Brazen Trumpet

 

June 23, 2024

Tried a little gardening this AM, but it was too hot even at 10:30. The weeds didn’t wait to be pulled, but leapt from the ground to end their misery.

Almost had my camera focused on my giant black frog before he leapt into watery obscurity. 

Second AVLGMC concert yesterday afternoon to a larger crowd, though it must be said that high summer is not the ideal time for indoors choral concerts. I think we were good. We were certainly active & happy & engaged, and our audience wept and laughed along with us. My own voice, which I’d been babying, was a brazen trumpet, and I could do ff contra notes to the very end. It’s been long since I felt so solid an accomplishment with that group. 

Watching some of the Olympic trials, where Katie Ledecky wins her heats with so much margin that she could have a cappuccino before #2 splashes home.  

The birds have found the mulberry trees. The mockingbirds have a peculiar little greed song they warble when they’re stuffing themselves with the berries. 

*

From email:

Andrew Murphy 

3:03 PM (3 hours ago)

to me

Good Evening, David,

My Name is Andrew Murphy.

I have been given your details by Jim Horgan from Cork Arts Theatre, I had the privilege of being in the audience on one of the evenings to see Views from a Lamp Post being performed. I work with two Amateur groups here in Scotland and I would love to get a copy of your script for Alfie & Greta to let them read it with the possibility of performing it at some point in the future. I look forward to hearing from you so we can hopefully arrange something.

Thank you for your assistance.

Kind Regards, Andrew Murphy

 June 22, 2024

Dawn already ablaze. 

Concert at Grace Covenant last night for a small, appreciative crowd. Most of our choreography and scene-setting worked just fine, contrary to my expectations– the most successfully theatrical show we’ve done in a long time. The repertoire is convincing– not what I would have chosen, but vital and energetic, with musical (or perhaps I should say dramatic) virtues I had not anticipated. Pop, but strong pop. We’d slipped into the habit of doing junk. It’s not Schubert now, but neither is it junk. Hellish time afterward staggering home across the empty parking lots. 

 June 21, 2024

From Charles Schwab:

Rate of return: Your account had a cumulative rate of return of 215.05% from Oct 10, 2017 to Jun 20, 2024. (Annualized: 18.69%).

Not bad, I guess, for a naif. 

*

Exhausting rehearsal last night. What should have been a simple run-through was a workshop, still learning notes the night before a concert. We take on too much. We waste too much time. There’s too much of a gap between musical leaders and followers. C who stands next to me, for instance, sounds good, but gets about 1/3 of the notes wrong. B who stands behind me sounds good and gets most things right, and I use him to check myself. A sounded sensational on his Dylan solo. Part of the downside of all this is that I’m hoarse as ocean fog. Much of the bass part is quite low and also loud and percussive. The contra D flats just stop forming after a while. The pain in my legs after climbing down from the risers is, for a moment, almost unendurable. Walked home from the venue waddling like a duck. 

S was in a dire mood because our thrice-featured soloist K “has a stomach bug.” I knew when her name was announced months ago that she would not sing this concert. It seemed hateful at the time to say so, and gratuitous now to say “I knew it.” Sometimes I’m quite clairvoyant. Without fail I predict the days when my cleaning lady will want to delay or postpone. I knew when there was all that talk about a graduate program in creative writing that it wouldn’t happen, even when the Provost said, ruefully, "it’s a fait accompli.”  I can tell this kind of conviction from a hunch, but the evidence is so subtle and subjective I wouldn’t believe it myself. Let’s not add Casandra to the names . . . 

Full summer. 

The Dublin Traviata sprints toward completion. 

A scene from Coriolanus popped up on the Internet. It was only a moment, but the lines uttered by the character C himself, I believe) were so rich, so embroidered and damasked and gorgeous that you swooned even before you understood what was going on. No modern writer would be allowed to do that. I long for it. I could do it. It would put an even longer corridor between me and any conceivable producer. 

 June 20, 2024

Seriously re-vamped my portfolio. Items sold came to $86,000 in profit. 

Turned down the trip to Umbria. The leader mentioned dormitory sleeping in a villa on a steep hill. Nope. Back in the day, maybe. Besides, I write daily with setting or provocation. He also said that mature participants are often impatient with the naivety and self-importance of the kids. Neither of those things bothers me much, but I am prone to impatience by any number of other causes. Also realized I could spend the same amount of money and be wherever I wanted doing whatever I wanted and not having anybody tell me how to write a play. 

Bad showing among the annuals this year. Change seed companies? Don’t know otherwise what went wrong. Saw the turkey hen wallowing in the zinnia bed, so that bit is explained. 

La Mama

 

June 19, 2024

Tried trading stocks, couldn’t understand why there was no response until the Schwab lady said “Happy Juneteenth.” 

Invited to join La MaMa’s playwrights’ workshop in Umbria in August. Giving myself a day to think about it. The invitation comes quite late, as many earlier acceptances dropped out. Don’t need it, but what DO I need now? 

 June 18, 2024

Went to the Woodfin Y first thing, had a workout. It felt good. I hesitated because I didn’t want to see C, and, of course, C sat at the desk at the top of the stairs and could not be avoided. It’s four years since my last visit, and that hasn’t changed. C never offends in any way, except to say “Good morning today” when he sees you, invariably, inevitably. I would do anything to avoid hearing those three words. I think twice about entering the Sav-Mor, because I always seem to be buying tonic water, and the check-out crone will always testify how tonic water is good for leg cramps, the quinine, you know. In fact, no it isn’t. Repetition has always driven me wild. Another day of heat, the sky a leaden yellow-gray. 

Marauder

June 17, 2024

Woke before tight to a sound on the east porch which I identified as a jar that has sat there for a month being knocked over by a raccoon. Sure enough, the jar was knocked over, and though raccoon is the likeliest, the sure culprit is unknown. 

My submission to The Carolina Quarterly came back with the announcement that the magazine is forced to close its doors. I can have my submission fee refunded if I want. 

 

 June 16, 2024

To church, merrily, without responsibility. Painting and writing. Great mullein in glory. 

June 15, 2024

Scorcher. I can survive upstairs by having the fan on high pointed at my head. Downstairs breezy enough. 

Dire (and sudden) disorder of the intestines. I look for dietary causes, and wonder if it was the unusual quantity of onions and cucumber in vinegar consumed yesterday.

Received a summons to jury duty at the end of July. I’ve ghosted out of that so many times I’m determined to do my civic duty this time. 

The lady at the Woodfin ABC offered me a part time job. 

 June 14, 2024

Missed Yeats’ birthday. He will forgive me. 

Good weeding yesterday– which I forgot until I looked out and saw dead weeds wilting on the grass.

Scolded at Riverside for feeding the white lab. 

AVLGMC concert at Givens Estates last night. Well attended, appreciated, but I don’t know how good. Perhaps adequate. I was better than adequate, though not perfect. Unable to walk for half an hour afterward. D and G had me up to their apartment for wine. Much talk of Ireland and Celtic culture. Another thing I’d forgotten was that in the despair of February, 2020, I invited everyone to my studio to take what they wanted. D and G took a good deal, the bluebird box and the painted drawer face for themselves, and bird paintings for each of their grandsons. I was happy to know this, to feel a ray of redemption. It was also curious to see the works in an unexpected context, though I must have known this all happened long ago. 

I like the boys in AVLGMC more than I have in the last decade. 

Delayed announcement from UNCA that certain programs– Classics, Drama, some foreign languages– will be cancelled. I want to be apoplectic, though can’t quite rise to it. It would be like trying to reason with a MAGA rally. Every aspect of the decision–including the identity of those who made it–is wrong. Everybody knows it’s wrong; it doesn’t matter. “Administration” must be eliminated as a caste and as a concept, but I am not the one to lead that fight, or more than a puling skirmish of it. Sneaking into my thoughts is the slightest satisfaction that Drama is gone, Arnold’s entire and only legacy disappeared before his eyes. A university without a theater is an absurdity, so if UNCA survives, theater will return, perhaps this time founded upon something other than mediocrity and dilettantism. 

 June 12, 2024

Productive days in unexpected ways– an orgy of revision of older manuscripts. 

Movie night last night with R and DJ. Dune 2. It’s a long, red-brown film, but I never looked at the clock. 

When I returned from Ireland, some things in my house were different from how I’d left them. The most notable was that all my TV remotes lay organized in a straight line on the coffee table. I had not done this. It being unfathomable, I stopped thinking about it, until R mentioned that he’d brought A to the house (which he loves to visit) and read him poetry from my shelves. A poem by Richard Wilbur moved him in particular. I loved the idea of R and A wandering about my house when I was gone. 

Yeomanly bout of weeding. 

Don’t go out without slathering my face with sunblock. Lip still painful. 

 

June 9, 2024

Ill today, with what I don’t know. Maybe just downloading the Irish adventure. 

 

June 8, 2024

Extreme early rising brought on by the clash of times between here and Europe means that I woke, caught up on correspondence, submitted three manuscripts, did the day’s weeding before 10 AM. Good effort at weeding, though about a tithe of what needs to be done. The orange sun hat proved its mettle. 

