January 29, 2023
Annual meeting at All Souls, protracted but familial. Admired a kid of about fifteen who seemed kind and sweet and deeply engaged in everything around him, who turned out to be the same kid about whom many tales of being difficult and maladjusted are told. Whose perceptions does one trust? Wrote a story about insomnia, which I have never (for more than a single night) had.
January 28, 2023
Multiple dreams of violence, of my participating (successfully) in passages of violence or defense. I think this came from going to bed with images of the Memphis police murder in my head. In one I had to help the actress Julianne Moore to her destination through a dangerous part of town.
January 27, 2023
Coffee with A, who talked about photography and gave me the keys to his Edisto beach house. Meeting at church where I was forced to eat a piece of chocolate.
January 26, 2023
Went to bed without a single drop of alcohol. Noticed no difference.
Snow promised for last night did not come.
Went to Ingle’s to do a little writing in the Starbucks lounge. Successful story beginning. Not only that, but free cappuccino from a former student who works there.
Visit to the eye doctor. Prescription changed only very slightly (likely not at all, but she wanted to sell me glasses). They did dilate my eyes, which made them nearly unfunctional for, so far, five hours. Will refuse next time, as I have in the past. The problems I was having may be related to 1) dryness and 2) the glare proofing having worn off the lenses. $500. SOMETHING sent me there upon a wave anxiety, so I went through with it.
January 25, 2023
B made a date to meet me at the West Asheville Dobra tea shop (where everyone, for some reason, meets) and this morning sends a set of instructions about how I must wear a mask and how he’ll get his tea to go if the place is crowded. Covid, though real and perilous, does give the passive-aggressive the chance to make rules for other people to follow.
Slept remarkably late this morning, after being very drunk very late last night. It was a war-with-the-Almighty night and it helps to be drunk. I wonder if He was.
The guy beside me at rehearsal last night has Parkinson’s and is trying to see how long he can still sing.
January 24, 2023
Workout at the Y at dawn. The new thing is to sit on a machine messing with your phone while a line forms behind you. This is the Age of Isolation. You don’t know what other people want or need, and it’s not so much that you don’t care as you don’t even imagine that you need to find out. A guy on the radio this morning opined how everybody talks about their rights, but nobody about their responsibilities.
January 23, 2023
Rain, thin snow, bluster, sudden stabs of sun. Painting and writing. Tired eyes waiting for my eye doctor appointment on Thursday. The first place I called said they could work me in late in March.
Asian people gunned down in California at a dance club. There will be no end to it. A few gun lobbyists are responsible for untold deaths.
Paintings piling up. Will wait for a crisis to decide what to do.
Re-writing NSDL as I should have written it once all the baggage was dropped. Can pretty much depend on nobody’s having read the original version, so--
January 20, 2023
Y first thing. Felt good. Weights and feeble cardio.
Went to MS’s sunstruck niche to get a Tarot reading. I think I did it to support someone who always seemed a little starveling. He drew three cards, the Wheel of Fortune, the Six of Wands, and the World, and presented an interpretation both plausible and encouraging. He observed that he was “receiving” impressions, and I asked him where from. He motioned to the air around us. I’m evidently to trust that I will finish the projects that abound in my head, and that it is time– and should not be embarrassing– to demand attention for them. I did not ask those questions, but the cards seemed to perceive what I wanted to know. Interesting. Not a believer, but– interesting.
January 19, 2023
Early appointment at MAYHEC, one made at their insistence (I’m not sick) and for which they were 70 minutes late. Nothing material, as I anticipated. My blood pressure is lower than before.
Lunch with M, who is now personal assistant to P, at this point in his winding road back from quadriplegia. M now has long brown Jesus hair, and is as enthusiastic as ever about winning souls for Christ. He witnesses to colleges in the evenings, but skips UNCA because no one there pays attention to him.
Wearing out brushes at gruesome velocity.
