Tadpoles

 

March 30, 2022

Planted ironweed, milkweed, joe-pye from the packets the lady in Tennessee sent. I want giant flowers, that will hold up the sky when it begins to sag. That’s all the planting I can do until I buy something else, or until it’s time to sow annuals. Dug a new bed for the ironweed, which involved intensified war against the honeysuckle vines. Rain came in the night, an added blessing. 

Rested on the front porch for a while. A hawk appeared out of the barrier trees. I hoped with all my heart that it was Sweetboi, but the body language was wrong. This hawk was cautious, faced away from me, stayed in the shade. When she fluttered off I saw the she was a Cooper’s hawk. I saw one Cooper’s before, flying beside a barn in Ohio. The light around her was blue. 

When I returned from choir, a box sat on the porch. Investigated, it proved to be the bull tadpoles I’d ordered for the pond. I thought about waiting until morning, but couldn’t make the tadpoles languish in plastic bags all night, so down to the benighted pond we went. It turned out to be an experience of odd perspective and embracing darkness. In the weird ambient light, the garden seemed to be enormous, to stretch on forever. All was motionless, silent, except me slitting open the bags and easing the creatures into the black water. All was profoundly serene, except for that one nerve that kept on the lookout for bears. 

Taxes

 

March 29, 2022

Another shocking tax tally. Learned that part of it is that my annuities and SS have no withholding taken from them. Did I chose that? Did someone fail to advise me? Amended all that through the morning, signing up for the withholding. Less of a labor than one would have thought. Still in financial shock. 

Watched rehearsal in Zabriskie for the play to be staged Sunday afternoon. It was good. It was quite good. I breathed several sighs of relief. 

Stanislavsky

 

March 28, 2022

Reading my Stanislavsky book, noting what people go through to help imperfect geniuses (or sometimes just imperfect men) realize their conceptions. I believe I go out of my way not to be this sort of burden on the people around me in creative situations, but they might, reading this, be rolling their eyes and groaning. K has his odd warfare on the letter “r” which turns from time to time to a flat-out tantrum; S has her thundered final consonants and Italianate inner syllable which (besides being wrong) drive everyone berserk, but seem somehow to be part of the package. The Russian was, of course, much worse, yet people put up with him. Fourteen hours of rehearsal and not yet to page 5 of the script. What were they getting in return?  Something which does not survive the re-telling. Would they be better for correction, or would correction be judged as opposition? One brick re-adjusted, would the palace fall? 

Watched the Oscars last night, witnessed what is bound to be one of its eternal moments: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock across the face for making a joke about his wife. Five minutes later Smith accepted an Oscar for Best Actor. Smith was seen laughing at the joke until his wife gave him the side-eye. People go to events like that knowing that comics are going to have a field day, and that nothing is off limits. If they fear being made fun of, they should stay home. Smith thought he was so big he could get away with something like that. He was wrong. Rock sailed on through his bit as though nothing had happened, saving the evening. I got up and poured another vodka.

I was cold watching all that and put on my coat. Maud recognized it as her cuddle coat, and crawled up inside it with me, until I squirmed out of it and left it all to her. She was Putin and my jacket was Ukraine.  

Asked if I want to be on the Magnetic Board. I think my energies are best employed elsewhere, but I will savor the invitation until tomorrow. 

Cold and bright. When it was almost warm enough I went out to garden. Planted butterfly weed. Dug and weeded on the inner side of the fence, part of the hell of vines. 

 

March 26, 2022

Fatboi returns to his den under the tool shed. 

Mother has been dead, from this day so long ago, 48 years. It’s impossible. Absurd. One more year and she will have been dead as long as she was alive. It cannot be thought of. 

I bought online a glass starburst pitcher with a star on the bottom, because it was exactly the pitcher mother poured my orange juice from when I was a kid. It is, conceivably though not very likely, the VERY one. When I look around at my possessions, the ones I notice are the ones that mean something to me, that were a gift or came from my childhood home or have some story connected to them. When I die, those stories disappear and they’re all so much junk. I have the kind of imagination that allows me to wonder if they’ll feel bereft or lost then, wondering why they are no longer cherished.

