Feast of the Nativity

 

December 25, 2023

Feast of the Nativity

Gathering in Alpharetta, the growing clan and a few friends. Recipients seemed to like the paintings I brought as gifts. Drove back into the mountains in time for our Christmas Eve service, which ended a little after midnight this morning. The service seemed lovely, but solemn, a very Episcopal celebration. The bishop had fun whirling the thurible about. I was in good enough voice. Moon moving toward full. Vodka when I got home, because I couldn’t sleep. Santa passed me over again. But it’s all right. 

Learned I can drive to Atlanta and back on less than a tank of gas. Being one who fills the tank whenever the needle hits 1/4, I’d never put it to the test. 

Worked on The Riding Fun House, baked molasses spice cookies, listened to carols on the radio.  Listened to our Christmas Eve performance on You Tube. I never know what to think about our sound. It’s probably affected in some way by position or recording apparatus, but to me it’s a little disappointing. The trebles sound aged and wobbly. The uncertain places are not the result of practice or direction, but deficiencies, I think, of individual voices, which in a volunteer organization cannot be helped. Great rain for the Nativity. 

 December 23, 2023

Hilton Hamilton “Curio” in Alpharetta. Driving was horrendous. Two dead stops for traffic accidents on 85, neither of which appeared to have produced injuries or fatalities. Too many cars, too many traveling at once, and I but adding to it. If asked what holiday gift I most wanted all my life I would say, “not to travel on Christmas.” What have I done for fifty years? Traveled on Christmas. Sweet day despite all. The jacket I brought is too heavy. Wandered little downtown Alpharetta. “Fragile” was the unexpected word that seemed to describe it all. Hosted my own little party in the hotel bar, J, L, J, D abd I, which was more festive and jolly than could have been anticipated. Good start to Christmas.

 

December 22, 2023

Ended the longest night with a trip to the Y and a brisk work-out. 

Call from Wells Fargo. One J B–unknown to me– wrote himself a check on my account for $4632+.  He must have intercepted a check at the mailbox. This may explain why credit cards have been reporting missed payments when I never allow such a thing. One suspects the mailman. Who else has access? I wonder how it’s done, though one probably can’t ask. 

Very strange: I’ve brimmed more with the “Christmas Spirit”–whatever that might actually be– than at any time since I was a kid. I listen to Christmas music for hours, paintbrush in hand, perfectly happy. I sit beside the lit tree thinking– who knows? Peaceful and expectant. It’s sweet. I’ll stop trying to explain it. 

Bach Christmas Oratorio. 

Much praised on Facebook for a painting of the French Broad at the Solstice, that took me one evening to do. It painted itself, though I don’t know how to explain that so it doesn’t sound like a wisecrack. In writing, too, speed– or at least dispatch– has been the mark of doing it right. I pay for that with the agony of publication. Which way would I have rather had it? 

Longest Night

 

December 21, 2023

Solstice, cold and bright. I went to the riverside determined to write, and I did. Concentration allowed me to ignore the cold, which lessened, anyway, minute by minute as the sun climbed. A woman carried her cat to the bank and let him play in the shallows. Her dog, in a white jacket, followed. The dog greeted me briefly, sat by me, maybe because I hogged the best patch of sun. Geese floated on the far side, as did a dark bird I could not identify (damn these glasses) which moved with amazing speed without taking to the air. Something in that tableau opened the door to deep and for the most part unidentifiable grief. I crossed the river and climbed high into the dry, broken woods and wept. The cat was part of it. I miss my cats. I will be alone this Christmas for the first time in thirty-five years. But beyond that– desolation, isolation, futility beyond all cats. I sat in the wilderness where I could howl my spirit out without detection. Could hardly make it back to the car for exhaustion afterward. Still haven’t figured it out. My emotions were beyond my own understanding. They were bigger than I. Some cleansing power of the Solstice, perhaps. At the very depth, at the dark place beneath the darkest place, I hear my voice crying out please. . . please. . . please.  That the Lord will not answer is the stumbling block to all my faith. 

French Christmas music from the Internet.

 December 20, 2023

Darkening toward the Solstice.

Went to Marquee on Foundry Street to see if my application for a space has gained traction. R, the owner, didn’t seem to think that my work would be a good fit there. He didn’t say that, but, if I interpreted correctly, it was the vibe he gave out. In any case, no spaces were open– so he said–and I’ll be contacted when there are. Or not. I argued to myself that there were plenty weirder productions than mine. The space isn’t right for me, being just one step up from one of those tacky antiques malls where every redneck rents a stall, but I’m not sure what else to do. It’s a small commitment and small expenditure, so I hope it happens, if only to thin out the mass of artwork gathering in my attic. My gifts, though in some ways considerable, have never been especially crowd pleasing. I write books nobody wants to read, plays that nobody wants to see, paint paintings that only very peculiar people would want on their walls. I think of turning my energies to more poplar ways of doing things, but that would be worse, especially if it didn’t work. 

Lunch at Twelve Bones in cold, clear winter light. Most restaurant servings are too large for me these days. 

Massive restructuring of my portfolio.

Last night sitting in my living room and at times today I realized that I was happy, the happiness an underlying harmony that specific things being wrong did not compromise. 

Fifteen Thousand

 

December 19, 2023

To the Y early, early in the shocking cold. Something had dragged the egg shells away from where I put them in the garden. Something trying to subsist on empty egg shells in this bitter weather put pity into my heart. 

Signed on to my aol account after several years. Fifteen thousand unread messages. . . .ten of which may have been direct and personal to me. 

Another David Hopes– David Terence Hopes– is a physician in Plymouth, UK. Attractive man with a gentle voice.

Vestry: M used our time (for the 7th or 8th time) to weep over something happening in her life. Weeping garbled her speech so that I never knew what it was this time. 

Trump excluded (for the moment) from the Colorado ballot. The test of whether we are actually a government of laws and the Constitution is if Trump ends up in prison. If he does not, the way to every bully and strongman stands open. Where is our Lincoln? Is it Jack Smith?

Revery

 December 18, 2023

Vaughan-Williams wafting up from the device in the kitchen.

Baking disaster. Probably over-adapted one of those antique recipes that actually calls for oleo. Should have seen it coming, as something went wrong at every stage of the process. 

Places north and east of us sustained a terrible storm last night. Maybe the mountains protect us. But one of my dreams was of buying a house whose roof leaked. The other was getting back an item– a huge black watering can, I think– which TD had stolen from me. 

Amazed by the time my mind spends reviewing memories, most of them disturbing or disappointing, about wrongs I failed to right or actions of mine that time showed to be. . . or hinted might have been-- hurtful. Perhaps this is Purgatory, though whatever wisdom is meant to come out of repentance is diluted by the fact that, for the most part, given the information I had, I could not have done otherwise. Someone was in need, and I gave all, informed later, to the distant cackle of a mischievous universe, that it was not what was needed at all. 

        These things turning in my head, are they punishment or information? If information, how can they be used now that everyone else involved is gone?

Painted a quirky still-life. 

Studying Italian again. 

I think of nights when my family went out and I begged and begged to be left home, and when I was allowed, I stared at the Christmas lights in extended revery. I made them into roads and distant cities, intending somehow to walk there. Secret in my heart is the fact that I do the same these nights in a different century. Blessings for that, in any case. 

 

December 17, 2023

S’s birthday party last night in West Asheville. Crowded, convivial– the rest of Virginia Ave, though, dark and empty, a Christmas haunting. After that to the Cathedral to hear the newly re-named group, A, sing the most purely I have heard outside of Cambridge. Tone like a shimmer of silver. 

Bitter rain.

Forlorn photographs of the Magnetic, now empty of all its equipment and theatrics. 

Gibbons’ “This Is the Record of John,” which I remember from the Saviour in Syracuse as beyond magical. Looked up the Saviour on the Internet: now a “chapel,” whatever that means, and whose interior has been modernized into unrecognizability, from the angles provided.

Nimmo's Quay

 

December 15, 2023

Y before dawn. Hardest workout since I wandered back to the gym. Teenage girls on Christmas break apparently just wandering about. 

Finished the revision of Nimmo’s Quay. 

Ate salad.

Found a reason not to go to the theater.

 December 14, 2023

Y in the dark before dawn, Venus glittering like a great jewel high in the east. Less the beauty than the simple manliness of men is what attracts me. Tried to make a donation, but the counter lady didn’t know how to take it. “Oh, I’ve been on vacation and our computers ave been down and I just don’t know how to catch up.” I walked away. What an odd, un-institutional kind of shortcoming. Lunch with SS to discuss the local theater scene. It has always been a disaster. Today’s is just one version of it. He’s more anxious about making a point and getting to it cleanly than I am. I’m happy to wend my way.

A God in the Waters

 

December 12, 2023

Reading of A God in the Waters here last night. Never winced, never thought O My God Why Did I Say That– in short, was entirely pleased. The play is nearly perfect in my ear, but what that means in the great world is impossible to say. It is all of a piece, descended from the same vision, unlike some things that get cobbled together out of bits and pieces. I wonder if other people can tell which is which. Quite good readers. I wondered how they kept from inspecting the Christmas trees, as I would have done. 

