December 30, 2024
Lunch with A, who asked me to be in the play he’s directing for Montford, in which I’d portray Richard Burbage. Tempting. His professional struggles are perplexing to me, given his prodigal artistic gifts. Warm and watery, the day. Bought the most loathsome sausage I ever tasted at the Fresh Market. Threw it out to the birds and none touched it. Loathsome Sausage would make a good title.
December 29, 2024
Coffee with A. His world is better as his prostate retreats. We laughed at the phone calls we got from UNCA Development asking for contributions. It’s like Helene asking the River District for handouts.
Something at waking made me think of theater, and the moments that led me to it: the skit in Sunday School where I carried a teddy bear and said one line (which I remember), and it was somehow magical; The Tempest, when I was 9, on TV with Richard Burton and Roddy McDowell, so fascinating to me I think I remember every detail, though I never saw it after, so vital that I fought off adults who wanted to change the channel, convinced I couldn’t really be enjoying it; a school trip to see a Midsummer Night’s Dream in Cleveland, where I was the only one in a pit of rowdy kids glued to the action, where kids threw pennies at Puck in his parting speech; the summer at Templed Hills when we went to see Billy Budd at the nearby college (Kenyon, I think), and I was moved (thinking that in Budd I’d found a kindred spirit); sitting in the theater at Towson State watching The Martian Chronicles and thinking “I want to do that,” to create Mars, to create a world with words spoken.
President Carter is dead.
December 28, 2024
A great blue heron was in the yard when I went out to make coffee.
Damp, warm day, like a day of spring. I meant to clean up the garden a little, but didn’t. Feeling sad at receiving no presents at Christmas. Did I expect any? No, but– I gave some, and not only to L’s grandkids, but silly ones to other people, so they’d know I was thinking of them. Caught myself looking furtively on the porch each time I opened the front door. Maybe the return of Sweetboi was meant to be my gift, my compensation for no human presents. Too foolish to mention to any company. Vacancies not filled in youth do not disappear with age; they just creep into the attic to be contemplated at unexpected times.
December 25, 2024
Christmas evening. I’ve been merry all this day, as the songs say, with a full heart of holiday spirit. Gratitude for that. Services at Saint George’s last night were sweet, and not quite the disappointment one expected in our state of exile. Sad to think, though, that All Souls stood silent on Christmas Eve for the first time since 1896. Even now Sweetboi stands amid the garden beaking to pieces his Christmas feast. Before noon today I finished the revision of The Garden of the Bears, and wept.
December 23, 2024
December 23, Christmas Eve Eve, used to be my favorite day, the day before the day, trembling with expectation yet unrealized, like the lovers on Keats’ urn. It’s also the day when mother brought from hidden spaces elves and tiny festive creatures and containers of candy and gratuitous glittering things that turned the house into a Christmas wonderland. Never knew where those things lived during the year. Never knew that happened to them after. You stretch your hands into the dark--
December 21, 2024
Winter, and weather to confirm it.
Napped not through but by the Met’s children’s Zauberflote on the radio. Lovely.
Driving back from church last night there was an incident. Cars trying to pull into the parking lot of the Italian restaurant on Merrimon blocked the northbound lane, turning before the car in front of them had cleared the entrance. It’s one lane there, unless you veer into the turning lane. I’d stopped because of the large white pick-up blocking the lane at the entrance in front of me, and was pulling out into the passing lane to get around him, when suddenly, without sign or signal, he pulled out into the driving lane, blocking and nearly hitting me. I assumed he hadn’t seen me (or didn’t care) and was going to hit me, so I honked the horn. He slammed on his brake, opened the door and stalked back toward me. He was a very large man, evidently very angry. An interesting thing happened. I was not angry (my anger is quite slow, burning on a long, imperfect fuse) but I was absolutely ready and absolutely committed. Whatever happened next, I was ready and willing. Perceiving that the horn had infuriated him, I laid on the horn. In a few seconds he went back to his truck, as I knew he would, slammed the door, and backed the truck toward me with considerable speed. I thought we were going to collide, but he braked at the last second and turned into a different drive, one which does not lead to the restaurant. Through every such confrontation I recall this has been my reaction, coolness, readiness, not an ounce of fear. On the street, in a bar, in an office, wherever the moment narrowed to a blade, I was ready– even though, now that I can sometimes barely walk, the chances of success are unpromising. If that’s just me it’s one thing, but if it’s a general male reaction, it explains a lot about the world, a lot of desperate or horrible actions that seem incomprehensible to reason and the calm moment. I would have followed the big thug’s lead wherever it went.
Christmas music from Cleveland on the bud downstairs.
December 20, 2024
Woke this morning writing a short story in my head. I believe I’d begun it in my dreams. In it a man who owned a café was fussing with something in his parking lot, and worried about a ketchup stain on his sign, which he believed the police had put there.
Dean S’s father has died. What a couple of months it’s been for her!
Tried to drive DJ in his new van, which instantly died in a flurry of flashing lights. I though I’d hexed it, but the problem turns out to have been a dead battery (dead in a matter of minutes from the last time it was used). Battery was revived by the van salesman, and we drove around the Parkway (closed, of course) to charge it back.
Sweetboi returned the next day to sit in the maple outside my kitchen. He wasn’t hungry and didn’t eat the quarter of chicken I put out. Missed him for two days now. Maybe he just wanted to say goodbye before flying south.
Realized that B is just making GMC like all the other gay choruses, several of which he has been a member. We were a pocket of uniqueness, even strangeness, which I cherished. Not worth fighting about.
Later: Sweetboi back, ripping up a pork neck in my garden. Me, happy.
Fasciitis so severe walking is difficult, I emitting a little gasp at each step. Nevertheless, drove to Biltmore to see the inside of the cathedral for the first time since the hurricane. We had hot chocolate and sang carols. The building is in much better shape than one feared. It’s odd seeing it empty. It looks small, like a very classy rural train station waiting room. Or an anteroom to a Byzantine palace.
December 17, 2024
People talk about being kept up all night by some anxiety, and I imagine myself free of that, except this morning I woke wondrous early and could not get back to sleep, the cause being anxiety over the meeting of the GMC planning committee. I don’t think I’m of much use to them, as I want to sing the best music available, and they to illustrate political points with songs from the radio, none of them very good in comparison to the repertoire open to us. B wants to “work toward excluding anything related to church,” which means never performing or rehearsing in a church, and eliminating sacred music from our concerts. I understand the antipathy gay people feel toward religion. I feel it , but am somehow able to get around it and preserve a life of faith and a perspective on Western culture. Such prohibitions are no different from the Nazis’ not paying Mendelssohn, or the Israeli Philharmonic not playing Wagner, policies which we would regard as ignorant, even while duplicating them in our own practice. Not one decision has been made on musical grounds, which I find incomprehensible in a musical organization. We develop some theme– so far political and abstract–then look for pieces that can be thought to illustrate that theme. I played Schubert’s “Serenade” last night, to dead silence, literally no comment at all. My guess is that we’ll never do a classical piece again. I don’t see how I can be helpful in that environment. I also measure a two hour meeting with B droning on to wear us down until we accept his plans against the work I have to do and the little time I have left to do it. For example, I’ve spent time writing this (to get it out of my system) rather than doing my work.
December 16, 2024
Beethoven’s birthday.
P said she had some banana bread for me, but I never found it. Turns out she’d hung the bag on the doorknob, so that every time I opened the door to look, the bread swung out of sight. The rest of the story is that raccoons found it before I did, and what I found was a bag with the bottom torn out hanging from the knob.
Walking out to the mailbox, I noticed Sweetboi on his old branch not six feet from my head. I talked to his steady, unforthcoming eyes until I realized he remembered me from before, and had come hoping for a handout. I drove to the Sav-Mor, bought bits of bony meat, returned, put a pork neck on the drive under the branch, and not a minute later he was on it, mantling against the onslaught of the crows. He stayed by the drive, pecking and gauging, every now and then sending out a brief, satisfied scream. I stood watching with tears in my eyes. The return of Sweetboi after a trespass on my part was forgiveness and Christmas cheer.
DM has died.
Cleaned out the pump well of the pond, but the motor still seems to be dead,
Felt a palpable, instantaneous difference when a period of not feeling well clicked over into a period of feeling just fine, arthritis receded from thumbs and knees, breath strong, inflammation unnoticeable. I’ve lived in mine for 74 years and still the body is imponderable.
December 15, 2024
First visit by the red cockaded woodpecker.
Sort of miserable Advent 3 at St. George’s.
December 14, 2024
An evening and an afternoon of AVLGMC’s Christmas concert. It went well. I did better last night than I did this afternoon, when I found at points that I couldn’t catch my breath. Need to get back to the iron tablets. We were much praised, some people saying it was the best we’ve done. I hope so. The chapel at First Baptist, small and live, helped us. I heard errors all around me, but perhaps that all shimmers out in the whole. But, anyway, let’s take a popular triumph as a triumph.
