outside, where it was sweet & lovely with the twittering of chimney swifts overhead. 

Our painful Holy Conversation was the talk of the congregation. All other sessions went off without a hitch. I have been warned against Ms C by seven or eight different people. Do toxic people know they are toxic, or do they believe themselves to be standing up for some principle? 

Y’s reading group did a Zoom critique of Ben and Angela, which was mostly highly complimentary. J, who hated Antigonus so much, hated this much less, but still managed to maintain the tone of a lecture. I’d love to read one of his plays. The moderator lady observed that the play would take excellent actors to perform. She thought this was a detriment, that community theaters would steer clear of it because the two actors had to be good, and wouldn’t I rather it be in some way more egalitarian? Every community theater in America does Virginia Woolf and that’s meant to be an actors’ tour de force. My answer was “I write things that I could perform myself.” In retrospect, that must have sounded a little immodest. 

 

May 22, 2021

Woke with sudden, urgent brief illness. As I was taking care of things, the wind chime gonged furiously, though as far as I could tell there was no breeze. Still partially asleep, I imagined a bear was carrying it away. The green chair in the bathroom had moved, and I was certain I had not moved it. Went back to bed and slept quite late.

Fine, relaxing days. The water gardens turned septic. One could be restored, the other had to be drained. Especially early in the mornings, my garden is a casket of perfumes, heavy, piercing, voluptuous, peony and rose. If I woke the morning after death in a little light filled house at the edge of turned over fields of black dirt, and an angel stood there with a spade and a hoe in his hands for me, I would be assured I had ended up in paradise. 

Laurel

 

May 21, 2021

Long hot summer day. I left for the forest in the cool of the morning. I went south from the Bad Fork tunnel, looking for the path that led to the most beautiful field I ever knew. Took the path I thought it was, and though it led to lovely laurel-y woods, it did not lead to my high meadow looking bold on Pisgah. Maybe I didn’t go far enough, though I think I did. Maybe the world has so utterly changed in the twenty years or more since I walked there. Maybe there is another road off the Hard Times that I stopped just short of. But saw rose acacia and false indigo and laurel in all colors from snow to peach. Got me 11000+ steps, which is either a record or a near-record. Was alone until the clock neared noon.

Watering the garden twice daily against the days of bracing dry.

“Holy Conversations” began last night in Zabriskie Hall. It was not actually very holy. The woman from Holy Cow descended, claws out, into defense of her position. I think she was trying to make the point that she was not on any side but that of the facts, but she was angry, and ended up scolding us for not falling in line behind her vision. We were not in fact falling in line behind her vision, which is statistical and useful, but not exhaustive, and not true. N went on–as she has in the past–praising herself for her visionary excellence in coming up with Koinonia. When asked for what skill she could bring to her parish, she said, “I guess I am a prophet.” Some good angel prevented me from saying, “You know Koinonia is over, don’t you?” It never made much sense, though I endured explanations of it at least three times. She doesn’t realize that T gave her the green light for this because it was the only way to get her out of his office, with retirement already a glimmer in his eye.

The last thing we did was make a list of those things we wanted in a new Dean. I almost wept, realizing that all this year of questionnaires and discernments and grave counsel comes down to that one exercise, the only one of actual direct and perceivable efficacy. One might lament the waste of time, money, patience. We simply could have met and made that list. But we wouldn’t be Episcopalians if we really trusted the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is my conviction that in matters such as this agonized and intricate planning and spontaneous acclaim will land exactly upon the same choice. 

Now that I’m on the Vestry, I stay to put away the chairs and close the windows. 

Vance Monument

 

May 18, 2021

Yesterday it did not rain, and I got in Ajax’s share of gardening, opening and preparing new beds, planting giant sunflowers and a Japanese golden pine, digging out failed roses, watering everything. Today I started back in quite early and put a large viburnum into the ground. I was watched while doing so by a pileated woodpecker in the black gums. I think all the annuals are in. I may add this and that as I redeem the erstwhile flowerbeds from their blankets of crabgrass and honeysuckle. 

Denise perched on the electric pylon by the pool, and was worried away by a bluejay. This seemed wrong. 

Exhausting Vestry meeting last night. I bless the Powers that these meetings are still virtual and I can sigh and languish and belch without being detected. Maybe the only good to come out of Covid. I am, as I have noted many times, not a detail person. 

A laptop I keep in the living room bookshelf leapt into life last night (though the lid was closed and had been for weeks) and I woke to the sound of, I thought, an arrest being made on You Tube. Two days, two electronic hauntings. 