Vast pot of vegetable soup turns out to be bland. In goes half a bulb of garlic. 

Hayden at the UC of C

Auditioned on invitation for a February show at Magnetic. The plot is ludicrous, and when I asked for clarification they said, “it’s a farce.” They’ll be unhoused then, so I don’t know where this show will be, and didn’t ask. The set for their last show in their space is covered with naked bodies and glitter. K begged me to come to it, so I suppose all will unfold anon. 

 

December 10, 2023

Winter rain. The car was rifled last night. There wasn’t much to steal, but they made off with two packs of gift wrap (leaving one) and made a mess. Left expensive binoculars behind. Considering how seldom I leave the car unlocked, either the thief was hugely lucky or sneaks in often enough to find exactly those occasions. The car was parked practically behind the house, so the intruder was bold. Will move the camera to face that way. Just after the robbery discovery, I was donning vestments in order to impersonate Saint Nicholas for the Sunday School, as I have many times past, but not recently. I think I did well, and though it is a cause of anxiety, I enjoyed it in the moment and after. Many faces gazing up at me in what might be interpreted as wonder.

Tried to relate an anecdote to J concerning our time together at a pub in London. He said, “We have never been in England together.” With some difficulty I dragged out the remembrance of the summer we spent teaching at Lucy Cavendish in Cambridge. He said, “I have almost no memories of that.” Not everyone inhabits their memories the way I do, apparently.  

 

December 9, 2023

Woke in a rage, rolling over on my mind every affront I’ve suffered in the last half century. You wonder where my mind was the moment before waking.

Cold winter rain, Medieval Spanish music. 

 

December 7, 2023

Pearl Harbor. No planes in the sky here, nothing but cool robin’s egg blue.

Bought my ticket to Minneapolis. That die is cast. Buying the ticket was an ordeal which I did not endure cheerfully, until discovering that I had filled a form out wrong and caused it all. 

Sat by the river watching two little boys and their dad play.

Went to campus for the first time since retirement– only because I was having a bathroom emergency and it had the closest one. 

Dinner with DJ in an empty restaurant. Quizzed about our meals by the owner who had nothing else to do. Impressed by the vulnerability of having to rely on an electronic chair to get around. The least mishap is life-threatening. 

 

December 6, 2023

Greek Orthodox chants.

Found missing decorations two feet to the right of where I looked for them. Sobbed, as I always do, when I found Conrad’s tiny stocking. Conrad was the Christmas kitty. When he was sick I’d sleep in the living room with him curled against my chest, so he could enjoy the Christmas tree lights as long as he was alive. The cloth Santa and wreath Bonnie Lundblad gave to me. 

Listened to the tape of the GMC concert. It is good. I mean, good without making excuses. I am the least attractive person on the risers. 

When I was young– maybe four– my parents were told I was about to die, so they wanted to give me an adventure, so we went on a train from Akron to Youngstown. I remember it vividly–the train itself, the downtown hotel with a view of a city different from my own but somehow the same, the attentive people in the lobby, my own private tiny suitcase, the excitement I caused by throwing my socks out the window. What I don’t remember was if it was Christmas time, or did I just happen to think of it now. 

M publishes photos of himself and his children on Facebook to announce–subtly– that A is now out of the picture. 

 

December 5, 2023

Began the day at the Y. Seeing faces from before the Pandemic.

Re-wrote my St. Nicholas piece for next Sunday.

Read through N/R’s new poem. She is my first student ever who is a better poet than I am. 

 

December 4, 2023

Clear light from the east.

Tumultuous days. I’ll likely omit details that seemed important at the time.

Advent Lessons and Carols Saturday afternoon, amid the activities of A Dickens Christmas in the Village. Sweet service. My reading of “the Lamb” seems to have struck a chord. Rushed from All Souls to Grace Presbyterian to do our evening concert for GMC. I was better than at rehearsal, perhaps a solid “B.” my legs hurt so bad by the time we left the stage that I wondered if I should give up performing. I looked like Frankenstein’s monster tottering down from the risers. Many errors in the rows behind me, voices carrying through rests, coming in measures early. I’m on record as thinking the repertoire was, with a few exceptions, without quality and without imagination, which did not prevent it from being an apparent hit. My theory is that if you serve gourmet or carnival hot dogs people will eat and enjoy, so you might as well go with a little nourishment. It matters to the cooks if not to the consumers. That seems to be no one else’s theory. How certain people became experts on what draws a crowd is a mystery to me. . . though I must admit, after Ben and Angela, I can claim no expertise there either. I do know that aiming at the lowest common denominator is, in art, eventually, an error. The Sunday afternoon version was better, and I give myself a B+, still coping with an iffy mucousy voice. Many familiars in the audience. Afterwards we retired, almost en masse, to Rye Knot. R’s gossip setting was at boil, and at close range, around the restaurant table, I was able to hear some of the rant that perpetuates certain wry conceptions of our history. Uncharacteristically, I determined to set the record straight, and there was a little back and forth. R must realize on some level that everything he says is bullshit, so it didn’t rise to a quarrel. He libeled M, calling him homophobic because he doesn’t list us on his table of achievements. He doesn’t because we treated him abominably. Why honor a wretched experience? Wand B forced him out with unwavering opposition. I’d have kept my mouth shut had new members not been at the table, liable to be swayed by the flood of effluvia. 

In Denver we sang a set of sea chanteys that were widely noted and admired. R rolled his eyes and asked, “I want to know what do old-time sea-songs have to do with the experience of gay life in the mountains?” Was he just blabbering, or do people really think that the only art worthwhile is that which reflects the awful narrowness of their own experience? What about their aspirations?  What WOULD reflect the experience of gay life in the mountains? And, living it, why would we think of the repetition of it as entertainment? It’s a wonder Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are popular, as they reflect no conceivable person’s actual experience. I’m angrier about it now than I was in the moment, probably because now I’m sure I’m right. 

Knowing how meagerly he is employed, I wanted to pay for S’s dinner, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without looking like I was paying for S’s dinner.

Quite early to bed. A solid ten hours all at once, unusual to me, who usually supplement short nights with huge naps. 

Late morning by the river, pristine with winter. Wrote a poem. 

 December 1, 2023

Y first thing in December. A homeless boy had his things gathered around him on the outside bench. They called the cops on him.

Sat in the freezing rain at Starbuck’s and watched the traffic on Charlotte Street.

Dress rehearsal for GMC last night. I did as badly as I’ve ever done, fighting my voice, never knowing when a note would come and when it would not, anxiety and exhaustion making me inattentive and, to my section, not very helpful. On the other end, a three hour rehearsal is inexcusable. Standing in one place for extended periods of time will not be part of my future. 

When I return at night and my headlights light up the back yard, I see the white zig-zag of the tails of startled rabbits. 

Background: Die Kunst der Fuge

 

November 30, 2023

Made vegetable soup. Worked on a play. Fought off drowsiness from cold medication. 

TN has died. Shane McGowan is dead.

November 29, 2023

Decided to touch up L&J’s painting after I got it back from the framer. Had to reach under the plastic wrap to do it. 

Growled through rehearsal. Mucus in the throat is the one thing that cannot be powered through. 

He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. 

 

November 28, 2023

Robert Szeligo has died.

UNCA appoints its new chancellor, the first it ever had that I did not serve under. Gynocracy has failed repeatedly for that institution, a lesson it ignores, unless assuring failure was the point, as evidence would lead one to assume. 

Power Tools for Women

 

November 27, 2023

Annual realization that the fog in my throat is caused by dryness. Annual conclusion that a humidifier is too much mess and probably won’t work. 

Bought a drill at Citizens’ Hardware. Betty chose the right tool for me, and then said that she would have included me in her Power Tools for Women course if I had wanted. 

O Tannenbaum

 

November 26, 2023

Without actually planning to do so, I set up the Christmas trees. Rearranged the living room to get the big tree in front of a window, so it looks like somebody lives here. One outcome of the absence of cats now is that doors may be closed–and thus spaces used– in ways they would not have tolerated. I am in the best shape for climbing the stairs with burdens and the like since I moved here. 

 

November 25, 2023

Brutalizing myself for being idle, then realizing that I’ve written a poem and painted two paintings today. The events seem disconnected, somehow. 

Voice still froggy.

 

November 24, 2023

The Y was smelly this morning. It usually isn’t. A murder of crows screamed in the parking lot. You looked around to see what had agitated them.

Vowed not to shop on Black Friday; nevertheless, brought home $100 worth of birdseed. 

Sat by the river in the afternoon, drinking my limeade and remembering things past. Wrote a little. Thought I saw shovelers on the far side of the river, but I couldn’t get a sufficiently precise image. 

I miss my cats so much. I think I see Maud approaching from the corner of my eye. I feel a tangle in the bed and make sure not to kick it lest it be a sleeping cat. 

Thanksgiving

 

November 23, 2023

Thanksgiving, me thankful that I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything in particular.

