In the Valley of the Moon

 

June 29, 2021

Infinitely modulated summer day. When I went to get the mail the front door was still locked, by which I realized I had not left the house the whole day. 

Spent some of last evening rejoicing in the families that have pulled through in my garden since the end of winter: a pair of red-shouldered hawks, still together; a pair of brown thrashers, still together; a pair of catbirds, still together; a pair of cardinals, still together; a pair of red breasted woodpeckers, still together; so many bluejays I don’t know who is mated with whom. Rabbits and baby rabbits graze at evening. An immensely fat woodchuck takes up residence under the took shed, hardly able to squeeze in. I’ve bought foul-smelling stuff to convince him to leave, but it hasn’t worked yet, and until it does I grudgingly appreciate him trying to climb my pear tree for a fruit the bears missed.

Working hard on In the Valley of the Moon, which is sliding along with the ease of imagination and vigor of expression I recognize in my best work. An imp in my skull asks, repeatedly, “Why bother, since excellence is not what is wanted and it will never reach stage?” Too many fellow imps whisper “Maybe.” 

Church

 

June 28, 2021

Back to church yesterday, able to stay for the whole service because quarantining is over. Masks go next week. I was out of practice and found it difficult to sit through it.

I think I am writing a masterpiece. I have learned how that is irrelevant, but it ought to be noted anyhow.

 

June 26, 2021

In the Valley of the Moon leaping from my fingertips. 

Found a clump of feathers attached to a bit of flesh. Sweetboi’s or Denise’s work, I should think. I believe the victim was an immature starling. The garden is in shock from the heat. If no rain in the forecast, radical watering. 

Maud can barely move from one nap spot to the next.

Blocks

 June 25, 2021

Unprecedented progress in the morning, both writing and the thing that is hardest for me, submitting. When that was done, I drove to Lowe’s to buy a load of cinder blocks to address the bear-attacking-my-basement problem. Their personnel being not in the giving vein, I ended up loading those blocks three times–once from the floor onto a kind of buckboard, one from the buckboard into the truck, then from the truck into a tiny castle around the assaulted window, the rest lined up against the fence for future work. I think my battlement will work because one of the virtues my bears do not seem to possess is diligence. Make it too taxing and they just move on to something else. First planting of orange cosmos sneaking into bloom. 

River writing

 

June 24, 2021

A huge turkey family feeding under my peach tree, muttering in their soft voices. 

Went to the river to write, and did write. A mother wheeled her baby to the table beside mine. He was so interested in the world, looking at everything, babbling responses to everything, smiling at me when I smiled. I videoed him because he was so beautiful, but deleted the video because something about the exchange seemed so profoundly personal. 

Revision of An Age of Silver completed.

Ruth Bader Ginsbear and two babies maraud. She again tried to claw her way into my basement. She wouldn’t fit through the gap, but her babies would. 

Summer rain

 

June 22, 2021

Deep rain in the night, on into silver morning. I was grateful. 

Found mail from 29 Lakeshore ripped up and thrown under my roses. Met Keith, whose mail it was. He hadn’t known it happened. His envelopes, having contained something other than books, represented actual loss. 

The summer days stretch out like eons, warm, unhurried, uncluttered, and I bless every minute of them. Did a power of writing today, though it was long ago in the morning, so I barely remember. May summer last and last. . . .

 

June 20, 2021

Film of rain, but not enough, so a chunk of my morning went to watering. 

Hung the encaustic painting I bought from the River District. I saw it while we were doing the play. It looked to me like Vishnu’s Sea of Milk. 

Mail was stolen from my mailbox yesterday. I don’t know what they got away with, but what they didn’t want was torn up and strewn under the ilex. I called the police and the sweet young voice on the other end asked me to fill out a form online, because, you know, they are SO understaffed they can’t possibly address such a thing directly. The sweet voices are meant to deflect you from noting their passive-aggressive need to punish us for suggesting defunding. Little fear. At the last City budget meeting, the misbehavior of the Asheville police force during last summer’s demonstrations was punished by a 2% reduction in funds, and that taken from animal control.

Beethoven’s Pastoral streaming from somewhere. Big item on the Internet today scolding–somebody, scholars, maybe-- for not asserting Beethoven was actually black. “Raging controversy,” it’s called, though there’s actually no controversy at all. I remember the trouble I got in asserting that Cleopatra, though technically African, was not black but Macedonian Greek, ten generations before her having obsessed about the purity of the line. I can champion any good cause up until the point it requires lying. Anyway, one forgets between hearings how perfect the Pastoral is. Oh, the last entry I read says Hayden was also black and that’s why Beethoven came to be his student. Real songbirds blending through the window with the music. 

 

June 19, 2021

The first Juneteenth holiday.