They have begun to dismantle the Vance Monument downtown. It’s a shame and a sadness. Why couldn’t it have been re-purposed, given another name? I suppose if I wanted my say I should have volunteered for the committee which decided its fate. Part of me wonders how this is different from the destruction of the rock Buddhas by the Taliban, or Palmyra by Isis, actions universally vilified (so far as I know). One difference is that no one would call the Vance Monument an artistic masterwork, I suppose. But I will miss it. I will think, but not say, that this hour’s emotions should not always have the last say. I suppose that means that my Vance play is dead now forever. 

 

May 17, 2021

Uncertain morning. “Partly cloudy,” the radio says. Will I garden or not? Uncovered my western elephant ears from honeysuckle that covered it in a mere week of rain. 

About a week ago the pump motor began throwing the breaker switch. I started it up, waited for it to flip again. I dried out the electrical box, took my hands and mucked out the considerable muck that had gathered down in there deep. I’d flip the switch a couple times a day, just to get a little air into the pond, but the breaker would flip within half an hour. When I went to bed last night the motor was dead and the pond still. When I looked out this morning, the pump was pumping water over my little waterfall, the pond merrily rippling. Has there ever been a case of a motor flipping its breaker switch back, and turning itself on? 

Watch

 

May 16, 2021

On March 13, 2020, when I entered my house after leaving Dublin, I took my watch off my wrist and laid it on the dresser. It stayed there until today, when I picked it up and wore it to church. I had no particular reason to know what time it was from that time to this. Church, some small gardening, some aiming of plays at theaters, then vodka and blood orange juice.

Scarcely a day has gone by when I have not given in my head the speech I did not give before the Provost, as she then was, concerning the grotesque miscarriage of justice and ruination of a hopeful institution that she and the other members of her dark matriarchy represented. I did not speak because, at that moment, I prized peace more than a laborious victory, and I knew I was going to retire within the year. That was a mistake. I should have gotten it out of my system. The confab of biddies should have at least known they were visible. Maybe I would have had I known a kind Tartarus would ensue, where I had to repeat a quarrel in my head that I was too weak or exhausted or prudent or– something– to essay at the proper moment. The news of Miss Jill’s exit exorcized this. I felt it come out of me, with a sigh of “well, that’s over.” The institution I labored for for nearly forty years is cleansed, and though there may be other pollutants, they are not mine to cleanse. A task was set before me, which I shrugged off. I accept the blame. I accepted the penalty. I think that is over. I do not wish my opponents failure in their new positions, for they will fail. That is the penalty for their side of it.

Theater

 

May 15, 2021

So, Jill, the Chief of Calamities, she whose arrogance and incompetence helped kick UNCA firmly and, probably, irrevocably, into the morass of hypocrisy and mediocrity, is leaving. I wish it were for a Gulag, but it is to another job, where she may do either less or greater evil. I’ve noted before my perplexity that bad performance as an administrator seldom has any visible consequence. They escape from the flames they themselves have lit into some new haven. Those who look for justice in that world are bound for disappointment.

Back to the theater, at the Magnetic tonight, where people sat widely scattered and masked but, nevertheless, in the theater space. The play was well-designed, well-directed, superbly acted, skillfully written, and absolutely inert. I left at intermission. When I got into my driveway the crescent moon hung over my old house

 

May 14, 2021

I notice in my bouts of revision that the worst writing occurs near the beginning. Is one trying too hard to make a fist impression? Had one been clearing one’s throat before the actual song began?

Revision

 May 13, 2021

Began a revision of The Nurseryman’s Wedding, which is all there, but could be carved closer to the bone. After that I had a day on the town, such as has not happened in more than a year. Had hot chocolate at Rhu’s. Ate salad and drank pale beer at Barley’s. Bought an image of Avolaketisvara on Wall Street. Walked far and uphill, and was not breathless or exhausted, this last being the major joy of it all 

 

May 12, 2021

Double Zoom meetings, overlapping, the first with the Community Advisory for Blue Ridge Public Radio, the second for Y’s unfolding and initial play contest. I felt my attention eroding after I’d gotten the point of each. The radio station wants to expand its number of listeners, adding young people and non-whites if at all possible. Most of the suggestions of how to do that were purely performative: things that sound enlightened when you put them on a list but really make no actual difference at all; create talking heads programs for ever slimmer minorities to join the talking heads which are at this moment not listened to. Left the meeting early to watch Jeopardy.

Water Gardens

 

May 11, 2021

Strange exhaustion in the morning, so that I wasn’t fit for work until after noon. But then I continued my program of revising and sending out plays, and after that set up two water gardens. What must be done every day, fine or torrent, is chopping out the new bamboo shoots, that would take over the world if I let them. J has Covid, and was taken to one hospital, then transferred to another. It is impossible to know when things like this are routine and when they are dire. 

