May 29, 2023
Memorial Day. Patriotic Music from Alexa downstairs.
Thinking of the time I drove Maya Lin to Portsmouth for art supplies, and she cried the whole time about how brutal members of Congress were being to her concerning her design for the Vietnam memorial. I wonder if she remembers this. Vicious grandpas used to bullying anyone they met. They wanted to pretend that Vietnam was the same as WWII.
Birthday celebration for DJ. The “usual suspects” expand and contract, mostly contract.
May 28, 2023
Pentecost. Extravagant rains. Closed the windows to calm my rattling bones. New flowers in the garden that will have to wait to be beheld up close.
DF wants to have lunch.
The first Pentecost since I came to All Souls in 1988 when the Gospel reading was not done in many languages by many people in the congregation. Missed it. Missed it dramatically.
Unbelievably cold. Turned on the furnace.
Stopped by the Sav-Mor after church. Two Hispanic men bought a whole lot of groceries, and when the clerk told them the sum, one of them dropped a handful of bills onto the counter. The clerk said, “You put those into my hand! That was very rude!” The man put the bills into her hand, and then left with his groceries. Her face was red. She was furious. Over the bills not being put into her hand? Something was going on that I didn’t understand. She snapped at me because I put my credit car in the slot before she was ready, but I think she was still harvesting the fury of her exchange with the men..
May 27, 2023
Thinking of the number of feuds I supposedly have, about which I had to be told because I didn’t know I was having them. I’m able to provoke people not only without intention, but without consciousness,
Started yesterday with a flat tire. Opportunity to go to Newbridge and be serviced by the sexy rednecks.
Happy days, doing what comes up, napping luxuriously, typing, painting, looking at a calendar essentially empty for Siberian stretches,
May 25, 2023
Lunch with B. He’s a fascinating meal companion for his wide range of interests and his deep knowledge of several, notably history, politics, and women. We can have rich exchange on three of them. He remembers with perplexity when women wanted to serve him. I think, but never say, that the perplexity is unnecessary. When I first met him he was so handsome and low-down sexy in a purring, Southern way, that I don’t know how anybody could resist him. I didn’t.
Medications all worked out– expensive, but worth it if they work.
Not too ghastly rehearsal, except for the announcement that we “have to do ‘YMCA’ at GALA, because it’s such a crowd-pleaser.” I say the point is to create crowd-pleasers rather than to depend on them. Doing trash like that will save me the journey to GALA next summer.
Extreme pain of the last few days lifted miraculously (which is to say, with nothing being different in my life so far as I could see) and I felt new all day.
Weeded. Sent out manuscripts. Letting a painting slowly evolve.
May 24, 2023
Linda arrived yesterday, and we hiked around Lake Powhatan as much as my one-two punch of gout and fasciatus would allow. It was boring for me to be limping and ouching all the time. She brought a comforter (is that what you call it? An Afghan?) her friend made out of my old T-shirts. It is unexpectedly nostalgic and elegant. Watched Atlantis (the 1961 movie) and remembered seeing it with dad when it was new.
Off to annual check-up today. A new doctor-in-charge changed my bp medicine and assigned a whole new regime for gout, saying that the new medicine would not only help the gout but flush away the constant inflammation that I must be feeling, and do in fact feel. The bp medicine (to cure something the effects of which I’ve never felt) came through, but the gout medicine (to address something that causes me actual pain and compromises quality of life) got tangled up somehow. Of course. Will pursue tomorrow.
May 21, 2023
Back in Asheville before noon, at first through considerable rain, barreling through without a stop. Went grocery shopping and hacked out four days’ worth of culms (some so tall they had to be taken down in stages) before 1 PM. Then a joyful revery on the back porch, eating the sandwich I had bought. The garden stood in perfect beauty. I thought of my valediction to the desk girl at the hotel, “Thanks! I had a good time.” It made me think that on my last day I, going on, will turn to my Host and say, “Thanks! I had a good time.”
May 20, 2023
Performed last night at St. James Episcopal on James Island. Across the street is Something Anglican (maybe St James) a monument to the horrible split in the Southern churches over the question of gay rights. I think their inviting us was to some degree a gesture across the street. We did not do superbly, but well enough to justify coming here. D F, our founding director, is now music director there. He must have toned down many levels. He kept talking about how old and near-the-end he was, being 62.
A is dead at 59. S reports it was a suicide.