Planted a take-it-easy rose, transplanted the Dublin Bay out of the viney shade. I don’t have much hope for it.

Took boxes to the Goodwill truck. The attendant volunteered, “I was in Dubai before this,” and we talked a while about Dubai. He seemed to love it so much I wondered why he was here. Maybe he was just feeling a moment’s nostalgia.  

Heavy sky, aching with rain but refusing to rain. Perjaps when the night comes. Is the darkness heavier or lighter than the light?

Handel from You Tube, Ottone, Re de Germania. 

 

June 17, 2021

Bears completed the destruction of my little pear tree last night. Very disappointing. 

Upstairs writing, I heard agitation among the jays. I knew Sweetboi was the cause. I came downstairs, and he was waiting for me on the electric pole. 

Perfect summer

 

June 16, 2021

Perfect summer day. An unexpected bout of housecleaning led me to the antique stores, looking for a book case. Found nothing. Wandered into the Candle Station to look at art. Met an exuberant artist named O who literally plucked me from the hall to look at his paintings. He was personable, enthusiastic, and very ambitious. The piece he has priced $1,000,000 sat swathed in plastic, but he showed me pictures of it. He was readying himself for a visit this evening from a local gallery which may want to feature his work. The paintings are muddy abstracts with some figures showing through– a textile-referencing style apparently obligatory for the African-American artist-- and worth about 1/10 of what he’s priced them, but his personal attractiveness and enthusiasm may make up the difference. He admitted that the million dollar painting was to “set a mood.” I might have taken it had he given it to me. The piece he identified as “the first work I did when I came to Asheville” was by far the best, clean, rhythmic, Pollock-y. I might have bought it except that it was too big and heavy for me to hang. I shared with him that fact that the entire second floor, where 60 or more artists now have their workshops, was once occupied solely by me, when Urthona and Black Swan and various other activities were all going concerns, and I tried to keep everything in play. He said, “I heard of that person! I can’t believe I’m meeting you!”

 

June 15, 2021

Extreme, productive, joyful weeding in the cool of the morning. 

 

June 14, 2021

From an old journal:

Either God is a brute and a traitor or I don't know how to reach him.

Either God answers prayers capriciously or He hates me personally.

Either God is making me a monster or He is making me a saint.

All of these are still open questions. 

Movie night with Russell and DJ. Can’tstop myself from making wise-ass comments.

Yeats

 

June 13, 2021

Yeats at 156. 

Yellow sky after days of violent, intermittent rain.

Watched the tiniest baby cottontail in the world grazing my lawn this dawn. 

Surprisingly not elated about having the play festival behind me. I enjoyed it, may even look for another opportunity, though most of what’s available to me now are the dead fathers. Spoke with the playwright, M, after the show yesterday. He seemed elated, joyful, in any case, way beyond satisfied. Thus was achieved the thing I most hoped to achieve. It was the first piece he’d ever seen on stage beyond his home town of Bellingham. We’d all remarked on the intriguing spareness of the play. M said it was because the man the part was written for (a real derelict, evidently) couldn’t remember his lines, and so was given few of them, including a song. Everybody remembers songs.

Now that I can compare, I realize a dance is much easier to memorize than a play. 

The fiber optic transformation was unexpectedly laborious (for the poor installation man) but has turned out well for me. If I heard the details right, it will save me $870 a year. In ten years my jaunt to Israel is thus paid for. Moving forward in all things.

Opening Night

 

June 12, 2021

Rainy, close morning. Rabbits graze the clover in the twilight on both sides of night. 

Our opening performance was sensational. I had FUN, which I had not been having at rehearsals. I played. I gamboled. Explored. Got laughs from the unlikeliest lines of a gloomy play, the gloom of which, I think, was heightened by the moments of levity. . . or absurdity. I’d forgotten what fun acting is, how rewarding to the imagination. My last turn on stage had not been that much fun, so I’m glad to have my spirit renewed. Jesse was gleeful. The playwright was in the audience, and though we were not encouraged to clog the room up by lingering, I hope he was pleased. I trust he was pleased. Most of the impulse for this adventure was to acknowledge all those actors who spent time and effort realizing my words & vision. Trying to return the favor. 

People exclaim: “God! I love the theater!” Do I? I love plays. That’s close, but maybe not the same thing. 

J started in show business singing with his father’s traveling Gospel show. He lives with two brothers in West Asheville. His ambition for performance is huge, and the distinct qualities of his voice would make him–so far as I am able to judge– a viable musical professional. Folky and country. I promised to read his play-script-or-screenplay in process. It seems to be about a superhero with a bad heart. . . 

Canon A phones today. I’m going to Israel with the bishop, November 26-December 8.