People ask what the most important thing that happened in Ireland was, and I have to get past the real one to name one they want to hear about. The real one was lying in my bed in Cork, sort of getting physically ill, but certainly sliding into the abyss of dark thoughts. Memories were pinnacles cast up from the past, places where thoughts snag one and lash one to bareness and despair. I foresaw a night of howling anger, as I’ve had ten thousand times before. I realized this derived from looking up old journal references to Cork and the places I knew there, harmless enough, but each harmless recollection dragging its burden of disappointment, deception, futility. Then, like the touch of an angel, came the revelation, “then don’t think of it.” Do not indulge in recollection. Have no past. With some exceptions, my “present” is hopeful, energized, lighthearted. Each day means starting again with my full complement of visionary joy. Thinking of all the times– which is almost all times–when this visionary joy came to nothing is instructive without actually being helpful. Not thinking of the past is the only way forward. So far, it’s worked. I’ve drawn myself out of whatever declivity my thoughts detected. Lost nothing, moved forward. Maybe it’s my time of life. Maybe it’s a lesson I would have been happier learning as a lad. 

 June 7, 2024

Jet-lagged at rehearsal last night, but the affliction (always worse this side of the water) ebbs away. 

Bought huge floppy hats at Tractor Supply to keep the sun off my head while gardening. 

Sweetpea climbs my bedroom window, with the most perfect pink in the world. Sometimes there’s the soporific buzzing of bumblebees, the flutter of tiny copper-colored butterflies. Near constant rain while I was gone turns the garden into a jungle. It will require care soon–probably tomorrow– but the condition of jungle is one to which the garden aspires. When I pulled down bamboo stalks, considerable amounts of water spilled from them. I should have thought to taste the water.

Visit to MAHEC, receiving a clean bill of health. My blood pressure is, according to the technician, “fine.” 

Home

 

June 6, 2024

The Day that Would Not End ended at about 12:15 this morning. Faithful Billy dropped me at my darkling door. You had to stand in line for the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. The democratization of air travel cannot be stopped except by one’s dropping out oneself. Worked on the play. The last leg, between Atlanta and Asheville, was leavened by my seat companion, who owns a beauty salon in Shreveport, LA. We mostly talked about True Blood. She’s visiting a friend in Asheville to have a girls’ week while the friend’s son attends his first summer camp. 

The impression of finally being in my own house was that of stunning silence. Compared to Cork and Limerick, my street seems wholly uninhabited by night, silent as stone, not a peep until birds began to cry before dawn. Delicious summer warmth laving all. So far as I’ve looked, I find nothing here amiss– despite what I might have imagined. Potato salad in the Atlanta Sky Lounge of memorable savor. Drank iced tea as though it were ambrosia. 

Aryan Noor drove me to the airport. He said his name means “moonlight.” I observed that I thought the Queen of Jordan had the same name. He speaks Persian and fled to Ireland with his family when he was twelve from Afghanistan. He said that of all English speakers, American are the easiest to understand. He asked if Americans think that Trump is a joke, or is it just everybody else. The gay steward from the Shannon-New York flight said I was the passenger who gave the least trouble. Part of that was that I’d had three quite calming bloody Mary’s (which I made myself, so–) before boarding. 

Thought I’d save gardening for a little while, but new bamboo spearing through the canopy got me down there with my spade. There weren’t many, but they were large and, most of them beyond hacking, had to be wrestled to the ground. 

 June 5, 2024

Heaviest rain in the rainy time I’ve been here. Hoping Ireland can handle that and there won’t be trouble at Shannon. If Ireland can, maybe Delta can’t. All will be made known. Unusually restful last night. I retired early, my departure is not until past noon, and I had reasonable confidence I knew how to set my phone alarm. All issues that can be anticipated are well. Was this a good trip? Not by a wide margin, yes. Worth the price and bother? Who knows? I’m unlikely to regret it, likely to look back on it with profit and instruction, and the mystery of whether I can travel again is solved. Can’t say it was exactly pleasurable or restful, but that may be the anxiety of departure. 

 June 4, 2024

Worst conceivable weather. A day and a half of this whole journey has been fine. It’s all right. The parking deck across the street shivers with gray water. I’ve checked twice since waking to insure I fly tomorrow rather than today. It’s the sort of mistake one makes. Supped in unnecessary splendor in the hotel restaurant last night, then spent the inclement night working on my play. It had been more than four years since I traveled, but my customs came back to me. What an odd little man I am in many ways. 

As Bank Holiday is over, it became museum day. The Limerick Museum across the street is a noble building but otherwise useless. Dioramas do not a museum make. Hauled up to People’s Park to go to the deeply-remembered and much-loved Limerick art museum, to discover that the bounty of AEs and visionary masterworks of the Celtic Twilight in their hulking frames are gone, replaced by a forgettable contemporary one-man show and an austere, modern, parsimoniously curated selection of the permanent collection. Great disappointment. The boy at the desk had no idea what I was talking about until I showed him photos in their own museum book of the same white, empty room stacked floor to ceiling with curiosities. It hasn’t been THAT long since I was last in Limerick. . . surely. . . Consoled myself with a walk in People’s Park, where the roses are in glory. Found the People’s Museum of Limerick, which is a Georgian mansion filled up with random furnishings and curiosities. The lad at the door asked if I wanted the guided tour or if I preferred to go about alone. “Go about alone,” I said, and immediately got a twenty minute summary of late Tudor to Georgian Limerick anyhow. Irish tour guides will not be daunted. Sat in the formal garden and contemplated their mulberry tree. A drawstring from my yellow raincoat had worked loose, and I dropped it into a phonograph on the top floor, as my contribution to the randomness of it all. Someone will find it tomorrow or it will lie there for the next fifty years. Wandered to the Crescent, north of which I stayed a couple of times, once with Nick, and below which I had enjoyable times at the theater. The theater endures. I might have altered travel plans if I’d thought of it. The gallery where I bought paintings once is not. Poured my coins into the case of a street fiddler on O’Connell Street. This journey lasted, perhaps, one day longer than it ought to have. Good to remember for the next time. 

 June 3, 2024

Plans for the day detoured by a poxy Bank Holiday. All attractions are closed, plus the weather is bitter and squally. Nevertheless, took the measure of Kings Island and sat along the river with cider in my hand and swans cavorting in the shallows. The sun-poisoning I got in Sligo has never healed, and re-asserts after exposure, and renewed after the fewer than ten minutes I walked unprotected yesterday in sudden sun. Burning sensation on brow and scalp and lips, face red as a lobster. I think a little ultra-violet crept in through the clouds on my walk today. Slept well last night, though both here and in Cork the only cover offered is an immense comforter that crushes and confines. The whole time I’ve had to kick it off and sleep wrapped in my raincoat. I remember a gladsome time last night, though doubt I can drink that much again tonight even to achieve a similar effect. 

Limerick

 June 2, 2024

Early morning, packing for the train to Limerick. 

Closing performances last night. Again, my cast did well, though impressions of other offerings changed, some for the better, most others not. Some things can be welcomed only once. My estimation now is that there were three clunkers, still a quite good average. Lovely big party afterward at the theater, where I met everybody, the other playwrights present (including Darren [I think] a charming young man from Skibereen) and other lights of that active and vital institution. A light to which there was no shadow, all in all. Wish we could have parties like that after shows, but it would necessitate house bars, which America makes so difficult.  

On the train from Cork, a woman sat next to me who had beautiful blue irises wrapped carefully in foil. I said, “Somebody gave you flowers!”She said, “No, these are from my own garden. I’m taking them to Dublin to put on my sister’s grave.”

Savoy Hotel, Limerick, a concern so elegant I was embarrassed to be dressed as I was checking in. Balcony looks at the roof of the Dunne’s Stores parking garage, but also, in the distance, at King John’s Castle and the green hills of Munster. Had a nasty lunch, leaving the record unbroken in that regard. 

Darkness: Went back to my ancient practice of hiking from pub to pub, taking in culture and ambience, and was deeply happy. Limerick is a comfortable town for me, whereas–for whatever reason–Cork was not. Hugely drunk, so that these words will be the last I can type tonight. I love the pubs, tribal, masculine, loud, intimate... . qualities, I realize now, generally remote from my life.

 

June 1, 2024

Bright morning. Tried to go socializing last night, but felt the creeping dismantlement that is the onslaught of phlebitis. Scurried home, took the prophylactic antibiotics which, along with the computer, may be the most useful things that ever came into my life. The fevered sleep that followed was some insurance against the unhoused people camped on the quay below, who shrieked at each other deep into the morning. This otherwise excellent hotel has severe noise issue. The glass walls onto the river are not the least bit soundproof, and the public area beneath allows for mayhem. 

Working steadily on The Dublin Traviata.

News on RTE that an Irish judge has been convicted of sexual assault and attempted rape on a number of boys, when he was a teacher. He was a thalidomyde baby, and has no legs, one arm, and does not leave his wheelchair. The question which the newscasts solemnly refuse to answer is, “how?” 

 May 31, 2024

The news when I came to the hotel last night was that Trump is convicted on all counts. Being without honor and without shame, he’ll not slink away as a real man would at this point. A bitter and ragged victory is still a victory. Listened to his reaction. There’s no need for him ever to speak again, just play a recording of his unvarying litany of imaginary grievance. Everything he says is a lie. Things that start out true are lies by the time they finish coming out of his mouth

Dead pigeon on the roof of the snack bar under my balcony.