Late morning pulling vines and digging privet.

Finished reading short plays for the Magnetic festival. Realized my central criterion was that the piece be conceived as a ten minute play and not be whittled down from some vaster conception. There should be some modesty, some quick wit in the conception.  Read the reader’s analysis of my submission. It’s in. 

Tried to read RG’s novel. It’s unreadable. All clabber-guzzling fluttery Southern grotesques going on about how unusual their lives are, and do you remember that time Auntie Petunia found the skeleton under the chinaberry bush? Picked it up, tried entering at several places, was repelled each time.  Flannery and Eudora are dead; let them rest in peace. 

 March 25, 2022

The CD Frank sent me on the player. Leo Sowerby, I think. 

My mind dwells on G. We’ve known each other a long time, on the theater scene in particular, but, I think, rather irritated one another, so I can’t claim a bond of friendship. But I feel grief for him. A life gone in a minute. I need to keep quiet, or dissemble, if asked my opinion, for my frank stance is that 1) no abuse happened, but was merely anticipated, and 2) to create the occasion of transgression and then destroy someone for wandering into your trap seems to me a sin equal, at least, to contemplated pedophilia. The voice of the young man who stung him was too triumphant, too self-satisfied. Practically his first words were, “you’re life is destroyed,” not an observation, but a boast, the cackle of a demon. His organization is “Dads Against Predators.” Sometimes we vilify vigilantes, sometimes we applaud them. 

Morning used in doing battle against honeysuckle vines. Though the war is probably endless, this battle was a success, I making more progress than I had anticipated. Some of the vines are old and thick and deep. Shoveling out privet, too, which seems to have fallen from the sky. 

Mahonia

 

March 24, 2022

Planted Mahonia and a shrub the nursery girl was very enthusiastic about, called Sixteen Candles, just before the week’s big rain. Excited about gardening this year, and find myself by no means behind in my program. Astonished by the ease of labor on some days, and the exhaustion occasioned by it on others. Tony came to renew our lawn mowing relationship. He is a dedicated talker. I try to piece together the narrative through ensuing months. Sometimes I’m almost defeated by his accent. I don’t understand how he supports three children by mowing lawns, especially as he doesn’t do that all winter. 

All Souls dealing with a financial shortfall, coupled with the apparently never-ending drama of calling a new Dean. It is easier than one expected to recognize where one can be of service and where had better stand back. 

During massage, Z relating to me what he’s learned from his dating books, in case someday I decide to try to snare me a woman. He confesses his long-standing fear of rejection in dating. I want to say, “Have you looked in the mirror?” thinking his fear of rejection to be ludicrously unfounded. 

G was caught in a video pedophile sting. Brouhaha at the university. I always thought he was creepy, but never suspected this was the source of his creepiness. I do not think this sort of thing should destroy a man’s life, but I know it will.

 

March 20, 2022

Vernal Equinox. I’m already committed to spring.

Sweet, cool, bright Sunday. Herbert Howells for the anthem. Our repertoire settles into something familiar, even repetitious. Perhaps K doesn’t trust us to voyage into new material (and perhaps he’s right). Perhaps he’s tired. New guy sat beside me this morning, a sweet warbling baritone, for all his sweetness inattentive and the maker of many mistakes, all of which would be forgiven. Frank sent me his latest CD, quite engaging organ variations on old hymns. 

 

March 19, 2022

More gardening. Planted cannas, dug a trough into which to transplant the volunteer holly seedlings, cleaned up the bears’ mess under the lilacs. 

Poems coming unlike their coming before. When I was young it was as though my voice joined a song already sound through the air. Now it is as though I look down and pick up something strange from the dirt. I begin to pick at it, releasing it from the disguise and entanglement until something beautiful and unexpected lies in my hands.  The recent ones are effortlessly metaphysical. 

 March 18, 2022

Rose up after strange and vivid post-sleep reveries. It will be a perfect day for gardening if my toe and my wind cooperate. 