Nevertheless, before 9 AM I’d cleaned out the leaf and stick debris in the pond, cleaned out the Jurassic muck from the pond pump filter, cleaned out and discarded the free weights that lived several years at 62 and at 51 since I moved in and were used once in all that time, stowed the garden tools in the tool shed for the winter. Little paw prints of raccoons decorated the dust in the tool shed, which they had tumbled and disordered like unruly children. Watched a little of the Macy’s Parade, and a little of the Asheville Christmas parade, which was actually better, more interesting, considerably less appalling. AVLGMC looked. . . confused. . . but nobody will remember. 

 

November 22, 2023

Schlep from one “extra” rehearsal to another. Because “there are only so many weeks until” this or that performance, because “We can’t lose Thanksgiving week.” Maybe somebody should have planned better.

Vacuumed my office/studio for the first time ever. 

D sends me what appears to be a bag of vacuum lint. I phone and remember that I asked him to send me seeds from his ironweed. I got an entire flowerhead.

The anniversary of the first public chaos in my memory. Alas, not the last. On the 23rd a wreath-making event was scheduled at Emmanuel Church. We all still went, twisting nuts and pine cones onto frames with wire, but nobody knew what to say. 

 

November 21, 2023

From JD on Facebook: The best humanities lecture I ever heard in my life was you talking about Godzilla and the metaphor of America. Seriously changed my life, thank you. All the other lectures sucked. Yours was absolutely f****** brilliant.

 

November 20, 2023

Y first thing. The hour of Amazons. Stopped at Starbucks afterwards. Sat outside watching the traffic on Charlotte Street, thinking God knows what. Tried to put my waste in a plastic bag lying just outside the door. A kid sitting at one of the outdoor tables said, “Hey! That’s my bag!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought it was trash.”

After that there was no recovery. I wanted to give the kid money, but anticipated the response, “What makes you think I want money, you old perv?” Nothing for it but to walk on. 

Continually amazed at how little dream life references waking life, how thoroughly independent they seem to be. Last night one dream had me in an iffy urban neighborhood, with some glamorous sections and some downtrodden sections. I seemed to be a mediator of some kind, keeping various gangs from wiping one another out. At one point I befriended a young girl, who was the girlfriend or perhaps property of a man (MM, actually) who may have been her pimp. I saw her crying on the street and she said MM wouldn’t let her eat because she had disobeyed in some way. I took her to a restaurant, intending to buy her a meal. The people at the restaurant said they couldn’t seat us unless we proved that our financial situation was equal, unless the girl could prove she had money or credit cards in her pocket, which of course she had not. I realized this was a way to curb prostitution in the establishment, but it still seemed unfair. The dream ended with me arguing with the manager, threatening, I think, to put her out of business. Waking, even if I were casting about for matter for a story, I would never have thought of that.

Reading of A God in the Waters cancelled for tonight. 

This month’s electric bill is twice last month’s. I assume it’s the heater that lets the studio be habitable. 

 

November 19, 2023

Cloud of bluebirds in my yard when I left for church. 

Listened to our rendition of “Steal Away” on the Internet this afternoon. Almost perfect. 

Read Wilde and Lord A Douglas on R’s invitation at P, a throng of old guys who get together for society and, apparently, a program. The program was distended by R’s having to lecture widely and wildly at ever lacuna. There were six readers. We were told to take ten minutes each. I took ten. The others ranged from twenty to forty minutes.  I wondered if I wanted to join the group. I’m  bad at chit-chat, which is what most of that sort of thing is. Maybe I’d be better if I practiced. Some faces not seen in a long while. The idea of my natural society being now old gay men is more than a little horrifying. 

Venison

 

November 18, 2023

Coffee with my ex-student, now craving advice about graduate school and Johns Hopkins. I didn’t recognize the student at first because in 2017 he was a boy and now she is a girl. The name changed too, but as she didn’t remind me of it, I assumed all that had been left behind. Some research revealed it was R. Trans-sexuality baffles me, but one doesn’t know what questions one is permitted to ask. He was a beautiful, Grecian boy. She is a rather alarming woman, the face too broad and too like porcelain. The Goth look adds to the alarming affect. He always preferred girls, so a transition makes him a lesbian. This is so odd to me that I must conclude it’s ignorant to think that sexual preference has anything to do with trans-sexuality. She said that the hyper-masculinity of the LA rock scene turned her off so much she decided to go as far the other direction as possible. Is that it? An aesthetic choice? One might have stopped at androgeny. The poems she showed me made better sense when I went online and looked up the band he used to front in LA. The person in those videos was dynamic, torch-y, elfin, passionate, Olympian, every inch a star. I’m not sure an MFA program is the turn I would have recommended for that extraordinary soul, but the journey is not mine. 

The lady at the Woodfin liquor store related at some length the false charges to her Amazon debit card. 

Cooked venison for the first time, in a stew. Venison relates to vegetables in a whole different way from pork and beef. 

Views of Mount Pisgah

 

November 16, 2023

Watched a movie late last night, Design for Living from a play by Noel Coward– 1933, I think. I mention it because it was smart and witty and has the best first scene of any movie in the world, without, so far as I could tell, a single special effect. Don’t recall Miriam Hopkins from before, but she was sharp. That’s what I call a script. Besides the fact that two men prefer each other to the girl, but can’t, by the weight of a whole culture, say so. Incredibly, I saw one of its stars, Edward Everett Horton, live on stage at the Kenley Players in The Fantastiks at least thirty three years later.

Began my day at the Y, wherefore I felt fantastic, until late afternoon when the flux came upon me. That improves by the hour. Possibly I ate the pork lo mein after too many days in the fridge. 

Finished Three Views of Mount Pisgah, though there will be details and touch-ups. 

Your Student

 

November 15, 2023

A nasturtium still puts forth four sun-colored blooms in the shelter of the magnaflora magnolia.

Email: Dr. Hopes,I'm not sure if you'll remember me, though you certainly left your mark on me and my writing some years ago when I took your Intro to Creative Writing at UNCA in the fall of 2017. I recall you, after finding out that I was only 16, talking about the lineage of great prodigies in poetry and saying "there was Ezra Pound, then me, and now I suppose there's you." Since then, I changed my name, chased passions across many state lines, and, after a number of artistic and personal detours, I am finally completing my Bachelor's through Arizona State's online program (graduating in the spring).

I've been looking into applying to the Poetry M.F.A. program at Johns Hopkins, among others. Seeing as you went there, I wondered if you might be willing to let me buy you a meal or a coffee and ask you a few questions about the school and my portfolio.

All the best,

NRH

Your Student

Paint & Poetry

 

November 14, 2023

Emptied the last sacks of dirt and mulch, finished with the garden except for a few loads of fallen leaves I want to dump on the new tulip beds. Painting ferociously. When I’m painting I’m not very much interested in writing. When I’m writing I have no impulse to paint. Do the disciplines fight it out somewhere inside my head to see who rules the coming week? The hiatus I gave to painting after 2019 has been miraculous. The fastest way to describe the difference would be the intuition to accept happy accidents. Second, to stare at the canvas long enough to understand what it wants to bear. Since then, so image that I really wanted to make has resisted me. 

Good enough

 

November 13, 2023

The concert went off well, I suppose (from the front is not the best place to judge). Admired K's attention to every detail, his radar alight when anything goes wrong. I wondered if my faculties are as alive to my own disciplines, and I sadly conclude, probably not. In my writing I can enforce perfection, as I see it in the moment, but in collaborative efforts such as theater I often decline to let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.  I thought as I looked out into the gray crowd there couldn’t be much they actually liked other than the Brahms. I ended up liking the Bardos quite well, and even sing it as I walk. T played some difficult (they sounded difficult) modern organ pieces. I could find something to admire in each one, but nothing really to like. Is “modern” concert music destined to be unlikeable? It seems to have rather taken a vow not to please, pleasing being somehow contrary to advanced political aesthetic. Will our ears someday attune to it, as they have to others who presumably jarred expectation when they first were heard? I think likely not. Music written on an impulse not specifically musical cannot succeed. Big J and my companion D– on whom I depended for correct pronunciation– were both absent. I croaked like a frog for the most part, though the sopranos in front of us were kind and said we sounded great. Limped home on my preposterous legs. 

Concert

 

November 12, 2023

Cold late autumn drizzle-dawn. 

Five hours of rehearsal two days before a concert is not a good idea, crossing over at some point from the unhelpful to the destructive. My voice was gone when I rose this morning. I was weighing ways to say “I can’t make it to the concert; you’ve rehearsed me to death,” but as the hours go the voice clears, and with more tea it may be well enough. J, the big Argentine bass who sat mute beside me during King David (still accepting, I bet, his $200) does possess a beautiful voice, and a vast one. He missed most rehearsals and for various reasons (he doesn’t read music, listens to others until he gets it) didn’t sing much during the other ones. Yesterday he was present in might. He sang maybe every fourth phrase, but when he did it was not the piano or pianissimo indicated by the score but a blast of trumpets, carried out considerably past the cut-off so the full glory of it could resonate in the space. Our director, who never met a mistake he didn’t grind into a pulp, obsessively triaged those places as though we’d never sung them before.None of this will bother me tomorrow.

Darkness

November 10, 2023

Cool drizzle after weeks of extended summer.