Took a taxi to the Lough, walked back almost the farthest way I could. The taxi driver wanted to know if a man could be a convict and still be President. As far as I know, yes. Many of the waterfowl were accompanied by balls of fluffy chicks. A pair of coots emerged from the island with their very fluffy but quite big baby, clearing the water for a wide swath in front of them, driving ducks and geese away, even menacing birds that were already out of the water. Papa whirled and had me in his sights. I wondered if he were going to try to scare me away. He stopped dead in the water, weighing his chances. I finally satisfied honor by moving off to an acceptable distance. Sighted my necessary heron. Hiking back to town I visited a little gallery above an off-license shop. The paintings were terrible, the effort gallant. Bought coffee from a couple who had toured the USA as part of a car delivery service. Visited Fort Elizabeth, the existence of which had been unknown to me before. The voluble Maltese at the gate was so pleased I had visited and loved Malta. We spent more time talking about Medina than the fort around us. If any monument in Ireland in the last 600 years is free from the taint of British savagery, I haven’t heard of it. The walls of Cork are alive with cranny flowers and ferns. The long walk home was less long than I anticipated; I’m beginning to navigate Cork with confidence. 

In many ways, the perfect day, nowhere particular to go, plenty of time to get there. I sat in the sun on a bench at the fort, doing nothing. The sun was hot but the air was cool, so the balance was perfection. I wondered how long I could just sit. Turns out, a considerably long time. 

Two herons flap around the pilings under the quay across the river from my balcony. Blessed. 

 May 30, 2024

Not a day of the journey when I have not worn the old lined yellow raincoat that I thought I’d brought just for arctic emergency. Looks just as cold this morning, though a shaft of light punches under the clouds from the harbor. 

Bad night last night, sleep-deprived as is measured in my well-slept world. Partially it was the Africans in the next room. I thought they were fighting, but after a while I realized it was simply conversation in a tradition louder than my own. I didn’t want to be the elderly white guy shouting “Quiet” at people who had no idea they were trespassing in any way. Also it was the mistake of poring through old journals. The past is always a tragedy, always sad with the sadness of a range of mountains that allow one to get so high and no higher, forever. 

Also it was the snippy hotel bar waitress who looked everywhere but at me, hoping I’d go away and let her continue stocking.

One more thing about the opera: Verdi can take two arias to make a point for which the playwright has a sentence. 

Returned to the Crawford, where my visit had been interrupted by opera tickets. Contemporary offerings thin and ephemeral, traditional offerings mostly patriotic, though several galleries were closed.

Fish & chips at the Oliver Plunkett. If inedible is a 6 and nasty is a 5, my lunch was a 4. Am becoming reconciled, however, to mashed peas.  A family of eleven from Mauritiaus wanted to be seated together in the pub.

Wandering north of the north river in a bit of sunny afternoon. Five French kids had pulled café tables together on Pope’s Quay and played cards in the slanted, mellow light. Three girls, two boys. I considered how providing that French kids playing cards beside the river in peace and safety is the goal of all government. 

Beamish at Dennehy’s.

 

May 29, 2024

Hiked to Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral. Passed Sullivan Quay on the way, where I felt a frisson of remembrance. To a bar there (it must have changed its name since the event, and I don’t recall the current one) I came in 1980 to hear an Irish poet and met Liam Broderick, who lingers in memory as one of the great and momentary loves. I did seek him once later, a task impossible unless you’ve more than a name to go on, even adding that he was a university student. Forty-four years ago. It cannot be endured. Realized my journals from 2005 are on this computer, whereby discovering The Rose Lodge, the lovely B&B that I had when I spent New Year’s here, is still in operation, though my hostess Alice must be long retired. I spent more time in pubs in 2005 than I do now. Didn’t go to plays or operas every night. Could count on erotic assignations, as I cannot, or dare not, now. 

In the Cathedral a lovely docent was far more eager to give me a tour than I was to take it– wanting to be alone with my thoughts–but on it went, and I did learn a great deal. She asserts that the Cathedral was built as an assertive monument to Anglicanism in a time when Irish Catholics were beginning to build churches of their own again. That explains its voluptuous Victorian overstatement of every detail. It still remains loudly majestic. Forty-four years ago I met the assistant dean (or somebody) and we talked about Spenser. The ambulatory was closed for repairs, and I waited 25 years to see it, and saw it again today. The red Cork marble of the church trim is now used up. The docent told me twice that when the old cathedral was pulled own, they found one of King Billy’s cannonballs lodged in the tower. 

Cork is some 300 years older than Dublin. One does not feel such antiquity in the stones. 

Tonight, the National Opera Company’s La Traviata. I had the best possible seat, second inhabited row, dead center, the only impediment being the back of the director’s head. He was energetic and had lovely, silky hair. I’ve always been lucky in theater seats. I’d seen the opera years ago in London, but remember nothing but Violetta’s dress. It was gorgeous and adept in all the ways a show like that is meant to be gorgeous and adept. The choruses I sang with the Asheville Symphony made better sense in context. But, also, it was ludicrous, without one moment of what anyone would recognize as actual human emotion. This is not a flaw, but a typical and expected aspect of the art form, Italian Kabuki, a Venetian mask set to shield one from all untidy true (and therefore hurtful)  emotion and allow the curated tempests of a soap opera. I’d forgotten how flimsy and absurd the crisis is. It doesn’t matter to anyone who buys in. I did not fully buy in, alas, while admiring, as I had not before, Verdi’s musical and theatrical mastery. The young lady beside me lives in Alaska but was brought to the opera by her grandfather, who lives in New Hampshire– they have relatives or something in Cork. The Japanese man on the other side wore the only suit in the house and recorded the show on his phone. 

Drunken boys sing in the plaza below my window, between the hotel and the river. 

Opening Night

 May 28, 2024

Slept ten hours. Woke with most of the edema drained out of my legs. A new day.

Wandered to the opera house to get a ticket for tomorrow night’s La Traviata.  Sold out. Friday sold out too. I charmed the ticket lady into putting me at the head of the waiting list, and I was having tea in the art museum next door when she phoned and had a cancellation for me, Orchestra F, for sight-line reasons the first row of seating. Sometimes you see the hand of God moving. The tomato basil soup in the museum was memorable, subtle, delicious. Took full lunch at a health food store terrace, and, again, it was terrible, 3 selected salads with each ingredient tasting exactly the same, except for varying densities of curry powder. Ireland is not a gourmet’s destination.

It is said that Irish men are the homeliest in Europe, and that is true. They’re raw-boned and goofy. That is part of their charm. 

J messages to say that M has died. He figured large in my life in Syracuse, and once said in the hall of the Hall of Languages, “I love you, David.,” one of few such declarations that I did not flavor with irony. He had success written on every feature. I lost track of him and thought he was living the stylish life in LA, where he was the last I heard from him. His health failed, and after a long illness he died in New Jersey. I’d have written it differently had I been in charge of the story. 

Foot substantially improved.

Almost midnight: Opening night at the Cork Art Theater a colossal success, personal and institutional. The ten short plays had only one clunker among them, and most of them were nourishing or (and) hilarious. Alfie and Greta was a smash, people roaring with laughter. I was very, very happy. In terms of efficiency and elegance of expression, the best of the lot. Met the sweet young cast afterwards. Compared to Irish actors, even amateur ones, most American actors seem to beg just a little for forgiveness or indulgence: “remember, I’m a volunteer!” I never saw an evening of one acts in the US that didn’t have some cringe-worthy performances, some (or mostly) cringe-worthy plays. Not here, not tonight. Lovely.

Noticed that I glide with assurance and confidence through the night streets of Cork. Most of my adventures in the past must have been nocturnal.

Noticed that I went fast on the way home from the theater, my wind solid, almost all the pain gone from my foot, like old bold times. During the last few blocks of my journey, I had the streets entirely to myself. A little creepy. If I drop down to the river there would be more people, though a longer way. 

Cork

 May 27, 2024

Clayton Hotel, Cork City. A bottle of Prosecco sat in ice awaiting me when I entered, and my room has a balcony overlooking the south branch of the River Lee. Lovely, and lovelier if the weather cooperated. The three legs of the journey were grueling. I sat in the lounge in JFK thinking, “this is too hard.” Travel from now on won’t be casual. But I’m here now, and all is well. The pain in my foot curtails my usual strategy of walking and walking till I know the environment pretty well, though in fact I did limp about while my room was being readied, and found the theater, despite its having been marked deceptively on the tourist map. I asked four people and three people told me wrong. They’d never heard of it. One sent me to the Opera House, and the girl at the desk there knew where the Cork Arts Theater is. The theater is dingy and small, exactly what I’m used to. Rain came a couple of times, went away a couple of times. Having been in Cork several times in the past isn’t helping me much. Certain things look familiar, but I’m not meshing them together yet. Odd dream trying (successfully, as it turned out) to sleep on the plane.  MH came to live with me, and convinced me to hire a friend of hers to do some remodeling. The friend and MH tried to take over my house and my life, and I caught them, by no means certainly in time. If I stood close to MH I noticed her flesh was rotting and old mucous had gathered about her nose. How do people earn being in dreams like that? Decided to taxi from Shannon, an expensive choice, but a necessary one given the state I was in after landing. F was my driver, eager to talk politics and well informed about matters on both sides of the Atlantic. I impressed him by being able to cite my favorite places in Limerick, his home town. I’m quite familiar with the land around Shannon, and I realized to day what sets it apart from American landscape. It is completely filled in. In America the land is torn and interrupted, heterogeneous. Here, it is of a piece, like a tapestry, or a pre-Raphaelite painting.  Worked on a play in the Delta Sky Lounges, despite being staunchly drunk. First supper, at the hotel,  disappointing, violently overcooked salmon with barely identifiable vegetables. Excellent sparkling water

 

May 25, 2024

Woke grumpy. The air heavy and gray. I was having an interesting dream, though, in which Ellen and I led an organization that would allow women some freedom or advantage that I can’t remember now. We were dividing up the country into areas of responsibility, and I chose Florida for Ellen, contemplating just before waking whether she’d like that or hate that. 