January 18, 2023
Fascinating Vestry last night. Ordinary & necessary business finished, we went into “executive session” to discuss weird attacks from two different quarters, which the discerning among us recognized as probably having actually one source. Malice intrigues because it’s time consuming and requires dedication and concentration. I tire of it before I ever do much damage. Not others, though. Nosiree. When we finally dispersed into the night, I noticed a fire on the porch of Zabriskie Hall. I ran toward it and discovered a homeless man (one known and familiar to us) had retrieved the cauldron used to burn the Christmas greens, gathered twigs and debris, and made himself a fire. . . on the wooden porch, under the wooden roof.
“Can you help me get some food?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “but first put out the fire!”
He was as out of it as any human could be and remain on two feet. As I approached he was pissing on the porch (I remember thinking I wish he’d saved it for the fire) surrounded by the bones of whatever meal he had just consumed. Several open bottles of the cheapest beer on earth gathered at his feet. I kept bellowing “Put out the fire!” and he kept asking me to help him find something to eat. I felt helpless, because it was clear he had no means of putting out the fire (having wasted his piss) and neither did I. Someone had called the fire department, who arrived pretty quick, and the fire was out quick, and one of the burly foremen was bellowing at him “Don’t you know this is a church?” The man’s answer was, “I had to keep warm!” A cop arrived, pulled him aside, began lecturing him on trespass laws with surprising gentleness. The homeless man had one hand and a peg where the other had been. I suppose he’s in jail now. It was dark so we couldn’t see if damage was done to the porch floor. Drinks at Rye Knot afterward, where I bought a bottle of vodka and left it on the table. The fire-starter was as squalid as it is possible for a human to be. I do not think it is his fault. Homelessness is the one human ill for which there is a known, precise, and encompassing cure.
January 17, 2023
Hesitant to observe (the mischief gods may be listening) how much better I feel than five years past, perhaps ten. The instant debilitating exhaustion is gone. I’m not going to run a marathon, but I can get up the stairs without leaning on the banister at the top. Besides squeamishness, another reason why it’s well I’m not a physician would be that my customary advice would be “Go home and have a good meal. It will go away.” At the center of my life for a while was agonizing acid reflux. It went away. I did change my eating habits, but memory enshrines the moment when I realized I had not taken an antacid in six months. At the center of my life for a while were severe, painful, unaccountable muscle cramps, anywhere, everywhere, at any hour of the day. I had to be cautious picking something up from the floor or getting up from a chair or coughing too hard. Gone. My dreadful legs persist, but it is hard to imagine any salvation for them. I’m glad month by month when they don’t get worse. I have habitually ignored personal hardships as long as I could, assuming they would run their course. So it has been about 80% of the time. The Lord giveth and the Lord allows to dwindle away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Going through the ancient photos my sister sent of our parents. The grief is almost unbearable.
January 15, 2023
Letting go of the truck has prevented my making large purchases, such as a tempting chair I see this minute on line.
P, when she bought the painting, reminded me of the feud I’m supposed to be having with A. Several public feuds involve me through the years, but which I insist were always completely one sided. I didn’t know the feud with K existed until people began asking me, “What happened between you and K?” To this day I don’t exactly know, and I am not the sort of person to stir things up by inquiring too deeply. I think I’m feuding with D just now, and I guess the cause, but really don’t care. The feud with A is better documented, but again, all one-sided. He has kept taking potshots through the years, scandalizing my name at intervals, whereas I don’t remember saying a single thing about him in public (or in private, now that I think of it) after the initial skirmish thirty years ago, which I won. He even kept a public blog dedicated to mocking me. It was in some ways quite impressive. I suppose my lack of attention to my feuds make them all the more infuriating to the other side.
Heard myself wobbling on sustained notes. Winter muck or a sign of age? I’ve sung one place or another since high school.
Caught myself wondered what led ancient people to distinguish between vowels and consonants.
January 14, 2023
Distant trees are uncertain smears behind the curtain of falling snow.