 

May 10, 2021

Softest of soft mornings. What the Irish call “soft.” Blue jays call through the condensing and diluting mist.

 

May 9, 2021

Worked on Tyger. Greeted at church. (Is it improper to observe that the bishop is cute?) Planted cosmos and anemone. Watered. Took joy in watching two rabbits chase each other in sacred circles in the darkening garden. 

Rabbits

 

May 8, 2021

Lay down for a nap, and when I rose saw two rabbits hopping across the street to my garden. A little later I peeked out the back window and saw them chasing each other round and round the iris bed. Blessed.

Rose this morning, and when it was barely light I was at the Hard Times Trailhead, determined to see if there was anything new on the lake. Surrounded for a few minutes by a large and raucous throng of joggers, who, however, soon left me behind in something resembling quiet. Big Canadas thronged the edges of the lake, but nothing else that I could see. A number of anglers dropped their hooks in the water. I went to the far side of the lake, into the wetlands and beyond, where in a park-like grove of considerable beauty, I realized I’d gained an escort of phoebes. They followed me with their gentle body language, their brilliant black eyes. The forest is lush now, the floor filled in with vegetation, the roof filling in with leaves. I was captivated by a scent, sort of bergamot-meets-lily, which my app identified as Autumn olive. It was ravishing. When I got home my research suggested that Autumn olive is an invasive alien and I should not have been deriving pleasure from it. It certainly was abundant against the open path.

My not having received my seeds from Eden Brothers had become a kind of frenzy, so it was well when I returned from the mountain and discovered they’d arrived. Dug, hoed, planted. Feel a sense of relief and closure: spring can actually move forward now. Twelve packets planted, three packets left to plant, with half the weekend yet before me.

Tired on the trail and in the garden, but never out of breath. 

Fixed the motor for the pool with little fuss, but sat at the table eating lunch when I heard the breaker thrown again. A short somewhere. I congratulate myself even to know that.

A nearly perfect day.

Iris

 

May 7, 2021

Day, cool and bright. The iris are coming into full glory, along with the peonies. I paid less attention than I might to graduations and harmonizations of color in the garden. It’s gaudy, like a burning dye factory.

Most of the last week spent revising and sending out plays. I was happy. 

L’s adoration of Trump seems not to be political, but based on the notion that he is a new and budding Christian and he should be given the benefit of the doubt because he is Christian, and that all attacks on him are anti-Christian. Of all descriptions of Trump, “Christian” seems to me the most ludicrous, unless one means simply “not Jewish.” Her certainty comes from someone whose name she dare not name (evidently a member of his security team), but who is close to Trump, and vouches for the sincerity of his conversion. I have no more information than this, as I vowed at the outset NOT to discuss this one specific person. Ever.  Most of the convictions of the Right seem to be based on unverifiable witness. The FACT that the data does not exist in any accessible form seems to be an argument in its favor, secret knowledge that only the chosen initiate would know, or that the Enemies of God would see with their own eyes but not believe.

Australia

 

May 6, 2021

Pale light. Sweetboi calling over the apartments roof. Short & Sweet Sydney has chosen to produce Alfie and Greta. Might go to Australia if I could.  Discovered during errands that the truck too had been rifled, of course. Wonder if they found something I’m not accounting for. 

 May 5, 2021

Woke to discover a crapfest of a day had been topped off, at night, by the Prius being robbed, or at least rifled. Don’t think there was anything to steal. What there was– credit cards and binoculars– they left. They pulled open secret compartments I didn’t know I had. My writing journal lay open on the seat. Wonder if they took a look.  Sense of violation, but no real loss. But when L and I went to Avenue M for dinner, I locked my house for the first time in 14 months. Had to look for the keys.

 L’s visit turned out to be pleasurable, sweet, all the dark of it in my preconceptions. Certainly caught up on a lot of Ellet gossip. Hardly at all did we touch on the topics I thought would bring conflict. We’ve known each other since the 6th grade. 

Terrible Anniversary

 

May 4, 2021

The terrible anniversary. 

Rain. 

AH came over in the afternoon, and we sat on the porch with wine, and rain falling a few inches away, one of the first purely social activities of recent months. He mainly talked of his mother, sick and old and mean in assisted living in Pennsylvania. The morning was spent struggling with my computer, which declared itself “offline” and could nohow be brought back on line. It took a call to the HP help service and a patient Pakistani two hours to find out that some automatic upload from Windows had messed everything up. My fury was extraordinary. 