Cancelled my trip to the beach, for no particular reason other than that I thought it was, somehow, the wrong time. 

Driving home after rehearsal last night, I realized that all was dark from a certain point north. No streetlights, no traffic signals, just buildings and corners rendered unfamiliar by the sweeping lamps of cars. Home loomed profoundly dark. My unreadiness for such an event was made clear to me, being without a usable flashlight and with only one candle in the house. But I managed to pour myself a hefty vodka and make it to the front porch, where I discovered I had been given one of the loveliest nights of my life, soft and purplish, but lit by the city lights southward under the clouds so that every detail of the landscape was, if rich and strange, discernible. I longed for a bear to share the porch, but that did not happen. I sat the while in a kind of ecstasy, joyful and worshipful, wondering what small thing– or perhaps a power failure is a large thing after all– could turn life around. I poured out my spirit like a fountain. Silence came with darkness, and holiness with silence. Wondrous beautiful to me, for perhaps an hour. When the lights came on it was jarring. The streetlight at the end of my drive pounded white and solar and almost unbearable across the grass. 

The blackout was caused, it is rumored, by a drunken or otherwise disoriented driver taking out a utility pole in front of McDonald’s. 

Huge rehearsal at First Baptist. I’m not the asset in this concert that I sometimes am. I hear the men on either side of me pronouncing Hungarian and Slovak at 50 miles an hour . . . .

 

 

November 9, 2023

Watched husky workers out at the riverside setting up Christmas trees of lights. I long to see them lit, now. I longed to see the night creatures by their light. 

 

November 8, 2023

Some animal scurries on the roof as I write. 

Good session by the river this morning. Wrote from a heart that looks more, sometimes, like Shelley’s than my own. 

C says she dreamed of me in a glorious suit of clothes, and that I swept her off her feet to a new life in California. She should warn her husband that she has options. 

 

November 7, 2023

Some mulch must yet be spread, but other than that, gardening’s done for the year. Dug a bed out of the tangles at the north edge of the lawn and planted fifty tulip bulbs. Transplanted peony and iris that found themselves in the shade. Thought the defeat of the honeysuckle vines during the winter is something that might be achieved. 

Venus in my western window, guarding the night.

Planting

 

November 6, 2023

Great gardening day, in summer warmth. Dug and planted and mulched. Transplanted the white iris to enlarge the front peony bed. Planted tree peonies, transplanted those damaged in the process. Blue anemone. Narcissus and crocus in the backyard. Planted more bulbs this fall than ever before, by a factor, I think, of at least two. Species tulips remain. Never know why I buy tulips, but I do.

Attendance at Ben and Angela is looking like one of those affronts that shall never be forgiven. Long fuse, that burns hot once it’s lit.

Some noise earlier on about HART’s doing Washington Place. The season announcement arrived today, and I didn’t even have to look at it to know my play had not been chosen. 

Nap-dream that I had a pet raccoon. We brought joy wherever we went. 

Requiem

 

November 5, 2023

Patronal Feast celebrated at All Souls with the performance of the Durufle Requiem. It appeared to be a huge success, and the reception afterward overflowed with praise. One thing I learned is that standing in one place for a long time will not be part of my future. 

Thought of my mother whenever the hymns spoke of those who have crossed over and await us on the other side

 November 3, 2023

The pilot is out in my gas heater in the studio and I don’t know how to light it. Moved an electric space heater up, but it’s insufficient. Two heaters flip the breaker switch. So the one heater is positioned roughly in the middle where it provides a pool of warmish air that I can move into and out of in my work. Cold has come upon us. The flowers I can see from the windows are gone.

Counted last night that S can chatter at least six different directives or repetitions or half-jokes between the time she calls for pitches and when we actually sing. K is generally only two or three. I wonder what they teach in director school. 

Huge revision of A God in the Waters. It worries me sometimes that I’m so easy about detours from the Original Vision. Was the Original Vision so weak? Or is it broad enough to accommodate re-interpretation? I think Vision is a door suddenly open onto a whole landscape, in which there can be much wandering. 

Painted, after several weeks. 

Unexpectedly did some major gardening, spading up waste places and planting grape hyacinth, daffodil, crocus. A new carton of bulbs arrived in the mail.

 

November 2, 2023

J appeared to do his solos for the Durufle. He’ll be singing along with the basses. His gorgeous & enormous voice renders our little contributions null, but so be it.

 

November 1, 2023

Most exquisite dream. I had been invited to live in a sort of commune (in one enormous house) with a group of young men. We were all artists, and went around critiquing and assisting one another’s work. They’d found gigantic paintings of mine somewhere and urged me to retouch them and bring them to perfection. 

 

All Hallows Eve

Magnetic is– finally– closing at the end of the year. It outlived expectation. Its death-throes– the kind of shows it choses near the end– are not pretty. 

Chill. Rehearsal. The most uneventful Halloween of my life. Gave myself a thrill by driving down Kimberly to watch the trick-or-treaters in their costumes bracing against the cold. 

 

October 29, 2023

Downtown adventure last night. Stopped at Sovereign Remedies for a drink, met Taylor and Melissa from North Georgia, here celebrating their 10th anniversary. He works IT for the Arch Diocese of Atlanta, and said if he hadn’t gone into IT, he would have been an English professor. The first poem that ever struck him was “the one about the cold figs,” which we figured out was Williams’ plums in the refrigerator. Turns out I’m 16 years older than Taylor’s father. On then to NCS, where I saw A Case for the Existence of God. Expectably well acted and flawlessly produced, and likeable until the very last scene, which is one of the most offensive acts of pandering ever seen on stage. Tragedy turned into TV sit-come in a gratuitous last stroke, which some producer must have insisted Mr Hunter tack on. Even the actors looked embarrassed. In any case, Ben and Angela was better in script and in production at every point. Why should not old men be mad? Stopped at the hotel for a drink on the trek back to my car, where an extraordinarily beautiful couple from Charleston watched the World Series on TV. Moon in glory over little Asheville. 

Reserved a room for a November vacation at the beach. 

W sits near the back in church with a beatific look on his face. Does he want to return to choir after being cast out? Is he simply worshiping as he might without comment from me? A complicated personality, a serpent and a dove at once. 

 

October 28, 2023

Massive labor in the garden: digging, mulching, the planting of daffodils, lupine, crocus. I must have gone mad ordering, for forgotten boxes of bulbs arrive every few days. 

 

October 27, 2023

Lunch with SS. The perils of the Bohemian life. Suddenly recalled my time with dinner theater at the Hotel Syracuse. For a while I lived quite dangerously. 

Men’s Chorus rehearsal last night. Same discouraging music, but a spirited evening among convivial friends, which I enjoyed. There may be a way through this. 

A homeless man entered during rehearsal. I rose to see him out. No aggression at all, he was like a hungry puppy. I felt intense shame that I didn’t have my wallet and consequently no money to give him. Under all the grime– and one missing tooth– he was movie star handsome. How do things happen the way they do?

Email stating that the guy who sat next to me in SC tested positive for Covid. 

 

October 26, 2023

Decent SC rehearsal, much headway with Central European languages. Music is my fourth art, and yet I spend a whole lot more public time on it than the others. I suppose by its nature it’s performance and therefore more public. Sometimes I think I’m good enough at it for it to have been a central part of my life since the seventh grade; other times, not. 

Not getting over rage about attendance at the play. I walk into meetings, scan the room, think, “Why should I be here? You couldn’t even be bothered to come to my play.” M notes that no one is going to see the play at NCS, either. That gives me intellectual comfort, but not emotional. At the Arts Commission meeting I could barely think of anything else. How can you pretend to be interested in the arts? Time will wear this down. I expect.

Early at the river yesterday, pumping out what I recall as two excellent poems. We’ll see for sure when I transcribe them from the notebook. This is a renewal of the times in Syracuse when I wandered the Clark Reservation, stopping, near-ecstatic, to scribble in my notebooks the poems that would become The Glacier’s Daughters. I drive to riverside, sip nasty coffee, and write what had not occurred to me even a second before. Now I am hugely less confident that anybody will care. But, I go on. Glory upon the mountain on the far side of the river.

Planted and mulched daffodils, advertized as “super-giant.” Was able to fertilize them with a surprising abundance of bear scat.

 October 24, 2023

Got a detailed Irish itinerary together for K. She decided she’s afraid of Ireland and will rent a cozy flat in Cornwall instead. Exhaustion.

Departmental

October 23, 2023

The exhaustion/illness I felt was indeed just sadness, primarily-- but not wholly-- the result of attendance at my play. Just sadness, which I suppose is better than actual disease. Mother had this, certain periods of lying down when father was cruel to her. I suppose it’s part of her legacy. One gets over it. I think I’m mostly over it. 

Into the recycling bin goes the box of unused Ben and Angela postcards. Almost all were, in essence, unused.

Party at Cynn’s yesterday, out past the end of Reems Creek. Mountains around her like the back of a scarlet and gold dragon. The English Department Old Guard was there, catching up, howling about the deformations that have rendered our university irrelevant as an institution of higher learning, however it might be a hotbed of momentary politics. I’d forgotten how physically beautiful E is. Elven. 

