May 29, 2022

Reading over Red Shouldered Hawk, found an error (a doubled word) in the first poem.

Robed up and waiting for service to begin, I watched the ground in front of All Souls heave (a little of it, anyway) and out crawl a grub the size and color of my thumb, with a single horn and ludicrously tiny feet. When it got to the sidewalk, I was afraid for it, and lifted it to the other side and set in back down on grass, into which it immediately burrowed. This probably explains heavings I saw in my own garden, when I stood staring, expecting the arising of a mole, but no mole came. I was looking for the wrong thing. 

 

May 28, 2022

Perfect summer. Some gardening. Some reading in the shade of the maple, the wind chime humming at my ear. 

I have no recollection of either of my parents hugging me or lifting me up or kissing me. You’d think a person would remember that. 

 

May 27, 2022

Began the day in the garden, dead-heading roses, chopping bamboo, weeding, weeding, weeding. It was a good time.

More information comes from Uvalde. The worst (worse beyond all worst) is that many armed policeman stood in the hall outside the tragic classroom biding their time while still-living children called 911 from inside, desperately begging for help. Cowards. Cowards. Cowards. A teacher threw herself at the gunman to protect her children while heavily armed cowards waited outside for enough more heavily armed cowards to make any action safe. I choked on my own bile after January 16; I am doing so again tonight. In any case, so much for the theory that armed “good guys” are any defense against armed “bad guys.” I wish I had the power to strike across the face anyone uttering those words. 

C responded to yesterday’s outline for gun control : “As a gun owning woman who has feared for her life, as every woman does at some point , I wholeheartedly agree with you David, but I'd simplify... I'd take guns away from men. All of them. That could work, too. For now I'll keep mine because: men.” I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I could not fault her. It is horrifying. 

 

May 26, 2022

Worked this out on behalf of the world. I’m sure it will fall over itself in its haste to implement my suggestions:

No Open Carry anywhere in the United States

No Concealed Carry anywhere in the United States (exceptions can be worked out, say if you’re carrying diamonds to the bank in the Diamond District in NYC, or something like) 

No assault or military style firearms in private hands anywhere, ever, for any reason (Hobbyist  collectors could keep & collect if the firing pins were removed and stored at the police station.)

Background checks on all gun and ammunition purchases.

No one under the age of 21 can buy a firearm. 

People with hunting licenses may purchase, keep, and use firearms appropriate to that activity. Hobbyist target shooters may buy special firearms for that purpose, which hold a limited number of rounds (3?) and posses only the range sufficient to get a bullet to a target some reasonable distance away. 

Firearms restrictions apply to the police. No military style weapons in the hands of civilian peacekeepers. Weapons must be drawn or used only after an officer is fired upon, or when the presence of something that is actually (not possibly) a firearm is confirmed in the hands of a suspect. Officers who draw their weapons at traffic stops, sidewalk interrogations, or other low-intensity events, or in the absence of any mortal threat,  are to be summarily dismissed. The death of an unarmed civilian at the hands of the police is to be considered murder unless some overwhelming circumstance determines otherwise. Weapons are to be left in the vehicle and not instantly available to a nervous cop, unless the mortal nature of the situation has already been established. 

*

AVLGMC rehearsal sparse. Does COVID reassert itself, or is everyone bailing out? L in the row behind fell asleep twice, snoring away. He sang exactly three notes of “My Bonnie Lass” and nothing else. When DB is accompanying, I am the only bass. I’m told I’m “carrying it.” 

Desperate cold rains. 

Hemp

 

May 25, 2022

Twenty more children massacred in Uvalde, Texas. Oh, we wring our hands. . . we say our prayers. . . we refuse to pass gun control legislation. The NRA has done far more violence in America than the Mafia. Why aren’t we seeing TV programs where brave Federal agents thwart and incarcerate NRA goons? A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

Chopping the vast bamboo stand that sprang up in the days I was away or prevented by rain, I realized why my spade shoulder is in pain. I came in and smeared hemp ointment on it, and the pain receded instantly. I’m the sort of person that does not automatically believe that such a thing has happened. 