Reading my Stanislavsky book. I wonder what my feelings for the theater actually are. I loved being an actor, but drifted away several time without much regret, and the present drift seems permanent and without nostalgia. Do I think of it as a literary genre? I do get weary hearing about the craft and struggle of the actor, when my advice is, ever: “Understand the lines, say the lines loudly and clearly, at every moment see what you’re saying.” That would not make a very thick book. 

Reading 10 minute plays for the Magnetic contest. Some are good. But I find myself writing things like, “Gave me the dry heaves. . .  Not if we were in a bomb shelter in Kyiv. . . .etc.”

Evening: turns out that it was a sensational day for gardening, every second on the verge of rain without, until just now, quite spilling over. I unloaded the pickup (many, many wet bags), dug bamboo, dug plots for plants yet to be sown, filled the front raised bed, planted and mulched a large stand of hibiscus. All this with my toe shutting up and without one breathing issue. Most excellent. 

Blessed Saint Patrick

 

March 17, 2022

Blessed Saint Patrick. 

Though it’s brilliant now, the beginning of the day was dark and atmospheric, and I chose that time to plant new roses and tear diligently at the tangle of ivy in the front garden. Labor was brought to an end by yesterday’s extending gout, which could no longer be ignored or worked around. Back at the garden tomorrow, big toe willing. 

AGMC rehearsal, successful auditions, several new members. One is a new bass as strong as I (and more accurate) which, ultimately, does nothing for the issue of balance. But we’re singing Weelkes and Morely and I am, for once, content with that. Comforted myself concerning the new bass’s strength by noting he has nothing below an A. 

 March 16, 2022

Rain on the roof. Des Prez on the CD. Rain hard, Des Prez soft. Four rejections in the morning email. Boxes of plants delivered either magically or in the dead of night. Kyle the red-bearded furnace guy came early, fussing with the drainage outlet so it won’t (we hope) freeze every time the temperature dips. I said “The old furnace didn’t do that.” He said, “But this is a condensator furnace. The old one wasn’t.” His tone implied how things are so much better now, so I decided to let it drop. One of the lessons of the technological age is that 50% of innovations make things worse. 

Canon A getting an earful–at least indirectly-- about shaming us into canceling summer plans to accommodate her interview schedule. 

Rehearsal. By constant hydration I made it through. Gout.

 

March 14, 2022

Brand new furnace was out on Sunday morning– the first cold night since it was installed. Of course it was Sunday, and there was no one to address the problem. R thinks it was frozen water in the drainage pipe, which makes sense, as the furnace was back on when I arrived home from church, the ice in the pipe having thawed. I don’t know that I want to spend $8600 on a furnace that’s useless below freezing. Cable also out, which means this morning was a succession of phoning repair offices and getting put on waiting lists. 

Organ concert at All Souls yesterday, an atmospheric composition commenting on the book of Job, parts of which were read before the music which described them. My thoughts went down the rabbit hole, which perhaps they were meant to do. What do you do with 1,000 donkeys?

A night of several interruptions and voluptuous dreams. The dreams, if I remember, were of my being involved in some gigantic and lavish theatrical production. I was notoriously beautiful, and part of the show was my getting dressed in front of the audience. The interruptions were Maud clawing at the basement door. Terror came first, when I thought the sound was something on the other side of the door clawing to get in. Then there was the issue of the mug. At one point last night I went into the kitchen and saw a glass mug with the remnants of the water which was drunk out of it sitting on the counter. I had not used the mug. It is one I almost never use, not convenient to reach, and I usually have very specific memories of the utensils I’ve used in a day. Whoever had drunk out of the mug, it wasn’t me. I did a once-over of the house and found nothing missing. The house was unlocked and uninhabited when I was at church, once in the morning (Purcell) then again for the concert in the afternoon.

Vestry 2

 

March 12, 2022

So the snow came. The petals of the sweetbay are pale brown paper, like the tissue mother used to use for sewing patterns. 

Perrin writes this in response to my gift of Peniel:

Good evening, David!

