St. Stephan's Day

 

December 26, 2022

Home in gathering dark on Saint Stephan’s Day. Long, uneventful drives, except for about 100 miles each way fighting off drowsiness.  Drive home lengthened by an hour by backed-up traffic on 26. Pyramids have been built in less time than it has taken to widen that road. 

The growing family is well and happy. We don’t have the quarrels that TV sit-coms assign to American families, or if we do, I’m not part of them. Daniel and David are inseparable, and their wives are best friends. Daniel has bought a house three door from his brother. They are trying to make paradise, and so far are succeeding. Daniel gave me a sculpture of a road runner. Daniel called a color “gay,” and then drew me aside to apologize. Hope I established what a non-issue it was.  The happy dogs Luna and Scarlet made everybody smile. Linda and I talked about mom and dad until sadness stopped us. 

Christmas Eve service seemed somber, beautiful but remote, like a snow globe held at the end of the arm.  Maybe it was, maybe it was my mood. 

 

December 24, 2022

Christmas Eve

Sharp and bitter cold. The computer claims the temperature outside is 1. My windows are scenically frosted. The kitchen will be unliveable unless I bake. Water froze on the inside of the attic stained glass, which now drips into liquid in the southern sun. As this has been the Year of Incompetent Service, and as I saw no signs that they had actually “insulated” the furnace drain, I sort of figured it would freeze and shut down my furnace. As I must have observed in the past, I have a nine-month-old furnace which was improperly installed (perhaps improperly chosen) and which now heats fine on warm days and shuts off when it’s really cold because its drain pipe freezes. I tell this to the Champion lady on the phone and she says cheerily, “Yes, we have a couple of those.”  Lovely, darling, but what do you do about them? She began the sentence, “We have nobody available today, but tomorrow–” when I cut her off abruptly. The end of that was that sweet Tim was at my door in about 40 minutes. He confirmed my suspicions, and showed me the several ways in which the installation had been substandard. “Don’t even know the laws of physics, do they?” He seemed to be angry at the ineptitude, at least partially because it caused him to shamble through my yard on the coldest night of any year. There turns out to be a temporary work-around, whereby the furnace works but spits water into the dirt floor. That will have to do until they appear again today. Tim is my advocate, I believe. I gave him a box of pumpkin cookies. I can foresee today’s discussion. There are solutions, each forbidden by the “inspectors.” No inspector will ever look upon that furnace again in my lifetime, is my guess. I will have to test, once again, the advocacy of a steely “Do it!”

Slept badly, maybe from the turbulence of material matters. 

Maud in her cycles now sleeps with me. She takes a flying leap from wherever she is to land on the bed, which can be quite startling if you're in the same bed asleep. 

Evening: Tim’s final words last night was that he was going to get on everybody and shake thing up and get my furnace fixed today. Of course, though I stayed glued to the house anticipating it, no such thing happened. It makes me sorry to have this to think about on Christmas Eve. 

 

December 22, 2022

H sends a photo of herself surrounded by the flowers of a Florida Christmas. Had things been different I might have married her, and had things been exceptionally well, we might be married to this day. That would have been OK, from this side, for her expression is happy and fulfilled. A little old man with a little old lady on his arm. Almost inconceivable now. Not so much then. The first letter I wrote from my terrible room on Baltimore Street was to her, on stationery, I remember now, she had bought me. 

In a dream I decided that I’d get back to my academic career as an independent scholar. I prepared an article called “A Reading of Canto XX.” Looked at Canto XX when I woke. It deserves to be written about, the exultation of learning a vanished language (in this case, Provencal) and the sadness that at the beauty once expressed by it is now an echo, a fragment, a ghost.

Packet from the mortgage company containing a large check, as my escrow account was apparently over subscribed. My monthly payment goes down $200 a month next year. One receives caress as one receives the blow, marking them for any possible wisdom, moving on.

Winter

 

December 21, 2022

If winter come . . . .

Watched The Banshees of Inisherin. It’s about friendship and the end of it. You think that because it’s more casual and less needy than love that friendship need not die dramatically. But, sometimes it does. An ending to it seems more cruel, because the commitment had been less intense, and trespasses more easily forgivable. Z made up a story of how he was cutting back on his business and would not be accepting new appointments. I assumed there was more to it than that, but went along. Research reveals that he hasn’t cut back on his activities at all, but needed a gentle way to get rid of me. He was right. It was gentle. I think he could have just said, “I don’t want to see you anymore,” but my testimony for candor in this case is probably insincere. He expended effort getting away from me without making a big deal of it, and I’m grateful. I think back on T, who for twenty years was the most important person in my life. He started to change tables when we met at the café, or asked me to leave if Wind came in and they needed to talk “business.” The business was how to sell their idiotic film scripts. The last time I saw him was in the early days of the pandemic. It was in the post office, and he said, “You want to get together sometime?” “Yes” “Ok, I’ll call you.” Never did. Nor did I call him. He made very clear that I was no longer his preferred company. By the time it happened, the relationship was ready to fade. We used the same gesture of rejection each to our own ends. 