 

 

October 22, 2023

Jack says of Ben and Angela:

Bravo— stunning performances, thoughtful / joyful / and full of mystery . 

Favorite scene was the one about the rearranged flowers … and the two rehearsed responses.  It felt very intimate at that moment.

Really a fine work!!  Thank you.

 

October 21, 2023

L drove up from Atlanta through many traffic accidents and resultant detours. Dinner at Tupelo Honey (disappointing food, excellent ambiance, right on the street), drum circle, much family talk, finally, hours into the night. The play was the best it has been, K and S like dancers en pointe. The man behind me got every joke and murmured at every nuance. Very gratifying. Tonight is closing night, and I couldn’t bear to be there. Exhaustion, mostly of an emotional nature (unless it’s actually physical, which should be revealed in a few hours) kept me in bed until it would have been difficult to arrive on time. I didn’t want to see another meager house. Everything went splendidly. Nobody witnessed it. That about that.

Afternoon spent rehearsing with chorus. Socially it was pleasant, but there’s nothing in the program that should draw a person out on a winter night. We have done every piece multiple times in the past. Nothing new, nothing adventurous, nothing to suggest Christmas is a holy or miraculous time. I’ll have a Blu-u-u-u-u-ue Christmas----. W-- with the taste of a turnpike diner waitress-- insists that’s what our audience wants to hear.  We think of gratifying our audiences, but never of nourishing them. Of course the poll we all took is 60% to 40% against “serious” music. I look around my life in general and wonder how many times I have to lose the same battles. And why I keep trying.

Rumbling in the sky I took for thunder. 

Blaze of color on the hills. 

 

October 20, 2023

Rainy morning, expecting my sister any hour from the dim and rustling south. I think of that line from “Frost at Midnight.” 

DJ texts that the BeBe was “almost a full house” last night. 

Instead, I attended chorus rehearsal, where it was discovered that our Christmas concert will be exactly those– and apparently all of those– jazz-lite rockin’-round-the-Christmas-tree pop songs that I hate utterly. Unrelenting. And not one hasn’t been on our program before. The only thing even vaguely unique is Friddle’s micro setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” When I bitch about doing the same things over and over, somebody (usually WJ) says, “Some people haven’t heard it.” There are plenty of things some people haven’t heard and we haven’t sung. Why not delve into them? 

Turns out we’re meant to have a four hour “retreat” tomorrow to learn this crap. I don’t even have the energy to protest. I am enjoying the process and the company, though, even if the repertoire is useless.. 

Lunch at J’s beautiful house in Haw Creek. Curried chicken salad and an apple cake still in memory making my taste buds tingle. We talked about her idea for a play, a one-woman show, which I thought hugely promising. Her dog would not leave my side. The dog looked anxious, as though he were leaving something out and couldn’t remember what. 

Turbulent days as far as my mental state. Fighting despair on several fronts. Or maybe just frustration. 

Sweet pea vine, bearing flowers of the most perfect pink, endures outside my bedroom window. 

Drinking Limeade by the Autumn River

 

October 17, 2023

Assembled Drinking Limeade by the Autumn River.

Exterminator people came to check the dehumidifier. Long discussion about Tolkien when they saw my bookshelf in the hall. They both loved my house, saying, “it has a nice feel.” 

Jack the dog whom I was happy to meet died after a series of strokes. 

FN said his postcard got buried under other mail and now he’s going to Florida and can’t see the play. It’s always something. 

Half of vestry last night was S sharing her feelings. 

Ken Burns’ documentary American Buffalo is a catalog of atrocities. I wish the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians didn’t so much resemble that between the Europeans and the Indians. We were worse. . . maybe worse than anybody ever.

 

October 15, 2023

Birthday dinner for L. I got sick on the fried green tomatoes, lunging to the bathroom in the dead of night. DJ’s night was turbulent with bears in the alley and opossums hissing in the garage. Bears or vandals spread trash over the street. I didn’t get all of it plucked from the yard this morning before it was time for church. Canon Augusta preached on that bloodthirsty parable about the king who gives a wedding feast. C and E loved Ben and Angela and bought tickets for their daughter. The last performance may be a full house. 

Considering that Jennifer, who pierced my ear in her button store on Wall Street, has been dead for twenty years. 

 October 14, 2023

Have I left the house today? I must have. There are groceries I’m certain were not here yesterday. 

Depression over attendance at the play continues, somewhat mitigated by SS’s assertion that everybody feels exactly the same way. One infers that one should be grateful when betrayal doesn’t happen rather than furious when it does. I look at the ceiling and say, “Filling a tiny room nine times in a town that’s supposed to be so arty doesn’t seem like much to ask.” The ceiling does not answer. 

Rolling clouds that have not yet become rain.

Friday the 13th

 

October 13, 2023

Day 2 of “flu-like symptoms.” 

Giant dreams, the one I remember taking place–again–in a gigantic university, tall, glittering at night with skyscrapers and musical conversations and lights. I walked about listening hungrily to intellectual discussions about this and that, in apprehension that I’d be cast out and only hear common talk from then on. I’d not been to class in so long that I wondered if I still had a job as a teacher, or that anyone would recognize me. I worried that I’d make no friends, but then I fell in with a group of men with a variety of interests. On the night I was fully accepted into the group, we gathered in one man’s yard to test out his flying cabin, a small square house hovering over the lawn. We climbed up in, and sat and talked and drank while the cabin flew through the night. I thought we were flying out over the ocean, but it turned out the cabin was tethered, and went around and around over his yard. I loved looking out the window, where his long property snaked through the neighborhood and came to end in the sand of the beach leading to the sea. 

What’s this anxiety about losing touch with a university? I feel no shred of it waking. 

Achy at waking, but recovered enough by afternoon to garden. Spread much mulch. Transplanted cannas. Planted blue anemone. Hacked bamboo roots.

SS cut the price of Ben and Angela tickets in order to fill the seats. Utterly defeated. Reviews don’t help, word-of-mouth doesn’t help. This time, in order to turn the usual tide, I’d sent out postcards, which means that just about every person I know received a personal, direct, material invitation. It didn’t matter a damn. Never again in Asheville. Even I learn eventually. 

SS opines that times are hard for all the arts.

Trying to help the company’s bottom line, seeing that ticket sales were disastrous, I went to sublime theatre/donate and donated. But the thank-you was from the local arts council, revealing that though I’d accessed what I thought was the Sublime donation page, I had actually contributed to the Arts Council, which I’ve loathed since days gone by. So I tried again, and donated to the right place this time. Got an email from the Arts Council wondering if I’d share what had prompted such generosity. Decided not to tell them it was a mistake. What a terrible day. . . aside from the gardening. Friday the 13th. 

 

October 12, 2023

Brilliant autumn day. Got flu shot and Covid booster at once. Thought it wouldn’t matter, but at the moment I can scarcely move. Tried to do some gardening. Stood in the sunlight leaning on the spade for a quarter of an hour. Quiet long enough that my autumn groundhog revealed his chunky self. 

Cocktails after rehearsal last night. One of us was infuriated that people expressed sympathy for Israel at this horrible moment, considering that Israel has made it hard for the Palestinians for a long time. I realize I don’t have the courage of my convictions, or I would have walked out of the bar and not spoken in that company again. Yes, blame goes to all sides, but how long should that go on? I strike you because you struck me and then you strike me because I struck you. . . . didn’t Athena address that in The Eumenides? It has to stop. It has to stop this time, not the next time, not when all resentments are somehow laid to rest. This time. This time being, by any account, rife with cruelties and barbarities more calculated and deliberate than at any time before. This time. Fairness is not the issue. The balance will never balance, and we have not the wisdom to know when it has. Twenty years ago fairness ceased to be a viable consideration. End it. Now. If justice cannot win, mercy must. If not mercy, then exhaustion. 

What was Hamas’ end game? Did they hope to win? 

Review

 

October 11, 2023

    Reviews from Asheville Stages:

Before any relationship begins, it exists in a state of infinite possibility. Will these two beings, completely unknown to each other, become friends, lovers, nemeses, or mere acquaintances of no further consequence? 

Such a blank slate stands quite literally at the start of Ben & Angela, a new play by Asheville’s David Brendan Hopes, which debuted through The Sublime Theatre & Press on Oct. 5. The stage of The BeBe Theatre usually holds some sort of set or props before a show begins, but here it’s set in its purest black-box form, lit by a warm orange glow.

But Hopes wastes little time in confirming his title characters — played by offstage couple Scott Fisher and Kirby Gibson — as people of momentous import to each other. And over the next two hours, the playwright guides his audience through a richly realized portrait of love and its expression in marriage.

The first act presents a brisk series of vignettes that establish Ben and Angela both as individuals and as a couple. Quick costume changes, coordinated by Kayren McKnight, immediately clarify the time skips from childhood to middle school to high school as the characters meet (and meet cute). 

Both Fisher and Gibson do an excellent job finding a steady arc for their characters through the chronological whirlwind. Ben’s adolescent awkwardness grows into an earnest romanticism, while Angela responds to her troubled childhood by developing a confident poise. As directed by Steven Samuels, their dialogue flows amid the natural pauses and hesitations of youth. They bounce and snap off each other in a way that’s a true delight to watch.

