January 29, 2022

Fierce winter storm. Under the sound of the wind is the sound of squirrels scrambling and gnawing in the attic. They should be grateful just to have shelter. 

Robins continue to mob the surrounding trees. 

Received the proof book for The Ones with Difficult Names. My delight in seeing it is balanced by the full ton of errors– several of them new after the last edit. I realize my poems require unusual attention to sentence structure. The last time I proofed, I noted that the poems are smarter than I am, and I learn by reading them. They also cover a lot of time. In one of them I lament turning forty. The tragic throb of my “mature” voice blends into the analytical lyricism of my later voice without offering any guidance to the reader. One shrugs. 

 

January 28, 2022

Yard full of robins, then of snow. The snow slants from due north, so if there is any barrier at all-- a house, a line of trees-- the south ends of the lots whiten first. 

Before the sun set I’d finished the latest iteration of The Sun in Splendor. 

Cold

 

January 27, 2022

Awkwardly typing around Maud, who wants to be cuddled while I write. 

Rose up to hike. Parts of the Parkway are closed, but I did find a pullover far to the east and headed into the woods. I realized almost immediately that it was too cold, but I kept on for a little while. The issue includes the fact that my stiff knee precludes the putting on of socks, so I’m stomping around essentially barefoot in the snow. I found a ridge that caught the sunlight, but that didn’t go far, so I returned. At one point I stood staring off into the woods thinking my thoughts. I’m usually pretty alert, but during my revery a hiker came up behind me and scared me out of my wits. He apologized profusely, but in the state I was in the incident could not have been avoided. Went on to the crafts center and bought a sculpture that I take to be a bittern hiding in the rushes.

Dreams

 January 24, 2022

Amazing dreams of late, but last night’s needed to be noted. I came to a theater company asking them to do my play. They asked “What play?” and I began to improvise. I encouraged the assembly to play along, to answer me, to block themselves, to respond, and they did. It was magnificent. De Vega or Goethe. I think the theme was somewhat along the Faustus line, and in the dream my speeches were immense, glorious, symphonic. I wonder how they’d look written down in plain light. My former student GG took the antagonist lead, or rather the hero lead, as I think I was something dark (though glorious) and Mephisto-ish. Just before waking I began to analyze, and my voice said, “this is to show the people how to domesticate the darkness.” Well. 

Drove to the Biltmore Estate, wandered around, bought wine. The estate was nearly empty, and allowed me therefore a calm and light-struck visit. Spent time getting to the Deer Park, upon arrival learning it was not a deer park at all, but the name of a building. 

Allianz fulfills everybody’s prophesy and refuses to honor the insurance we bought for the Israel trip. It blames us for somehow not anticipating Israel’s closing of its airports on the day of our arrival. It’s discouraging that so many scams are allowed to function in the wide open. There goes $3600. 

Watched Once upon a Time in Hollywood, enjoying it for a number of reasons, but centrally because it allowed the reversal of a horrible day in American history– a veritable Hollywood ending. Margaret Qualley is a better actress than her mother. 

Karen Cragnolin is dead.

It occurs to me that EK was probably a suicide. It would explain the odd silence around the details of his passing. 

Maud has taken to climbing up to the top shelf in the upstairs study, the very highest place a little cat could get in this house. The floor is littered with the CD’s she had to displace to get there. 

 

January 23, 2022

Listening to Capella Romana chant as if they were in Hagia Sophia.

Annual meeting at All Souls. Everyone abundantly thanked. 

Paradise of birds out the west window. 

Mail from BRH, which I couldn’t open. 

Received R’s novel. To me, unreadable. A big, fat book wherein everyone has obviously ethnic names and whose exact quality of transexuality is analyzed repeatedly and in full. That, and notes on how each of them is feeling at the moment, how they are lacing their shoes or folding their napkins, is the book. I keep turning pages in amazement. All it takes to get into print are far-flung names and exhausting quirks, exuding the holy aura of diversity. A child’s playroom flung with toys is diverse. 

Burns

 January 21, 2022

Putting together a new collection of newly revised short fiction.

Listening to Burns songs-- one of the poets who, at least for a quatrain at a time, achieves perfection. 

 

January 20, 2022

Began the day with a flat tire. Drove to the sexy rednecks at Newbridge Tires to have it seen to. Owner to customer: “I got a daughter. She’s been wearing me out about getting a Jeep for her first ride. They’re all right, though. They’re like a billy goat in the snow.” My tire had picked up a vicious looking bolt. The tire guy explained to me that Toyotas are built so that you can’t always feel when a tire is flat. This was to excuse the fact that I had evidently been riding on it for a while.