I threw out some stale pretzels and hear the crows squabbling over them in the yard.
Despite snow, our concert came off last night, to a full house, it seemed to me. We did well. No one who came out that bitter night felt himself cheated. T will not be continuing as director, so who knows the fate of the group?
Gout hit when I got home from the concert. Went from unbearable to merely distracting through the night.
Listening to the news: Education under attack from both extremes-- jackanapes deSantis trying to make Florida schools adhere to MAGA “truths” while avoiding left-wing indoctrinations such as diversity, critical thinking, academic freedom, science. Left wing trying to impose ludicrous extremes of individual delusion as new truths, somehow missed or dismissed by a thousand generations before. The only answer is for all sides to shut up and let teachers teach. Interference with the education process by those not part of the process is ipso facto censorship.
Trying egg tempera as a finish over oil. Not sure of the result, but it does look slightly richer. Somebody must have thought of this before.
January 13, 2023
Snow in thin, wavering veils. Waiting for notice as to whether our concert–in preparation since September– will be canceled tonight. Last night’s rehearsal was big, exhausting, informative. I suppose we got all we can get out of the music as performers, but it would be nice actually to perform the pieces. On the other hand, it would be nice not to have to budge from the house tonight. T had finally to tell the sopranos “Shut up!” He hesitated longer than anyone I know. One of the sopranos turns and makes “You’re flat” signs to the basses and says things like, “Because the basses aren’t sure of their parts, we don’t know exactly when to come in–” Only tyros don’t know that one performer never corrects another.
How can Lisa Marie Presley be dead? I knew her when she was born.
January 12, 2023
I’m usually gone, protecting me against such knowledge, but today is cleaning day, and it’s 10 AM and the cleaning lady, meant to appear at 9:30, has not arrived. What do I want, O Universe? I want once for people who have decided on the time themselves to be on time. Once. Once I do not want to be the one waiting. Once. If you are in a giving vein, allow someone sometime actually to be early. Allow me to walk toward someone who has been waiting for me. Once. How’s that for vulnerable? Now that I’ve expressed it, experience makes me assume it will never happen.
Many ideas for new stories. I can’t type fast enough.
Loretto at the Trinity in Dublin tells me to bring some of my paintings over the next time I come. I wonder how that will work. I think of renting a place there for a month or so and just painting, but Maud stops me, how little time she has left, how bereft she is with missing me.
P did come by and purchase At the End of the Great Meadow. I wrote the wrong date on the back of the panel. Oh well. P was full of gossip from UNCA, which I relished more than I thought I would. She was gone fo twenty years and is already far more engaged than I ever was.
January 11, 2023
Dehumidifier guy makes an appointment for 4. At 4:50 I call the office frantically, reminding them that I have rehearsal at 5:30, which I told them when the appointment was made. Mitch the dehumidifier guy phones and says, laconically, “I’m about twenty minutes out from you.” There are so many more provocations to murder than there are murders. We should rejoice.
Rehearsal showed me how far I am from being ready for Friday’s concert. The basses may be the least shaky, I say in our defense. Symphony Chorus has tripled in size. Maybe they wanted to get past the opera.
Akron in the news for an arrest in which the arresting officer smashes snow into a citizen’s face while he was in cuffs and down on the ground. Three times.
Went to get the egg tempera piece framed for Bekka’s daughters. I mentioned how I hadn’t painted in two years because of a flood in my studio, and the frame woman told me that her house in Wilmington was swept away by a hurricane. She insists that Asheville is much larger than Wilmington, which it is not. The idea of moving here to get to a “big city” was odd to me. If an 8x8 costs $70 to frame, I won’t be doing much framing in the near future.
Watching road rage videos on You Tube. My fuse is too slow for there to be much danger of involvement in a road rage incident.