And even though the two are the only ones performing, the stage rarely feels empty. Choreographer Kristi DeVille fills the space with the young couple’s spontaneous dances and an energetic, wordless gift-opening sequence. Samuels’ changes of scene place Fisher and Gibson all over the BeBe’s box.

The pace slows in the second act, and the action becomes a bit more sedate, with much of it coalescing around Ben and Angela’s kitchen table. But those changes feel like natural choices to reflect the reality of an ongoing marriage — of course there should be less dynamism, more routine. The initial flirtation can’t last forever.

Hopes embraces this different stage of life to give each of his characters some beautiful longer monologues. Husband and wife slowly reveal new facets, disappoint each other in different ways, and seek reconciliation in precise, vivid language. However, I did find the second-act script to give slightly heavier weight to Ben than to Angela, creating something of an imbalance for a work so centered on a joint relationship. 

But that’s a minor quibble, especially given Gibson’s skill at developing character through expression and body language while listening to Fisher. And her Angela gets a chance to shine toward the end of the play as she wrestles through a sleepless night (accentuated subtly but powerfully by lighting designer Jason Williams) amid the couple’s darkest challenge.

At once intimate and universal, Ben & Angela will resonate with all who have tried to sustain love over time. I’d wager that makes it a worthwhile night out for just about anyone.     

Daniel Walton

Drama, Romance

*

I, too, noticed the imbalance between the two, but that is somewhat because of the cuts we made in the name of time. Besides, what relationship is equal? 

Symphony Chorus rehearsal last night a near catastrophe. Our leader was away, and finally our accompanist had to seize the reins from a substitute who infuriated us all. The big European guy who sat next to me in the King David oratorio moved up to sit beside me. During the King David he never opened his mouth, and I carried bass2 alone. Last night he sang maybe 10 phrases, all of them operatically lovely, but--. Maybe he saves it for the shower. 

 

October 8, 2023

Dream before waking: I was filling out an application for some sort of art/nature teaching job in the Southwest. It wasn’t right for me, but I  was desperate about my future, having been denied tenure at Syracuse and having no clear prospect of another academic job. Of course, none of this happened, or ever threatened to happen in actual life, but the fear of fear of it must have been deeply embedded. I woke grateful to be so old, with none of these struggles ahead of me. 

Having discovered “Asheville Stages, “ I read, belatedly, a very positive review of In the Assassins’ Garden. 

People asking how the play went, reciting their reasons for not coming. I want to say “Nobody is taking attendance,” but someone probably is. Will try to fight that off. 

Om Namah Sivayah

 October 7, 2023

B writes on Facebook:

i’ve been thinking a lot about yesternite’s production of Sublime Theater’s Ben & Angela.

it was superb of course. 

the cast & crew involved are all immensely skilled, so i knew it would be top tier theater.

but i didn’t know how invasive it would be.

that it would crawl into my psyche as it has.

the story has no plot. it is driven solely by characters.

and since David Hopes created those characters, they are highly watchable.

witty, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and silly.

and real…. so very real.

it was Angela that really got into my brain.

i understood her. at times i have been her.

and while i have never had a Ben in my life, i have started every relationship trying to figure out “why me?”

why would this person spend so much time and energy trying to make me smile?

to make me happy?

why would they be so kind and sweet and generous to me?

what did i do that would make them think i deserve any of this?

of course, the story of my life is much darker than Angela’s.

she’s the one you want to watch, not me.

because there are no Bens in my world.

once the “not-Bens” finally convince me that i am worthy…. they turn on me.

i become disposable to them.

always made to feel like i have done something wrong.

pointedly and repeatedly treated like my presence is unwanted….

and then lied to and gaslit so i think it’s all in my head.

and all i can think is “why me?”

what did i do that would make them think i deserve any of this?

while i know i will never be treated with kindness as more than just a trap to break me….

i do want to see that happiness for other people like me.

Ben & Angela definitely made my son and i laugh and cry a lot during the show last night.

today it’s been making me cry…. but that’s just me.

my son is still laughing, and we are both still in awe of everything we experienced.

i hope you have the chance to experience it too.

❤ 

Downtown again last night for Ben & Angela, the performance at least as suave as opening night’s. Again parked at distance and wandered about, autumn rain sharpening the experience. Italian white at the Times Bar, which has operated for six years without my noticing. M and M, R and E at the theater last night. Before the lights went down, M and I moaned about the decline of UNCA, and the apparent demise of the English department as a viable instrument of instruction. Little selfish Trumps replicating themselves and toddling out to poison the world. Stopped to listen to karaoke on the way back to the car. The bartender was rude to me, later came back to apologize that he had broken glasses in the dishwasher (or something like that) and had been distracted. I should not have let solitude–even isolation–take control of my evenings. I’ll blame the pandemic, though I’ve always leaned a little toward the hermit’s cave. 

Theater not full last night, not even nearly. Sleepless with the realization that I have dedicated my life to pursuits– the kind of poetry I write, the kind of plays I write, the kind of stories I want to tell, the kind of paintings I paint– almost calculated not to have an audience. Walk out on the street where hundreds jostle looking for a good time. Bad karaoke in one bar with surly waiters attracts more than have yet seen Ben and Angela. It has to be all right, as nothing can be done. 

Dreamed that the sun poisoned skin on my left temple had turned to cancer. Don’t actually know that it hasn’t.

Hamas attacks Israel from the Gaza Strip. I thought I had something to say about this, but one shrugs and keeps silent in the face of the purely ruinous. 

Ben and Angela

 

October 6, 2023

Opening night for Ben and Angela the best, the most elegant, the most nearly flawless opening night I’ve had outside New York. Everything the director and the actors did worked. Every choice was–even if other than what I would have done–right. Choreography, stagecraft, perfect. Even attendance lay within tolerable parameters. I usually think about 3/4 of the way through any play of mine “this is too long!” Did not think that last night. I’ve always prized clarity in writing (maybe above all else) and in acting, and I was proud of the clarity of both the script and the production. I wondered, is it too clear? Is it not thick enough? If so, can’t be helped. Probably nobody but me would worry about that. 

S and K were beyond perfection, in that they were at once cuter and subtler and more believable than I’d imagined them. 

Parked at some distance from the theater (beside First Baptist) to avoid the downtown mess and give myself some exercise. The stroll reaffirmed what a glad and bright little town this is, full of happy people enjoying their evening. Also, because I passed twenty restaurants, it assured that I would be starving through the whole show, which turns out to sharpen the senses. Makes me want to make excuses to get downtown more often, though you can eat and drink only so much and just wandering around looks peculiar. Took a gigantic piss on the oak across from the UC of C, downtown being too well lit for such a thing. 

 October 5, 2023

Worst night last night. Worst day yesterday: all in the mind, but that’s enough.

 

October 4, 2023

Woke to frantic horn-honking, realized it was a motorist trying to hurry a flock of turkeys across Lakeshore. 

Morning spent stuffing Stewardship  envelopes at church. Got to pet Jack the dog. 

So far, a three-losses-of-temper day, and there are hours left. 

 

October 3, 2023

SS reports a sudden great leap in performance of B&A. Excellent news. I must subconsciously have been more anxious about that than I admitted. If this flops I feel that I’ll probably give up actively seeking stage production. After the universe sends so many signs you reluctantly begin heeding them.

Brahms at night, to put things in perspective. 

 

October 2, 2023

Woke, sat by the river and wrote nothing. Assumed feeding the crusts of my sandwich to the fish would be the highlight of my day. Dug up spent sunflowers, cultivated, and planted three (I saw by the packing light, shockingly expensive) tree peonies. Sun poisoning affected me so fast and harshly that I consider I may never again be able to work in full sun. Maybe a good sun block. 

Pride

 

September 30, 2023

Evidence of more ursine mischief last night. As this point it’s just planters pushed off terraces and the like, teenagers cavorting after dark.

Morning and afternoon it was Pride in Pack Square. Blazing blue, hot as summer. The sun poisoning I got in Sligo has not and perhaps will not go away. After a very short period of exposure the skin of my head and face feels and looks burnt, painful and sickening, like someone had thrown hot grease from the stove. I had a cap on, but the sun crept under the cap. As for our performance, it may be the most fun I’ve ever had on a stage. People danced in the open space in front of us. I was happy. 

In the midst of our Pride appearance, big M began shouting instructions in his truly disturbingly loud voice: “Make two lines! Remember where you were! Get in line now!” I wonder how he imagined we survived the 25 years before his arrival. What we needed was one more bossy queen. 

Three different people asked for directions and information early on Pride Day. I reflect now that the advice or information I gave them was wrong in every particular. 

September 29, 2023

AVLGMC rehearsal last night packed, our largest number in years. Because of my truancy, we did two pieces that I’ve never seen before, and will perform them at Pride Saturday. M behind me was doing the Lady GaGa by heart, and mostly doing it wrong, but he sounded good. Not my place to say anything. S screams critiques at us while we’re singing. Not only rude, but inaudible.

Cute furnace boy in the cellar doing whatever they do for a “tune-up.”