More flickers at the feeders than I’ve seen in whole years.
As I sit in perfect peace in my study, the Internet tells me there’s a winter weather disaster outside. Maybe I won’t even look.
December 13, 2024
Scurry of birds into my dogwood grove. Flickers today among the usual.
Second-to-last concert tonight. Call is 2 ½ hours before show time. My repeated protests of this sort of thing go unheeded. Directors cannot stop themselves from addressing their anxieties by measures that are certain to damage the performance. Part of it, this time, is the chaos brought on by the loss of accustomed performance space to the hurricane, so one purses one’s lips and goes on. One says “never again,” and then does it again.
Devoting some thought to the recent assassination of the health insurance CEO on a New York street. I’m not in favor of murder, but I think that, from time to time, people must face the consequences of their actions. Guerilla tactics are lamentable, but blame cannot be laid on those who undertake them after years of desperation, of grievance unaddressed. I’m sorry that the executive was killed, but people do remark on the thousands whose lives were snuffed out or abbreviated as a direct consequence of his policies. Or are only certain lives valuable? Elon Musk counters criticism of insurance policies by noting that the job of a CEO is to increase profits for the shareholder at any cost whatever. Who should be next in the sights of the Avenging Angel?
I think I remember this was grandma’s birthday.
Interviewed by Kirkus Review for their publication in a few days of their top 10 (or 100, or something) reviewed books of 2024. Wyona is in there. One said that it’s their top pick from an Independent Press, but we’ll wait to see what it actually says.
Cold in the study. I dress as I would to go outside.
December 9, 2024
Spending most of the day in fictional worlds, having to stop and reflect for a moment to be sure what happened and what was imagined for the next page. Went to the Farmers’ Market for giant bags of peanuts. What conversation there was was still about the hurricane, about the lives of people not yet re-assembled. One woman kept shouting, “Dora, turn your hearing aid off! Dora, turn you hearing aid off!” The guy I bought cheese from said, “I’m glad finally to have a day without rain.” It was raining pretty hard outside at that moment. The guy across the street set up a lighted plastic Santa, maybe 7 feet tall. It glowed dimly through the night, then deflated and collapsed on the lawn.
Al-Assad collapses in Syria, ten years after it should have happened, but better late than never. Symbolic value, anyway. He did nothing that Trump is incapable of.
December 8, 2024
Lessons and Carols in our temporary digs at St George’s. Chaos, for the most part, but week by week it will get better. Saint George’s is the most undistinguished building in Asheville, which may be good for an All Souls’ parishioner’s long-standing venue-pride. The room is small and reverberant, and the choir’s sound is gigantic. We may have to adjust to that. I can’t say my soul was fed by this morning’s events.
Nose to the pleasant grindstone of revision. Dreamed of teaching in the new UNCA. We had to pass our lesson plans through administrators to insure there was no actual content, as content is apt to offend. If we were approved, we were given white pillows that floated in the air.
December 6, 2024
Irked to see starlings ravage the bird feeders. I’ll have to develop the same tolerance for them as I have for other immigrants.
When I’m writing productively, as I am now, it seems that I have no other life to record here. It is the happiest and least problematic life.
Resentment of long car trips (such as to AVLGMC rehearsals) revolve, I deduced, around fear of getting my lovely fresh car damaged.
Endless congestion, unremitting hoarse voice.
Absurd cold. Went out to do errands, whined and clutched my coat tight the while.
November 30, 2024
DJ prepared Thanksgiving dinner. We ate and watched football on TV, which I suppose is the accepted thing. Each time I’ve sat down to watch football, determined to understand what the attraction is, I come away thinking that, next to baseball, it’s the most boring activity in the world.
Cold in the studio this AM, a premonition of things to come. I work for twenty minutes before I forget about the cold.
T comes over yesterday morning, and we catch up to some degree. A, who seemed inert to be in his extreme youth, has developed an interest in music, the clarinet and the bass guitar in particular. He’s a junior and already considering conservatories. Their house was destroyed, and the struggle to find a place to live mirrors so many within the sound of a cannon shot from here. T is far more political than I, and filled with vehement hatred of the coming four years. No mention of our silence, which is well, I suppose. I often imagine that issues which bother me are nothing to the other side, and so need not be articulated.
Eternal, if slightly mutating, coughing.
Orgy of cookie baking yesterday. For church receptions, mostly.
Phoebe ranging around the rims of the water gardens, looking for something. Hope he found it.
November 27, 2024
Weather toeing the line between autumn and winter. Roses survive: everything else withered.
T breaks a four year silence, texts me. I phone him, and we’ll get together (maybe) Friday– at my house, because he’s afraid of public places after COVID. His voice has the same effect on me that it had before. Will we mention the years of silence? His house was destroyed by Helene, and the search for a new one will probably occupy our conversation.
Discussion with a woman in Ingles about the problem of double yolk eggs in baking.
Constantly surprised at vehement hatred of religion on the part of my gay friends. Unfortunately, when they name their reasons, I cannot disagree with or refute a single one.
UNCA, which cut its own throat over a 6 million dollar deficit, announces it will spend 5.5 million trying to attract students with free tuition, now that it has no faculty to provide the requisite classes. The only response is a stiff drink and a long nap.
Restored the winter feeding stations under my dogwoods. After two days everybody has returned. The arrival of the red-bellied woodpeckers announced “It is accomplished.”
November 23, 2024
Blustery cold. Roses and Mexican sunflowers still bloom.
N’s Broadway break, about Jim and Tammy Fay, is panned by The New Yorker. Oh well. He himself escaped blame.
Two last performances of Messiah, each better than last night. I sang well. The soprano beside me made the same mistake every time. I remembered how, when for ten years I did Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker ten times a season, I never tired of the music. K had us reprise “Hallelujah” as an encore. Audience loved it, sang along. Happy recollection. Women remark on how it’s thrilling to stand beside the basses.
November 22, 2024
Snow. Took photos of snow lying on the roses, but knew it wasn’t cold enough to do them any harm.
First performance of Messiah. As I stood watching the Maestro and beyond him the capacity crowd, I thought what an honor and a privilege it is to be singing that piece before an eager audience. Winter raging outside made it better. That for many it was the first bit of “culture” since the hurricane made it better. The soloists, especially the bass and the male alto, were excellent. The chorus was worse than it was for the Wednesday rehearsal– I skipped the Thursday rehearsal for AVLGMC, a choice more consequential than I would have anticipated. I imagine that I’m going unnoticed when I’m not. The tenors were strident, and often at odds with one another as to entrances and rhythm. There are a few too many “leaders” in that group. The soprano beside me came piercing through on the tricky rest at the beginning of “Worthy Is the Lamb.” I could feel by the intake of her breath that she was going to do it, but I didn’t know how to stop her. I may be, unconsciously, more of a leader than I imagined. Steve, the bass beside me said four times “thank God you’re back. We kept missing those entrances.” I turned two pages at once, missed an entrance, and the entire bass section missed that entrance. Maybe we all turned two pages at once.
Let’s see if I can keep up my enthusiasm through two performances tomorrow.
Colder outside than I want it to be.
November 21, 2024
Cold, but not cold enough to kill the flowers just yet.
Long but somehow not irritating rehearsal last night. Maestro is Serbian (or something) and his body language does not always communicate. Learned new things about familiar music. For once the orchestra had more problems than the chorus.
AVLGMC rehearsal beleaguered, surprisingly good. The Whitacre has a contra B. I rejoice in it.
November 19, 2024
Small muddy footprints mark the marauding of raccoons across the yellow tile of my east porch.
Picked up my Christmas cards at the printer. They look good.
Maestro D took rehearsal for Messiah last night, this being concert week. I remember thinking him cute when I worked with him before. This time I thought he was ravishing. Fully a third of rehearsal time during the past months was taken up with K explaining and imposing an eccentric interpretation of the work, which he then enforced by stopping everything full stop and making the same correction, literally ten times a night. The first thing Maestro did was throw all that out and bid us sing according to the actual flow of the music. One might have seen that coming. But it had the effect of our starting in some senses from the beginning. Long night.
November 18, 2024
Deacon M leaves us yesterday with a fiery sermon. She believes that praying will bring down Trump. Certainty is lost on me, but persistence is not.
Planted, I believe, the last of the last. Five yellow trillium roots were meant to be in the package. I found only one, but planted the lot anyway, as an act of faith.
November 17, 2024
Bach from Alexa downstairs.
Vivid dreams. You sleep too late in order to have more of them.
Something overtured everything on the back porch, smashed a flower pot, arranged Kit’s mug as though it were about to be painted.
Reading Wycliffe’s bible. It offers of itself only charm and quaintness, though the backstory is enlightening. Why do people say the English Reformation began with Henry VIII? Why do people get (everlastingly) agitated by the things they do?