Mr Jacobs from Ellet has died. 

Odd observation: I slept under a single sheet last night, in a room at least ten degrees cooler than the thermostat setting I kept through winter, perfectly comfortable. And yet on some winter nights, under a thick comforter, I would wake with violent convulsions of chills. 

Uninvited Guests

 

May 24, 2022

Day indecisive between rain and clear. Yesterday clearly voted with the storm.

Zoom meeting last night with a play reading group in Chicago to critique the current draft of C’s adaptation of The Third Policeman. Two of the participants live in Milwaukee and, after announcing their chosen pronouns, introduced themselves as “Uninvited Guests of the Potawatomi Nation.” I suppose I’d find such virtue-signaling less cringe-inducing if there were any possibility of an actual Potawatomi’s being present to be gratified by it. 

Ellijay

 May 22, 2022

If a thunderstorm can be called gentle, a gentle bursts over the house just now.

Returned a few hours ago from Elijay, Georgia, in a part of the world which, from the Earth’s perspective, is pretty much identical to this. Their mountains are lower and greener, ours higher and bluer. David and Laura’s wedding went off beautifully. My sister’s labors in planning the rehearsal dinner and arranging accommodations (I don’t know what else) were gigantic, but assured that everyone had fun. I read my poem “Song for a Wedding” and then conducted the service, and it seems to have gone well. I was credited with setting an enchanted tone. The PA went out, so my howitzer stage voice came in handy. The land is quite perfect, and 76 though North Georgia would make a good route for exploration. Maud was angry with me at my return, and grumbled at me through our homecoming embrace. All the brothers’ friends are big and handsome, in a quasi-military way, high and tight. They do not visibly sweat even under the blazing Southern sun. Their wives and girlfriends are the female equivalents: girls you would cast as officers’ or astronauts’ wives in a movie. Never was there a better example of like unto like. I had more anxiety about this event than I understood, and napped ferociously almost as soon as the car was unpacked. 

D gets into the car for me to drive us to the rehearsal, and says, “Are you an atheist?” I said that I was not, and we spend the rest of the time talking about spiritual things. At one point I heard myself explaining Apostolic Succession. 

 

May 18, 2022

Writing at first of morning, because that morning is perfect in beauty.

The volunteer buttercups stop at a straight line marked by the shadow of the roof. They own the shadow while clover owns the sun. 

Poppies beginning to bloom.

 

May 17, 2022

Absurdly beautiful day, cloudless, the blue more a metaphysical than a visual proposition. I love my summer routine. I love my summer routine during retirement, and resent interruptions to it. I worked on my play. I submitted plays to contests. I gardened (Watered. Weeded. Hacked out 69 bamboo shoots.) I napped. Now I’m preparing for my second bout of writing while downing tangerine-flavored sparkling water.

Full-to-the-brim Vestry meeting last night. I have only the most general notion of how to do anything ecclesiastical. Sometimes not even that.

 

May 15, 2022

Last night there was reverie during which I prayed, after a long struggle, “I give you my heart.” The peace and stillness that came upon me was deep, immediate, lasting. This morning in church something made me realize that “Life Eternal” is not something that happens after this life, but that I am in the midst of it, this second, this intaken breath. Joy like a great golden plain rolling out in all directions without limits.

MA pays a visit with his new fiancé, and by new I mean he proposed to her this morning on the Parkway, and I am the first not family to know. She’s lovely and owns a wine shop. M hit the jackpot. 

Paper-jam-related temper tantrum this AM. Despite technological advances on every other front, the computer printer devolves and devolves.

 

May 14, 2022

Night. Worked today on Songs Powerful Against the Inhabitants of the Waters, a play that went astray years ago, but found its way back today. I have 46 full-length plays ready for the stage. This is not counting one-acts and 10 minute plays. My abundance is an absurdity. 

68 bamboo shoots dug out. Many climbing vines undone. 