Plumbing

 January 19, 2022

Michael -- the big plumber who may be cute but how can you tell with the mask on?-- has turned off the water and is now replacing the master toilet-- which was possessed, and I’m glad to see it go. As in all such things, I find it better not to watch. 

Third day in a row beginning with TV aerobics. Judging by sweat and out-of-breathness, I’m in better shape than the burly Australian instructor. 

Evening: The toilet is in, after Michael took six hours rather than the promised three. There were issues, and he had to call his supervisor to help. Eric, the supervisor, inherited the houseplants in a break-up and went online to find out how to care for them. He especially loves the toilet I bought because it is the Cimarron model and his boyfriend (the one, unfortunately, involved in the break-up) is also Cimarron. My patience was exhausted and I’m afraid I was stonily businesslike with the striving and amiable Michael there at the end. 

Elegy

 

January 18, 2022

Bright morning. Began today as I did yesterday, with TV aerobics. Went through yesterday painless, supple, and without taking a single aspirin. Let’s see if it can be the same today. I made it better through the routine than the 30 year old woman on the leader’s right. That exercise could be the cure for my tottering about constantly on aching limbs is counterintuitive, but hugely welcome. 

An advantage of exercising at the gym rather than at home is that you aren’t distracted by fifty other things you should be doing instead.

Gentle vestry meeting last night, saying goodbye to the troublesome and to the beloved.  

E has died under circumstances not yet revealed. One of the junior administrators asked me for a comment, and I returned one, trying to accentuate his endearing idiosyncracies while de-emphasizing the truth that he was, ultimately, a destructive force at the university, devising, among other things, the single most elaborate and unworkable curriculum that anyone ever heard of, and enforcing it by sheer will well beyond the first telling, experimental, catastrophic year. He was arrogant, intractable, isolated and unteachable. I will in fact miss him. 

 

January 17, 2022

Though it still feebly snows, we seem to have weathered Izzy, the storm meant to be threshold apocalyptic. During it I cooked noodles and worked on short fiction, bringing two stories to higher form. 

Received a note from an agent concerning Tub, which said she loved the prose but claimed adult stories with juvenile narrators in any part are hard to sell. This, of course, is bullshit. Fake expertise expressed with ludicrous confidence. The task of the contemporary writer is to find a way to spike their work past the stupidity of the  gatekeepers. I have not been good at that. 

Used Roku to find an exercise program on You Tube, whereby I began my day with half an hour of aerobics. I was careful of my knee, and it gave me no problems, nor were there the breathing issues I expected. Right now I do, as the aerobics instructor promised, feel great. I remember  when I’d do three high-energy aerobics classes in a row at the Spa. I probably have that to thank for some of my current knee problems, but at the time it was exhilarating, and my most consistent method of social interaction. Destroy the aerobics floor, then make the lonely drive back to the wilds of Candler. I was so good that aerobics instructor who were interviewing for jobs at other venues would bring me along as a ringer who could do their moves and make them look good. Except ping pong and 4-square, it was the only time I was superior at anything physical. 

The only time I left the house was to replenish the suet holders. Four red bellied woodpeckers stared at my through the window, referencing the empty feeders, shaming me out into the elements. 

 January 16, 2022

Byrd on Pandora.

The snowstorm long prophesied is upon us. I stayed up until 2 waiting for it, but sometime between going to sleep and waking it began, and now the world is fully white, and by that I mean the sky too is a moving plain of white, beautiful and amazing even after seventy years of seeing it. It seems, weirdly, to be coming mostly from the south. From the tiny upstairs window I see clouds of it blowing from the roof. Maud curls below, beating my foot rhythmically with her tail.

Read Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey. A different world. What if a student brought that to a creative writing workshop? Yet the experience of reading it was pleasurable. 

 

January 15, 2022

Spent the day getting an apparatus for my TV whereby I can stream streaming services, an activity at which my cable service falls short. The guy at Staples was hugely attentive. I was his only customer, so maybe he was glad to see me. Slightly dismayed that so much energy went into, and so much satisfaction derived from, enabling fuller and easier inertia before the TV.

Spiderman

 

January 14, 2022

Waited for the roofer who never came.

Went with DJ to see the latest Spiderman movie. Charming principals, a concept too big. Multiple universes is a disastrous idea for narrative, without limits, without consequences, without stands to take that might not be undone by the next moment’s capriciousness. But, the lead of this story is that it was the first time either of us had set foot in a cinema in two years. 

Mouse

 

January 13, 2022

While making coffee I heard a weird tacking sound come from the pantry. Looked, found nothing. Sound came again, looked again, realized that a mouse had fallen into the washer drum and, unable to get out, raced around and around on his tiny claws. Lifted him out and bore him out the front door into the detritus of the front garden. He sat amid the leaves glaring at me until I went back inside. The keenest sensation was the vitality and determination of his tiny body in my hand. 