C the window washer calls periodically to ask if he can pick up a charger and a speaker which some apparatus tells him he left here a month ago. I assure him he did not (at least I haven’t seen them) but invite him to come anyway. He never does. “Oh. . . the traffic was so bad. . . sorry, can we try for Saturday? . . .I had my kid with me and he’s such a handful . . . .” I work not to sink into rage. His mother is the one who sets the time for housecleaning and has to call every time to ask to reschedule or come late. Family trait or red-neck tell? In any case, one of the human failings of which I am least tolerant. Make a date. Keep it. 

Fasciatus enduring, adjusting location, refining discomfort. Can’t wait to run through airports with this. 

Conversation I’d love to hear ONCE during rehearsal:

Director: “You’re behind the beat!”

Singers: “That’s because you’re rushing.”

Director: “Oh, I guess I am.” 

Note: C arrived. The objects he sought were not here.

Extended planning, reassessment, creation of redundant systems have exhausted me in terms of my journey tomorrow. Gigantic layovers may turn out to be restful. 

Cat and Crow

 

May 24, 2024

Rehearsal overwhelming. Too much new music, which will teach us to complain about doing the same old things again and again. C snarled at me during a rest. I could tell from his expression that I was being taken to task, but I actually couldn’t hear what he said. Didn’t ask him to repeat. 

Odd sounds emanating from a crow in the dogwoods brought me to the window. A black cat and a crow faced each other from various places in the tree; As the cat climbed, the crow changed his perch, but did not deign to fly. It was a game, an attempt at contact, neither much intimidated. I heard the same sound yesterday without getting up to look, so I suppose it’s an ongoing drama. 

Fasciatus problematic in my right foot, limping and ouching. 

Frog

 May 23, 2024

Rejoice, unwedded Bride

Celebratory dinner and de-briefing with SS last night. Concerning the production, I was disappointed in nothing, a sentiment which is hard to express without sounding insincere, but there it is. Exalted by much. Made more money than I thought I would. 

Watched as my bullfrog hopped out of the pond. He’s enormous, a little frighteningly so, and bronze as a penny.

 

May 22, 2024

Peonies I did not remember ordering arrived today (odd time to ship!) and got planted. Cactus repotted and left on the porch for the summer. I let the bamboo go a few days and had almost grown shafts to bang through. Some were unbangable, so I had to shake the growing tips off by hand. Fatboi has dug a labyrinth under the tool shed. 

 

May 21, 2024

Installed five new water gardens, employment both back-breaking and serene. 

 

May 20, 2024

Woke to fasciatus in both feet. Remarkable discomfort until I got some shoes on. In that vein, cleaned out my bedroom closet and found four virgin pairs of shoes. The two I tried on fit. Found rubber apparatus that I’d forgotten the use of. 

Pentecost

 

May 19, 2024

Pentecost. Rain rather than tongues of fire. 

Many earnest conversations at church. I sat, listened, felt myself pulling away, as though wanting to hide in invisibility. How much time have I spent alone with my thoughts? How much of that time has been perfect joy?

 May 18, 2024

Sound of Tony mowing on the first day in a week he could without running into rain. 

Avalanche (or at least a trickle: an avalanche in comparison) of praise for A God in the Water.

Save the dates and times of parties and get-togethers, let the date pass, delete the message.

Thunderstorm. All the windows that J just showed me how to open must be closed. 

Finally clearing out the gust room closet. I’d thrown comforters and bedspreads there willy-nilly, whereby their folds became the nursery of generations of mice. Testing to see if laundry removes the stains. 

 May 17, 2024

L& J arrived to see the play. Talky afternoon, festive evening on Patton Avenue downtown (tried a new restaurant, Enterprise, where I had a braised duck soup worth writing about), then behind to see the play, which enjoyed a full house and went exceedingly well. We sat at the back, where I could see the entire audience having a good time. It made me happy. At last curtain I heard the woman across the aisle exclaim to her companion, “I thought that was wonderful!” Full of people I know, which means more to me than it probably should. Talked deep into the night. 

Seeing that parking at AVL airport is at 100% capacity (and why wouldn’t it be a week from now?) I booked a limousine service. The voice on the phone said, “No need to insure with a credit card. I know exactly who you are.” He was B, the Humanities student who 1) was almost too handsome to endure and 2) came to me begging for a D in Humanities, which he was failing, just so he could get at last out of school. Wish granted. 

Second Thoughts

 

May 15, 2024

Having time to think of the review (the only one the production is likely to get) I feel differently. W says at the beginning:  If there were ever a show designed to make me self-conscious about writing a review, A God in the Waters would be it. That being flatly untrue, either in intention or result, I had to consider what was going on. As I did, a scene from Shakespeare in Love popped into my head, wherein actors, asked what Romeo and Juliet is about, answer from the perspective of their characters; “Well there was this Apothecary. . . “ I think the play is about the power of the imagination to reconfigure everyday chaos into the order of artistic creation. I am an artist. Why wouldn’t I think that? I believe SS said he was attracted to the part of Peter because he found himself at the stage of life and career represented by him. The Bs assumed it was about the career of musicians, they being musicians. Our reviewer thinks it’s about criticism because he’s a critic. In some ways what irked me at first turns out to be a towering compliment: that the play may be a mirror in which everyone may see himself. I hope so. I’ll go with that. 

 

May 14, 2024

Internet adventure yesterday. Received a barrage of pop-up warnings that I knew were false but which I couldn’t stop. Miraculously, McAfee really did help to end the issue for the moment. Ironically, the malware had come in on my Kirkus review. 

W writes in Asheville Stages:

If there were ever a show designed to make me self-conscious about writing a review, A God in the Waters would be it.

The latest effort by Asheville-based playwright David Brendan Hopes — produced by The Sublime Theater & Press and debuted May 9 at downtown’s The BeBe Theatre — spends most of its two-hour runtime dwelling on the theme of criticism: whether it be directed at self, family members, or the very concept of objective merit. Its central character, Peter Loredan (Steven Samuels), is a classical composer animated by the impending judgment of a New Yorker reviewer upon his second symphony’s premiere. Its dialogue employs and dissects the language of appraisal, full of words like “inspiration” and “accessibility” and “modern.”

(Samuels himself, who also directed the play, emailed me photos of the production accompanied by the note, “Asheville Stages is our New Yorker.” No pressure at all.)

Such artistic self-reference runs the risk of becoming obnoxiously meta, but aside from a few overly-clever quips in the second act, Hopes avoids that flaw. Instead, he grounds his heady themes in compelling family dynamics that unfold in a measured mix of comedy and drama among the talented ensemble.

The different threads of criticism are most tightly braided in the interactions between Peter and his son Anthony (Jon Stockdale), an accomplished bassoonist and part of the orchestra that performed the elder Loredan’s work. During a reception for the symphony, the two trade wicked barbs about their respective artistry that Hopes heaps with personal meaning; there’s no mistake that their clash is merely the latest in decades of verbal jousting.

The script is excellent, and Samuels’ direction further amplifies its implied study in contrasts between father and son. Anthony’s movements are subdued and measured, Peter’s full of exaggerated gestures and grimacing expressions. Kayren McKnight’s costuming helps make the point as well, with Anthony remaining in his neutral concert tux while Peter slips into a silk jacket with fiery red dragons.

Filling out the family circle is Peter’s wife Emilia (Kathy O’Connor), endowed by Hopes with an exquisite blend of wisdom and worry. O’Connor gives a masterclass in subtle acting as she rides out her husband’s temper with quick sidelong glances, slight wavers of the voice, and a tightening of the grip on his hand throughout key exchanges. Again, the audience understands that she’s witnessed similar moments many times before. 

Into the family triad enter Anthony’s brash girlfriend Amy (Olivia Stuller) and the quietly charismatic hotel waiter Eleven (Adam Olson). Without giving away too much of the plot, both come from outside the insular world of classical music, and their vastly different responses to Peter’s symphony shake up the routines of the Loredan household.

I’ve only seen one other play by Hopes, last year’s Ben & Angela, but I noticed several stylistic similarities in his latest work deployed to great effect. There were monologues infused with the rhythms of poetry, such as Peter and Anthony’s gorgeous descriptions of music. And there was a wordless solo dance (choreographed with great expressive freedom by Kristi DeVille) deployed at a key emotional moment.

Underlying both that play and the present one, I sensed a conviction of basic moral goodness. Throughout A God in the Waters, the playwright asks his audience to consider the point of criticism: What is it good for? Is it a tool for tearing down others, or for proving one’s aesthetic superiority, or for achieving status among a circle of erudite obsessives?

None of these, Hopes seems to say. At its best, criticism should come from a place of love, a desire to help others understand both the good and evil they do not grasp about themselves. The lesson stands for families, for classical musicians — and perhaps for theater critics.

A God in the Waters runs through Saturday, May 18, at The BeBe Theatre. For details and tickets, visit this link. 

*

The play is not actually about criticism at all. Not a bad review, but an ignorant one. Extended sigh.

