April 30, 2023
Rain, then cool spring light. Returning from church, I stopped dead, weeping in the door, having looked for Maud when I opened it, having called “My sweetheart!” before I remembered.. People ask if I’m going to get another cat, and the answer is an emphatic no. Won’t go through this again.
CP is dead. She was glamor itself when I was a very little boy.
April 29, 2023
Another day of heroic gardening. Dug, hoed, cleared, planted nasturtium and the ferns I’d bought at Reems Creek. Transplanted a fern that managed somehow to be growing in the lawn and getting mowed over each time. When I stepped into the shower, the water ran dirt brown under me. Can’t remember that since I was a kind.
Sat for a while on the pond bench, longer than I planned, for the movement of fish in the water is notoriously mesmerizing. I have at least three burly bullfrogs. This makes me happy. As I watched, fish appeared from under the waterlilies, fisht bigger than they ought to be, especially one pale silver and variously speckled, with a diaphanous tail trailing behind. It was at least a foot long. I assumed my original purchase had been long ago cleaned out by herons, but maybe I was wrong.
I went early to the river and began a new story. I saw a merganser, all cinnamon-headed, plying the gray water. Their body language is much more agitated than the mallards’.
Solid and deep revisions of three plays. A chapter of Bears and an act of a new play sitting in the notebook, waiting to be transcribed.
A bowl of baba ganoush brought Syracuse memories flooding back.
April 28, 2023
Rehearsal grinding last night. W has somehow been accepted as adviser on repertoire, he who has the taste of a 50's teenager. We repeat the worst pieces over and over because he says “they like it,” though who “they” are is unspecified, and in fact THEY do not like it; he does. We serve neither ourselves nor our audience by keeping our settings on “stupid.” Why do I continue? Each such event pushes me closer to the door.
Followed by a harrowing night of war with heaven. The Enemy’s only weapon is disappearance, which he uses with unanswerable cunning.
It didn’t help that I had watched a movie called Fatima, about the apparitions in Portugal. Did it occur to no one then that “the Lady” was selfish and cruel and totally disconnected from the plight of the people to whom she spoke? Don’t tell starving, war-torn people to “pray the rosary and stop insulting God.” It’s an abomination. Someone in the movie called her “the devil’s daughter.” I think she was.
Woke this morning in the one hour of beauty, between night rain and morning rain, when all the world glittered with crystal and diamond. Pink peony petals fallen on the dark ground were almost too radiant. Gray soft rain now.
LJ is dead.
April 26, 2023
Gentle rain and cold, but enough to water the plantings and keep those not yet int the ground from despair.
Discovered Max Richter
Vestry last night given over to the examination of the enneagram. Like Myers-Briggs, they acknowledged, but with a greater emphasis on motivation than on appearance or achievement. My 4 and 5, one heart and one mind, are almost equal. My first reaction at similar matters is frustration at the waste of time, though I did learn interesting and useful things. When arguing an issue, I assume my opponents argue from facts and research and evidentiary conviction. I need to be awake to the truth that fears and ancient uncertainties and survival strategies are all in play, and if I look for the strait path of reason, I will be thrown into despair. I do all that myself, as well, and, as they probably hoped, I spent a long examining my own strategies and the ever-evolving scars over ancient wounds.
Tried to watch a West End musical of The Wind in the Willows. It was gawdawful at every point and by any standard. The gruesome perkiness of the cast just made it worse. One moment of almost sweet intimacy, between Ratty and Mole on the boat, past which it rushed as fast as it could, as if embarrassed by real emotion.
I can think of Maud without bursting into sobs now.
April 25, 2023
Another day of good labor in the Garden of the Lord, the corner of it assigned to me. Much area cleared to formal beauty, but not much more than blue columbine put into the ground. Intricacies of bamboo runners pulled out, yellow, exposed to the light. The thrashers and towhees glean in my path.
April 24, 2023
Brutal cold at morning, though nothing seems to have frozen.
I still close the door behind so Maud will not follow me up the stairs.
Day of tremendous gardening, more intense labor than, easily, the last six years, delving and pulling out rafts of vines, planting fern and columbine and dicentra. Not even exhausted, or only just.
April 22, 2023
A strange, sweet sensation of blessing came over me last night, in part as though Maud had become a guardian spirit, in part as though some more general blessing had come to me, strange, beatific, not fully understood. It continued into the morning. A craving for pancakes seemed to be part of it, if only as a remembrance of times long past. It is not gone now, and I sense a renewal as evening turns to night. Finished my painting Night Fishing, inspired by the Picasso, but, n the end, not resembling it at all. Picasso was looking for new modes of expression. I look for the one mode perfectly to express what dwells in the imagination. My technique is less bad than it was before, and I come closer than before, sometimes grazing the center of the truth.