Redid an old painting. Light comes through it like stained glass. 

 

December 20, 2022

Baroque Christmas music. Sudden vivid memory: I’ve just arrived at Hiram as a freshman and the Baldwin Wallace music department is presenting an evening of Bach at Hayden Auditorium. I’ve never heard of Bach, and I ask someone about it and they can’t believe I’d never heard of Bach. I cross the street, attend the concert, and it changes my life. Is this a recollection or part of a dream? Can I really not have known Bach? I do remember what struck me was the antiquity of the music, as though it were the first ever in the world. The discovery of Renaissance and Gothic were further shocks. 

Fascinating vestry meeting, an old troublemaker up to her old designs. I express my wonder that people have the patience and energy to carry malice on through the long months. I’ve recognized the futility of many a battle, based on the fact that I just couldn’t keep enthusiasm up. 

Art beginning to pile up. Where will I store these paintings? How will I get them seen? 

L came to fix the closet door, explaining that, as the house is old and the floors no longer level, many things will be going awry. I asked “How much do I owe you?” and he said, “You gave me a truck.” He’s invited random people to my New Years party, effectively doubling attendance. That must be acceptable behavior somewhere way out West. 

ASCC rehearsal. I was alone on the 2nd bass part. I like that.

 

December 18, 2022

Finished the revision of Jason. 

Cold sinks in from the west. I’ll spend the next four months shivering. 

 

December 17, 2022

Revising, waiting for paint to dry to finish my Granny Smiths.

As for the revising, so much of it is finding alternatives to “to be.” This includes my reflexive use of the form “he was driving” rather than the simpler, and almost always better, “he drove.”  Part is putting in contractions where more formal expression had been. Part is seeing how many little words can be cut from a line and still maintain my rhythm. I can be elliptical. Many passages have to be filled out as to meaning even as they’re being reduced as to diction. I explain the wrong things, and cut long paragraphs while asking myself why I thought anyone would need to know that. 

The absolute joy of being assured I don’t have rehearsal this morning.

 

December 15, 2022

Rain. More rain. Considering that half the country lies under five feet of snow, we don’t complain

Stopped by Metro Wines, where the clerk was a woman whose wedding I conducted by lakeside a few years back. I asked if the marriage had worked, and she admitted that it had not. I wanted to say “not my fault,” but, of course, she hadn’t blamed me. 

Caught myself spinning my wheels on old grievances, unfinished quarrels, unhealed affronts. Prayed the spontaneous prayer, “Lord, grant that I not  be such a petty fuck.” .

DJ and I at Rye Knot taking advantage of a minuscule price reduction. 

 

December 14, 2022

Actually writing this on the 15th, having deleted this day’s entry before saving it. I recall writing about the stab of grief I felt when Conrad’s stocking fell out of the ornament box. Rehearsing for the Chamber Choir concert. A good selection. SS proposes a reading of Ben & Angela.

 December 13, 2022

In a Christmas greeting mood, looked up my old address book. The first six people in it are dead. 

Spent $100 on Christmas ornaments in Biltmore Village. Not even sorry. 

Jason of the Apes thawing like a glacier. 

Brightest and Best

 

December 12, 2022

Clear morning. “There Is No Rose” at All Souls Sunday morning, then the 2nd helping of AVLGMC in the afternoon. The crowd was huge–about capacity– and our success was, I think, definitive. Joyful exercise to be singing. People weeping in the house during “Salvation is Created.” Me weeping during “Brightest and Best.” Lower level of drama than usual. Maybe that was part of our success. Came home and set up the Christmas tree, a rather odd and scraggly thing by day, but magical by night. Drank freezing vodka, fed Maud bits of ham, watched TV by Christmas light. 

Several people at the concert commented on how young and well I look. I say it’s better to look well than to feel well, so–

Easing now toward night. I walked a little along the Parkway, went to the Folk Art Center and bought a tree ornament in the shape of a banjo. 