Lovely day already, and it’s just past noon. First full visitation from Housekeeping, which gladdens my soul.
Watched life on the pier, many insufficient fish being caught. Every identifiably heterosexual couple was mixed-race, the ten-colored gods be praised. On the pier, fifty feet from any body, in a stiff wind, I could smell coconut sun-tan oil.
R sent me photos of visiting Maud’s grave, which I had described to him, and of A spreading daisy flowers over it. I was sitting on the hotel terrace bar, amid a hundred youngsters drinking and reveling, and I burst into sobs. No one looked at me, so I dwelt in perfect solitude until I worked it out of my system. I might feel foolish mourning my cat for so long, but I don’t. The grief feels clean, like a flash of light on the sea waves. And, it’s not just for Maud. She was the Seal of the Cats, after whom there will be no other. I look through the memory of her to the memory of six cats who gave me comfort and mirth through the middle of my life, when it was needed. Jocasta the hidden. Theseus, my sweet boy. Titus the burly. Conrad the secret sharer. Circe the gentle hearted. Maud the mysterious. Homage. Honor. Thankfulness.
May 19, 2023
Misty morning. People with metal finders speckle the beach, looking for treasure thrown up by the waves. Surfers speckle the ocean, taking advantage of the still hilly waves. The whole panorama is after-storm. Walked the beach a little, then the pier, where there were many fishers, white people, interestingly, on one side, black people on the other. One of the black people caught a baby shark. Surreptitiously to suggest he throw it back, I said, “Can you eat that?” He gave me a recipe for grilled shark with lemon butter. Grackles were everywhere, engaged in either forage, rape, or warfare, but loud in every case. Dolphins sported toward Charleston, looking exactly as I portray them in my paintings. Tossed a crouton to a female grackle at Rita’s, then attacked a salad far mightier than I.
May 18, 2023
Slept a rich sleep, turning off the light at 9:30. The sea in your ear is different from the mountain night in your ear, uniform, mesmerizing, at once calming and wildly melancholy. Cloudy and gray this morning. I’ll feel all Romantic Poet walking down the beach.
Walked the fresh, blond new pier. Out at the end encountered a thin but considerable shoal of jellyfish, about as big as mixing bowls, with a fringe of red between bell and tentacles. Nobody I pointed them feverishly out to seemed to be as enthralled as I.
Can’t help noting that I have been here 4 times (recently) and this time marks by far the greatest ease of motion. I have more actual pain in my legs, but I walk and walk and am not exhausted nor out of breath. To get away from a storm hitting while I was on the pier, I did something approaching a run. My legs and feet were in agony yesterday; today, not a twinge. Imponderable.
I love hotel life, except that you’re never sure when the goddam Housekeeping will appear.
*
Lunch at Planet Follywood. Raw burger and nasty slaw, but good vodka tonics and good company, jolly waitresses and Dan, whose dad was an English professor. Dan and the waitresses discussed a recent death by DUI where they’re trying to sue every bar where the perp might have had a drink. MADD is one of those organizations which has gone several steps beyond its original good idea.
Bought two t-shirts so far when I didn’t actually need any.
When I went back to the room, housekeeping was two rooms away, so I expected them at any minute. Two hours later I opened the door to see what happened, and a “Do not disturb” sign flew off my door. I hadn’t put it there. I guess housekeeping got overwhelmed and just decided to skip, and decided to have an excuse. Sooner or later everything happens.
Storm, the sea whipped into frenzy. I rather like it. One group of gulls stands far back from the water, another stands right up against it.
The hotel has an excellent native beach garden. Loved the painted leaf, which I don’t believe I’d seen before.
Housekeeping came, an Asian woman who had no English. She replaced the towels, emptied the trash, but didn’t touch the bed. I was working at a table nearby, and I think she was afraid to come near me.
I retain the impulse to pick up men on the street. I note body language, calculate strategies. It’s sweetly nostalgic now, like an old soccer star roaming the pitch and remembering.
Wind so strong the water in the toilet is agitated.
May 17, 2023
Packed and ready for the beach. Sleep plans were interrupted by weird sound outside my window. I’m still not sure what they were, but I interpreted them as raccoons trying to dig back into the house. I struggled into some shoes and went out, half naked, with a baton in one hand and a flashlight in the other to confront the enemy. Once out, I realized the sounds came from across the street, and were much louder than I’d thought. Even after searching the internet I’m not sure what it was: almost a sci-fi noise, a high bubbling sound repeated at some length. Woodchuck is the best bet, but they usually don’t go on like that, endangering themselves with volume.