Much bad news from the internet, in the form of “no”s from publishers. 

Message from L that she wants to come here next, after Akron,  in her vast cycle of visitation of old high school friends. Our relationship is almost wholly a fabrication on her side, and our old age, in which she became a fire-breathing and lie-consuming Trumpist, did not improve anything. She sent out a message observing that I was the only one of her liberal high school friends who hadn’t called her names because of her politics, and the vehemence of them. I did not respond “that was an oversight.” I have no idea what we will talk about. I did get her a hotel room, resolving that, whatever else, she should not spend the night. I could have lied and said I wouldn’t be home, but some distant voice whispered, “see it through.” 

 

May 3, 2021

Heavy rain, gray, warm, organic. Javier and Justin bang around downstairs changing out the lights so that I might enter my dotage without worrying about changing bulbs in the ceiling all the time. I expect it to be an all-day ordeal, so if it’s less than that I’ll be pleased.

Mentioned briefly to T B that I’d been in a dance concert. His response: The thought of you dancing is pretty damn amusing, but I know you'd approach it sincerely and in good faith and that I'd like to see. I'd have to mock you a tad though. We came back into contact so he could tell me that he had gotten into none of the graduate schools to which he applied. I wonder if he ever makes the connection between his attitude and his almost invariable failure. 

Fed Sweetboi, but when I was done, there was Denise perched right over the truck. Threw her meat. Sweetboi screamed encouragement until she finally dived and picked up the offering. The workmen were in the next room, and I almost invited them to watch the interchange but, finally, didn’t. 

 

May 2, 2021

Another glorious spring day. 

Sweetboi was perched in the walnuts when I went to stand looking our the back hall window. He unfurled from the branch and dived right at the window, pulling up only as he reached the roofline. A great hawk of the air was playing with me. 

Second evening of our dance was perfection. I was happy. Ann was happy. The consensus was that our piece was “deeply moving.” As a creator myself, I take joy in not having marred, in helping to convey correctly, the creation of another.

Most of the boys in the dances were gay. One was not. The gay boys moved appreciably differently from the straight one. Trying to ponder why, if intentional or unconscious, under what philosophy. 

Beautiful Lyle now looks like a middle aged man. 

First church service in 14 months gathered together in the sanctuary. It was not fully right, but it was a step forward. 

May Day

 

May 1, 2021

Sweetboi very loud today. I’m thinking his chicks hatched and he is screeching fatherhood to the world. When I came into the kitchen this morning, he was waiting on his limb, staring fiercely into the window, patient as only the tumultuous can be. 

Planted a huge box of daylilies yesterday in the cool & bright. I think I thought I was ordering three of each, whereas I was ordering, apparently, twelve. 

So last evening was one of those rarities: I stepped on stage at Montford as a modern dancer. The dance was affecting, and people who saw it wept. I think pathos was what A was going for, and the fact that it had the effect she wanted made me think I did all right, or at least didn’t impede. She actually made the mistake– forgetting a whole passage and having to look over at me to see what I was doing. It’s not that one gloats, but that one is so relieved not to have marred another’s creation. Didn’t see the other dances, but heard and liked the music. Also, one observes that one’s memory is intact, though I note from this brief exposure that it’s not the same kind of memory that propels a scholar or writer. It is far more like painting, a memory almost semi-conscious. She said, “it’s wonderful to be paired with an actor instead of just a dancer.” I figured acting is what I could bring to it. Enjoyed this. A is a good enough choreographer to include only action that this imperfect body could actually do. 

A bit of scenery interfered with where Ann thought she wanted the choir to stand, and in an instant she stood center stage pointing and declaring, “That must go now!” The boys in the organization looked at one another, knowing that it was bolted to the floor and getting it on and off would be awkward and time-consuming. I found somewhere else for the choir to stand, but what was running through my mind was that I would never have said such a thing or used such a tone. She studied under Balanchine and Martha Graham. I had no such mentors. Or mentors of even remotely equal rank. Not knowing them, I had no impulse to become them.

The weather for May Day was the most perfect in the history of the world.

My step counter sends me a message saying I did not meet my steps goal last month. I want to answer, “I was learning a dance. I revised five plays and wrote another one whole. “It suggests that I might want to revise my goal, so I’m not disappointed all the time. 

Hunter the Barber’s wife read the copy of OBN I sent. Review: “She liked it. She blew through it.” I have at least one fan living in a trailer. 

 

April 28, 2021

All three of my nephews are simultaneously engaged. If I read correctly, Jonathan will be acquiring an autistic child, too. Beka read OBN and assumed it was an actual account of our family history.