*

 May 12, 2024

Cool Sunday. Watered the shaken mulberry and the new plantings outside the fence. You look at the clock and it’s time to get up. You look at the clock again and it’s evening. 

Poults

 

May 11, 2024

Cold, clear. Had to turn the thermostat down to avoid waking the furnace.

Downtown last night to see night 2 of A God in the Waters. As I pulled up to park in the street, a scruffy lad knocked on the widow and asked if I could spare him $20. I gave him $20. The theater brimmed with friends and acquaintances, and on that account I was happy. My problem with Ben & Angela was that almost nobody I knew bothered to see it. Already that anxiety is gone with this one. The performance was satisfying in every way. The labor  people put into realizing my work is a constant source of gratitude. Anyway, great praise from the audience. B and J said I’d hit everything musical on the nose. Stopped for a drink in a new bar beside the BeBe. When I got home, a Shakespeare-in-th-Park version of Hamlet played on PBS. It was quite good– the best Ophelia I’ve ever seen–and I heard myself thinking THIS is the company I want to keep. 

Nicolas the tree hombre came with his wife and son to right my dangerously tipping mulberry. Spent $400, but loved saving my beautiful tree.

Planted a new rose and dug out what I recognize now to be resuscitating English ivy when there was agitation on the street, and a car stopped behind my hollies. Checked to see what it was. A woman had seen a turkey hen (probably MY turkey hen) trying to cross Lakeshore with her perhaps twenty chicks. The babies, for the most part, couldn’t get over the curb. So she and I were out there lifting turkey chicks off the road and into the lawn while traffic labored around us. In the midst of it, a hawk zoomed down aiming for the babies. The turkey took flight and saw the predator off. People around here habitually identify all hawks as “osprey,” as did the lady in the street. She remarked that it was like a nature show on TV, Mother Turkey in various sorts of peril. But we got all the babies rescued and disappeared into the lawns west of here. I wished they were coming into my yard, where they would be safe and there is no curb. I forgot the woman’s name, but she lives at the end of Red Oak where, she says, all sorts of wildlife abound, and she takes on the task of looking after them. 

 

May 10, 2024

J at GMC said, “I listened to your podcast. You’re really SMART. I thought you were just another pretty face.”  

Unbelievable how many questions and quibbles gay men have when you announce “dress for the first act is black shirt, black pants, no bling.” W sighed heavy sighs at the prospect of not being able to “personalize” (which is to say, show off) in any vivid way until act II. Not one concert in 24 years has gone unmarred by his insistence on standing out, vocally or visibly. 

SS writes of opening night:

First act a little choppy. (Or so it felt. Watching the video, it looked far better than that.) Second act splendid. Overall: triumphant.Technical glitches, of course, but nothing of the slightest significance or anything the audience would have noticed. A couple of lines bobbled but no real problems, plus one excellent save. Not a single “fuck” or anything otherwise untoward. Unexpected, prolonged applause. After, I came out from backstage, some eight people, all unfamiliar to me, spontaneously offered the highest praise. J, who helped K with front-of-house, reported another person saying, “This is the best play I’ve ever seen in Asheville!”

Once again, only half a house tonight—but, hey, the same night of the run of Ben & Angela had half of that. And we’re sold out tomorrow night.

Very high hopes for the remainder of the run. And I had a note from Daniel Walton of Asheville Stages, after I’d sent him pics to run with his review, that indicated good reason to expect thoughtful praise. (He declares himself a trained violist and allowed as how the play had…resonance.)

*

Wind blew over my tall irises. I don’t normally cut my flowers, but these I did to save them for a while. Most heavenly fragrance. 

Dress

 

May 9, 2024

Tlaloc has been gracious to me, bringing rain after every planting day, though he rather over did it last night with a storm (oddly, from the east) of frightening proportions. It seemed artificial, in a way, the thunder queer-sounding and too close, the rain like a river bashing against the streetlight, which gives me my perspective on such things. It commenced on the stroke of midnight. 

Prior to that I had gone downtown for the dress rehearsal of A God in the Waters. One technical glitch followed another, but one is not too upset over that, the adage being a bad dress means a sensational opening night. Everyone had done their work, and it was a plausible evening of theater even so ragged. Gaps while lines were pulled out of the air. It’s a very wordy play. I do wish A wouldn’t scream “Fuck!” every time she loses a line. But, I was pleased. The essential work was there.

Finishing one of my most complicated paintings. Something was wrong with it, and after a stared at it a while, I realized that painting over one little detail, hardly an inch square, would correct it. Used to one word changing a paragraph; true for the eye as well. 

Some acoustical anomaly makes the repairs going on at Carolyn’s house seem like they’re in my back yard. I keep getting up to see who’s hammering. 

Visitation

 May 8, 2024

Last night as I was settling down in front of the TV, a young bear marched around the porch and into the back. I got up to watch. Though I found sign, it’s been nearly two years since I actually saw a bear in my garden.  He explored the perimeter, took a dip in the pond, came out with a lily pad in his mouth, which was evidently not to his taste. I wanted him to linger, maybe bed down for the night, but he was on the hunt and proceeded with efficiency out the hole onto Lakeshore again. It gladdened my heart. 

Much planting before hard rain. 

 

May 7, 2024

Booked my stay at the Clayton Hotel, Cork. 

Planted succulents in the planters and pots on the front porch.

Turkey hen walks past me on the way to the back yard, her back brown jewels.

 

May 6, 2024

Painting, lying about watching the rain come down. I try to feel with my plants my toes in the delicious water. My turkey hen visits on her own wild lone. 

 

May 5, 2024

Sunday morning Bach from the radio downstairs.

John Ireland tackled at service. Memories of singing it first at the Second English Lutheran on Charles Street in Baltimore.

The Terrible Anniversary

 May 4, 2024

The terrible anniversary. 

After an hour or so of concentrated excavation, I finished clearing this side of the fence up to the hart’s tongue ferns. What to plant there to keep the weeds from coming back I don’t know, but something will occur. Almost as I finished the rains came. I poured wine and sat on the front porch blessing God for the beauty of my garden. In all our collaborations, that is the only one that has come to any end I recognize. 

Fledgling towhee on the fence, all fluffy and disarrayed, unlike her elegant mother.

 May 3, 2024

Listening to M’s interview of me for his podcast. I’m shockingly eloquent. I expected more hem-hawing. Maybe he edited it out. The photo makes me look ancient as the hills, but not in a bad way. 

Repeated messages from H, who wants to talk, who wants me to interview him to write his life story. Find out at rehearsal last night that he attempted suicide and is hospitalized in some fashion. Or so the gossip was. Unexpected unanimity of distaste for him. One expected some sympathy. You transgress too often and the wells of mortal mercy run dry. 

Had my first assignment as a docent at the Cathedral. Surprisingly draining, all that cordiality. Another surprise was the sheer number of people wanting a tour, most of them quite religious and able to quote the passages referenced in the windows. One little girl, Nina, climbed the pulpit and recited First John from memory, then revealed she could to it in Latin as well, noting that “in” is the same in both languages. Her mother was intense and kind and very religious and seemed to take a liking to me. They were from New Braunfels. I was told several times that I too could travel and take in local sights when I retire. People from Chicago, Colorado, and several places in Florida. When I go to a historic building I’m just as happy to be left alone with my thoughts, so I thought we were a little aggressive in our approach. 

Fatboi and Giselle

 May 2, 2024

Trip to the Toyota place to get everything installed correctly that I had done amiss. Dashboard now like the panel of a starship. 

Good poems by the riverbank, too hot in the sun, too cool in the shade, the way it is perfect. 

The news in the garden is that Fatboi has a friend. Giselle is smaller, redder than he is, and less tense in my presence. They are sizeable animals, and it’s a little alarming to see them grazing out there like squat, dark sheep. 

 

May 1, 2024

Glorious May Day. Arrowed out to Jesse Israel and bought white swamp hibiscus and butterfly weed. Planted them. Planted a second bay tree in the back. Planted the ironweed seeds D sent from Hiram. 

Rehearsal

 

April 30, 2024

Soft rain, though were are threatened with thunderstorms. Finished the main labor of the garden just in time. 

In Hendersonville last night for a run-through of A God in the Waters. A week before production it’s watchable as a production, the lines in some cases quite solid and in all cases thoughtfully delivered. I sat rapt, as though I’d never heard the words before. Learned something new from every speech as it was uttered. The time flew, as is not typically my experience while attending a rehearsal of one of my works. At some point I realized that with a script that interests me (here I’m being a little self-congratulatory) what I prize is interpretation that puts nothing between me and the words: a transparent voice, an intelligence modest enough and bold enough to learn as it speaks. Not an display in itself, but a conduit. All things depend on the clear delivery of a clear truth. I got that, as I never have this early in the rehearsal process. Sometimes it happens closing night. Always when I consider the sheer labor that goes into presenting one of my works, the hours of memorization and rehearsal, the gathering of props, the assembling of sets, the fussing, huge and minute, over every detail, I am speechless with gratitude.  That I have done this for other authors is all that tempers the mortification. 

Crisis in that our stage manager’s landlord had been cruel to her. Difficult to know what to do at this point. Wish I had an extra house. 

My anticipated entrance onto I-26 was closed, as was Hendersonville Road going north, so the only thing I could do was ride I-26 to the Bat Cave exit, turn around and retrace my steps west. I called down curses on the head of anyone having to do with that endless shit-show of a road. 