Concert

 December 10, 2022

AVLGMC Christmas Concert at Grace Covenant Presbyterian, whose pastor was creepily insistent on sharing her pronouns. The program was well chosen, and right in the sweet spot that utilizes the best of our talents. I watched the faces of the crowd, and they were joyful. Made me joyful, as such an event hasn’t in a long time. My usual reaction to the end of a chorus season is relief. A thing well accomplished.

Jason

 

December 9, 2022

Perceived needful revision of Jason, a joyful proposition that eased some stiff place in my heart, that knew something was wrong but not exactly where. A flow of honey.

 

December 8, 2022

Trying to think why so many of my old paintings were dark. Dark makes everything more dramatic. The images I see in my head have often to with the night. 

Dress rehearsal for AVLGMC considerably less grueling than usual. Our theatrical sensibility has always been lacking. When we bother at all we mistake camp for theatrical sensibility. The singing doctors have a rendition of “O Holy Night” that tries one’s patience half way through. But, one bright bell in the holiday chorus. 

Haircut

 

December 7, 2022

Pearl Harbor.

Warnock wins in Georgia, but one is dismayed nevertheless by the slim margin of victory. A million and a half people are willing to vote for a man whose first trait is violence and whose second is stupidity. Trump started a trend for voting for the worst person imaginable as a kind of satanic jeu-d’esprit. 

Finished Lake Powhatan.

Felt my spirit backing away from the extra rehearsals planned for the Chamber Chorus. I’m retired and I have no time. This week the worst of it is over. 

Finished a revision of Nighthawks.

Got a fairly radical haircut. 

Footsteps

 

December 6, 2022

The mystery of who was making big-animal sounds on the roof (I feared for I while UNDER the roof) was solved when I went out to see a turkey rampant on the porch roof. His neck was stretched toward the horizon, as though he were using that high point to plot a route. How a turkey on the roof manages to sound like an intruder stomping up the stairs is not yet known. 

The editor of APR saw my Fairy Tale poem on Facebook and asked to have it for the next edition. That is a record: sketch to publication in one day. 

Walked along the river in light rain. 

 

December 5, 2022

Began the day with a trip to the Y. My body hurt in so many and various places and ways I thought I’d take a gamble that it was lack of use, and I was right. A man with an artificial leg was shooting baskets. He was so smooth and adept I didn’t realize he had an artificial leg until I noticed another one, maybe his not-for-the-gym one, leaning against the wall.

Wrote a poem about throwing poetry magazines away.

Painted on Lake Powhatan.

Lay on the bed half-napping, listening to Christmas music. 

A productive, and therefore a happy, day.

Cookies

 December 4, 2022

Lessons & Carols in the AM. Brought my cookies to the church kitchen. 

Still in baking mode, took some cannabis butter that’s been lying in the freezer for several years, and used it to make chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t know how to measure the butter, so my cookies pack a major wallop. I didn’t eat even one, but just the leftover batter off the spoons and I was–and am– flying. Reminds me of Amsterdam. My body is registering no pain or inflammation, which was the original point. Many typos, though, to go back and correct. 

 

December 3, 2022

Baked pumpkin cookies, a double recipe. 

 

December 2, 2022

Some gentle haunting may be underway. Garden tools I’d stacked against the house were scattered across the lawn this morning. As I wrote, I heard very distinct and unmistakable footsteps on the attic stairs, and not Maud’s velvet touch. I got up to look and there was nothing. 

Watching muted truck crash videos to the music of Josquin Des Pres. 

 

December 1, 2022

Hauled books to Malaprop’s to be sold on consignment. They ordered the easier-to-get ones on their own. This could have been done years ago, but I— have no excuse. Played a little downtown while delivering the books. Homeless in every bit of shelter. It would seem to me that of human afflictions this would be very nearly the easiest one to remedy. Had a neck and back massage from a Chinese guy at the Mall, from which I came feeling like a new man. Compared to most of the masseurs I’ve employed, this guy was brutal, but brutal has, in some senses, always suited me. 

Infuriating rehearsal. 

 

November 30, 2022

Great things happening in China and Iran. 

Painting like mad. Fluid and unexpected.

 

November 28, 2022

Early morning at the Toyota dealership, getting all things made right, including a nail taken out of a tire. They send you a video of your car, with someone narrating the particulars of the overhaul. They remarked repeatedly on my low mileage, insinuating that I never drive. My insistence that I do seemed not to move them. My service manager was an extremely lovely young lady with red, red hair. 

Brief walk in the forest off the Parkway. My heel hurt, so it was not as long as I planned. Wind blew, but the forest seemed very silent. I keep forgetting that the Parkway runs along the tops of mountains, so naturally wildlife will be sparse. Only the ravens really want to live that high.