One adjusts to the truth that a solid plurality of one’s fellow Americans preferred a known fascist and autocrat, public, loud, without subtlety, who did not hide one detail of his catastrophic character. Deception cannot be blamed. Confusion can be blamed, of course, but in a case like this, probably not remedied. A snake slithering toward you –hissing the whole time-- can be mistaken for– what? Perhaps it was gender, the enduring frontier sentiment: “better any man than any woman.” I’ve heard some explain that “the economy” threw the match, but that makes me wonder what on earth made people imagine Trump to be interested in the economy, or if so, what he was going to do with it. What he did in the past was enrich the rich: the only Trumpian financial outcome known for sure. He said he would “fix the economy,” but from a many-times failed businessman that’s not reassuring. Every sentence that comes from his mouth contains two lies, so expecting “I’ll fix the economy” to be an exception is an act of desperate faith. Some say it was “security,” by which I suppose they mean border security, but what we will actually get is the most insecure time in our national life since the War of 1812. A sovereign and predatory police force, marked by violence and impunity, is a necessary adjunct to all autocratic regimes, and our society is about to lose the gains made against that specter from 2020 onward. Why talk of civil or Constitutional rights when Security– however ill-defined-- is everlastingly the issue? Is resisting agents of the State not automatically an act of insurrection? “Surrender your papers” is about to be heard on every street corner, and some will sigh with relief. If there is a return from that, I don’t know what it is. Obliteration, then rebuilding from the ruins. Or moving on to an America presently unrecognizable. Trump is naive about foreign affairs, ignorant of every aspect of diplomacy without caring that he is. Not interested in our foreign interests, he will neglect them, will make the wrong choice every time, will abandon allies and give comfort to enemies. That this is treason has already been dealt with by the Supreme Court, which shrugs its shoulders and says “Oh, well.” No one will rely on us and fewer and fewer will fear us. Never having a plan, never caring to see a minute ahead, Trump will react like the ignorant bully he is when crossed or disrespected, and that could mean the end of the world. We who lived in the 60's feared we’d see it then, but no world leader of that time was as dementedly volatile as the leaders of this time. In choosing his Cabinet so far, Trump demonstrates that he has no interest in governing. He told you that before the election. He said aloud that it’s all about getting even, about counter-punching. The President of the United States is a gangster from a bad TV show. My friends, you voted, with eyes wide open, for the worst candidate that has ever stood for any election on this continent. I sometimes think “owning the Libs,” getting back at the “elite” by damaging what you suppose is precious to them, is the reason beneath the reason. If so, good for you. You have succeeded. You have avenged yourself for that “D” in Language Arts by burning the schools. You have evened your grudge about that vaccine by insuring the ill-health of your children. You have addressed the price of groceries by electing the one man who will insure that price goes up. His friends can pay it, no problem. You have bought “security” by making yourself mortally vulnerable to every yahoo with a badge and a blue hat. Eighty years after your grandfathers died to stamp out fascism, you have built it a fortress in their homeland. Fine work.
Night: Rameau from the computer.
November 16, 2024
I may live my life having experienced only one President younger than myself.
Planted hibiscus and lupine, mulched, came within one box of yellow trillium of finishing the garden.
However things are with my health, massive afternoon naps are still the rule. They team with vivid, sometimes quite habitable, dreams.
Each night I think I’m going to have something to say about the election. The tsunami has struck, drowned everything it could, now slowly withdraws. Analysis will likely be impossible until one has stood on dry ground for a few minutes.
November 15, 2024
Physically thwarted from getting to rehearsal last night by traffic stopped on Sweeten Creek. I sat through eight changes of the traffic light at Givens Estates and not one car had moved. Death-defying U-turn and came home.
Our return to All Souls may be delayed as long as a year because of infra-structure issues in Biltmore Village. When do delays and setbacks become the sign to move on? One must distinguish between habit and commitment.
Picked up groceries for DJ. The man in charge of the operation there had the face of an Orthodox icon, lean and wide-eyed and holy. His conversation was about how to make things easier next time, but coming from that visage it sounded like prophesy.
November 13, 2024
Returned to ASC rehearsal last night, successfully, without coughing fits, or with fewer coughing fits than those gathered around me. Neither was I in particularly bad voice. Energy drained. Coughing renewed later in the evening, including the strangle-cough, where the impulse to cough is immediate, irresistible, not-prepared-for, multiple, hitting before a breath can be taken, so the longer you cough, the more breath you lose while taking none in, until you’re emptied of air and still trying to cough. You say to yourself, “This is how I go.” It may be. Hasn’t been yet. Smashed the morning to pieces getting a Kirkus sales crusade going for Wyona. Also trying to use Facebook pages which cannot be used, cannot be saved, and, apparently, cannot be deleted. Still may plant bloodroot if I walk out the door and can stand the sudden cold.
November 11, 2024
The first day I’ve felt somewhat less unwell. Medium level body ache, medium level congestion, medium level cough. I’m only moderately tempted to rejoice. Knew I was getting better when I began to think of things I wanted to write.
Recommended E for an honorary doctorate.
Decided there was not enough trash in the can to haul it to the sidewalk.
Have not been entirely successful avoiding images or news of Trump. In a few seconds before I got my finger back on the key, he vowed in his first week in office to take away the accreditation of any university which allows anti-Semitic propaganda. Don’t know what he means by that (maybe any statement even mildly tempered with sympathy for the Palestinian cause), but I do know in a reasonable time the statement would be ludicrous. But the Supreme Court has arranged it that “he can’t do that” isn’t even a deterrent. Who calls him to account if he does?
November 10, 2024
French Baroque music from the speaker downstairs.
Passing through a time of unusual, and not unpleasant, passivity. Is that the word I want? Maybe “disengagement.” Through the hurricane I was of no use whatever, and did not intentionally inject myself into situations where I could be of use. The time of hauling and digging and battling the current is over for me. I suppose I could have passed out canned goods, but instead I fled, and felt, in a general way, that was the thing to do. It got me out of the way. I did send money. Maybe I was meant to do that. Partially because I have been (and still cursedly am) ill, the Great Disaster has not struck an actual nerve. I recognize every aspect of life will be stained and putrified by these four upcoming years, but the realization remains distant, intellectual. I tell myself that if rage could make a difference right now, I would open the portals of rage. But maybe I wouldn’t. Thinking back on the hour when I hurled the demon to the porch floor and ended years of rancourous inner dialog, I must have known that both good and less good would come from that. But, even if my fury were righteous, what real good did it ever do? Not rhetorical: I actually do not know. When was the last time I felt so many contiguous days of peace? So far, when I’ve felt indignation rising, I’ve managed to ease it back, like dropping a toad into the underbrush. Nothing that crept into my mind seemed important enough to pursue. The fact that influenza gives me two huge naps a day, when I think about nothing at all, may be part, but not all. If I go to church today (which I might try to do) what will I contribute to the inevitable lamentation? Will I have that stupid smile of the peacemakers on my face?
November 8, 2024
Slight rain last night, a glisten from the fallen leaves.
Partially it has been my interesting and ever-evolving flu (I suppose. I thought it might be pneumonia, but there’s no breathing difficulty) that has kept my mind off the Great Disaster. Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November–.Partially it has been my resolution not to watch the news for the next four years. It has worked for the last four days. I have not been upset, not been infuriated or grief-stricken, not having heard his voice or even a full iteration of his name. Indignation and outrage are the only things I have to offer at the moment, and I’m not sure they’re beneficial either to the one that gives or the one that receives. If I thought fury or opposition would help one thing, I would indulge them. Greater faith sees justice working itself out even in defeat, and I am confident that the Orange Menace will not enjoy one day of his reign, neither will he complete his term. Then we are left with Vance, but that is bridge further on. The conviction of my sprit at the moment is that the time of tribulation will not affect me personally. It is horrible to say that, but one trusts that when one might be effective, one shall be called.
November 5, 2024
Third day of ague. Back to relentless napping. Bad night last night, caught between trying to breathe and trying not to shit the bed.
Incredibly, a new carton of plants appears on the porch. I have the feeling that they are mostly meant to wait till spring. I’ll look it up.
The most horrific political night of my long life. I can’t picture any headlines which proclaim Harris as victor: it’s all TRUMP AGAIN and TRUMP SQUEAKS THROUGH. My being able to picture things is not, thank God, the test of their probability. Part of me expects a Trump victory because a Harris victory would be so perfect, solve so many problems, dodge so many dangers, and the world does not allow escapes like that. At other times I repeat to myself the proposition that a Trump victory is unthinkable, and will not therefore happen. I won’t be listening to any news media for the next twenty-four hours. Better to awake and take it, like pulling the bandage off a wound.
November 4, 2024
The two people I would not want to be right now are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I do not deal well with anxiety, and the level of theirs must be astronomical. Kamala has done her best in an abbreviated period of time to save the American way of life. She might be anxious, but there is no need for self-incrimination, whatever the outcome. Trump, on the other hand, emerges as the thing he loathed and always was, a loser. His crimes sit at his front door waiting to devour him.