 

April 29, 2024

In terms of square footage seeded and planted, likely the most productive gardening day for me ever. Cosmos, Mexican sunflowers, 4 o’clocks sown in vast blankets on the street side. Planting of lavender, pulmonaria, dianthus, and shady blue flowers I forgot the name of. Copious watering. 

Lingering Light

 April 27, 2024

Great & full day. Attacked the outside-the-fence garden head on, planting Shasta daisies, cat mint, false indigo, zinnia, and bishop’s flower. When did bishop’s flower stop being Queen Anne’s lace, and why? Golden spurge inside the fence. Much spreading of straw to protect seed until they sprout. I’m deep into my tenth year here, and this is the first day it occurred to me to heave the hose over the fence to water the space outside. It’s laborious, but works perfectly. Water was my great doubt about beyond-the-fence, and now that is alleviated. My other great doubt is the public tendency to vandalism, with its urge to damage anything beautiful in order to put one’s mark upon it. Maybe flowers are too lowly to count. 

I's son C comes tomorrow to wash windows. I engineered the job for when I’m at church, so I don’t have to witness any of it. 

Whatever my intention when I begin a painting, it turns out a little haunted.

Trump on air twenty four seven. Tolkien’s Sauron seemed over-the-top to me until Trump entered the picture, a being with no redeeming qualities, devoid of any sense of the other, a bottomless vortex of selfishness, the seal of all gluttony, soulless. Yet people adore him, find him Christ-like, feel that he has been victimized. That is the puzzle. That is the darkness one despairs of lighting, ever. Justice would have been for him to face a firing squad on January 7. I pray some more complicated justice awaits in the future. 

I rejoice now that light lingers deep into the evening. 

 April 26, 2024

Got one shield fern into the ground before being driven indoors by rain, not much of it, but enough to make outdoor plans unsalvageable. Couldn’t write. Painted.

Mountain Xpress

 

April 25, 2024

From Mountain Xpress:

UNCA professor writes play 

A God in the Waters, a new play by award-winning playwright, poet, memoirist and fiction writer David Brendan Hopes, will run Thursday-Saturday, May 9-18, 7:30 p.m., at the Bebe Theater.

Hopes teaches literature at UNC Asheville and is known to theatergoers for his plays Washington Place and Ben & Angela, which ran at the Bebe Theater last fall.

A God in the Waters follows an egocentric maestro whose family life is upended at the reception for his final performance, exploring themes of family and the making of art. “I’d been working with the Asheville Symphony for a while, and the two things blended together,” says Hopes. “What surprised me most was to discover, through the course of writing, that I really do have strong opinions about what makes good art and bad art. I’d thought that doing it and having opinions about it were somehow inimical.”

Hopes has been an Asheville resident for over 40 years, and the region is responsible for his turn as a writer. “I never wrote plays or prose until I came here, but whether that was in the air here or just a natural progression is difficult to know. My recent novels The Falls of the Wyona and The One with the Beautiful Necklaces have a fully Appalachian setting, so certainly in the sense of scenery it has made a whole lot of difference.”

A God in the Waters is produced by the Sublime Theater. Seating for the six performances is limited.

The Bebe Theater is at 20 Commerce St. For information visit avl.mx/dlz.

Indescribable Moon

 

April 24, 2024

GMC meeting here last night. We needed another song that expressed adversity, and I remarked that just about any Gospel song does that, and there was no such thing on our program. 

“We already have a Gospel number,” says B

“What?”

“Pilgrim’s Chorus.”

“That’s not Gospel. That’s Wagner opera.”

“Well, it mentions God.” 

I gave up. Whatever else, the group’s apparent hatred of religion, or Christianity anyway, pretty much limits music selection to mediocrity.

Began planting the new garden. Got two climbing roses for the fence and a tangerine bush rose not for the fence. Planted sweetpea and lupine that I’d already got. The big garden mystery remains the couple dozen tulip bulbs I planted, not one of which came up. Except that the bulbs were defective I have no explanation. Forgot where I got them, so I can’t even complain. I was right that the big machine scrape didn’t get the roots, so I’ll have to dig each time before I plant. At least it made them accessible. Alexa promised rain, but there was no rain, so I spent an hour hauling cans of water to the new roses. 

Indescribable beauty of the moon last night.

 

April 23, 2024

Shakespeare’s Birthday. 

Cool, and then lovely. G and his mute helper came early in their yellow steam shovel to scrape away the honeysuckle from my outside yard. I’ve not actually inspected the outcome, but I suspect it’s both horrifying and satisfactory. That it wasn’t the job it was supposed to be is likely, as they didn’t scrape deeply enough to remove the roots. But the incredible biomass that refused to admit even the sharpest spade is gone, and I can find the roots myself, dig them out one by one. I watched the elbow of their machine shaking the mulberry and the cherry. Perhaps they survived. Their leaves at this hour remain unwilted. While they worked I did the same job more traditionally on the other side of the fence. This effectively doubles the size of my garden. I bought huge amounts of seeds, as though I’d planned this project unconsciously this winter. G and Tony share being Mexican and talkative, which means I spend a measure of time listening to anecdotes I don’t fully understand. G told me about eating delicious cherries either on a job or back home in Mexico, a conversation brought on by his admiration for my mulberries, which are known and cherished in his homeland. He observed that several of his recent clients had been named David. 

K stopped by, and we chatted as we do once every year or so, living a two minutes’s walk apart. She continues to shed a realistic light on life as a flight attendant. 

 April 22, 2024

Earth Day. Surprise from ZR Landscaping that they can do the yard beyond the fence tomorrow. Must dig up whatever I want to save today. 

Thought of dad’s building projects, and how he must have anticipated with joy being a father: a sandbox with a roof, so we could play in the rain; a teepee made out of burlap; a dollhouse you could go inside and play in for my sister; most famously, “the big slide,” a sliding border bigger and faster than that on the school playground. I could go far beyond the neighborhood and be identified, metonymally, as “the Big Slide.”

 April 21, 2024

As to the yard work, one quote was $600 less than the other– but also the one that put me off at first, not knowing one vine from another. Have to decide if my scruples are worth $600. Likely not. 

An orgy of revision: Bathory, The Class of 1960, a section of The Garden of the Bears

Sweet notes from Charlie (whose baby will be a son) and Fred, who remembers the glitter of an ecclesiastical New York long gone. 

Strange passage before bed last night. I united with my mother and father in prayer, begging their forgiveness for all I did that hurt and disappointed them. I supposed they understood I was opening a new chapter, for the first time around, I could not possibly have known how to do better, largely because of their own example. Understanding one another might be enough. 

 

April 20, 2024

Booked flight for Shannon. Happy. Snuggle down in my chair like a happy kid. 

Regarded from my front porch the pale gold peonies, the brick of the porch floor, as if by intent, the perfect backdrop. At the base of some of their petals lies deep scarlet. I wonder why every garden in the world does not have them. They, like some of us, are slow but indestructible, bearing on their unlovely branches blooms so voluptuous, so abundant, so redolent of Eden you think they were intended for some other life. For some reason you seldom stand just here in the evening light. You will now, the golden mountain throwing a mountain of darkness eastward, where it will meet the sun of morning. 

T send an audio message, of him rapping (largely to the tune “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” the most bitter (yet somehow unspecific) vituperations of me, beginning with my name. Sometimes you think it’s comic; sometimes you don’t. But in there among how I stink and am loud and everyone wishes I were dead, he notes honesty, and courage (or at least stubbornness) in expressing truth, which makes one think it’s a satire in the voice of someone who hates me for truth-telling. The whole performance is too drunken for one to know for sure. He’d have to sing drunkenly worse than that for me to forget the angel who fronted Sister Raven on stage with us so long ago.

Cork

 

April 19, 2024

Slow rain, the shrieking of a woodpecker through the upstairs window. Music from my college production of Marat/Sade has been going through my head since waking. 

Yesterday I sat by the river and finished the first act of my new play. Restored the raised bed out back and planted golden zinnias. All this before noon. Two landscape companies came to prepare a bid on my work beyond the fence. Very different affects from each group. Unless there’s a huge price difference, I’m going to take the first. The second guy (huge man, my hand disappeared in his) identified poison ivy when in fact it was Virginia creeper. Somewhere down the line, those things count. 

Official notice: 

Cork Arts Theatre Thu, Apr 18, 5:29 PM (15 hours ago)

Hi David,

I’m delighted to let you know that your play, ‘Alfie and Greta’, has been selected by one of our directors for production in May. If all goes to plan, it will be performed with 9 other short plays from Tuesday 28th May to Saturday 1st June at the Cork Arts Theatre. The director has begun the casting process and rehearsals will commence shortly. I’ll be in touch again over the coming weeks to keep you up to date on progress. It may be a bit far to travel but, if you do make it over, we would be delighted to see you there and would like to offer you complimentary tickets.Congratulations on being selected. It’s a wonderful achievement to make it through to the final 10 plays from a total of 318 plays submitted from around the globe.

Talk again soon, James Horgan, Event Co-ordinator, Cork Arts Theatre

Morningstar reports that my investments profit 13% above the market. Good enough. Greed is not among my vices. Wish I could get rid of envy and wrath. 

Rehearsal last night far less infuriating than usual. . . fun, actually. Only one– me– can reach the bass notes on “Blessing,” so I blast away from the depths. 

Had a lesson in docenting for the Cathedral. 