Giving thought to the concept “vulnerability.” Never know what people mean when they talk about it, assuming that all souls at all times are vulnerable to the missiles of existence, and that it’s not something needing to be cultivated. But perhaps it indicates the willingness to express needs and desires without regard to reaction or consequences– saying “I want” without fear of scorn or indifference. If that’s the case, I have been bad at it, and my lack of this particular quality has been a central factor in my life. At Christmas my sister observed this of herself, confirming it’s a family trait. In my defense, there was at no point (before right now) any reason to assume it was a wrong approach to life. Thinking back, I cannot recall one time when I was candid or forceful with my desires that did not end in emotional disaster. I accused God in my prayers of using my prayers as aiming mechanisms, so he could annihilate whatever I most desired. He waited to hear my deepest longing before He struck. I revealed, He destroyed. It was like saying “yes” when the Nazis asked if you were hiding Jews in your basement. I do not accuse people of the same malice, but I do assert that “being vulnerable” has never produced a successful outcome for me. I do not ask for what I want, but try to maneuver around to get it by earning it or deserving it or simply being there when it was handed out. I never assumed, from earliest recollection, that anyone would be moved by my deepest emotions. This is not exactly a complaint. I managed to make a life, and did receive much that I needed without asking. My whispering “I love you” never once elicited “I love you too,” but silence and some confused version of, “well, that’s not what was in my mind at all.” Wanting to present my art, I opened a gallery rather than asking to be in someone else’s. Want to be published, I founded, ever so briefly, a publishing house. Wanting to be produced, I ran a theater. I did this because I never assumed that the response to my asking would be “Yes,” and in this way some shred of dignity might be preserved. Was that wrong? How was I to know? Every response to “Please may I have–” was “Hell no.” Perhaps vulnerability can be taken too far. You leave the gate open wide and the enemy streams in. I have put vulnerability to the test, with a failure rate approaching 100%. What should I have done? I was not able to be someone else, the only full cure I could imagine.
What flashed into mind when I thought of “vulnerability” was the time when father intended to get rid of my dog Kim. He had his reasons–mostly to do with his innate timidity–but I consciously determined that my great need, my unfathomable need, my unanswerable need to keep my dog should overcome his reasons. I pleaded my case. I said, literally that I should win this because it was important to me and it really wasn’t to anybody else. He responded that Kim would go, nevertheless, “because I said so.” I knew in that instant that our relationship would never recover, and it never did. Why leave yourself and others open to that? I could have said all those years, “He really didn’t know how much I wanted it.”
Long ago my mother wanted to go to her family reunion in Pennsylvania. Father refused, and as I didn’t want to go, he and I formed a wall against her. She took to her bed for two days, in a dark night of sadness. That was a lesson to me. Never say how much you want what you want, for cruelty will align against you. In my defense, I was probably 9 or 10. I also smile to think that her reaction to sadness is mine now, go to bed and sleep until you can stand it again. Also in my defense, years later when she wanted to go again, I not only went, but drove. My 21st birthday dawned in the house of my great-aunt Beatrice who is gone, and the farm with her never to be seen again. But for two days my mother was happy among people who had always loved her.
January 9, 2023
Broke out the egg tempera and achieved my first work with it. Advanced Addio Andante. Listened to Palestrina.
Moles have made my yard look like Verdun.
January 8, 2023
Realized during the course of yesterday’s rehearsal one of the reasons I drifted away from directing. At the end, I counted poor Tate’s having to answer the same questions at least four times each, sometimes more, the sopranos chattering and not hearing, some anxious old guy having heard but wanting confirmation. Yes, the concert is at All Souls. No, nobody knows where you can park Yes REALLY the dress attire is black. No, honestly you don’t have to wear a tux. I’m constitutionally incapable of repetition, at least of an intensity that comes with people before performances. Besides the fact that it’s all written down in at least five emails.