I realize that my positiviry concerning Trump’s defeat is that he MUST be defeated, not that I have any special insight into outcomes. His victory is unthinkable among rational or humane beings. I suppose that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. One has faith. I know, the world being as it is, he will win. But I'll disbelieve until the last minute.
Felt better today: most of the body aches gone, need to sleep half of what it was yesterday. Managed to cook, and to garden, planting the last crocus and the last eight peonies of the never-ending succession I seem to have brought upon myself. Barring another forgotten delivery, the garden is complete for the winter. As I dug, a mother played with her baby on the sidewalk across the street, the baby laughing one of those hard, irrepressible baby laughs that compel one to laugh along.
November 3, 2024
Influenza. I’m so used to my usual panoply of idiosyncratic afflictions– phlebitis, anemia, fasciatus– that garden variety flu is a bit of a relief. Have slept almost literally all day. When not sleeping, I thought of the Internet repair guy. He was black, and wore bright yellow overalls and hat, and the contrast between sepia and yellow made you suppose he was something other than a repair man. I told him that I lost nothing on my property, but that my church was “swept away.” He looked vary serious and said, “I hear a lot of that, people talking about their lives being swept away without very much emotion at all. I’m not used to it yet.” I suppose the Tragic Attitude is the hardest one to sustain. He said power will be going on and off for the next few weeks, and not to expect any progress on Sunday, as they all get Sunday off. It is Sunday–our patronal feast day-- and sometime the Internet came back on, for how long who knows. My illness kept me from singing Lauridson at Trinity.
Big article on Black Mountain in Southern Living Magazine. Several of the places it recommends are gone.
November 2, 2024
Cooler morning than one is used to. I don’t want to admit that not having Internet showed me how much of my time I allow it to waste. When it returns-- if it returns, which now seems unlikely-- I must vow not to fall asleep in front of the TV every single night, not to scroll through videos until the time allotted for creation has been spent. Painted well yesterday, then, flipping idly through computer files, came across “Old UNCA” and a file for poems I must have significantly revised while at work. Began to revise, and saved six poems from the ash bin of my past. Sitting on the porch at night, as I have done five nights in a row now, I opened to several revelations, some so secret (and so lovely) I’m not ready to set them down in words. I did recognize how much of my time I spend fighting, often with people who are not there, with imagined opponents whom I might not ever encounter, with people who are dead and their issues therefore moot. It has always been the case, but I’ve thought of it as the background noise of anybody’s mind. Perhaps it isn’t. As I sat in darkness with a drink in my hand, I realized I couldn’t stop it. One argument with the imagined CEO of Spectrum melted into one with a police officer I saw in a video, and that into one with an editor years ago, and that into this and that into this. There was end. I couldn’t control it. In desperation I cried out, stood and made a gesture as though hurling something physically from my body. I sensed it striking the bricks at my feet, vanishing as a shadow. I called it Satan, but I am of a Theistic and Mythopoeic frame of mind, and so I would. In any case, the next hour was the freest hour of recent remembrance. No argument, no setting out of grievance, no putting the record straight, but clarity like water flowing from sheer rock. A little animal, maybe an opossum, maybe a clumsy cat, scurried by the end of the driveway. The first night on the porch I had wondered if I had done what God wanted in any degree, and if I had not, how did I, searching always and diligently, manage to miss the admonition? I saw last night that the distraction of my life had been interrupted to show that what I did in the effusiveness of youth, what I still do with green vigor when I’m not frustrated or distracted– create– is valued, and the Power arranged things (however irritatingly) to renew my attention while there’s still time left. Yes, it is what I wanted. It is what I intended. I have conspired to get you back.
It’s odd, but perhaps an emblem of the times, that when the Lord God shakes the curtain I believe one moment and doubt the next. At ten it was a Visitation, at eleven an upheaval of my own mind. Perhaps that’s the dynamic that moves us forward. But finally I doubt that these thoughts, the apparitions, are intrinsic. “Mind” does not work that way. The dazzling moments are so surprising, so foreign, that you know they arise from a place totally elsewhere.
I let my coffee get cold.
Visitation by two exquisitely elegant veeries. Not sure I’d seen one that close before.
Dug, planted, mulched the fern garden that I ordered in an extravagant moment. Also another small stand of bloodroot. Except for half a bag of silvery purple crocus, all the plants ordered (and which have arrived) are in the ground.
I was told to expect a Spectrum engineer today between 2 and 3. I gave up and 3:20 and went upstairs. At 4:45 a technician showed up, saying he’d gotten the assignment ten minutes earlier. As service had come back on spontaneously (or something) at about 1:45 I decided to eschew recrimination. The engineer was from New York, brought here to address the various emergencies. He shared my disgust with everything related to his company’s executive system.
Internet lasted two hours, then went off again.
November 1, 2024
Another night on the porch with a drink in my hands. The Internet’s failure gives me time with my thoughts, often vast and unfamiliar thoughts, often the same dry rustle in the dry grass. I am a small man: I would trade the profundities to have my TV back, at least to have the choice between them
Pulled myself out of rage long enough to plant Siberian iris, ranunculus in pots (will it grow?) and to paint. Rage interferes with words, but it does not so much with images. It makes me think that anger, unlike other emotions, is a kind of narrative.
One persimmon clung to the tree after the hurricane. Half of it was rotten, but I ate the other half, and it was divinely sweet.
October 31, 2024
My flock of three turkeys visits every afternoon at about 3:30. They favor one certain area, whether because of a statue of Saint Francis, or because open dirt feels good on their bellies, or because a path of sage delights their senses.
Another day without Internet. It flickers on sometimes, and then one receives joyful tidings from Spectrum, but flickers off again within an hour. Every ten minutes or so I have to stop myself from screaming with rage. Not good for the throat. Discovered that part of the delay– multiplying the firm’s established incompetence–is that the linemen had not been paid for their work. They staged a work stoppage for two days, delaying everything. When I learned this my rage turned, momentarily, to solidarity. I was glad some principles remained.
Huge gardening day. Joyful discovery that the autumn crocus, planted after the hurricane, are in purple bloom. New beds dug against the street, wherein were entombed daffodil, black iris. Much mulching, all the bags on, requiring me to renew. Internet, in the few moments when I have it, reports that more shipments will arrive. I must have thought I needed to replant the world.
Hard time getting to rehearsal in Arden last night. Sweeten Creek Road no longer connects with Biltmore. G said that more roads– those already in bad shape before the storm–in the County are being closed than being opened. Drove home through the dark of Biltmore. Some Halloween activity downtown, good to see. Two cops in their dark uniforms jay-walked across Biltmore. Only a sudden gleam from their badges allowed me to see them in time.
October 30, 2024
Internet service came on briefly yesterday, during which time, to save them effort and money, I cancelled my repair appointment, for today. Then, after I’d left rehearsal early to luxuriate in an evening of TV, service was off again. No vehemence on the phone could bring them earlier than November 2. For perhaps the first time in my life I demanded to speak to a supervisor. He was more politic than the agent, but supplied no different answer. The first night this happened my fury was untameable, and turned onto very dark paths not really associated with cable at all. You have done these awful things to me, Lord. Maybe I could at least check email. You have negated me; perhaps I could have Internet. You have stolen my life, Lord; maybe you could let me sit in front of the TV with a vodka in my hand.
Last night was different, at first merely duller, dull and edgeless. I could not have survived a night like the one before. I couldn’t sit home, so I took a longish walk through the neighborhood in the dark. As I walked, I heard my voice saying to the Night, “You think my suffering is funny.”
The next words were “I acknowledge that it is.”
That broke a barrier. Returned, sat on the porch, and my mind wandered, but this time not to anger and despair, but to a probing acceptance I don’t remember feeling before. I said to the Covering Night, All right. You have my attention. What do you want? The Pure Spirit stood in the garden, and I opened my heart to it. I wanted it to speak to me, and after a while I suppose it did, but in a way not easy to discern, in a way that explained why one misses or mishears its voice from day to day. It shifts the heart without addressing it. It changes venue without a path or a door. It does not speak, but its answer is received. Pure Spirit. I catch myself writing “it,” by which I mean to express that the Pure Spirit was not a personality as I recognize it, not a person congruent with my experience. It was Presence. It made my accusations of malevolence and indifference absurd without exactly addressing them. It was Wholly Other, there in the darkness shivering with random lights from the street, utterly beautiful. I asked it why I was born and what was I supposed to do and have I done it at all. I didn’t expect an answer, as I’ve never received one as often as I’ve asked.
Some time later the words formed in my heart. It is sufficient.
I determined to sit in the darkness until some rare thing happened–besides meeting the Lord of the Universe under my redbud trees. A bear wandered out of the back garden, crossed the drive into the neighbors’ yard. That was it. The great black Bear of Revelation, appearing for a moment, mostly dark itself, disappearing.