Closed my Wells Fargo security lock box after sixteen years of not using it once. Thought I’d put my jewel collection in it. Nobody’s knowing it exists is probably security enough. 

Diane Feinstein is dead.

Trump facing trial for business fraud in New York. This is an unexpected bonbon, hitting that evil man in the only place that really hurts him, the wallet. 

Apparent uncertainty from the stage of the BeBe. Difficult to know what is meant by what is said.

 

September 27, 2023

As production nears, I hunted in my journals for previous mentions of Ben and Angela. This is from October 3, 1999. Last Century:

Converse College is doing Four for the Gospel Makers and Ben and Angela’s Romance as reader’s theater this coming Saturday. If one of them wins their contest, it will be done as a mainstage production. About that I forbid myself any hope, lest the disappointment be worse than it needs to be.

Then, from October 10:

Drove to Converse College yesterday for Theater Converse/ Scriptwriters of South Carolina 5th Annual New Play Festival. I gave myself too much time, and arrived early, to watch the campus fill up with proud papas and elegant mamas for parents’ day. I had forgotten that Converse is a women’s school; the boxy femininity of the place added an air— how to say it without deepening a cliche?--that was gentle, airy, safe, sweet. The conference itself was filled with that atmosphere I had forgotten since I had stopped attending such things: the innocent asininity that attends on too much confidence, the most talk from the least able, awkwardness and unexpected excellence, all with a gentle unconsciousness that made it, if exhausting, funny rather than horrible. Steve Willis from Greensboro thought he was going to be the star of the show. He was doing a “presentation”-- which turned out to be his bragging on his many accomplishments— in the afternoon, and he had just come off a run with John Glines in New York. I latched on to him and his lover, though, because they were friendly and, even when mutually bragging on Steve’s brilliance, interesting. Another cliche— gay men being the life of the party. His play was almost unbelievably boring, but had just won a prize at some festival in Savannah. I never cease wondering what goes through peoples’ minds. My Ben and Angela’s Romance was the second play on the bill. The actor playing Ben had not showed, so the director of Steve’s show was pressed into service, and the result was that, though Angela, one Chris Freedman, was subtle, intelligent, excellent, Ben was a dud, as well as being way too old, and, as he’s half the show, it was a half a debacle. Added to that was the fact that my director was either stupidly literal-minded or had deliberately tried to sabotage the show. It was all, I thought, awful. When it came time for the playwright to speak--a period in which Mr. Willis went on for an easy twenty minutes--I could barely find a thing to say, except for the obligatory thanking of cast and crew. I was so frustrated. If I hadn’t had another show later that afternoon, I would have left. 

There was another playwright from Asheville. Her play was called Merlin, the Mountain Medium, and was so unbelievably bad that, again, I wondered what the theater people were thinking, or if the array of scripts they had received was really so abysmal, or if they thought the sittin’-and-spittin’ genre of ignorant mountain folk doin’ ignorant and boring things needed representation. During her talk, the playwright explained that the play came from the need to confront grief at the death of her dog. 

Four for the Gospel Makers came on in the afternoon. I unclenched then, finally, for the direction was intelligent, and though my actor, Keith Turner, took some time to warm up, he was attractive and fully adequate. Lest I appear like one of those people I mock for their self-delight, I will keep to myself the fact that the play moved me deeply. It was as though it were not mine at all; I was listening to catch every word, learning, discovering, dreading, at some points, weeping. The emotion in me afterwards was the knowledge that it, as least, is a great play. I was satisfied. The conference had given me what I needed. When they asked me afterwards where the play had “come from,” I flatly could not answer them. It sounded like I was being evasive or “arty,” but I really didn’t know how that had gotten into my mind.

During the reception, when they announced the winner of the contest and the play that will be presented as a mainstage offering in May, it was Ben and Angela’s Romance. This surprised me as much as it must have the others, though the conference director had emphasized that choice would be made based on the script and not on the performance. It was not the play I had enjoyed most--that had been Learning the Alphabet by Liza White--though perhaps I was too pretzeled up inside over the production to enjoy it. I left happy. Walking to the car I sang “Green Grow the Rushes, O” all the way through for the first time in a decade. 

Then, from the production:

May 11, 2000

The highlight of the week was traveling to Converse College in Spartanburg, twice, to see the production of Ben & Angela’s Romance. It was one of those experiences that was better than one expected. I sat in the dark, weeping briefly opening night, for relief, for sheer joy. Everything could have been much worse. Some things could hardly have been better. D played Ben. Danny is so beautiful that the sight of him skewed my impression of the play, which turned into a fantasy of our lives together, tender and sexual, out of which I could not fully rouse myself. I thought of him all the way home, and could not sleep for thinking of him once I got home. The second play, Packing Up the Past, the English premiere of the work of a famous Spaniard, Sebastian Junyent, was so self-congratulatingly bad and so long, that after 2 ½ hours, after I had dozed all that I could doze, I came as near as I ever have to standing up and shouting, “All right! That is enough!” It is a mistake to put the exit on the other side of the stage, so that one cannot escape. Nice reception afterward, (exactly the same food as the reception in the same place in October) during which I was praised almost enough to suit me, and during which D suffered my attentions in a way that seemed welcoming, physical and affectionate. I smile thinking of all the things which might have been on his mind-- respect, delight at premiering a play and meeting the playwright, who had just praised his performance, maybe a little artistic veneration--which were not precisely what I wanted. 

Ellen joined me Thursday night, and liked the play, though questioning, as I did, certain directorial choices. It was lucky she could see through the technical disasters, some of which had the actors on stage saying their lines in the dark, or by the light of a flashlight someone from the audience seemed to have trained on them. Even with that, it was very good. Slipshod Asheville makes me forget the difference well trained actors can make.

The minute one crossed into South Carolina, the air smelled of honeysuckle.

*

The sky looks like rain. All my bulbs are in (for the moment) so I’m praying for rain.

Vole

 

September 26, 2023

Late yesterday afternoon I decided to make myself a tomato sandwich. I unwrapped the bread, went to do something in another room, and when I returned the same mouse, the one whose sad demise I had lamented, was nibbling on it. His eyes were defiant. Again he allowed me to pick him up without a struggle. This time he went into the trash bin, which was picked up in the dark of this morning. If he returns I’ll know he is supernatural.

A Google search reveals that my roommate was, in fact, a vole. It also says that voles rarely enter buildings. Its strange tameness was not explained. 

Encountered L in the Ingle’s parking lot. Each time I ask about UNCA from a former colleague, the mouth of lamentation opens. She’s the latest. Apparently it’s even worse for the English department, split– as it never was in my 37 years– between warring factions. S, whose arrival I celebrated with a dinner party at my house-- when I made an elaborate mushroom stew because she is a vegetarian– made everyone either her enemy or her ally in her struggle for tenure, and uses liberally the power of filing Title 9 complaints whenever a criticism of her can possibly (however improbably) be attributed to misogyny. Here’s misogyny for you: in my experience, the divisive, embittered and embittering destroyer of academic concord is invariably a woman. Her own will is more important to her than the mission of the institution. Her colleagues will, philosophically and politically, encourage this attitude, as if it evens out some ancient wrong. Nor is there any defense, because fact and reason are not allowable tools. There is only emotion–”but I FEEL it is thus-and-so-” and not everybody’s emotion, but only those who can present themselves as somehow vulnerable. Anything but full surrender to feelings– however ill-defined, however remote from truth–is presented as violence, and that presentation automatically accepted by an administration who wants nothing, really, except not to be questioned. Our former two-year Provost lasted long enough to eviscerate the department, which was once the strongest on campus. No more tenure hires for us. Those hired must be a minority, no matter competition or qualification. The salve for our sacrifice to diversity was to be they would not be on tenure track until they prove themselves, but that leaves open the possibility of several years of inadequate or incompetent staffing. According to L, that’s exactly what happened. The woman who replaced me and R is not only a bad poet, but misses classes and faculty meetings. She feels secure as the genetic identity that got her the job will be a powerful argument if she is ever threatened with losing it. The provost, of course, achieved this and ran off. Plus, he gave her $60,000 to start her very own reading series, independent from the designs of the department, which itself was never offered a penny. Dean Karen stupefied everyone with her kaleidoscope of inanities, and ran off to run a museum. All recent administrators have vandalized and run. All. The ruin of a once- promising school became irreversible when education disappeared as a priority. Money, tenure, influence, alliance, bailiwick, counter-punching, virtue-signaling, cancellation remain and thrive, but no one gives a goddam what the students learn, or fail to learn. No one with influence. Why does anyone still apply and attend? This began, as I and a few others knew, when the word “assessment” entered, then dominated, the conversation. What were we assessing? Our adherence to anti-pedagogical guidelines set down by the administration. It was a test of obedience, and, alas, we passed with flying colors. L said “Our legacy is disappearing.” I figured mine was gone even as I left without comment from the administration (or my department, it needs to be said), without the gifts one usually gets upon retirement, without an invitation back to campus for anything at any time. Not even to give them money. If I could think of anything to do about this I might grit my teeth and re-enter the fray. But I am old, feeble, and without a single weapon in my hand. And should I appear winged and haloed upon a shaft of light, THAT would offend someone, and it would be for nought. 