I’ve waited to write back to you because I wanted to dive into your book of poetry and savor it. But after reading off and on when I had the time, I want now to write to thank you for the kind and generous gift of your poetry. I’m aware that any writer gives to someone his offspring with a degree of anxiety, fearing the misunderstanding or mistreatment of his creative “children” by some outsider, someone who wasn’t present at the creation, who can’t know the pain and deep pleasure of inspiration and composition. And I fear that in appreciating what you’ve written, I may be guilty of misunderstanding or a coarse appreciation that could make you regret your gift of your book.

Enough, though, of apology. I loved what I read. I admit, I have to keep my wits about me when I do, but what good poetry doesn’t demand attention? I was struck by the fact that you took inspiration from paintings that must be favorites of yours, which are my favorites, too. I love Sassetta, and recognized even without being told that in your description of Sts. Paul and Anthony, when they met, the lovely painting you drew inspiration from. And I admired your poem on de la Tour’s Magdalene. I liked the contrast, as I read it, between some lover contemplating a photograph and Magdalene with her skull companion. Or maybe it was Magdalene herself at an earlier time—either satisfies me. I was struck by the emphasis on the color red—a color that comes up here and there in a number of poems—was her dress red? I’ve forgotten. I mostly see the painting in black and white, although red certainly would suit her.

“Peniel” I read with great attention because my original plan at Sunday’s forum was to read things from three people commemorated in the Calendar for March, and I thought I’d introduce the group to Charles Wesley’s “Wrestling Jacob”, and along with that poem I’d also read yours. (That’ll have to wait because Elizabeth Wilde will be doing a program on sacred movement and gesture, and I want above all to have members of the congregation do these programs). (I know I can’t tempt you to come and talk about “Peniel” and some other poems because you have choir rehearsal. Or can I?)

The last long section of “I sleep, but my heart keeps watch” struck me as very forcefully, cleanly and beautifully expressed. Oh, it was good!

“The Hidden Verses of Ibn Dawud” was for me perhaps the most intriguing poem I’ve read so far—and I, lucky, have more yet to read! I wondered which Ibn Dawud this was, whether he were the man who helped to seal the great Al Hallaj’s death for heresy, or the one who kept a bird in a gilded cage. For there are several Ibn Dawuds. I loved the line “What they know of God/is rolling darkness edged with lightning”—it has the feeling of the Arabic poetry I’ve read--and the mention of jackals and haunted ruins made me think of one of my favorite books—I’m sure you know it—Rose Macauley’s “Pleasure of Ruins”. (I always like it when one pleasure makes me think of another, with the result that I get a double dose of delight when I read.) My only puzzle was having the love mentioned in the poem wearing a veil—it piled so many thoughts at one time: the veil the poet’s friend might be wearing, the veil of darkness perhaps, the veil of the sort that Moses covered his face with—who knows? Perhaps all three, and maybe more. 

So now I close (you may be grateful that such ignorant readings are coming to an end!) with two general comments. One: that I found your titles completely tantalizing in the way Wallace Stevens’s titles also are. And my other comment: that this is a book of spiritual poetry that has a much, much greater range of interest than so many works that treat of spiritual themes. So much more is contained in your work—everything’s constantly searching out new perceptions, new ways of expressing the venerable truths of the inner life; the use of paintings and the suggestion of music (I think of the poem that could be set by William Byrd), and explorations of other cultures with their own deep spiritual experience. I felt as if I entered a full world of the inner life instead of the often thin gruel of what goes by spiritual writing.

So thanks, David, for the experience, and thanks for the gift. I look forward to getting to know the “only begetter” of these poems—when you can be prised away from your ministry of singing.

 

     Perrin

Perrin’s missive took a while to reach me, going first to a David Hopes who seems to be a songwriter in Cardiff.

H phoned today, his voice a teenage boy’s voice. There’s no point in trying to derive actual information from what he says, but it was good to hear him being his old non-linear, conspiracy-theory-adoring self. He loves his boys to distraction. No one predicted he would be an excellent father, yet he is. That pays for all.