 

June 11, 2021

Realized yesterday as I was driving somewhere that my aversion to upheaval may become a problem. Wednesday night disarray at the theater put me in distress, though not much. As I write now, I await the AT&T Internet guy, and I wish I had not signed up for this, whatever the advantages, because it means upheaval in this house. When will he come? Howe long will he stay? What hidden problems will there be? Will my Internet work as well as it did? What if I miss some of my favorite channels? What if there are service glitches? Maybe when it’s done I’ll be glad, but until then, not. This is not new. As I look back on things I understand how much of the energy of my life has gone into keeping even keel, putting limits on hours spent off task, into marking off vast measures of time in which I might function undisturbed. Isolation has only rarely displeased me. Maybe now I am less tolerant because my time is so much my own that any compromise seems an intrusion. 

 

June 10, 2021

As I crashed on the sofa after rehearsal last night, I glanced over in time to see the great form of a bear walking between the streetlight and the window. They are cute and winning by day, but by night they are gliding, dark, mysterious. I locked the doors and turned on all the lights. 

Maybe my bad rehearsal filled my morning dreams with passages of classes gone wrong, students, talking back, off-subject, not having read the material. I don’t remember having such dreams when I was actually teaching.

Turns out that the bear ate the tops off my jack-in-the-pulpit. To do so he had to be standing on the front porch stairs. I don’t think it will prevent them from setting seed. 

Dress Rehearsal

 

June 9, 2021

Made myself sick with anxiety over dress-rehearsal, which turned out to be just as bad as I’d imagined–not bad in itself, maybe (everyone did her job, and well), but insofar as it ignited all my loathing of chaos. Six little plays, six sets, six technical set-ups. K was superhuman in keeping all from running aground. I would have been screaming and setting fires after ten minutes. I went up on my very first line. J said, “That’s what rehearsal is for.” 

 

June 8, 2021

Sent out a few complimentary copies of the play, especially to Lara, who was its first director. 

Rehearsal under conditions– displacement from the stage, improvising space and props and other elements-- which rendered it all but pointless. Too much hauling of furniture damages concentration. Walked behind Jesse as we went to our cars afterwards, so he didn’t see me. He danced a little in his walk. He keeps saying how happy he is to be doing this, and his very stride showed the truth of it. I thought of that, how I was feeling tired and maybe semi-regretful at having taken this project on (but semi-not) while he danced with joy. His parents have bought a number of seats. 

Chaucer

 

June 7, 2021

Bear on the roof this morning. The only way he could get up there was to climb the black cherry tree, and that took him inches from the window of the bedroom where I slept. Wondrous stealth.

We rehearsed half an hour yesterday. Katie was satisfied and let us go into the afternoon heat. In the parking lot I encountered a former student, who had been in the Drama department. He recounted his adventures in trying to make a career in acting, arriving at places like Providence and Portland after the local theaters had already held auditions. He gratified me by remembering my lecture on Metaphysical poetry, in which I used the Police’s “King of Pain” as an example. The things people remember, the things people forget. He also remembered taking a course in Chaucer from me, which never happened. “Whenever I think of Chaucer, I think of you.” Well, good. He looked trim and healthy and muscular. When his dreams of theater went away, he began teaching pre-school. 

First copies of Washington Place in the mail.

For a few minutes in the afternoon, the gentlest rain imaginable, gray, translucent, solemn.

Changes

 

June 6, 2021

First order of the morning was deadheading of the roses. In this I was far behind. 

The bears marauded last night. They broke one of my pear trees for the sake of a few bitter unripe fruits. I trimmed away the broken part–unfortunately, the central trunk-- thinking it could still live. I’d left my leather gardening gloves on the porch. One of them carried a glove some distance in his mouth, thinking for a moment that it was not totally unlike meat.

The clouds of mosquito larvae in the water garden diminish to a few hidden amid the stems of the waterlily. The tiny fish have done their work. One of them was dead and had to be flicked from the surface of the pool. Perhaps it was gluttony.

Light fixtures began falling from my ceiling, so I called the electricians, who came to put them back in, warning me that if it happened again the remedy would not be so easy. Whose fault is that? That same afternoon two boys from AT&T came to the door wanting me to switch from my current cable service to theirs. . . fiber optic. . . direct. . . it had some advantage, anyway. The main advantage is that I would end up saving $840 a year from my current plan, which, they explained is expensive because, in this area, a monopoly. The last point in their favor is that they were handsome and merry, and I wanted their company as long as the exchange was being made. The down part is that I have to wait some morning for a truck to arrive, then learn a new way of working the TV. I worried about what features were being offered until I realized I don’t really care what’s on TV, so long as I can sit in a stupor before bed with a cocktail in my hand. I will also lose my land phone line. Though I could think of no reason other than nostalgia to keep it, it grieved me. The old order changeth. 