M writes: I have The Ones with the Difficult Names on my bedside table, and it's been my nightly companion since you sent it to me. There's a theme in the book which is so beautiful and so striking: in exchange for noticing and capturing the beauty of the world, the poet has to forgo being noticed himself. This is the poetic sacrifice, and this is where the poetic lightning hits. I would put it up there with your very best work. I know that the poems were written at different points of time, but the thematic current of longing is absolutely beautiful. Congrats on publishing it, and thank you for sending it to me.

I have no recollection whatever of send it to him, but--

 

May 13, 2022

Thin, unforthright rain. 

Woke in a panic, thinking D’s wedding might be this weekend rather than next.

The new book is now called Songs Strong Against the Powers of the Air. Structurally perfect, though if asked who its audience is, I wouldn’t know what to say. 

E responds politely as he can about my gift of FW, congratulating me on the construction of the character of the narrator. He was meant to see himself, and himself and I, in the book. If he did, he didn’t give it away. I have a gift for friendship that was never allowed to manifest over the long run. I have a gift of interpersonal intensity that was never welcome out of bed. Maybe I too much derived my ideas of friendship from heroic books. People turn away and say, “that’s not what I meant at all.” 

Annuals peeping through the soil. I based this year’s garden on the seeds sent to me by the Tennessee painter lady, and I don’t think they were viable. Nothing yet, anyway, which means vast empty patches inviting weeds. 

Why do I have so few publications, I wondered, finally realizing that the best part of two decades was spent writing plays, of which there is no material trace. 

Thoughts of the past, as though correction can be achieved now. At least two great dramas of my professional life were caused by female colleagues who severely misinterpreted texts, and, too arrogant to ask for clarification, launched lengthy campaigns of slander. C misinterpreted my first play and, out of ignorance coupled with supreme self-confidence, labeled it “sexist.” It was in fact about female empowerment in the persons of Ruth and Naomi. IG took my correction of an error she made in a lecture as a personal attack, because, being infallible, correction could be nothing but assault. Both went howling wounded to their underground support system. Five minutes of “what the hell did you mean by this?” could have obviated months of subterfuge and libelous indirection. Why do I think of this now? Does something impend that can be informed by it? Maybe academics can’t imagine that they’ve gotten something wrong. Maybe it’s an aspect of feminism that modifying one’s first impression–however askew–cannot be considered if doing so involves consultation with a male. IG did approach me at Bob Moog’s funeral and say that Bob had cherished one of my paintings. I took that as reconciliation. As far as I know, they are both sublimed into the air. 

The demographics if not the exact identities of the candidates to be our new Dean are revealed. Women predominate, and there are African Americans. I feel objections rise as a reflex, but thankfully I realize they ARE a reflex. How many will leave if we call a woman or a black? How many will leave if we do not? I pray that one rises above the crowd so definitively that no such controversy kicks in. 

Orpheus

 

May 10, 2022

Spring returns. At the bottom of my drive I met a surveyor who was looking for my property line. I told him I had never been anything but approximate about it myself. He said that Ingles owns or is acquiring not only the shopping center down the hill but all the houses around me except one or two, and one has come up for sale, which it wants. He showed me what Ingles owns, and I am surrounded by it. It looks like expansion to me, perhaps a giant shopping center, though the surveyor said they just like to have all the land around their stores “to keep their options open.” Maybe some day they’ll offer me a sick sum to add my little lot to the program. Maybe by then I’ll be too feeble to care about the garden. 

Finished the book I am now calling Orpheus, Upholder. Bad title, but much the least bad I have thought of yet.

 

May 9, 2022

Freezing and bitter in the morning, lush and vernal by the afternoon. 

Coffee at Grind in the River District with F, an exuberant monologist. Learned about his various and exciting career in the church and at tennis. I think the interview was basically to pick my brains about what to do with King David now that it has been performed. He imagines a run on Broadway, and thinks of it as a musical rather than, as I do, as a reasonable person would, an oratorio. The suggestions I had were predicated on its being good, which it isn’t, but he shouldn’t let that stop him from trying to find a place for it in the great world. He read CMW and remarked it was lucky for me to have know since the beginning what I wanted to do with my life. Indeed, it was.  “Privilege” radiates from him every second, but to his credit he realizes and admits it. 