Of course when I woke an hour ago the first thing I tthought of was the Internet. My suffering is funny.
October 29, 2024
Internet out again. I assumed the line was torn when tree trimmers came to tear up the hemlocks, not even hauling the debris away, but the problem turned out to be farther down the line.
Strange episode in the silent night. I tore at the veil. I entered the place behind the veil with all my weapons in my hand.
Barbara Bates Smith is dead. Her “Ivy Rowe” broke my heart, also Gertrude to my Old Hamlet.
Painting riotously. Is that well?
I know I need cataract surgery, but I put it off because I’m certain that it will be a botch and I’ll go blind. There, I’ve said it.
October 28, 2024
Church yesterday in borrowed Trinity. The jazz trio played “Hard Times Come Again No More.” In the midst of M’s sermon I had a vision of myself dancing in my garden at night, to the sound of distant bells. I knew then that Harris is going to win the Presidency. It will still be necessary for millions to explain why they dedicated themselves-- often slavishly, idolatrously-- to the single most repellent man in American political history. I can see a cult of personality if there’s any personality. I can see enthusiasm and agreement if there are any policies or deeds to agree with. But there’s nothing but gluttony, malice, vengeance, ignorance, cruelty, hoggishness-- which term offends the relative delicacy of actual hogs. I cannot listen to Evangelicals on the subject, for fear I’ll burst into flames. THIS is God’s instrument? It is true, as they argue, that God uses the imperfect, but, referencing Abraham, David, Peter, at al, he uses the imperfect who are striving mightily for the right and miss, by dint of being human. The disgraced, impeached, and felonious ex-President has not striven for any end but his own gratification since he came out of the womb. For him to be in prison on November 6 is the one acceptable justice. There is still the matter of his followers. Did education fail? Near the end of the time when I was in it, education was intimidated enough that it hesitated to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, for fear of giving offense. Certainly some points of view ought to be offended. The ignorant deserve their lives, but they do not deserve influence over the lives of others. One might forgive and move on, but some dark flux gave birth to this morass, and that dark flux must be discovered and investigated. Something went wrong. Somehow we failed to teach love of truth, love of mercy, love of honor. Failed to teach tolerance, let alone empathy. Failed to teach humility, let alone wisdom. We failed even to teach self-interest, which is threatened by every injustice done to another. It’s beyond my wisdom to know how to separate supporting a fascist from being a fascist. It’s hard for me to admit that plain good folks have such malice in their hearts, such ignorance governing their minds. Are they plain and good? If you intend mayhem and suffering, do you expect not to be blamed for doing so? I don’t know how to face them. I don’t know how to desire to face them, even if doing so is the only healing.
October 27, 2024
Squirrels scamper over the garden, finding my newly dug soil the perfect place to bury their hurricane windfalls. Some bug or other has been emerging, for my garden is full of birds of almost every kind normally seen here, all at once, including white-rumped warblers, which I’ve never seen here before. Maybe it’s just the hurricane windfall. Maybe it’s a special blessing unearned and unanticipated.
October 26, 2024
Planted peonies. God forfend that I buy any more peonies. Planted cinnamon fern and ranunculus. Crushing, but not unpleasant, exhaustion.
One lesson of Helene is that helpers emerge from the woods with chainsaws and bottles of water in their hands. The person you knew all your life was an angel of light waiting to be needed.
October 25, 2024
Israel is bombing Tehran. Worse and worse.
Heroic gardening today. Dug at the new bed outside the fence, planted more of the apparently inexhaustible daffodils, the Dutch iris that came in a box I didn’t remember ordering, peonies (I must stop buying peonies); transplanted Linda’s elephant ears to a place where it will have more room. Uncovered and saved spearmint, white native hibiscus, and ironweed from the overgrowth. Staggering with exhaustion at the end of the afternoon.
October 24, 2024
Prolonged my agricultural activities by loading up at Jesse Israel’s, where they were selling end-of-season plants two for the price of one. Poor root-bound things, this late in the season.
A spider wove in my bedroom window a web which, because of the space, is shaped like an airport runway. I worry about him. He perches dutifully at one end all day, but I never see anything in the web, and don’t understand how an insect could get in through the screen or, on the other side, through a closed window. I took to opening the window so, should he be a prisoner, he could escape and build his web elsewhere. But he remains. Perhaps he is a pure artist spider, happy to contemplate the perfection of a web never put to its intended use.
I can attest to the continued necessity of boiling the water. Forgetfully I used faucet water for brushing my teeth, and got a memorable case of diarrhea. Had to run from rehearsal once, and wanted to a second time. People would not stop praying and asking about conditions at church so I could fly to the door and hence to my own bathroom. All Souls choir rehearsal revived in the First Baptist chapel.
Return of AVLGMC rehearsals at R’s church in Arden. We talked about the efficacy of anything we might attempt in these troubled times, deciding to go through with nearly our original plans regardless.
Made my first foray into the devastated River Arts District, discovering, to my joy, that Cheap Joe’s Art Supplies survived. That was the last good news. Bought stuff I didn’t need. The district is still a calamity, though it’s possible to walk about, and those venues which can be open, are. It’s not always easy to tell why some buildings stood, some collapsed, some vanished as though into thin air. Heavy piles of masonry stood a good chance in general, though what their interiors are like one doesn’t know. Ran into two former students, JS, taking in the atmosphere for his Ashvegas column. He has a three year old daughter. “I’m an old man,” he said, “I never expected to be a father, much less to be good at it.” Walked into the one studio that was open. One of the residents was AA, who took Humanities from me, twice, and remembered me as the best teacher she ever had. Every now and then the Spirit leads me into the paths of those willing to say what, at the moment, I need to hear. Their gallery survived by being the highest point on the river side of Depot Street, the water just lapping the top step. Miss A makes colorful portraits of animals. Her partner makes watercolors, and attributes their survival in their storage area (lower than the gallery) to her habit of waxing the finished product. The mud just brushes off.
Drove home from Arden rehearsal through Biltmore, which is utterly dark, as though nothing on either side of the road still exists.
October 23, 2024
An undergraduate from San Diego requests a copy of Edward the King for research she’s doing on adaptations of Marlowe’s play.
Boxes of bulbs keep arriving. I wonder how much garden I thought I should plant, and where I’d find the energy to do so
Asheville Symphony Chorus reconstituted. Everyone in good spirits, willing things back to normal.
Dug a new patch for new tree peonies. Began transplanting scraggly roses from the maple shade, where they were not happy. The second batch of ranunculus roots fuzzed with fungus. Planted them anyway.
October 22, 2024
The Orange Menace visits Asheville, to interfere with recovery efforts and draw attention to himself. Part of me is at peace about the election, determining that a treasonous felon rapist ignoramus blasphemous lying walking embodiment of Gluttony cannot possibly, once known, be elected president. On the other hand, my continued astonishment that nearly half of all Americans favor him despite daily confirmation of his inhumanity. Is inhumanity what we want? It’s possible. People in the past have accepted or welcomed inhumanity– but not, I think, when it was so clearly visible. His re-election means the end of civil society in America. You could say that to his supporters and they wouldn’t care. They want something else, not civil society, not facts, not Democracy. Is it revenge they want? Revenge on whom for what? Revenge that their lives didn’t turn out as they thought they were promised? Revenge on those who know more and do better? Revenge on an “elite” class that wouldn’t even recognize itself as such, and is known only to its enemies? I don’t know. Deception, malignancy, stupidity are the only reasons to vote for the beast. Setting aside the stupid and the malignant, you should be able to reason with the rest, but reason is one of those things that belong to the “elite” and must, therefore, be rejected. Election night I shall turn off all media and go to bed as drunk as I can be.
Planting and mulching.
October 20, 2024
Have contributed to so many Go-fund-me pages to help hurricane recovery that my own finances are in need of recovery. It’s worth it to memorialize having the same roof over my head.
Trinity invites us to use their sanctuary for an afternoon service. There the choir was reconstituted today for the first time since the storm.
October 19, 2024
Video of a lizard stranded on a bit of bridge in the middle of the raging water in Chimney Rock. We have not had time to consider the havoc wreaked upon those without voices or video cameras.
Thinking of my sister and brother-in-law, whose relationships goes a long way toward justifying the institution of marriage. They have found someone to spend their lives with, grow with, meet all uncertainty with.
October 18, 2024
Followed the course of the moon across my window in the dark hours of morning.
Voted. Late opening of polling place created a longish line where everyone talked of the hurricane and when they got their services back. At the University site we were all dependably Democrats.
Went to Ingles for half & half, one of life’s few necessities. It was full of rescue workers looking grubby and exhausted.
Internet flickering on and off. My hatred of Spectrum is a blue flame.
Gardened when it was finally warm enough. Made a mulch run. The streets are covered with it, could it but be gathered.
October 17, 2024
Full moon of Aries rose over Georgia last night, immaculate on his blue silk.