Crowd at Ingle’s, preparing for the winter storm prophesied by our TV station. Long lines at the checkout, the one beside me longer because a querulous old man at the front kept objecting to what he saw on the screen. First the checkout lady and then the manager explained to him that the number on the screen was how much his groceries cost, a sum that would be deducted from the credit card he held in his hand. He kept repeating, “I’ve never seen that before! Is it new? How come you changed things?” while the people stacked up behind him closed their eyes in despair. 

 January 12, 2022

Bartoli singing Salieri. 

A day spent mostly at the keyboard.

Two expensive cameras with their plugs and charging apparatus lost. Opening drawers, finding the remnants of lost hobbies, expired fixations. 

 

January 11, 2022

Filling out forms so the Magnetic can rehearse in Ann’s dance space. Trying to type while holding Maud, who insists on being held.

 

January 10, 2022

Mike from Four Seasons Plumbing did his preventative and investigatory work downstairs, then mentioned that he saw the marks where I lever myself up from the toilet by grabbing onto the window sill. So, getting a new toilet. I think the old one was sort of evil, so all’s well along those lines. Mike thinks that, all in all, my plumbing should suit me for another year. Cold. The sun makes you venture out unsuitably clothed, then you scurry from errand to errand trying not to freeze. 

Omicron

 

January 9, 2022

John Sheppard on Pandora.

The turkey flock sheltering in my garden under the cold rain now consists of fourteen. 

New round of cancellations because of the Omicron version of Covid19. It never ends because too many people refuse to commit to the preventative protocols. The Beast people refuse to face endures because they refuse to face it. 

Checking finances, shocked by the erosion of funds I thought would last me amply forever. Have been spending as though I were still employed. The money lost on the Jerusalem trip would fill the gap and then some. Spilt milk. 

Wedding

 

January 8, 2022

Night of a yellow crescent moon. Sang for K and C’s wedding. Two happy grooms. When I was a lad this would never be thought of. We sang Mendelssohn and Durufle. J said, “When you hit the last low note of the Durufle, Dr K (who was directing) closed her eyes in bliss.” A line jumped out from the liturgy, “A banquet prepared before the foundation of the world.” I thought about that. I thought how, if that is true, then all anxiousness and frustration are absurd. I have managed to live a whole day as if anxiousness and frustration are absurd. 

It is true that most of my life has been stolen away. Upon rare moments, it doesn’t matter.

 January 7, 2022

Outcry at UNCA against the wearing of masks. As in times past, the outcry comes from Atmospheric Sciences, always the redneck element of the university. Most of my time there they spent shouting against the Humanities, which were unnecessary if all you were going to do was follow the weather. They shut up about that publically but continued to sow resentment among their majors. Now their chair declares all measures against infection, including masks, a delusion not only vain but un-American, robbing the individual of choice. All curiously unscientific for a program allegedly within the sciences. AS shares with Women’s and Gender studies the distinction of being majors that do their students more harm than good, from which they are likelier to emerge stupider than they went in. 

Late afternoon spent with A at my black table over wine, catching up on the gossip from the university. I know a great deal about people I will never meet. 

Anniversaries

 

January 6, 2022

On this evening in 1969 I began writing this journal, and did not let off from that time to this. 

Every year (for 7 or 8 years now) former student RC makes me a mix CD for Christmas. I’m playing this year’s right now. Trying to find him in it, but perhaps too much time has passed. He was big, handsome, athletic, smart, mordant. Listening for that in the cheery (and to me unfamiliar) tunes. 

Anniversary of the Trump Insurrection. Only the foot soldiers have faced any consequences. The generals, the Emperor proudly flaunt their impunity before the world. America is founded on spasms of mistaken cooperation, beginning with the Northern States’ accepting a Federalist compromise with the slave owning South at the very formation of the nation, continuing through Reconstruction, when fellowship with our defeated white brethren was more important to us than justice or the Constitution. Compromise is of itself neither evil or good: it depends on with whom. Compromise with error is always error, no matter how it smooths the road. Democrats today are not exactly gutless, but so convinced by the universality of reason that they are duped every time by people who are not reasonable, not just, not fully human. None of us are sure enough of this to strike the first blow. But the blow must be struck. If the news is to be trusted, full a third of us will to believe a lie fully debunked a dozen times, for which there was never a shred of evidence but the outcry of the toppled Emperor. The tantrumof an infant has unmade our Republic. 

 

January 5, 2022

YMCA in the morning darkness. 

Returned to revision on The Sun in Splendor. The easiest–in some ways happiest–days of my life are days of revision, when the edifice is built but might yet be gilded or strengthen or enlarged. 

 

January 4, 2022

Bitter cold but bluebird blue morning. 