Day 2 of Vestry Retreat dedicated to the revelation of unconscious bias, to prevent us from making snap judgments when we’re interviewing prospective new Deans. I have noted that I am anxious that time taken from me be taken for a good cause, and this was not. Warning about subliminal bias can, to people who wish truthfully to guard against it, be delivered in a sentence. This took four hours. I was almost feral with impatience. I have experience with hiring. A university professor’s duties are nearly as complicated and vital as a pastor’s, and the process of choice needs to be held in equal sacredness. But we trusted each other to bring our best selves to the task. We trusted one another to recognize our biases and balance them against new information. Whatever its intention, the message the diocese sends is one of infantalization. We must be led step by step, each step swathed by tutorials to prevent straying an inch from the intended path. A didn’t need to say she thought we were untrustworthy: the process said it for her. 

I’ve heard repeatedly during this time that the Holy Spirit speaks through process. I do not believe this is true. The Holy Spirit can overcome process, or thwart it, but He is ever the Road to Damascus, never the flow chart or the instruction manual. 

My other theory is that hours and weeks and months of tense self-examination and preparation and simply reading the vitas and meeting the candidates will produce exactly the same result. Don’t know how to test that.

Anyway, we Episcopalians are a self-dramatizing lot.

Also, after going on three years of piddling about, we are suddenly in a frantic hurry, and we must all cancel our summer plans so that we may meet with candidates in a way suited to the bishop’s calendar. 

Petty are my grievances, and petty is my wrath.

Those hours at the computer allowed Maud and me to snuggle as we have not for a long time. She is inexhaustible in that regard. My shirt is covered with white hair. I watched the suet stations out the front bedroom window. Twelve species visited as I sat. 

Vestry 1

 

March 11, 2022

Vestry retreat in Zabriskie Hall. I’m such a miser of my own time that I probably can’t evaluate meetings with any objectivity. It was not unpleasant. It was one of those Episcopalian gestures meant to insure everything gets done in a particular way so explanations and justifications of the process are already in place before any criticism can be leveled. New people possibly found it valuable, but the plague was such that my vestry class did not have a session like it, and I never felt the lack. Rye Knot afterwards with Jack and DJ. Chatter and vodka (Not Russian) got the bile out of my system. 

Casting

 

March 10, 2022

Upstairs working, I was gladdened by the sound of the two cleaning ladies downstairs. They laughed. They talked in happy voices. The (quite cute) city inspector came to OK the furnace. It took perhaps two minutes. I couldn’t see why the furnace people had been so apprehensive. The cast for The Frankenstein Rubrics is announced. Strother, playing Polidori, is the only person I’m sure I know. But they all sound good-looking, and that’s the main thing. . . .

 

March 8, 2022

Rain, pause, rain. Good for the garden. Lunch with CJ at White Duck beside the river, a pleasant locale. She and her sister were subjects of a “kidnaping” by their father, and spent two years on the lam. She remembered it as great fun. We met so I could give her a copy of ODN. She spent a chunk of time going on about the typos in Beautiful Necklaces. She said they didn’t ruin the experience of the story, but they clearly did. Even when I make it to print the universe plans some sort of mitigation to make it all pointless. Geese honked on the river as we ate. 

Memory of Valletta

 

March 7, 2022

Changeable spring day. Reading Sweat by Hayes, a history of exercise. I had forgotten my old curiosity, the way I would read anything at any time, the way I rejoiced in tangents and minutiae. The fact is that throughout my collegiate career I read almost nothing for pleasure, except magazines. Back to reading now, though with weakened eyes, which means that between reading and writing I must ration one to achieve the other.

Heavy rain allows me to postpone for one more day the reconnection of the garden hose.  

Ten years ago tonight a boy wandered onto a moonlit street of Valletta and played lascia ch’io pianga to the stone and the cats and to me. One of the moments of my life inlaid like a jeweled masterpiece in the wall of some cold, dim edifice. 