Killed a brown recluse in my bathroom.

Mouse

 September 25, 2023

Music from the time of Louis XIII, so the caption says.

Arose feeling cool and rested. Had the conviction that this was going to be a good day. 

One benefit of being sick alone is that you can moan every step to the bathroom and nobody is disturbed. 

Watched the movie Brigadoon last night, S and J’s visit having put me in nostalgia for high school, where I played Mr Lundie in the stage version. I’d forgotten what a truly terrible film it is, an apparatus upon which to hang the elements that made Oklahoma and Carousel successes, by then threadbare and calculated. I heard myself praying at every moment of heightened emotion, “PLEASE do not dance again!” But they did. Van Johnson is the only one who emerges with dignity. I tried to remember my emotions relative to it during high school. I guess then it was mostly about impressing my friends and not screwing up my song (as the candy vendor at the fair) and nothing to do with dramaturgy. I remember Brenda Brooks who handed me my Mr Lundie cloak which she had made during Home Ec class. It was the first and only time we ever spoke– ran in completely different circles-- but her eyes shone with pride. 

Music changes to La Follia, my favorite. 

Afternoon: Heavy duty gardening. Anemone, bluebells, crocus into the ground. All cartons of bulbs yet received are accounted for. 

I walked out of the garden into the kitchen and saw something on the floor. I startled before I understood what it was. It was brown mouse with shiny eyes. He nibbled around, trying to find a crumb, not realizing he is the reason I make sure there’s no unenclosed food in the house. He didn’t seem agitated or frightened, and I picked him up without his scurrying or scampering. I put him in the trash bin. A minute later I repented, pulled him out of the trash bin and set him on the lawn. Again, no scurrying or flight. I decided he must be sick. As I watched, greenbottles began to attack him. It looked like there was a sore on his bottom, or his rectum was afflicted in some way. At first he fled from the flies, hiding under Virginia creeper, but the flies pursued him and he gave up. When I turned away, flies had attached themselves to the sore and he didn’t try to shake them away. Do I end misery or let nature take its course? I walked away. After a while I realized that was not the choice I would have wanted had some great power found me afflicted and tormented. I went back, but could no longer find him.

The red of the infection makes a clear border where it left off climbing my leg.

 

September 24, 2023

Joyful dinner party with Jeff and Sharon last night. I made pork roast with root vegetables, ratatouille, and a maple cream pie. The pie looked to be a failure ot every stage of its development, but turned to be delicious. We talked, of course, about old times, and the people we knew then, and what has become of them, agreeing that, all in all, the three of us have held up pretty well. We asked ourselves who were the “cool kids” back at Ellet. It might have been us, but I think the part of the blessedness of that company was that we did not have a social elite, nor that gang that goes around tormenting the weak or odd. At least I don’t remember them. Toward the end of the evening my weariness transmuted into waves of pain, part ungodly exhaustion, part universal inflammation like a bruise and a burn at once. I bade my friends goodbye as I realized it was phlebitis, my old nemesis, and I began gobbling the drugs. That was about 10 PM. From then until 3 this afternoon I was in considerable pain. I never understood exactly what causes the pain of an attack; the bacterium surely can’t be striking every nerve at once. I’d gotten to the drug soon enough that it was a brief attack, and didn’t exhibit all the usual stages, but it was so painful I cannot call it “light.” I rose up a dozen times to urinate vast quantities, more than I could ever have taken in. Where was I retaining all that liquid? In the afternoon it eased up so that I could actually sleep. Now, evening, I’ve made it up the stairs, but I know the affliction remains because I can’t type two words without making a mistake. Beautiful, perfect autumn day while I was writhing under the blankets. 

 

September 22, 2023

Outstanding AVLGMC concert at Givens Estates last night. Happy audience, happy performers. Took me one song (The National Anthem, in this case) to blow past hoarseness and make a contribution.  The invariable weak point of our concerts is the inevitable duet by “the singing doctors.” Both voices have passed their prime. 

Theater with J, a matinee of What the Constitution Means to Me. Not a wasted afternoon– excellent acting and production values. But the show is essentially virtue-signaling and not a play. There is no ambiguity (hence no character) and no chance for growth, as the correct attitude is struck and the correct information is revealed by a charismatic and infallible narrator. Perky, though, and often funny. I bet it was a one-act that outgrew itself trying to be a full length. The really good material took up somewhat less than an hour. As a playwright, I’m jealous of its fame. In want to say “inexplicable” fame, but we all want to hear what we already believe emoted from the stage. Spent unnecessary money being confused by the parking apparatus. Had an excellent bloody Mary at the Bier Garden. Did not bake the pie I had assigned myself to bake.

Goodbye summer, goodbye. 

 September 21, 2023

Bad night last night, brought on by after-rehearsal resturant chili, which was not good enough going down to justify the after-effects.

Blue anemones

September 20, 2023

Dug out the eastern porch garden in preparation for, I think, blue anemones. 

Zoom meeting concerning the Stewardship Committee. S is a force sweeping all before her. Someone must have said she was made for us and we were made for her. We were concerned during discernment for the new Dean that we might be too clergy dependent. That concern has now become an affirmation of identity. So far it is well. Direction and unanimity. 

 

September 19, 2023

Closed three windows against the chill. Got the comforter down from the shelf. 

Planted red anemone yesterday. Think I did so before and it came to nothing. Maybe a better spot this time. Maybe a better root. 

Persimmons laden with fruit, but I let the trees grow too tall and now I can’t reach them. 

Vestry meeting passed like a blur. One had the feeling all things were decided already.

 September 16, 2023

My prescription having been exhausted, and no response coming from the doctors, I’m consumed with inflammation again. A few months of relief. 

Some gardening today, some spreading of mulch and weeding of weeds, but the same spirit wasn’t in it. 

K and S are doing a podcast, in which I’m told they mention me and Ben & Angela. Waiting for that mention to occur.

Trump. Trump. Trump. At any other time, in any other place, Trump would have faced a firing squad on January 7. I have always been impatient with process. 

 

September 15, 2023

Went to rehearsal last night fully intending to withdraw, but then had fun. New members. The most exhausting old ones absent for the night. Departure postponed for a while. 

Retired, I have almost no time for anything. Put off going to the grocery store for days. Haven’t gone to MAHEC to fight for my prescription. Words and images crowing to get out. Iris beds needing to be dug.

Evening now of a productive day. Dug out from their mantels of weeds the iris beds, planted the three cartons of bulbs that had arrived before the beach and sat waiting. It was the cool of morning and I barely broke a sweat, though my body feels it now. Ate pasta with my sauce and drank not-bad red wine from South Carolina. At evening I sat on the back porch listening to Chopin with my turkey flock gleaning in the garden– now nine, when there has been as many as fourteen. When they came close in a certain angle of light, red and pink and green iridescence flashed off their feathers. Chopin is not the ideal composer for turkeys. I’m thinking Bach. 

Rewrites

 

September 13, 2023

Turkeys arrive to greet me at sunset. 

Uncharacteristic tantrum occasioned by questions from the cast about Ben & Angela. I think I calmed and toned down before I sent a response. An uncertainty of chronology or the tone of a particular word bothers them. Usually I like discussions like this, but today was, for some reason, not the right day for it. “Just say the lines,” did not, in the end, comprise my response. I reflect that in all the plays I’ve acted in–an inordinate number new and untried– I’ve never asked for or suggested a rewrite. To my recollection I’ve never asked a substantive question, unless I flatly didn’t know what I was saying. Just say the lines, and all will be clear at length: the wisdom you didn’t see at first, the folly you suspected, either their ineptitude or yours. 

Improvised an intricate sauce which I’m now having over linguine. Triumph. I wish I remembered what is in it. Tomatoes. . . garlic. . . . .

The cast questions remind my of an anecdote from Tolkien. Asked repeatedly why he just didn’t have the eagles fly the One Ring to Mount Doom, he eventually said, “I have an answer for the people who keep asking that question.”

“What is it?”

“Shut up.” 

Nevertheless, rewrote the play with regard to their observations. 

The Commonwealth of Dogs

 September 12, 2023

K from Ellet has died. His shy beauty in memory. 

A day of almost ludicrous productiveness. Went early to the riverside where I watched happy dogs cavort in and by the water. It started with two big red dogs– shaped like Labs; maybe they were Labs– joined by a white dog and a black dog, both leggy and pointy and wolfish, and finally by a roly-poly little white mutt, all of whom raced around in a dog commonwealth, stupid with joy. I wrote on three different projects as I sat watching. Returned, painted a small painting, again achievable because there was no overlay requiring a wait for drying. Symphony Chorus in the evening, where we began the Hayden St Nicholas Mass. K says I sang it before, but I had no memory of it, so it was a merry rediscovery. Among the rarest of events happened during rehearsal, which was my being captivated by the beauty of a woman. Her name is C, and she was new tonight, all poise and grace and unconscious radiance ten feet from me. During introductions it was revealed she is an OBGYN. 

The William Byrd Station came on by itself during the night, so there was heavenly, mysterious beauty.