The indigo sweater that I got in from LL Bean while I was in Syracuse 45 years ago is about to go into the recycling bin, both elbows worn out, six or seven gaping holes. I thought its fidelity deserved mention. If I still had my studio I’d work it into collage. 

Vittoria on Pandora. 

I may have remarked on the fact that I’ve received not one communication from UNCA since I retired– not even a solicitation for donations. I certainly didn’t get the goddam rocking chair that everybody gets. Do I blame the manifold oversights occasioned by the pandemic? Did I leave a bitter taste behind me among those who look after such things? They did give me Emeritus status, so my name couldn’t be all that blackened. I tend to underestimate my effect on people, tend to assume I’ve left no particular impression behind, when in fact the impression I’ve left behind is often astonishing for its vehemence, on either side of the ledger. Not interested enough to ask, nor, now, do I know whom. 

The day seemed full, though filled mostly with errands and tidying up. One errand was this: two days ago I did a little shopping at Ingles. I had very distinct recollections of buying peanut butter (a disabled man in a wheelchair was blocking the peanut butter shelf, taking each jar off the shelf, investigating it, laying it back up and going on to the next. I had to wait for him to move on half an inch before I could make a grab for the jar I wanted). When I got home I couldn’t find the peanut butter. Next day I went to Ingles and told the guy in the office platform that I’d purchased peanut butter, but it wasn’t in my bag when I got home. He said, “Go and get what you need,” so I did, walking out of the store with a naked jar of peanut butter in my hand. Nobody stopped me. The next day I realized I’d put the ice cream in the freezer without noticing that the peanut butter was in the same bag. So, today, I drove to Ingles to sneak the second jar of peanut butter back onto the shelf. I wondered what I’d say if I’d been caught doing it. Incredibly, the same disabled man was inching along the same aisle as before, but now a few feet down from the peanut butter, removing items, gazing, setting them back.

 

January 3, 2022

First winter storm, wind-blown rain, then snow and thunder. The power went out and came back on several times. Something pings in the house when the power goes out; I’ve never figured out what it was. Dusty with AT&T in St. Louis helped me cancel my account and send the equipment back. I told him my story and he said, “I’m surprised you stayed with us so long. You gave us many second chances.” And so I did. May the same be done to me. The new account went off during the storm, and I feared there would be no end to it, but there was.

The Parish Profile presented in its “final” form–which people have altered in the hours since. I think I did my part to raise it to the level of readable and, in some places, noble. Educated people can make astonishing blunders, stumble into astounding oversights. Some resent having this pointed out. In church you can cite “feelings.” I have, I know, been more on the side of precision than I ought to have been. 

 

January 2, 2022

Spectrum installer here, after my failure to understand the installation directions came to the edge of, but did not quite result in, a meltdown. Everyone helpful. People working on Sunday. Harley the Installer is big, dark, with piercing blue eyes over his mask. Someone on the radio said that a dark man as first visitor of the New Year is good luck. So be it. 

The year seems old already. I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t write the poem I had intended to write. It’s all right. Tomorrow looks like an opening curtain. 

2022

 

January 1, 2022

First words out of my mouth were “Rabbit. Rabbit.” That’s a big deal around here. The Usual company zoomed in the New Year, remembering the years when we could do it in my living room. 

First dream of the New Year: I was part of a group of faculty trying to sell a mob of students on a new Humanities text. We went to huge full auditoriums enumerating the virtues of the book, all the while I’m thinking, “They’ll read whatever we assign, so why all this bother?” One person– ghostly, appearing out of nowhere– opposed the text on purely mystical grounds which he could not explain but which he insisted upon. 

First deed of the day was to write a poem about Maud’s empty food bowl. When you’re on, anything turns into poetry. Filled it. Cleaned her litter box. She stares at me now with a look of vague approval. 

First hike of the New Year from Hard Times Gap under the bridge and north from there, to the land of perfect hemlock trees. A measure of the day is that people were picnicking at the Parkway pullovers. Exceeded my FitBit step goal on the first day of the year. Saw not on single bird, and came to resent the binoculars banging against my chest. The extreme silence of that path made the appearance of other hikers–joggers, actually– the more surprising. Because I go so slow it’s my duty to stand aside for the fast lane, even in the narrow places. Standing aside for a jogging girl in turquoise and her dog, I began to fall down the wet slope. I caught myself. She came near and patted my arms and asked if I were sure I was OK. I said yes, but in fact one is never sure. Rednecks on their new motorbikes broke the silence as one neared the bridge. My thoughts were excellently pure during the hike– which is to say, practically not there at all–but I did think a moment about poetry. The poetry of my youth was Praise. The poetry of my maturity was Anger. The poetry of my old age is Analysis.