The Spirit drove me home at the earliest possible moment, so here I am, Internet crackling, water (very loud and belchy water) in the pipes. This is as much as two weeks before they led us to expect restoration. Prudent on their part. Joyful on ours. In the midst of tribulation you assume it will gone one forever, even as in the midst of “ordinary” you assume that will go on forever. I run around testing everything to see if it works. Tomorrow I will be grateful.
The bear overturned the trash bin, but was thwarted by the bear-proof lid this time.
October 16, 2024
Sudden sharp cold. As I brushed my teeth, I saw a doe and her young one cross the street on the other side of the creek.
Went to downtown Alpharetta to a café with airplane decor, where they didn’t produce my coffee until I’d asked three times. The second time I was scolded for being impatient. “We’re working on it. We haven’t forgotten you.”I inquired what there was to it beyond pouring coffee into a cup, and got a supercilious look. There are reasons for not letting women run businesses. Strolled past a barber shop, stopped to get my wild mane cut. I don’t have to LOOK like a refugee, Found a seat in the library among the early voters. Wrote a poem and looked at a glossy movie book. Tried to go to the bathroom, but there was a huge black man soliciting sex. Wandered about in the cold bright light. Sat watching the astro-turf where kids play. A big boy and two little boys–brothers, I think– played a kind of football which was mostly an excuse for an extended brawl. I admired the big boy, his engagement with his brothers, his kindness, the attention he was paying them that they will never forget. From their voices when they shouted at each other I think they’re British.
Spectrum email declares that my Internet is restored. Why is my doubt instant and inerradicable?
Home either tomorrow or Friday, depending on the motion of the spirit. If I get back too soon, if I get back with everything still unresolved, it will be too exhausting. L & J are off to Ohio, so my departure time doesn’t have to be specific. Had a productive time downtown today, and know how I can have a productive time in days to come, so the urgency is off just as the possibility arises.
October 15, 2024
I’ve switched typing surfaces, which makes things marginally better.
The house in Dahlonega appears to be a done deal.
On D’s advice I motored yesterday to the Chattahoochie River National Recreational Area on Jones Bridge. Walked in wood that are mostly yellow poplar, therefore lofty and airy. Discovered the windleaf. The river itself looked normal (though I never laid eyes on it before, so there’s no opportunity for comparison), but the trail bridges cross feeder creeks, and mud on the vegetation there indicates a flood stage as much as twelve feet above their current levels. Almost every walker but me had at least one dog.
Mornings are hard, longing for home, anxious to find a way to do my work. But, I search the Internet for something to do, do it, and by evening TV and family cocktail time, the circumstantial contact feels comfortable and sustainable. Then it begins again the next day. L & J have certainly gone out of their way to accommodate me.
Fascinating email from Spectrum announcing that my payment is due. Haven’t had Internet service since September 27, and they’re closed as clams about what, if any, progress is being made in restoration. Companies make people hate them more by hiding behind a baffle of blind email addresses and unnavigable phone trees.
Downtown to the Georgia Aquarium. Stopped on the street by attractive kids trying to run a charity scam. I almost fell for it. All the denizens of the aquarium had Halloween decorations in or on their tanks. Skeletons lay on the bottom of the shark tank as if they had been stripped clean by the predators above. A male beluga was erect and trying to interest a female in afternoon delight. She declined. The sea dragons had bats on strings hanging from their tank.
October 14, 2024
Birthday celebration for M, organized with my sister’s apparently effortless aplomb and enthusiasm. With two infants in the room, discussion turned inevitably to baby things, which was informative but in which I could not participate the least bit. Everyone was tired and giddy with baby-attending. Everyone was fascinated by the babies’ doing nothing at all but allowing themselves to be served. This is their lives for a while, as mine is watching it unfold.
During the night my laptop was blasted by something, and in the morning I had to recover Word Perfect and e-mail and Google Chrome and Facebook, and wait for everything to upload and unfold two hundred miles from the book in which I note my passwords. I was not calm. I was not patient. I pictured a situation in which I was even more isolated and impotent than I was before. It did turn out well, but it is not yet time to feel more grateful for that than infuriated by the supplemental tribulation.
Domicile temporarily to myself while everyone checks out the vacation house the family is buying in Dahlonega. I think they’re meeting the inspector. The boys’ lives speed ahead. They each have two houses and a piece of land at a time when, I think, I was still in grad school.
October 13, 2024
In the dim of my little basement retreat in Atlanta. Shuttling between sites is possible but wearing thin, until I compare it with the lot of those who have nowhere to go at all. Alpharetta hosted a street festival last night, which we attended. Lots of music, convivial and diverting. Listening to WCLV, streaming from my ancient haunts. Baroque Bieber going Gl-o-r-ia over the airwaves.
I wonder if my discomfort here is mainly having nowhere to balance the keyboard as I type. The room is cold. Can mendicants mention that the room is cold?
Monteverdi “Magnificat.”
October 11, 2024
Retrieved a CD player (acquired but never used) from the riverfront office, discovering that I do have a broadcast radio and, Internet or no, can have the sound of a human voice in my house. Listened to the Sixteen performing the Eton Songbook by dim light, writing, reading Traherne and The Song of Hiawatha, an evening of almost perfect bliss amid the ruins.
Read Lao Tzu at the car dealership and Traherne at my desk at night. What a collision is there, one renouncing with a wry smile, the other gathering in with both arms, wanting life to be richer and richer, battening on the bounty of the soul. I am in Traherne’s camp, of course, though the old mendicant clears the air.
Added a single figure to Forest Edge and made it my favorite painting.
Rose early and gardened. Needed a jacket, and then I didn’t. Planted and mulched daffodils, iris, autumn crocus, those onion-like flowers that I don’t remember the name of and can’t look up because there is no Internet. Allium.
I am happy at my house.
I am miserable away from it.
These truths should be part of the equation, but clearly they are not.
October 10, 2024
Cold morning. Turned my furnace on. As there was no explosion, I assume it’s independent of the water system.
Errands. Got a prescription filled. The pharmacy guy says they have Internet in Black Mountain and were promised water this afternoon. Made an appointment for routine car service, that I missed twice during the hurricane.
Drove to the Mill at Riverside. My space smells like an outhouse, but is secure and untouched. High Five, miraculously, stands, though scoured empty by the flood. All the lawn furniture is gone. Smashed sheds. The far side of the river white with what seems to be an infinity of pcp pipes. Workers and owners out on the pavement trying to hose off (with what water?), dry, and clean furniture and equipment. Grace Plaza becomes a staging area for water distribution and the parking of utility trucks. Streets still hazardous with splintered lumber. Linda sent lily and elephant ear bulbs home with me. I got those planted, along with two roses that came from Heirloom and a row of orange iris by the street. All live plants are planted; the bulbs can bide their time a little. Interesting process of getting clean, or cleanish, after a bout of gardening. Fifty thousand years of being mostly dirty becomes quite understandable.
Routine maintenance at Anderson Toyota. Took up time, anyway. Gorgeous autumn day, the trees etched with blue shadow on the nearby mountain.
Poking through old journals reveals that I began painting in November 1991.
October 9, 2024
Thinking of the man in the High carrying his baby (less than 12 months, I’d think) from work to work in the Modern Art room, explaining and exclaiming. Like Wordsworth, I imagine that some dim recollection of that moment will color, however unconsciously, the child’s life.
Back in Asheville, suppressing rage that the Internet is not restored. A bear defeated the bear-proof lid (or else I left it unsnapped), overturned the garbage bin and took the food, by that time quite elderly. Hope it didn’t make him sick. It was all the contents of my fridge, and therefore a windfall.
Good news is that T cleaned up my yard and made it look civil again. It was a task that I wasn’t sure I could address.
Because of the Cone of Silence over Asheville, I don’t know what havoc Milton is loosing upon Florida.
Unable to master my car’s various display mechanisms, I listened to news the whole way, concluding that Conservatism in 2024 is solely focused upon preventing others from achieving the lifestyle and privileges you yourself have attained or aspire to. It emphasizes difference, mocks compassion, adores dogma, has no particular interest in the truth. All Conservative spokesmen (those interviewed by the media, anyway) consciously and knowingly proceed from a dishonest premise.
My three turkeys paid a visit. I think they’re all girls, for none is aggressive or showy.