Took the enneagram exam for Vestry. Solid 4, as I believe I was when I took it for other reasons before. I’m not sure this is what we should be doing with our time, but–
The first white iris is in bloom.
April 21, 2023
Chorus rehearsal surprisingly happy last night. Except I realized that for a thousand nights I would have looked for Maud sitting on the arm of the loveseat, waiting for me to come home.
Huge gardening day, digging, planting, weeding. Black nasturtium and evening primrose into the ground, vast sections of weed and vive excised. I meant to paint and write but did neither.
April 19, 2023
Caught myself pulling the door shut quickly behind me, to keep the cats from getting out. Lying in bed I thought, this is where she creeps over and puts her paws against my back.
I have more carpet than I have floor. Thought I’d finished, then found more than half stacked upstairs, where I’ve been ignoring them for 6 or 7 years.
Buying produce, I found a vendor selling yellow rhododendron. Bought and planted. Chopped through massive bamboo runners to get it into the ground..
April 18, 2023
My grief was so voluptuous and multi-faceted yesterday, so Baroque, that it could almost be examined as an artifact. Today I’m alone for the first time since October 3, 1990. On that day I acquired Jocasta from the county shelter. On October 4th, M gave me Theseus. The house has not been empty since; it feels vast and cold and quiet. That’s longer than the raising of children. I listen for the thump of paws descending from furniture onto floors. I listen for Maud’s morning tirade from under the dining room table. When I woke this morning I was careful not to kick her as I struggled out of the covers. Passing the shower, I reached in to turn it on for a moment, so she could fulfill her desire to lap water from the floor. Part of me wants to rush out and get another cat. Most of me doubts that I have the 10 to 20 years left necessary to give an animal a forever home.
But, curiously, late last night, a feeling of blessedness, even of mirth, came over me. I think that it was the spirit that had been Maud turning in its journey to thank and bless me. I accept the thanks, for taking care of my little cat was one of the few tasks set for me that I did not botch.
Without intending to, I dragged the Anatolian carpets out of storage and restored most of them to the floor. They are by far my post expensive possessions; I figure they’re worth about $60,000, an investment, I thought then and think now. Maud took to peeing on them. So much did I lover her that I didn’t even care. I had them cleaned, rolled them up and put them out of the way.
Learned that the bamboo tips I’ve been hacking out are called culms.
April 17, 2023
Perfect cool spring morning
Last night I watched Maud have a stroke, I think. She couldn’t walk. I lifted her up and she lay beside me all night, making a noise between a purr and a howl that I hadn’t heard before, and never want to hear again. Today before noon she crossed the Rainbow Bridge and began the next leg of her journey. I’ve noticed before that grief is different from other emotions, for wrath, fear, even love can be controlled for a moment, for a span, but grief cannot. I caught myself moaning as I walked through the house. Did that comfort me? Perhaps it comforted the animal that abides inside before reason. She came into my life on November 11, 2007. I wrote this in my journal: Titus is mature and Jocasta is old and Theseus and Conrad are gone. But Circe and Maude rumble and tumble, and I smile every time they do. Circe has a magic streak down her forehead and a passionate disposition; Maud is pale and beautiful, and if there were a Yeats cat, she would be his Maud. I needed something to take my mind from the sadness I don’t completely understand, and they are it.
I dug her grave in the west garden, and planted over it evening primrose.
Before, when a cat died, there was another cat. The house is empty now. For more than thirty years one cat spirit or another dwelt with me. I have no where to turn.
As I stood I the garden I suddenly had such compassion for God. Every second of every day He hears lamentations rise up, most from those whose cause is a thousand times greater than mine. How can He endure it? I cannot endure even my little dirge, nor the thought that I’ll be singing it sadly, wearily, until it simply wears away.
April 16, 2023
End of day, the sky outside gray and dull yellow. Towhees chirping. Finished the revision of Some God in the Waters. Waiting for yesterday’s paint to dry so I can go back into today’s work. Finished the New Yorker crossword in forty minutes. Having opted out of church, almost forgot it is a Sunday.