Tides Hotel, Folly Beach 6th floor at the very end, overlooking the newly restored pier. The drive was endangered enough by construction not to be fully boring. Strong warm breeze in my window. Maybe, in terms of view, the best room in the hotel.
Shut off the air-conditioning, opened the door to the sea.
Gout was my co-pilot this morning, right front toe, which made pressing the gas pedal for five hours a fascinating endeavor. In fact, limping and in considerable discomfort the whole day. Best to have been driving.
Black-headed gulls fly close to my window, as if expecting a hand-out. Now that I know that’s the culture, they will not be long disappointed.
Dinner at the hotel– because of torrential rain. . Perfect salmon, salad as gritty as if they’d dragged it across the beach. The rain knocked out the hotel elevators and flooded nearby streets as high as the middle of the hubcaps of parked cars.
May 16, 2023
After three days of neglect, I hacked out 71 bamboo culms, some more the eight feet tall. Looking forward with dread to coming home from the beach, in this regard. Packing without feline interference. It’s miserable.
Vestry largely uneventful. I’m not good at administration. It’s blessed that I stayed away from it by instinct, and so made no colossal blunders,
Evening: stupendous thunderstorm. Lovely. Close rain, distant thunder.
May 15, 2023
Something almost unprecedented happened this morning: I didn’t wake till past 11 AM. Probably exhaustion after the Mother’s Day concert at First Baptist last night. We had a large crowd, most of whom were hearing that music for the first time. Theater companies and choirs wish their audiences were a little less elderly. How did we do? I went errorless, though also hoarse and weak-voiced from too much singing and too much pollen. I think we did well. I do not have the most discerning ear. K is pissed at me for something, but, searching my conscience, I can’t determine what. He could barely stand to shake my hand. It’s a Southern tradition never to tell the person who’s offended you the offence, so that it may rankle and spread. We’re both Midwesterners, so perhaps that won’t happen, or perhaps I’m imagining everything.
Cramps in the night after standing so long for the concert. I used to leap up and try to curse and hobble the cramp into submission. Now I lie there, try to find a better position, pray until it goes away. It does.
SB has died.
May 13, 2023
Croaking like a frog after last night’s long and grueling rehearsal. Pollen and overuse attack my throat at the same time. Trying to figure out why so much effort is expended selling a mediocre composition. The Beach Mass is not a great lost masterpiece, but a formulaic, uninspired (though learned) exercise that has had precisely the renown it deserved. My mind keeps going back to Germaine Greer, who, in The Obstacle Race, set herself the task of discovering great unknown Baroque paintresses (her word) and concluded there were none, that female artists of the time, though disadvantaged in several ways, were known and celebrated because of their novelty, often out of proportion to their achievement. All the ones that were are already known and evaluated.
Evening: morning rehearsal was less grueling than the one last night. My body was in broad and severe pain, which I tried to hide from the people around me. A couple of Advil sent all that on its way. Why don’t I remember that? Exhaustion=Inflammation.
Looking at photos of my cats, weeping bitterly. I always felt grief at their passing, but loneliness was never before part of it. There will be no more sweethearts. An evening, I see now, given over to melancholy. It must happen from time to time.
May 12, 2023
Last night’s rehearsal levels better than the one before. Hit the low A in the Casals effortlessly.
Completed a painting.
Sat by the riverside and wrote nothing, but watched bluebirds. Watched a large skink with an inflamed orange throat pursue a smaller one into the ivy. I assume it was a rape.
Deep and inexplicable exhaustion. Perhaps related to this (perhaps not) my alternative imagination had lain very close to the surface. If I so much as shut my eyes an alternative cinema begins, having nothing whatever to do with the “real” world I was taking in seconds before.
May 11, 2023
Major gardening. Fatboi is back, looking enormous, like a little red bear. He has to do a job of flattening to get into his lair under the toolshed.
The perfume rolling to my front door is peonies, of which I finally have nearly enough.
May 10, 2023
Did not intend to return to the garden today, but the urge to do so was almost physical. Huge areas cleared, a few things planted. Unearthed a snake, who zipped off into the grass. I don’t expect to encounter snakes actually under ground. I suppose the loose state of cultivated earth makes it easy to burrow.
Eye red and watery. Pollen, I suppose.