Extended wonderful dream, which remains now in fragments. I lived a long time ago, maybe in Sumer, and had invented a small machine out of which medallions could be drawn, arranged on a golden wire. These medallions bore the name and history of famous people, and were prophetic, reaching far into the future. The people around me we awe-struck. Scenes changed and brought me forward in time, always before some sort of salon astounding people with my machine and its prophecies. As we came forward in time, I worried that the effort I was putting into the magic box would prevent me from finishing my Ph.D. At some point I acquired a large, beautiful German shepherd, whom I love inordinately. The dog and I wrestled happily at the end of the dream.
Meaningful sermon this morning, which put my life in order in a way I didn’t expect. Like breaking through a wall and seeing a vista unsuspected. I overcame what annihilated others and could have annihilated me. I have always been stronger than I imagined. That should be enough.
January 7, 2023
Morning given over to rehearsal for the Chamber Chorus’s Friday concert. Are we in good shape? T is encouraging, but there were, to my mind, too many mistakes. My colleague being ill, I was the only bass. I did better than I expected, but in such a case you never know how loud to sing. T announced that we will not be continuing during the spring semester, but will reform in the fall when the Symphony calls a full-time conductor. This is actually good news. I need fewer complications until I go off vestry. There are ten sopranos and ten altogether of everybody else. The sopranos do not stop chattering for one moment, gabbling to one another during rests in songs they are at that moment singing. Every phrase must be discussed, an obligatory post mortem after every moment of singing. From behind, you get ill watching heads whip back and forth to whisper to the ones on either side. I came to the brink of shouting Ladies! fifty times.
January 6, 2023
Epiphany.
It being Epiphany, I knew the Christmas decorations had to come down. When I lifted my hand to do so, I was incapacitated by the strangling grief I feel every year at this prospect. Christmas is the day before the darkness needs to be reckoned with. May it last forever. I sobbed bitterly. I wrote a poem. A took a nap. I got up and dismantled the Christmas tree and packed it away without another thought.
Having arranged my day around the arrival of the buyer for Great Meadow, I knew at the back of my brain that she wouldn’t come. And so she did not. “Dear David, my plans have changed. . . “ Why do people do that? Is it a form of self-aggrandizement to have people plan around plans which you never meant to honor? I fall for it every time– I suppose because I have never reneged or failed to show up at the appointed time regardless of circumstance, regardless of the inconvenience or cost to me. Thus I know it can be done. Each occasion is a demonstration of contempt I don’t believe I’ve earned. “But, circumstances change! There was traffic! I was running late! My cat was making funny sounds!” The only truth is “something else was more important to me.” Here it is Epiphany and my two overwhelming emotions have been grief and disgust. Is that what I’ll find this year?
I wish I had my Christmas tree back. When I go downstairs it will be bare and dark. There will be nothing good on TV.
Fifty-four years ago tonight I wrote the first entry in this journal. In my dark room in Gray Dorm.
January 5, 2023
Listening to an article about Sam Philips on his hundredth birthday. I too made a record in a record shop, though no one discovered me at the time. My dad took me to a music store in downtown Akron and had me make a record from my grandmother. I wonder what she thought of it. I don’t remember singing, but I said a little greeting to her. I was 3 or 4.
Tried to pick up a prescription and was told my insurance had been “terminated.” An afternoon’s worth of phone calls trying to figure that out. The people who eventually helped me were kind and patient, which was a surprise. The misadventure was, it proved, entirely my fault.
Alexa’s ring was lit, so I asked, “Alexa, is there a notification?” She said Amazon wanted to know, based on my past interests, if I wanted to follow the author David B Hopes. I said I did.
January 4, 2023
Finished At the Edge of the Great Meadow.
Sat beside D at rehearsal last night, whose water had been out from Christmas day till yesterday. He was in a better mood than I would have been.
The paint is not dry on At the Edge of the Great Meadow and a Facebook contact wants to buy it. One of my reactions is “No! I haven’t finished looking at it!” The other reaction is grateful amazement. The second chapter of my life as a painter is already more remarkable than the first, though there is no way it can be as lengthy.