I remember my father remarking that he enjoyed old age because it was full of happy memories. Mine is not, so far. This is not a complaint; I’m not haunted by bad memories, very often, but they do seem usually to be of moments of emotional or empathetic failure, when I could have done a good thing but did not, when I could have done a far better thing than I did. My apologia for each of these is How could I have known? I could not have. In that sense I’m blameless, if melancholy. Then why do they return to me with such insistence? Am I to learn something now when the moment of crisis is fifty years in the past? I think of finding my mother weeping. I could have knelt on the floor where she was and embraced her, tried to bring comfort. Instead, I walked away confused. Neither of my parents ever embraced me, ever consoled or comforted me in any overt or passionate way, so the gesture was not then in my vocabulary. Why confront me with it now? Is there some alchemy that can reach back and change what was? Even if I extend deliberate effort to find a moment of love or triumph, a spirit within me asks “Is that how they saw it?” Perhaps I felt loved and included and necessary when the people around me were rolling their eyes and waiting for me to go away. I whirl in a cloud where my perceptions and certainty never collide. I have no wall to back up against, no firm sureness to set my compass by. I thought A loved me, that I had B’s respect. Maybe I misread everything. I have learned to live with this, but it must make a difference in my character, perhaps one that only others can see. The memories I can turn to are of being alone in the wilderness. There no misconception, no error that was not fatal, is possible.
April 15, 2023
To the theater last night. Blocked from Depot Street by the longest train in the world, which cleared in time for me to make it to the show. Had to change seats (easy to do in the sparse house) because the two tall lesbians in front of me could not stop kissing each other, thus blocking the space between heads that would normally be there. It was the Hyena Preview, where a few people who worked on the play and one notorious Board member let out piercing cackles every few lines to demonstrate how funny the play was (it wasn’t). “Oh, I’ll have a tonic with lemon” SHRIEK! “That must be Child Protective Services; answer the door” SHRIEK! To be fair, it would likely have been a dead house without the hysterical shrieking of the shills. I did laugh honestly once. My history as a teacher, and a teacher of playwriting, prompts me to look at a night like that other than others do. K said as I left “I want to talk to you some time about this play–” If I hadn’t felt the necessity of having an informed opinion, I would have driven home in the fitful rain and never thought of the dreary piece again. Magnetic has been able to count on pretty solid acting lately, so little of the fault lies there. Directing, however, was catastrophic. I left my program downstairs so I wouldn’t be tempted to record the director’s name, but she managed to magnify the script’s flaws, and to add ineptitudes of her own likely not inspired by the playwright. The male lead was grossly miscast. In this age of gender-blind and color-blind casting, perhaps we’re not meant to notice when the actor clashes with the character, but casting a beared, obese middle aged man as what was clearly intended to be a seductive, sexually and morally ambiguous juvenile went too far. Focus was often impossible, as two or more things happened on the stage at the same time. The play? As a playwright that’s what I mostly notice, while others have their eyes on the actors. The play can be dark without being dreary: this was dreary, slow, the bad directing letting it be unintelligible almost to the end. It probably cannot entertain. But can it be respected? In a way, yes. A woman has killed a young girl in a traffic accident, and tortures herself with things both real and phantasmagorical in penance. A good premise, but one which, here, never quite emerges from the therapist’s office onto the stage. At the end the woman and the dead girl’s ghost are doing yoga together on the woman’s deck. Don’t mind that: have no idea how it happened. One way of killing your play is to develop and develop and take everyone’s word for what you should do and end up with a product so bland it can neither offend nor excite. The other way is to ignore the audience altogether, and parade your inmost psyche on the stage as though it were a dream. The second of those is more interesting, but still a failure. The second of those was last night.
Trusting Bobby the check-out guy that it wouldn’t frost again, I put in zinnia seeds.
Rabbits fed in my garden as I turned to mount the stairs.
April 14, 2023
One thing led to another and it looks like I’ll be taking a brief vacation at The Tides in Folly next month. We’re meant to sing at F’s church, and the idea of staying with some church-lady in her guest room could not be entertained. Revised Some God in the Waters. Got a start on the residency play.
April 12, 2023
Wrote in the cold morning beside the river. Goose pairs sailed up and down with their broods. Very serious conversations went on round about. Two men took care of an energetic baby while planning, it seemed to me, outings for a church youth group. A young man explained his plans to two older people, perhaps his parents, apparently presenting a new college and a new major and wanting financial support. He aspired to be a “life coach,” but confided that looks ridiculous without a degree after your name. One men met another who was furious with him for something that happened at work. Their interchange was civil and reasonable.
Planted pinks. Ripped out vines. Felled new shoots of bamboo.
April 11, 2023
Supper last night high on a mountain in Waynesville with S and D: gnocci and asparagus. S and I lamented that roles for men our age disappear, unless someone wants to do Lear, and no one wants to do Lear. They have a rich and layered mutual life, deeply to be admired. They read great books to each other in the evenings.