Getting back in touch with DB from Johns Hopkins. He said I was the “most elusive” grad student that year. I suppose I was. Maybe then I knew why, but I don’t now. Maybe those who know me would think me elusive to this day. I’m too elusive to ask.

Mother's Day

 

May 8, 2022

Bishop visits church. That ends in deviled eggs.

Mother’s Day. Mother has been gone since 1974.How accurate is my remembrance? I have tried to go behind the curtain. The first thing– and something I may not have understood before–is her profound privacy. Did anyone know what was in her heart? That I inherited from her in full measure. She was brave and moral. My father’s morality arose from fear of being caught in the wrong. That too I inherited from her, though with the addition of anger and sometimes brooding malice that was foreign to her. Her delicate health made it heroic for her to have a child, and then two. In this is the self-sacrifice of all mothers. When I think back I can conjure no moment when I am certain I gave her delight or satisfaction, and many, many that might have hurt her. As time went on, her husband was cruel to her. Did I make that up in any way? Did I ape his cruelty? I do not know. Not knowing is a dark weight in the heart. In horrible moments, I think of her dying on the operating table in Cleveland, and the thought in her head, Thank God. When was her life not sad? When could she not look at her brothers and cousins and see how things might have been for her? She was made for a different world, kinder, closer, natural, in contrast to the coldness she must have felt from us. I regret every time I argued with her. I was fighting so hard to be myself. My secrecy fought for room beside hers. I regret first among all regretted things that I did not see her before she died. I didn’t think she would die. It’s a victory that I weep for her almost half a century later. I pray that she had victories in her life that I knew nothing of.

 

May 7, 2022

Met a woman at the coffeeshop whose daughter graduates today (in creative writing) from UNCA. First Commencement in three years, and it’ll be plagued by chill and squally rain. They live in DC. Her daughter chose UNCA because it’s a hippie school in a hippie town and she could run free.” I wouldn’t have said that, but I see how someone would. 

The garden is perfection. 

 

May 6, 2022

Took a spade to the largest growth of bamboo sprouts in memory. Three days and I have to hack away like a jungle guide. Many of the shoots were as tall as I.. 

Voted at the West Asheville Library. It was quick, easy, but also an interesting experience. The moment I left my car I was mobbed by progressive demonstrators with placards and pamphlets, surrounded by people with whom I agreed, all of them thanking me for voting. I accepted a candidate recommendation form from the Sierra Club, and actually (if incidentally) found myself voting for everyone they suggested. One of the candidates for DA (an attractive young woman) was herself there among her supporters. All candidates for DA are Democrats, so I asked what separates her from the other candidate whose supporters had handed me information. She crept close and whispered in my ear, “My opponent is endorsed by the Police Benevolent Association.” That was all she needed to say. I didn’t recall knowing anybody there in the library parking lot, and I didn’t understand how they could have guessed my political inclinations so accurately. As I exited, the people sitting under the CONSERVATIVE sign asked me about my T-shirt. That was it. I had, quite unconsciously, worn my most leftist T-shirt, the one that calls for remembrance of the Black Wall Street calamity of 1921. They read my shirt as it were–and as they should-- a political autobiography. 

Intermittent & necessary rain. 

 

May 5, 2022

Magnetic cancels its next play (for which I had Friday tickets) and moves it to July, they say because of Covid.

Memorized madrigals and wrote two brief poems by the riverside. 

I have not had alcohol since April 30. Skipped the bar meeting after choir last night so as not to be tempted. 

F praising A Childhood in the Milky Way, which he read on Kindle. More talk of my work in two days than in full years erewhile. 

 

May 4, 2022

The Anniversary

Breakfast with the hearty breakfasters at 5 Points. It happens maybe twice a year, and that’s plenty. 