Rehearsal last night left me voiceless. We are not prepared for the concert on Sunday. I came in to the house and called, out Sweetheart!, not remembering
A cold voice from the interior replied, There will be no more sweethearts.
May 9, 2023
Good work on GB.
Mighty work in the garden, vining, spading, ending with the planting of ferns in an area less shady, actually, than I thought.
Today begins a sequence of two weeks in which there is a task almost every night. Retirement has spoiled me for that sort of thing..
Dreamed that I had bought some beautiful cattle, and when they arrived I had the dilemma of finding a place for them to live.
Trump found liable in a civil sexual assault case. The first of a cascade, I hope.
May 7, 2023
Read articles in NYRB about the extinction of humankind. The disappointments of my own life are strangely comforted by that concept. I’m think of the paradise that would assert itself if we were gone. I want to say, “but who would appreciate it?,” forgetting that the animals too have souls and like what is beautiful to them.
Thinking about Thursday night. I have sung in choruses since the 7th grade and no one has ever once bellowed at a director for directing badly in the middle of a rehearsal. Ought it to have been done? Ought I simply to have walked away? Ought I to do that now? Am I expected to leave the chorus? That would be no sorrow at this point. Am I meant to go on as if nothing had happened? That’s my plan now. That is almost always my plan . . .
Afternoon. Torrential rain began as I sat on the porch with a cold drink, even as I was thinking “I have to water these plants.”
Evening: Lightning. Thunder. Maud is not running to me for comfort.
May 6, 2023
Movies with DJ. Almost forgot how to do it. He reports that one of our homeless people destroyed the garth. Hard to know what to do.
Watched about an hour of the Coronation.
Back to painting after a month.
Went the Marquee in the River District to rent display space. Didn’t do it. Went to Togar’s to buy another carpet. Didn’t do it. Bought a limeade and sat in the shade of a smokestack drinking it.
May 5, 2023
Lost my voice at rehearsal last night. Sheer exhaustion, I think. I had enough left to shout at our director, who had doubled down on a tactic she acknowledged to be rude and disrespectful, but which had determined to keep up until we gave her the effect she thinks she wants, which has not happened after five years of her doing the same thing. I told her to stop it, that it was ineffectual and infuriating. She said that she would, but who knows the actual outcome of the incident? I gain the reputation of a grumpy crank (in case I didn’t have that before)? All things are suddenly well with the chorus? Rob pursued me afterwards to hug me and say “Thank you. That needed to be said.” Hope to God it did. My punishment was a restless night full of horrible dreams, which involved–literally– exploring versions of hell. Brad Pitt seemed to be my companion in the journey, which lightened it surprisingly little.
My sister sends the death notice of Esther, my father’s last sibling:
May 4, 2023
The terrible anniversary.
Woke this morning to Maud’s little morning shout, the one that announced she was awake and ready to start her day. It was ghostly but comforting.
The mower mowed wrong, the cleaning lady left ridges of dust, and her sweater on the chair in the living room. I stared at the sweater for a while before comprehending what it was: so feminine, soft blue and embroidered with little flowers.
May 3, 2023
Biggest garden day ever. The shade garden on the west side is practically clear and practically planted. Coral bells, dicentra, a fragrant white rose called Desdamona, yarrow and milkweed in the sun. The wind blew a giant bamboo over on my cedar, and was interfering with its crown. Sawed if off, then had 40' of green bamboo to deal with.
Sudden remembrance of Colors in the Dark, the first play I saw at Hiram, whose inventiveness and– I think– strangeness made me want to participate. L impersonated a swan. K gave the line “Ich bin ein Canadienisher Frau,” which everybody thought was funny. It was probably clunky and forgettable, but I have not forgotten it, and to me it was magic. 1968.
May 2, 2023
A day pretty much wasted, but I suppose that’s OK once in a while. Touched neither spade nor hoe, neither pen nor keyboard.
Received a check from the Treasury, with no explanation, but I assumed I overpaid my taxes. Took it to WF to cash it, and tried to ask a question about the FDIC, but the woman said they were not allowed to talk about the FDIC. Very curious. My student Will was having his first day as a teller, and gave me a big flannel-y hug.
May 1, 2023
CRF is dead, my student and my wife in Our Town. What does a person that young die of?
Truly a stupendous day, I think, looking back on it. Rose early and wrote by the river, wrote well, pulling my winter jacket tight around me. Gardened hard and long, digging and clearing, planting the rest of the evening primrose.