 

April 17, 2024

Interview with MP. He asked quite good questions. Hope I answered in ways vaguely interesting. Have had a crush on him since we met. I wonder what people would do if they knew such secret things. Breakfast afterward at Early Girl with happy tourists. Many high school kids on the streets, “On a field trip” said one from Owen High.

Wondered every now and then about that jackal S. I looked her up today. She has been dead since 2014. Her career as judge was speckled with errors and indiscretions, reported in the local media. Some satisfaction there. Why didn’t I feel it when she died, youngish and evil? 

Lupine

 

April 16, 2024

Crisis averted, new actor comes on board. I had a very bad feeling about the alternative dates, troubling, but so vague I would probably never have expressed them. 

Exhausting gardening day. Put in lupine, freed lilacs and hazel and peonies in the back garden from vines; gave everybody a big drink. 

Still transcribing the lines I wrote in a white heat on the Folly pier. 

Nap dream that I was on a mission to the moon. I enjoyed it, so I signed up for a mission in which one is lifted in a belt of open containers vertically into the atmosphere. I thought my acrophobia wouldn’t kick in, but it did. I was so terrified I thought it was better to throw myself out and die rather than endure it any longer. I did so, woke in a start realizing I was lying in bed. 

Delphinium

 

April 15, 2024

Tried to mail a book to SA, but the Post Office overflowed. Couldn’t figure out why until the woman in front of me observed that it’s tax day.

A steel-colored skink at least a foot long crosses the porch in front of me.

Planted seeds from a packet that said, in handwriting, “Aunt Muriel's blue delphinium.” I couldn’t remember whose Aunt Muriel.

Windows open at night for the first time.

Production in such upheaval I won’t even look at mail or messages until tomorrow. One more calm night.

 

April 14, 2024

Woke feeling amazingly hale. Looked out the window in time to see Fatboi and a rabbit crossing the street, as if setting out on a morning adventure together. 

Note from SS that G dropped out of A God in the Waters. Things were going too well, too many people claiming already to have bought tickets, too many allegedly excited about the production. My belief is that if it's moved, that momentum can't be salvaged. 

 April 13, 2024

A MX reporter sent me questions about the upcoming play, asking particularly about “the foraging of families.” Reporter from the Asheville Watchdog asked to excerpt my recent screed about the turmoil at UNCA.  Feel like a public person again.

Attacked the honeysuckle tangle between the fence and the street, making heroic progress, but also deciding that some heroics are unnecessary and it’s time to call in the professionals. Found in the same place one of my barrier poles broken (by a car, I assume) and a quite large dead animal, a raccoon, I suppose, though its stage of decomposition and my reluctance to poke around makes identification uncertain. One certainty is enormous curved, snow white canines. Maybe a dog. Because I’m going to call the yard men, today’s labor seems wasted, though it was good exercise and I retain the benefit of that. 

Fatboi and I gave each other heart attacks when I went out on the back porch and there he was. 

S says Washington Place is on the schedule next year at HART. So it was said for this year. I decline to celebrate just yet. 

 

April 12, 2024

Bears pulled down the seed feeding stations, even the hot-pepper ones, breaking the dogwood branches as they pulled. 

Fifteen year old boy shout in Akron by the police. Cop fired three seconds after stopping his car. The boy had a toy gun. 

He-man weeding between bouts of rain. 

Mouse

 April 11, 2024

The surprising realization that I’m in a better financial situation than “billionaire” Donald Trump. 

Day began with wildlife conflicts. Heard a tiny but unusual sound: figured there was a mouse in the washing machine, and there was. Lifted him out, made him promise not to come back, and set him down in the grass. Rodents are faithless and I knew even in the moment that he’d try to get back. Meanwhile, ants had made a nest in the mailbox. Brushed off the mail. Went for the RAID. 

Drove in hard rain to buy shoes. The young man who helped me was named Connor. I said “I wrote a book whose hero is Connor.” 

“Did you write about me?”

“Maybe. Are you a werewolf?”

“You never know.”

Realized from the shoe-buying that I had likely worn socks two or three times in the last two or three years. COVID ruined what fashion impulse I ever had. 

Almost unbearably enraging rehearsal. Interruptions interrupted now and then by rehearsing.

 

April 10, 2024

TG sends his new book on poetry. I remark that our varying perspectives would have made an excellent team-taught course. He responds:  That would have been fun to teach together. It's probably not a surprise there's some connection between us--you were pretty much my first teacher. I listened hard to you, and then after we moved and started writing letters, I studied those letters and poems you sent almost like scripture, learning my own language, I guess, by inventing a way of responding to yours, trying to keep up. 

I learn from his book, among other things, how little in comparison I responded to my contemporaries, how much to my ancestors. 

Drive J and L to that chaos of an airport. It was a mistake to privatize the airlines. 

 

April 9, 2024

Rain keeps me out of the garden. Publicizing the Kirkus Review, probably too late for any kick in sales. 

Lilacs in full glory. I don’t remember deciding on this, but I planted a variety of colors. 

Eclipse

 April 8, 2024

First rehearsal of A God in the Waters at a power company in Hendersonville, owned by the dad of one of my actors. Perfect, though odd, venue. The cast is the most immediately adept I’ve ever had. 

Solid cloud cover concealed the eclipse, though I did manage to see a bit of the moon shadow crossing the sun late in the show, with the glasses I’d got at Ace Hardware for the purpose. Sat in my garden in the weird twilight, which must be like the blaze of noon on Mars. 

Fatboi

 

April 6, 2024

Squalid dreams that gradually became graceful dreams, like riled water clearing. 

Finally opened my Kirkus review, which arrived Monday:

THE FALLS OF THE WYONA

David Brendan Hopes

Red Hen Press (203 pp.)

$10.61 paperback, $10.08 e-book

ISBN: 9781597098939 May 23, 2019

BOOK REVIEW

The love between two teenage boys is threatened by the homophobia of a football-mad town in this plangent romance.

Hopes’ tale follows four friends growing up in an unnamed small town in the North Carolina mountains in the 1940s: gifted athlete Vince Silvano; oddball Tilden Roundtree; everykid narrator Arden Summers; and Glen Copland, a “sissified” St. Louis transplant who stargazes and collects local flora and fauna. The boys roam the sylvan landscape surrounding a 100-foot waterfall on the Wyona River, a gorgeous but treacherous watercourse that is said to kill one every generation. Vince and Glen covertly fall in love as they start Eddie Rickenbacker High School, where Vince becomes the football team’s star quarterback. Unfortunately, the domineering football coach, who likes to toss around homophobic slurs, is Vince’s dad, and when Coach Silvano discovers the relationship, he quashes it by administering a beatdown to Vince. Tensions come to a head when Glen appears at homecoming dance and kisses Vince on the lips. Hopes’ yarn vividly portrays the fervent bond between young boys—camping out, bantering, double-daring each other into crazy stunts by the Falls—with its occasional erotic undertow, and the way it fractures under the pressure of stereotypes and bigotry. His young characters are full of vigor but also experience poignant, tongue-tied confusion over their warring impulses. Hopes’ prose is intense and evocative, infusing nightmarish scenes with a mordant lyricism: “Something that was less like water than everything else was bobbing on the near side of the river, snagged on the roots of a clump of willow…The way the Wyona was treating her, it almost looked like she was alive, lifted up by the waters, then settled gently down.”) The result is a gripping read with an undercurrent of elegiac yearning.

A darkly vibrant coming-of-age novel, richly textured and full of passion.

*

A fair day for gardening. By no means too hot. Bought plants to put in tomorrow, pulled strangling vines out of the hibiscus beds. The wind in the bamboo behind me was especially ghostly. I kept turning around to see who was there. 

Fatboi is back, looking so comical when he tries to conceal his immense self under the tool shed. 

DJ motored down in the chair to vew the garden. It was modest, assuming he’d come back when it was in full glory.

 

April 5, 2024

Quite cold, a look back into winter. Clouds out my upstairs window: it was brilliant at the beach. I’m home now, and not liking it. The vacation was brief but glorious, a renewal, a deep breath, and being back is not setting well– returned to my shoes stuck in the same pool of mud, me tugging away. Drive uneventful except, again, for long traffic jams. Standing on the pier last night I realized there is no particular reason (except for the bother of getting there) why I can’t live at the beach.

Maud did not patter out to greet, and then scold me for going away. Grief. 

Phone call to my old UNCA number from people who want to feature A Childhood in the Milky Way at a book fair in Los Angeles. What sounded a delightful surprise turned out to be, of course, a scam to get me to pay them money. The voice on the phone wavered when I told them the book is thirty years old. They didn’t do much research. Five calls after I hung up on them. I wonder why nice things can’t actually be nice once in a while. 

The radio program that bored me on the journey is now playing downstairs. All the PBS station must buy from the same list. 

 April 4, 2024

Chilly, brilliant day. Spent most of it walking around in my red Boy Scout jacket in the most spotless joy. Sitting and writing, moving to the next spot. I was happy. Am at this hour happy. I was morose yesterday (the storm?) but Tuesday and today have been the kind of days I would like to pile one upon the other till the end. The sea is a rich brown dotted by the swift shadows of clouds. Began a play in various benches overlooking the waves. Ambrosial beans and rice at Jack of Cups. The most vacation-y vacation in remembrance. 

"Alfie and Greta" has been short-listed for the summer festival in Cork. If it’s chosen, I’ll go. 

My cleaning lady is from Mongolia. I welcomed her to America and she smiled and bowed. 