DB writes from Baltimore: 

Your latest book is a marvel, and I am considering writing a review for it, but also including references to your work as a whole. The Ones with Difficult Names possess some problems. You say it is not a collection of your latest books and you say it draws from poems written over decades.  It seems to me that the book strikes often a new note.  You seem to be writing by the seat of your pants.  There is an even greater freedom and audacity to some of these poems.  A much easier campy humor.  I think I can guess what are some of the older poems.  My guess is that they are the more formally controlled.  The other problem I face is identifying you in the tradition of other queer mystical poets such as Whitman, Crane, Robert Duncan or even William Blake.  You've been very careful in dealing with your sexuality in your poems, and I don't want to say anything that would disturb you.   I would be writing the review for the Gay and Lesbian Review.

I read your account of being in Hopkins.  We must have both taken Wasserman's course.  The course I was lost in was Holland's American Literature.  Reading five James novels in five weeks was impossible. I think I made it through only because I started therapy with a wonderful analyst.

 

May 3, 2022

My fortune cookie from a purchase of hot & sour reads “Ignore all previous fortunes.” 

Director DS wants to cut the word “Chinamen” from the script as being offensive. The line is uttered by Claire Clairmont in 1820. The best I could say was “I don’t want to fight about this one. Do what you will.” I remember how I fought Red Hen to keep “retard.”  We give ourselves lumbago virtue-signaling. One of my memories of Michael Yeats is his remarking that something or other didn’t have “a Chinaman’s chance,” then falling all over himself in correction when he noticed an actual Chinese person in the room. That was 40 years ago. 

Thinking hourly, nightly, about my father. This gives me a sense of disloyalty to my mother, but perhaps she’ll have her turn. My very first years were magical, and their magic had something to do with my father’s garden (which I have sought to reproduce ever since) and his inventiveness building an environment for us on Goodview Avenue. Something happened, some catastrophe that I either did not witness or put out of my remembrance, that ruined everything forever. Was it me? Was it something between husband and wife? I don’t know how I shall ever know. I though of this while he was alive, but couldn’t find a way to say, “What was it turned one of us, either you or me, into what we are?”

Thinking of the AVGMC concert, a mound of sexagenarians (at the least) warbling on about May-time and seizing the day. Not to be looked upon. . . . 

MJ writes of The Ones with Difficult Names: Thank you, David. I am finding your book utterly ravishing--expansive and surprising, yet burning into some naked fiery core of self-realization and recognition--kind of a holy book. Cheers and hats off 

Aconite

 

May 2, 2022

Yesterday’s gentle murk continues. I hadn’t planned gardening, but while it was yet cool morning I found myself outside, and at the end of it I’d finished all planned planting for the year. Much digging, clearing, weeding. Put into the ground sunflowers and aconite, the aconite in a barrel in the full shade recommended. A few seeds are left over, for which I will find a patch of likely ground somewhere in the world, that they may work out their destinies, but I am finished here. Sat in the garden afterward in such a soporific state it’s a miracle I moved at all. 

Gout reduced to a shadow. Because it never interfered with my life or work, or I was never distraught when deprived of it, I probably underestimated my alcohol intake. Only evenings, between last duty and sleep, but the bottles could empty fast. I find no particular gout risk factor in my life (being functionally a vegetarian right now) but that, so the first two days of May, at least, are teetotal days. I enjoy alcohol, enjoy the taste of the drinks and the way it makes me feel, but I think similar pleasure can be extracted with less volume. I did wake today unusually refreshed. I napped, during which I had a long dream that involved water and gardening and meeting a woman who lives on Tan Lane, where I lived in Exeter. 

May Day

 

May 1, 2022

Murky, clement May Day. This has been the worst day for the gout. I sat in church and heard my thoughts say of the pain, “I can’t stand it.” The Imp that listens to everything in the world replied “Oh? What are you going to do about it? You will stand it. You shall stand it.”  Even if I’d decided at that instant to end my life, I had no means of doing so, and would have to endure the pain every second while I sought one. It is better now, I having learned for the 5th or 6th time that plain aspirin is more effective than the prescribed pill. I looked up prednisone on line and one of the interesting side-effects was “inappropriate happiness.” 

Up in my study I can hear the neighborhood quite well, and often think something is happening in my yard that is actually a considerable distance away. I also, after recent events, suppose that random sounds are a bear trying to break in.