This is Sunday. Friday and Saturday together made the most intense space of gardening since I moved to this house. I’m digging out the back garden–something I didn’t attempt wholeheartedly even when I decided to have a garden there. Part of success is ruthlessness: out come unflourishing roses, planted without research; out come clumps of daylily which were here when I moved in. Planted $200 worth of plants from Reems Creek, including bushes like spirea and beauty berry that will take up space in the middle so the edges can be dedicated to smaller things. Dig dig dig. Plant Plant Plant. Then, most importantly now, water, water, water. I emit a stream of blasphemies each time the hose kinks, as though that were the worst thing a person could encounter in a day. Describing activities in the garden is corollary to the observation that all through that time of labor I was perfectly and uncharacteristically happy. Twice this week I have prayed, “Lord, thank you for my life,” a prayer which I have noted in the past as not been general in the last four decades. 

This is the first summer when the great mullein has not made a volunteer appearance in my garden. 

 

June 3, 2021

Overcast, praying for actual rain so I can stop dragging the hose all over. 

A few minutes’ stillness on the front porch reveals a reptile population explosion– blue tailed skinks, and brown skinks of considerable size. 

Sweetboi now prefers the electric outlet pylon in the yard for his perch. He stretches on tip toe to see if I’ve tossed his morsel. 

Sent an announcement to the English Department about Washington Place: not a murmur of response. I recall the closely knit nature of the faculty at Hiram and at Syracuse, how the faculty looked out for one another even after retirement, as would a family. Not a ghost of that here. So much was wrong. I can’t even fathom the root of it. 

Asheville Police Department, having lost 80+ cops in a year, makes up a list of crimes to which they will not longer respond. I think the same could be accomplished through other means, such as not sending eight officers to kick the shit out of a jaywalker, or to pile up on a grandma who crossed the yellow line for two seconds. The resistence American police show to reform indicates that the reform will need ultimately to be painful. 

 

June 1, 2021

Parents’ wedding anniversary. 1947, I think. 

I bought some pepper-infused seed columns (to discourage squirrels and bears) to hang outside the guest bedroom window, and no sooner were they up than a bear came to pull them down. I said through the window, “You’re not going to like that.” I don’t think the bear saw me through the window, and was startled. He turned tail and ran hard across the street. I felt bad. It was like shouting at a kid and seeing him panic and run. I thought he might be Buddy Bear returned, but Buddy was night black, and this bear had a distinct cinnamon sheen to his fur. 

Haunted the River District looking for art to purchase. Many studios were closed, but those that were open ranged from hideous to Motel Bedroom. 

Probed for the root of a mild depression, and realized that Magnetic will not be doing any more of my plays. They’ve settled into a type, and the type is sort of rollicking hillbilly, and I’m not likely to produce anything like that. It is understandable, if several levels down from what might have been. 

Washington Place

 

May 31, 2021

The last several days have included memorials to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. One thing pointed out is that the memory of it was deliberately buried, which is true for my experience. Never heard of it until I did, and was then, and still am, thunderstruck by the savagery and brutality. How can white people be forgiven for such an act? That was 100 years ago, and black people are still brutalized, murdered, ruined, if now one by one and by the police. Time must be very long to grind away such stains.

Joyful news that Washington Place is now a published book. I never mentioned it much, suspecting that it might not happen. What joy to be wrong! Anxious to hold a copy in my hands.

The first day there were no new bamboo shoots. 

 

May 30, 2021

Question from scanning theater notices: do I write family-friendly plays? 

DJ’s birthday at Rye Knot. Large crowd. For the first time in memory nobody took a picture. Maybe the Pandemic has made us sick of pictures of ourselves. Met ’s fiancé, who seems, at first glance, a female version of himself. 

I tell people that my signal characteristic is forbearance. They often don’t believe me. This is proof that the effort to forebear pays off. 

Racoons

 

May 28, 2021

Woke early and went into the kitchen, and saw on the lawn just lit with dawn two racoons. My heart stirred for them, they looked so happy, so innocent, so at home. I though they’d hurt their paws, but they were doing a little jumpy dance across the grass so they could see what might be stirred up. 

Some weeding. Hacking of the immortal bamboo. Looking at quite old plays, finding them often quite good, realizing that I retire or conceal whole manuscripts because someone said something slighting.

 

May 27, 2021

Rehearsal misunderstanding, so I tooled around the River Arts District, and narrowly escaped buying a few paintings. Memory reminds me that I started painting (I told myself) so I could have art without paying those shocking prices. Here, 30 years later, I am in the exact same place. 

J missed rehearsal because of the misunderstanding, but he sent in recordings of his songs, and he sounds great, old-timey and heart-felt.