 April 3, 2024

Waking: harsh rain over the ocean. 

Family with young boys in the next room. They keep dropping something, sounds like marbles, if kids still play with marbles. 

Instead of retiring last night when I felt I should, I toddled into the little town and attended an open mic at Planet Follywood. For starters, pretty good vodka tonics were $5. It was red-neck paradise, with local boys hollering blues and zydeco into the little room. Those I heard were quite good, and emotive, clearly feeling comfortable among their peers. I walked home on practically empty streets, panes of light falling from windows where the waiters were mopping floors and setting up for the morning. This could be a decent hometown. 

Seated at breakfast opposite a high school baseball team from Virginia, here for a tournament. Perfect hair, round boy muscles, gestures and mannerisms hardening into personality. Courtly, as if they’d just learned manners and were trying them out. Two of the boys played catch in the hotel pool with the storm raging around them. 

Evening. The storm, which was terrifying for a while, goes out to sea where it may terrify the fishes. The water drained from my toilet. The sink thundered. I don’t know what causes that. The bartender says there’s a pond in the hotel storage area. Couldn’t leave the hotel until about now. Soon I shall. I feel that I’ve had a bout of anger, but I can’t remember why. Maybe reading email from my ordinary life, which I ought not to do. W calls certain music we tried to consider “boring.” The word “boring” loses meaning when he uses it. The Resurrection would bore him unless Christ wore a sequined gown and twirled flaming batons. 

The bartender noticed me writing out on the terrace in the sea wind. He too lived in Baltimore for a while. 

 

April 2, 2024

Peach colored dawn over the pier. Early walkers and beachcombers already out. Oddly restless night last night, considering how exhausted I must have been. Couldn’t get comfortable in bed. 

Spent a happy morning writing on the hotel terrace, blown by the sea wind, chattered at by grackles and laughing gulls. Bloody Mary at Drop In (new to me, and a new floor of sleaze) and lunch practically on the sidewalk at the Bounty Bar, where the passers-by were, in a striking proportion, nubile young girls with their parents. Boys with their shirts off, enough.

Found a little art gallery upstairs on a side street. Awful stuff. I’d be the Raphael of that place. I thought about asking if I could exhibit my beach paintings– I’d even buy in– but the elaboration that lay ahead daunted me. They must pay the rent with the sale of megaladon teeth. 

Climbing the steps to the pier I suddenly was reminded of the decades when I would engage the gaze of every male I passed on the street, checking to see if he desired me, or would allow himself to be desired. It was exciting. It swelled the time with expectation. It came to something more often than modest relation would allow. For a while, that and “poet” were my definition of myself. I can’t remember when it stopped. Over time? In one night? When did I stop missing it? I was picking up men on the streets of Dublin into my middle sixties. I thought many inroads into the realm of Venus would find me a true lover for all of my life, as I thought that dedicating myself to writing would get me a life as a writer. I was misled on both accounts by poetry. 

Huge afternoon nap made up for last night’s restlessness. The sound of the sea is unfamiliar to me, and every now and then I’d almost wake and wonder what turbulence was out on the street. 

My balcony is directly above the hotel pool, so pissing or hurling things from the window is out of the question. 

Beach

April 1, 2024

Woke to the chuckling of my turkey hen, stretching out her neck, as though calling to the rest of her flock. She gave up and ran around the perimeter of the garden until she found a way out. 

Folly Beach, ninth floor of The Tides hotel. Buddy’s and my drive here was long but uneventful. Stopped dead four time in I-26, and jammed up in a long line trying to get onto Folly, but still adding only forty minutes to my ETA. My assumption that the week after Easter would be sparse on the beach proved inaccurate. The little town is packed, mostly with young people– me a tottering von Aschenbach with a whole range of Tadzius to choose from. Dropped an unopened bottle of vodka first thing. The maid who came to clean it up did a hilarious and accurate pantomime of how I must have looked when a full bottle of liquor broke on the floor. Coming home after supper and first stroll to the end of the pier, I had to vidit Buddy in the parking lot, to assure him I was nearby and all was well. The dominant group on the beach now is the laughing gull. I hadn’t remembered seeing so many of them (or any of them) here before. 

 

Easter

 March 31, 2024

Easter Sunday

God has gone up with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of trumpets.

Most of the day a flawless, cloudless celestial blue.

Three services so close together exhausting for us, but, one hopes, inspiring for the congregation. 

Brunch after at the Village Pub. 

Maybe its exhaustion, but at the moment I look at the Paschal Mysteries as a child through a window at some distant, forbidden thing. They are not for me. I was not invited. I have failed to beat my way in. I waved my palm on the highway, shouted my hosanna,  and that ended my part in the story. 

Holy Saturday

 

March 30, 2024

Holy Saturday

Bright as burnished gold. Planted the second sweet bush, burying the Palm Sunday palms in its hole. Cleaned, moved, and reset one of the water gardens. Attached the hose and gave everybody a good drink. Preparing for the Great Vigil of Easter. Is this known to people who are not Episcopalians? We overdo it, making a celebration into a task, but someone at each moment is probably enraptured. 

“For this day the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

Good Friday

 March 29, 2024

Good Friday

The flux hit in the dead of night and continues to ths morning. I blame Fresh Market cold cuts. I asked the cleaning ladies to start with my bathroom in case I have to make a sudden beeline. 

When I woke and looked out my window, the lone turkey hen still haunted the garden. 

Lunaria in bloom. I cherish it as I had nothing to do with it, a pure gift from the land. 

Afternoon: the sickness, whatever it was, was more than just flux. I slept most of the day, and could lie down and sleep again now– which is a shame, because of the glory and gardening-friendliness of the day. Missed Good Friday noon service at the Cathedral, which I loved singing. I’ll have to honor the Crucifixion in my own way. 

Beautiful Tenebrae with music by AVE. In a trance most of the hour. 

Maundy Thursday

 

March 28, 2024

Maundy Thursday. Blazing cold light. A turkey hen has spent most of the day wandering around in my garden. It’s unusual to see one solitary. Maybe she just had to get away from the flock for a little while. Weeded, planted foam flower and Solomon’s seal.  

Foot Washing at the Cathedral, then the stripping of the altar. Moving. 

In the time between rehearsal and the Maundy Thursday service, I sat in the parish hall listening to a trio of health care workers (evidently) talk about PTSD. They discussed a symptom whereby a traumatic experience replays and replays, years later, with unabated bitterness, the recurrence out of the person’s control. I realized at that moment that the uncontrollable and often context-less repetition of the worst moments in my life, without any apparent reason or trigger, is PTSD. I have a condition I’ve heard of without applying to myself. The remarkable part is that attaching that simple diagnosis to an amorphous and mysterious affliction has made it better already. “Oh, that’s just my PTSD.” A previous explanation was that I had somehow left myself open to demonic possession and those horrible remembrances were the prick of the devils’ pitchforks in my soul. Something like that.

Most beautiful moon.

 

March 26, 2024

Marion Elizabeth Summers July 24, 1924– March 26, 1974. A day set aside for remembrance. This is the anniversary that marks her being gone longer than she was alive. My life since that terrible day is equal to all of hers. Some thing cannot be thought upon. 

Meeting last night: my last hope for Classical, or even just “classy”, selections for us ended last night. It is not what we want. Not who we are. I get blank stares, not of opposition, but of incomprehension. That’s not for us. I was wrong, not them. I belong somewhere else, not them.

 March 25, 2024

Note from Fishamble in Dublin: 

Dear David,

Thank you very much for sending your play to Fishamble. We appreciate the time and effort you put into your work.

The Beautiful Johanna takes place in the streets of post-apocalyptic Dublin, where violence and chaos are omnipresent. Johanna and Reiner discuss their romantic history with each other and wonder what went wrong. After tragedy strikes, Johanna runs into a group of teenagers, in need of help, who can’t remember a world without violence and chaos.

The play does a good job of portraying the enduring power of love during a time of chaos. The Mullaneys – because they are never seen by the audience, but only heard – are an ominous and unnerving presence throughout the play.

To fully bring the characters to life, it might be worth going further into the richness and the complexity of the world they inhabit. It would be great to anchor them still further in this world. This might allow the audience to feel more fully immersed in the story. Also, you may wish to consider working on the ending,  to give the story a fully satisfying resolution.

Fishamble will not be pursuing this project.

Yours sincerely, Gavin Kostick and the Fishamble Team

It’s good to hear something, anything from Ireland, through which I passed like a shadow.

Also, from AB, former student, who wrote to AVLGMC to get my address: Comments and questions:

Hello! I am a UNCA alumni and past student of David Hopes and would like to catch up with him and say "thank you." Please, if he is still affiliated with the Chorus, or someone there is still in contact, can you please pass my contact information on to him?

Thanks so much!

*

Without intending to when I rose, I drove out to Brevard Road and bought a new car, a white Corolla Cross. I chose it because it felt exactly the same to drive it as it did to drive the Prius. The bad part was the spasm of grief I felt at parting from the silver Prius, the best car I ever owned. I snuck into it one last time after the deal was done so whisper, “Thank you, thou good and faithful servant.” I anthropomorphize morbidly. In the night, I feel alone, as though I’ve lost another friend. 

Meeting here to nail down the repertoire for summer and GALA. Discussion on how “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” would have to be carefully introduced– ”contextualized”-- so it wouldn’t offend people with its references to God and battle. I have lived too long.