DS died in his sleep. He and I feuded memorably for a while. His gripe was that I am white, mine that he was ignorant. Now he is beyond everything like that.
April 9, 2023
Brilliant Easter, a day of weatherly perfection. Two services which I hope brought joy into hearts and peace into souls.
Dreamed last night that I was invited to a New Years party at the Huxtables (the TV family from long ago). Bill Cosby told me to sit down and “look after myself,” and pointed to a gigantic coat rack which took up most of the room. When I tried to hang my coat, I realized the hangars were tangled up, and untangling them was a puzzle you had to solve before you sat down. When I was finally seated, I saw K standing behind an array of microphones, and my heart sank that the evening’s entertainment was going to be bad poetry.
Watched an opossum nose about my yard, then cross the street in their unheeding way. A woman stopped for him and waited for him to cross. I think it’s DJ’s ‘possum, so bold now that he gads about in broad daylight.
April 8, 2023
Holy Saturday
Enduring rain.
The brown thrashers have returned with their aggressive body language. Beauties. The male (I think) hammered away moments ago at something at the edge of the back garden.
The dogwoods outside my window make me think, upon waking, that it has snowed. The dogwood volunteer I pruned and left in the west garden bears its first flowers.
JN has died. We met several times, and I liked her, but she was married to one my dearest high school friends, whose kindness and manliness (though that is a trait difficult to define) have stayed with me through the years. I remember the day he appeared among us in first grade. Michael and I were locker-mates in the eighth grade. He chose me. I couldn’t believe my luck.
April 7, 2023
Good Friday.
Baking a potato last night, I discovered that the convection oven would not turn off and the house was heating up fast. Had to go downstairs and flip the circuit breaker. Assumed the stove was new when I moved in, but maybe not.
Horrific dream. A new professor, I couldn’t find my classroom and couldn’t get on line and couldn’t find any documents to help me, and when I finally found the room it was like a saloon and I had to lecture on the Gothic by shouting over drunks and boors. One young man whose dorm was nearby said I could lecture to the few who wanted to hear what I had to say in his room.
Inevitably when I miss a service, this time Maundy Thursday, K Facebooks that it was the best the choir has ever done. Should send me a message.
G has died, less than a month after his sister, of dementia and Parkinson’s, the obit said. G was the main character in my first published fiction, wherein I recounted the backyard football we used to play. I was G’s preferred receiver, because I had “great hands,” he said. Made me wonder what might have been had I been able otherwise to get onto the field. My other memory of him is when my friend Laurie and I brought a basket of baby mice to show him, and he threw them in the fire.
Sang the Good Friday service. No one would say that was our finest hour, but I believed those who came to be moved were moved.
Foot in agony from faciaitis.
Barrier-breaking painting of a bear standing at a spring roadside.
Guy on Facebook says I was the best professor I ever had. Needed to hear it.
April 5, 2023
Carol has died. During the Hiram year and thereafter I thought of her as my best friend, and though the feeling wasn’t reciprocal, it was warm and lasting. D writes from Hiram: Her leaving was unexpected. Late Covid became pneumonia, as well as riling up long term rheumatoid arthritis. Her daughter Karen said yesterday that she went "peacefully but not passively." Al died 4 years ago (on Christmas Day) and she had become quite reclusive. I had known her for 63 years, taught with her, enjoyed her as a colleague and fellow troublemaker. It's strange to have entered the stage of oldness where we are lined up at the door just waiting for the call.
Wrote abundantly by the river, and watched a man playing with his dog. K appeared with a big, dark man I mistook as her husband, but whom she introduced as a new Board member. I got shot out of that organization as soon as New Year’s Day passed. It’s OK. It’s gone down a path of goofy, where I cannot follow. She congratulated me on a production I still don’t know that I have.
Tony’s giant son mowed the yard today, with a woman I think is his mother, though she looks very young. They were going to creep away without being paid.
April 2, 2023
Palm Sunday. Read the St Matthew Passion at three services. Asked Alexa to wake me a 6:00. She did not. I woke in full daylight and screamed “What time is it?” Alexa said, “It is 7:19 AM.” Zoomed down to Biltmore unshowered and unbathed to get there for the 7:45. Was moved when the earthquake began. The Gospel reading did get me out of the procession. Inflammation so bad I walked like a cripple. Better now. Flat cool beauty of spring.
Watched a production of Jesus Christ Superstar deep into the night.
Wearing the shirt I wore for my first North Carolina Driver’s License photo.