January 3, 2023
Paint a little, write a little, John Taverner on Pandora. . . A fragment of paradise.
A discovery made while rooting in the shed for a cooler is that the powder bought to poison and discourage varmints has been eaten to the bottom of the bag by some of those very varmints. No wonder it didn’t work.
Step forward in painting: how much will, as if automatically, go your way if you don’t hurry or force. I think I made the worst of this before because I tried to finish a painting during a single trip to the studio. Working from home allows for judgment and extension.
Spectacle in DC of the Republicans failing to elect a Speaker of the House. Republicans are unable to govern, a condition made more exquisite by the fact that they have no interest in governing, but only in contradicting the plans of others to do so.
January 2, 2023
The homeless have built temporary shelters in the grocery parking lot under my hill. It looks terrible, but what can one say against shelter for the shelterless?
Did some writing, did some housecleaning, then drove down to Foundry Street to discover for myself the vast art and antiques and home furnishings establishments. Bought a stilted wooden box I didn’t need (What do I need?) Several of the establishments are the sort that you can rent space in, sometimes as little as a wall or a panel on the wall, and one of these days, if I keep painting, I will have to consider this. Gone are the days when I will attempt a whole gallery, or even a whole studio. Painting at home is so much better for me than painting at a studio that I will continue it until issues of size or volume intervene. Some familiar faces at the art warehouse, particularly O, who tried to sell his weary portraits at Urthona thirty years ago, and is trying to sell them– unchanged, unimproved–to this day. There must have been some encouragement along the way. It would be difficult not to look like a handful of confetti thrown in the midst of such ungoverned variety.
William Byrd lullaby suddenly on the airwaves. An instant ravishment.
January 1, 2023
Fog reduced the numbers at my party last night, but the numbers probably needed to be reduced. It was the best of my New Years parties, I think, one during which I was anxious or exercised not even for a second. Nice to have it back after two years of pandemic cancellation. Managed to enjoy. S and D made their first appearance, as did the H brothers. I produced pumpkin soup and sauerkraut & sausage, both in unnecessarily massive quantities.
Lesson: People can be very particular about their cocktails, and it’s better to leave the instruments there for them to make their own.
Behind, a year of changes to my house: new toilet (replacing one that was possessed) new furnace which had to be repaired twice, huge damage to both roof and basement because of the inroads of creatures, drama of addressing that damage, which might not be over quite yet. Appearance of The Ones with Difficult Names. Vestry chooses a new Dean. I return to painting. My task now is to finish off the jug of eggnog DJ left in the fridge. My task is to allow this quiet Sunday to ease me into a vibrant year.
Viennese waltzes on the airwaves. It’s hard to imagine an idiom related to Classical music more quickly cloying.
December 31, 2022
Vowed not to go into a panic about the party tonight, and have not. Need to fry sausage. Need to pick up a few last things at the store. Need to give myself 2 hours to set up. That’s the most of it. Invitees changeable as taffeta. Left foot crushed by fasciitis, which should be a grand sensation through the day. Have not a drop of valedictory energy in me on this the last day of the year.
December 28, 2022
Have been rising and climbing to the studio at a time when morning light streams through the attic window on the south. The whole attic gleams gold.
Unexpectedly baked oatmeal cookies.
Red haired Kyle came and fixed–so he says–the furnace. The problem was that when the exterminators sealed the basement, when the Mexican boys sealed up the windows, they screwed up the furnace drainage system. This, Kyle claimed, was the problem. I believed him. He also observed that he’s been here 25 years and last Friday was the coldest night in all that time. I have been here 39 years, and it was still the coldest night. Perhaps I can rest easy on that account.
Reading of Ben and Angela at the kitchen table. It came out quite well. The play is better than I remember it, or maybe it’s just having live voices read it. The actors were so good the reading could have been a performance. Much autobiography in this play, which I had also forgotten. Every single person brought his or her own beverage, six separate thermoses on the table. It’s a new kind of socialization that took me by surprise.