Looked up the hurricanes of 2004, the likes of which I imagined I’d never see again. This is what I wrote on September 8, 2004:
Our little hill was so undisturbed, and I didn’t turn on the radio today, so that I didn’t know Biltmore and the River District, Black Mountain and Swanannoa are under water. South and East Asheville are blacked out, and half the city is without water. I finally went to look when I received an e-mail from a patron who was coming to my studio tomorrow afternoon, which said, “Let’s reschedule when things get back to normal.” I snapped on the car radio and heard people howling that someone had given the order to open the floodgates at the Bee Tree Reservoir at exactly the wrong moment, which meant a flood of water came down the Swanannoa just as the rivers and creeks were carrying their full load of hurricane runoff. I drove in a panic toward my studio, but found that the river road was blocked and flooded. I circled around through the city and came down Chicken Hill, and saw the flood plain of the French Broad not only under water, but under flowing water. For ten years the River District has been trying to pull itself up out of the grubby warehouses and dim garages and become the area’s arts showplace. Now it is under water. Who knows what’s gone and what remains. The New Blue Studios are under water half way to the roof. The Warehouse Studios first floor must be at least twenty inches under. Railside Studios stood in the middle of a lake, but I parked and waded through, and the upper room of my studio is high and dry, though the lower room is gone and a thick stack of paintings I had on the floor are lost. I didn’t care as much as I thought I would when I was driving and hadn’t seen the awful majesty of it all, People were lining the Craven Street Bridge to watch the great brown fury of the French Broad, bearing whole trees and the walls of buildings. The most distressing part was the heavy stench of fuel oil, the red pools of it lying on the eddies, from where tanks had been overturned and storage facilities flooded. The smell is unbearable. I hope nobody lights a match. Tonight’s forecast calls for rain, and Hurricane Ivan is coming.
This is what I wrote on September 18:
The sky is green-gray, a high wind moaning in the tips of the trees, a day and more now after the slamming through of Ivan. I have all the lights on, and the CD playing Rococo opera, tapping away at my computer, just to revel in having power again. We got fringes of hurricanes in Ohio once in a while–Donna, I remember–but they were just a line of especially vivid thunderstorms. DJ and I watched Ivan on the Weather Channel Wednesday night as it poised to strike Mobile. I kept saying “it’s not coming here.” Thursday afternoon I went down to church and helped lift everything off the floor to the third or fourth shelf, in case high water came. I told everyone it was a false alarm, but I kept lifting, because I wasn’t sure. My nature is such that I have refused to cry wolf from time to time even when the wolf was at the door. Thursday night, Ivan came indeed. The lights went off at about 10:30. What followed seemed to be an eternity of dark and noise, though of course it couldn’t have been any longer than the hours on the clock. It was impossible sleep; I was up most of the night. When walking circles in my own floor grew old, I put on my yellow slicker and went out into the storm itself. The trees were swaying like grass. The mountains were great dark harps, roaring. My colossal sweet gum seemed rocked by a series of explosions. Green flashes were sometimes lightning, sometimes exploding transformers, plunging some new part of the city into deeper darkness. What surprised me was that the hurricane was warm, like a flying bath. I liked that part. Waves of wind-driven rain swept like surf across the parking lots. A pine split and sailed into the street, all but grazing the tips of my toes. I stood and watched it, wondering, until the second when the question was answered, “is that thing going to take me out?” Tremendous, roaring majesty, an exultant god whirling in the middle of the air. I stood in the middle of the Wachovia parking lot, the waves of watery wind coursing around me, the hemlocks bending almost to the ground, and I felt solid; I felt like the earth itself, immovable, maybe, in an unfathomable sort of way, merry, with the great wind roaring around as though we were complimentary powers come to visit each other at the edge of the world. It was stupendous. One doesn’t get to use that word very often, “stupendous.”
I startled Zack when he came out with a flashlight to inspect his porch, and I called his name out of the whirlwind. The air is filled with the incense of shattered pines. Carolyn’s basketball hoop had been uprooted and launched through a back window of my Explorer. But, in truth, what surprised me was that the damage wasn’t worse. Wind like that, rain like that, should have obliterated the world. The epic quest for a cup of coffee at last achieved– downtown had power--I drove to the studio. The river had risen, but not so far as before. The river district had electricity, so I stopped, picked up my brushes, and painted. DJ bought a battery powered radio, and we learned that two lanes of Interstate 40 had fallen into the Pigeon River gorge, that tornadoes and mudslides had wiped out an as-yet-unknown number in Macon County. Flooding closed all highways east and west, though we could probably have fled north if we’d needed to. The street-level businesses in Biltmore and the riverside studios which had just been crawling out of the debris of Frances were hit again. Ryan e-mailed me about a group of students holed up in a house behind Charlotte Street, and a flying oak had crushed all their cars but his. I had been thanking my luck, though luck, as usual, was not doled out equally. As DJ and I were pulling out to go to rehearsal for the bishop’s installation–which even natural disaster is, apparently, powerless to stop–the lights in our houses came back on.
Found this prayer I wrote for the reconstruction of All Souls:
With Solomon the founder of the temple, with Peter the founder of temples now and yet to come, we acknowledge that all that is built without the Spirit is built for a season or a time, but all that is built with the Spirit is build for the ages. We ask the Spirit which God sends to inhabit the true labors of the human heart to come to us, to abide in our labors, to inspire our bounty to right use, to perfect our skill and our determination, so that in our building all may be as the Spirit wills. May the lines be plumb, the foundations firm, the door open to all who would enter. May we who have received the legacy of the past deliver the gift whole to those who come after. May those who come after remember us as men and women who received the Spirit, who acted by its voice, and raised our roof into the stars.
Paid a $114 water bill. $5 dollars of that was water actually used, The rest was exactly the infrastructure that failed this week,
Painting to Obrecht masses on the CD. Serenity that would be prized if the goal were serenity.
October 8, 2024
The odd energy of waiting for time to pass. Try to sleep as long and often as I can. Try not to eat and use the energy of being hungry as something to think about. Walk from night stand to workbench looking for a place to type; they’re all wrong for various reasons. It’s the workbench now, keyboard tipped against my legs and the screen almost flush with the bench.
Met me grandnephew Stetson, a happy, imperturbable child. He will be a blessing to everyone he meets. His parents seem rightfully to regard him with wonder. Photos of me and Stetson playing, in which he looks joyful and I look incredibly old. Everyone finds them cute.
Spent yesterday in downtown Alpharetta. It would be possible to spend only one day there, having, I think, exhausted most of its scenic and social possibilities. Visited the Arts Center, which is a classroom with drawings on the wall. Sat in a park on Milton Road (the one where I watched the fireworks two Fourths of July ago) and wrote, and wrote a little more in the lobby of the Hampton Hotel, which seems like home to me after several stays. The writing has not yet come to much. I’m trying to write about the hurricane. It’s possible that it will not be written of.
I feel thwarted even in my lamentation, for I am safe and among family and my property is intact and my suffering is immeasurably less than almost anyone I know. But I am totally disoriented, at sea, futile. I think “I cannot endure to the end of this,” knowing I must.
Hurricane Milton slams into Florida. I resent a storm coming so soon, to dilute attention on us. It might be bigger than Helene. I stop myself from thinking “at least it aimed somewhere else.”
Asheville water authority sends out the message that it will charge fees on water bills not paid in a timely fashion.
Drove the perils of 400 into Atlanta to visit the High Museum, where I checked in with my Madonna.
Elegant supper in downtown Alpharetta.
October 6, 2024
Sunday morning.
At home I planted the chrysanthemum plants that came in the box, cleared the deliveries off my porch and the mail out of the mailbox. It is not that far. It is not that far.
The drive from Asheville was complicated by the closing of the Pleasant Hill exit from I-85– the only one I know in Atlanta. I drove toward the city center at the right edge of ten lanes desperate to find an exit. Madame GPS led me through bush and briar but finally to Alpharetta.
Who should call to see if I was well but N, my sweet friend from long ago. He filled me in on the demise of classmates whom I knew were dead, but I lacked the grisly details. “The Deaths of Ellet High” could be a TV series. In our youth he was a better friend than I'd earned, and age has not changed that.
This will be the longest month of my life.
A stern email comes from the Asheville Water Authority trying to correct rumors (which I helped spread) that part of the problem was slipshod construction and lazy maintenance in the past. I stand, if not corrected, silent.
Attended church at The Parish, a mission of the Anglican Church in America. It meets in an office building and at other times in people’s houses. The congregation is young, and child-oriented in a way that would exhaust and dismay the decorum of All Souls. So many handsome young fathers proved a distraction. I found the gathering uplifting, spiritual, the old message made more vibrant for being related in a different way. The phrase, “Hasten the Coming” plucked out of the litany moved me considerably. Hasten the Coming. Make Straight the Way. Keep Watch from the High Places. They prayed especially for the victims of Hurricane Helene. How odd and unprecedented it is for me to be prayed for as the victim of an internationally known disaster, a waif and an orphan of the storm. It is an honor I don’t care for very much.
Sitting on the McLaughlin’s porch in the shade of an awning, content for the moment, wondering what to do with myself over the next few weeks.
Hasten the Coming
Make Straight the Way
Keep Watch from the High Places
October 5, 2024
After early retiring in the silent dark, after interesting dreams, rose and painted– with an idea for the work on the easel which arose directly from a dream. It is not yet full light. Painting and listening to Josquin on the CD player.