 

March 6, 2022

Tom comments of ODN. I’m glad I read his message first thing, for it will fortify me through the rest of the day. He ends his comments with: Quick thoughts. It's a beautiful book. I never could have written it. But I can feel it.

 

March 5, 2022

Second day of gardening, some in the morning, some in the afternoon. Not interested in writing at the moment. . . except poems, which come dropping down like dew from the tips of leaves. 

 

March 4, 2022

First stab at spring gardening. I got less done than I had wanted to. Cleaned out the giant cosmos corpses, dug a little, snipped bamboo and raspberry. Brightness of daffodils. 

Ash Wednesday

 

March 2, 2022

The furnace guys have been here 7 hours. I’ve gone from welcoming and accepting to kicking the floor and screaming goddammit when I look at the clock and another half hour has passed. It can’t take THAT long. One hole bashed in the wall was abandoned because it was too close to a window (the window was there when they started). I had to leave the kitchen because the next hole they were bashing lay right under my feet. They blame the inspectors for wanting things just so. My counsel is finish the job, go home, and don’t call the inspectors at all, but I don’t expect that suggestion to be met with approbation. 

One is a sullen redneck named Kyle, the other a giant Indonesian. I thought Indonesians were meant to be tiny. He’s messing with the study heater, trying to get the pilot lit. Rage for the moment suppressed, or redirected. 

Pruned the wild white lilac by the drive.

Had to move the old sideboard so they could use the hall, and in order to move it I had to empty it of three or four sets of antique dinnerware, now spread across the dining room table. The upheaval has given me a chance to prune my collection and send several fragile boxes to Goodwill. 

Saint David's Day

 

March 1, 2022

Shrove Tuesday

Saint David’s Day

Travis and Trent are downstairs hammering away on the furnace. Earlier, Dave the gas company guy was here because I walked into the house and smelled gas, and the furnace had gone off. I thought the pilot might be out, but it was–of course-- something more intricate than that. Trent acted in A Tuna Christmas at Polk County High School. We got onto the subject because he admired the bust on the hallway sideboard and I said, “That’s Shakespeare,” and he said, “I know I don’t sound like it, but I do know who Shakespeare is. I even did plays in high school.” They’re likeable souls, and from the giggling in the basement you can tell they enjoy working together.

Sunday night was the darkest, darkest, and Monday rose slowly toward gray, but this is Tuesday, and the sun gleams and two workers giggle and hammer in the basement. 

Watched a big opossum die in the back yard, his staggering steps slowing, slowing, until he lay still under the pear tree. Then I went to the Post Office, and when I got back he was gone. I suppose he was “playing ‘possum,” but, except for a tree full of screaming crows, it’s hard to know why. The crows did disappear when he lay still. Do opossums fear crows? Was it just a sleep of annoyance? 

Turns out that the furnace is a goner. One thing is broken that lets CO into the house. . . another thing is broken that snuffs out the flame, letting natural gas into the house. . . something else is rusted through in a dozen places. . . this and that are out of code. It was installed in 1996, and Trent observed that furnaces last only 15 years, so I perhaps got more than my money’s worth. One cold night (tonight) and terrible upheaval tomorrow morning, and this, too should be behind me. The final visitor, Russ, wrote out the estimate and drew up tomorrow’s work plans. We both hate Putin, but then he added “he’s almost as useless as Biden,” so I knew where the conversation ought not to go. He said, “Do you know where you were on your 25th birthday?” It turns out that I did. He then related that on his 25th he was on the road fleeing a job at Wynn Dixie in Florida because Florida was too crowded and crime-ridden, to stay with his daddy here until he could get organized. Russ has Tourette’s so the conversation was occasionally startling. I had wanted to go to the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper at All Souls, but that was nearing its end as Russ left the house. Lent is begun.

Odd observation: I was paralyzed with rage when my Internet went out and when my books didn’t arrive on time. This furnace event hardly affects me at all. Maud lies asleep under my coat. 

Sweetboi and Denise are returned. The flew screaming over me in the afternoon sun. I went to the Sav-Mor to buy them meaty bones.