Horrible thought while painting: what if Cheap Joe’s Art Supplies is washed away? It must have been.
Met the jolly ruddy mailman at the door. Among the accumulated pieces he delivered was the water bill. I don’t believe I’ll be in a rush to pay it this time around.
October 4, 2024
I sit at my own computer in my own study in my own house on my street. Drove from Atlanta this morning. Accidentally engaged the GPS, which panicked me because it took us a way not familiar, through farms and obscure neighborhoods, but we arrived, and connected with I-40 one exit before it’s closed. The GPS lady was calm and omniscient. I’m an untrusting individual, and would lead a sweeter life if I’d lean back and let it roll. From the Interstate nothing looks wrong, but once you get on the streets calamity is everywhere evident. Also evident is that the responsibility for clean-up and tending to the needy has been at the first an overwhelmingly entirely community effort. Power line workers heroically restored power to several neighborhoods. If you saw the state of things regarding trees and lines you’d be amazed at any progress at all No Internet. No water. Officials say “it could be a long time till water is restored,” as though acknowledging it were the same as excusing it.
Carrier Park, the RAD, and the Swannanoa valley are still under water.
Decided to stay the night. In the morning I’ll plant some of the flowers that arrived by undaunted couriers in the past few days. Most are bulbs and can wait.
Cleaned out the fridge. The half & half was clawing to get out. Even the iced tea had little floating islands of mold.
Odd that I creep around in the dimness and have to remind myself the power is on.
The pants I wore to clear trees off the street were covered with wet sawdust and now stink. I had to move them outside. Filled the long-violated toilet bowl with bleach, that it may be washed clean as snow. DJ got his chair back, and is not apoplectic with boredom, so all is well there. People scurry around doing good deeds, making the horrors better. I escaped, return briefly to tend to my little concerns. I hope I have an opportunity to make up for this.
Every few seconds my hands automatically try to summon the Internet, which won’t be there. What did we do in our youth?
October 3, 2024
Alpharetta, after a tedious but uneventful drive through the South. Wind damage evident as far as Columbia. Had an elegant seafood lunch in honor of L’s birthday. The view from L’s basement windows is almost paradisal, a rough garden, a little stream flowing beyond, shaded by trees and elephant ears. First decent sleep since last Thursday, though the police, looking for an intruder, swept the yard for a while with powerful flashlights. The beam a few times came directly through the window, hurting my eyes even from a distance. I wondered if I could be seen, glaring back. Had to scuttle a spider out of the sink before I used it this morning. Didn’t want to begin my tenure here by drowning the original inhabitants. Rode to Dahlonaga to look at a house the family is considering buying, a chalet perched on a cliff in the grizzly woods. Met my new great-nephew David Theodore, unbelievably tiny and steadily asleep. In the afternoon J and I were talking in the back yard, and a phoebe approached, brave and unafraid. He hunted and pecked a little in the garden, but seemed more deeply interested in J, and finally perched twice on his hand, pecking it a little as if testing it out for taste.
L is infinitely more family-oriented than I. Duty to family inspires an Ohio trip in a few weeks, and buying the house in the woods is all about family gatherings. I cannot use the word “family” without a slight tinge of irony. I reacted to lack of family cohesion by mistrusting all things bearing that name. She reacted to it by creating her own.
October 1, 2024
No sleep last night. The earthmovers worked from dusk to dawn, their backup signals the exact pitch and volume as a clock alarm. Did anybody sleep? Was it just me?
Message from A assuring me that the Riverside office escaped unharmed (though the basement under it flooded). Sobbed ugly five minutes with relief. I’d hidden from myself how deep the dread went. I’m sure my dear High Five by the river and all the picnic tables where I did so much writing is gone. The river almost touched it after an ordinary heavy rain. Most everything is gone to some degree. We will have to relearn everything.
Useless, tranquil days spent by the beach. Maybe I’ll return later if recovery drags on, as it appears it might.
Watched a boy, about 13, playing with his little brother and sister on the beach. They were tigers and he their prey. He delighted in his speed and agility eluding them. As a boy I never delighted in anything physical, as breathlessness and exhaustion lay always near. Innocent games of TAG were terror for me.
Reading The Prelude, so my thoughts and observations bend back to me
The ACE has made the beach as straight as the edge of a ruler. That is very weird.
A woman invited me to watch the sunset with her.
Bats pursue dragonflies outside my window. This gives me joy. Now I realize the bats and the dragonflies are pursuing the same (to me) invisible prey.
September 30, 2024
The one phone call I got from the world was from L. Amazing.
Trying not to have any shameful emotion about seeing the Marquee, which turned down my work because it was “spiritual” and “spiritual” doesn’t sell, completely submerged. I will think of the hundreds whose work is gone. Terrible thought occurred to me. I assumed the river office was on high enough ground, but maybe it wasn’t. If so, the poems of my youth, all my journals and notebooks and photo albums and theater memorabilia and scrapbooks are gone, the things I cherished most in my possession, perhaps cherished solely. They’ll still be either ruined are well when I return. Sadness fills me hour to hour, intensified by the realization that I’ve lost far less than most. I must force myself to keep making that comparison.
I liked my life. I see no possibility of returning to it.
I see no possibility of Asheville’s returning to what it was. The Asheville Era is over. A city that size, whose function is more ornamental than practical, cannot survive four weeks without water.
My mind is like a rat in a box, scurrying from one corner to the other, imagining that it’s missed some way out, that something will be different this time through.
Having brought clothes for three days, I made a trip to Walmart, where the workers were unexpectedly kind.
Wrote a bit of a play about the Army Corps of Engineers. Wandered aimlessly about town at sunset, wanting company but wanting nothing to eat or drink. Many spoke to me. I think I’m probably easy to speak to.
But sad. Sad as night.
September 29, 2024
Unusual, for me, disinclination to record or to write anything at all. I sat on the pier in morning light and stared at the sea. What can I make a poem of? What would fit into a story or a play? I didn’t care. I hadn’t taken into account the exhaustion and trauma of the last few days. I can barely move between one chair and another. But the grackles on the pier were exceptionally beautiful, and sang and gurgled in a variety of voices I hadn’t heard before. Anglers pulled elegant small silver catfish out of the water. I met SMWL, who was beautifully dressed, as she had been heading for church but decided to service a massage client instead. She is a religious theorist of some kind, and confessed her belief that Hurricane Helene was caused by a group called HAARP. She admitted it was “a conspiracy theory” but asserted it could be true nevertheless. They also caused the fires on Maui. She seeks to transition from massage therapy into real estate. She was eager to talk. I googled her, and she seems to be a person of some importance. I enjoyed her company. We were simpatico in ways impossible to explore in our brief time together.
Dinner at Jack of Cups, improbably delicious butter beans. Drink afterward at Planet Follywood. Scott was there, but he didn’t remember me. Rode the elevator with a family from Asheville, right next to UNCA. She is an alumna and thought she remembered my name.
It’s 9:30 PM and the Army Corps of Engineers are still plowing the beach, beepers beeping. No beach access, no TV– I complained to the desk clerk and he took some small charge off my bill. At least I can flush the toilet.
Every now and then the floor shakes beneath my chair. It’s not waves or the wind. I don’t even think it’s the bulldozers.
Listening to Purcell. Reading Wordsworth.
I am not used to not knowing what to do.
September 28, 2024
Folly Beach. The waves are pink with sunset.
Rose this morning facing the prospect of indeterminate days without water, without power, without internet or cellular service: threw some gear into a bag and drove to Folly Beach. I suppose that makes me a refugee. My rabbit and my turkeys were gleaning the ruins when I left. As I drove 19/23 toward I-26, I could see the French Broad to my right, a mighty river, light brown and turbulent and wide as the Ohio. Meadow Road and River Road are completely and profoundly inundated. The River Arts District is gone. Water touches the roofs of the buildings. What I feared most came to pass– All Souls is being called “a total loss.:Water came to the ceiling of the offices, and in the sanctuary reached the foot of the altar. Someone said “the walls are collapsing,” though what that could mean I’m not sure. As a docent I pointed proudly to the cushions and kneelers and pews and chairs and the intricate floor and said, “these are all exactly as they were when the church was opened in 1896" This never can be said again. This is the greatest shock in my life that does not involve the death of a person. Only upon arrival here could I get a sense of what happened to Asheville, as all forms of communication are kaput there. I know more than anyone whjo sleeps in the dark tonight on Lakeshore Drive.
I never had a full sense of the destruction a hurricane can cause. I would rather have kept my innocence. It is awesome, though. If I were Shelley I would rhapsodize.
Had vodka in Planet Follywood, where I met Scott, who was born in Cleveland and adopted into a family in Marietta. He came to Folly because he “fell in love,” though with the town or a woman he did not reveal. A street festival, “Mermaids and Mateys,” clogged the main street when I arrived. A grackle sang and preened on my balcony as I unpacked.
Vodka comforted me into troubled sleep.
