August 27, 2024

Left off recording here, but for what pressing activities I don’t remember. Maybe nothing to say except tidbits about gardening, finishing a painting, revising Bears, all things vital to me but making boring copy. 

In painting I am learning to follow my accidents. This almost never works in writing. 

GMC meeting here last night. The drone of male voices makes me long for a woman’s, a woman’s perspective on the things we discuss with what I’m sure must be male shortsightedness and determination. B’s partner has been in the Northwest for a few days, and he said, with some tinge of disgust, “I didn’t realize how much space he takes up, how much noise he makes.” I imagine people saying that about me all the time. 

Day after perfect day. My garden longs for rain, but its voice is quiet. 

Day in the public arena, turbulent as all such days are likely to be. Arrived at the Cathedral in time for my 11 AM appointment with C– a time set by her–to find the office locked. Waited. Rang the bell. Nobody answered. Was walking away when someone else approached the door. I decided to see how she fared. She rang the bell. K answered. When she had stated her business and was admitted, I explained how I was there for my appointment with C.

“C is taking a personal day.”

“Well, we made this appointment so I could–”

“She’s had a very rough week.”

My next question was “There are no phones?” but I didn’t ask it. As it was clear my time had no value compared with whatever was going on behind that locked door, I wandered off.

To the wild end of Old Fairview Rd to the Democratic Party Headquarters. Chaos there, though the two old ladies holding down the fort were doing the best they could. Made a donation, carried off a Josh Stein for Governor sign (the Harris/Waltz signs are not ready), got information on how to be a Poll Observer, which I may in fact do. The lady helping me swore in Polish because she couldn’t get any of her computers to work. Twenty-five minutes spent in getting one email off. The lady in the other room had to listen to a guy go on about a class he designed to teach Black kids how to relate to the police without being shot. She kept trying to interject, “How can the Democratic Party help you?” or “What exactly do you want from us?” prompting him each time to start over from the beginning.  I exited just as her dial neared “explode.” 

The lesson for the Black kids was, by the way, basically “obey.” 

Anniversary

 August 23, 2024

On this night fifty-eight years ago I became a poet. I remember it as if it were now. A great door turning slowly on golden hinges. 

Missed my audition for the Symphony Chamber Singers. Maybe God telling me “Enough, already.” 

Harris and her campaign bring so much joy into the world (my world, anyway) that I fear someone is going to take a shot at her. Some lard-ass in a red cap. Some Trump acolyte having head his master’s voice in the watches of the night. Maybe a Robert Kennedy’s being dismally mixed up in all of this puts it in my mind. 

Painted Trillium

 August 22, 2024

Return to Cathedral choir last night. We did Brahms, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, etc, rejoicing my heart. I have to let go of repertoire like this for GMC, so will cherish it the more when I have it. I can’t imagine why my insistence that we do the best music we can falls on heedless ears. Perhaps they really do prefer  schlock. It does achieve immediate approbation from the audience. 

Planted painted trillium and saffron. Towhees interrogated from the branches.

Cold

 August 21, 2024

Visited Schwab. Every single holding is in the black. I credit Harris/Walz.

Miserable with cold last night. Of course I couldn’t get up and fetch a blanket or close the windows, but rolled around in bed trying to use the available sheet and pillows to cover the most vulnerable places. Cold night ended with a dream in which I was trying to find a parking place in a wintery landscape. My car had something wrong with it, and I pulled it into a garage. I left the car there, assuming I’d never see it again. I contemplated driving around in a horrible truck that I happened to have, until a guy from the garage hunted me down and revealed that repairs on my car would be cheap and fast. 

Painted today. It had been so long since I’d picked up a brush my water had evaporated. 

 

August 20, 2024

Mr B, my 7th grade math teacher, who was hateful but also weirdly attentive, left teaching, moved to Florida, became a drug addict, died of suicide. Mr Jacobs was apparently, if long remembrance can be trusted, a pedophile. Discovered a new webpage dedicated to gossip from my old high school, some of it as old as I. 

 

August 19, 2024

Bright moon last night, almost violent on the dark foliage of the garden. 

Throwing out many thing, including old (and expensive) portrait photos of myself. 

Apollo his bow

 

August 18, 2024

Felt actually pretty great this morning. A five day recovery: neither good nor bad.

 A car with Florida plates cut me off where Merrimon hits downtown. His lane went left, mine straight ahead, but he kept going straight so I had to brake to avoid a crash. I tapped my horn so he’d see that he was making a mistake. He stopped dead in front of me, put his hand out the window, gave me the finger, to teach me a lesson. I laid on the horn. I could see him thrashing about inside the car like he’d sat on a bare wire. He moved on a little, stopped again; I laid on the horn. Another finger out the window. He moving inside, again, like he was on fire. He moved on, repeated the operation. This happened three times in one block. He made a light I had to stop for, so I thought that was all done. But he had stopped, waiting, and swooped in behind me, tailgating. I realized I didn’t even have to brake to ruin his day, merely lift my foot off the accelerator. I did not. Switched lanes. He sped up, zoomed in front of me. In his haste to get in front and brake check me, he lost control of his car, which jumped the curb and ended up on the dead grass at the side. I went on. Here’s the interesting thing. It was road rage on his part, but not on mine. I was not the least bit enraged. I was having fun. It’s like when you know the right thing to do or say that sends the neighborhood brat into a tantrum. I was playing and his taking it all so fatally serious was part of the fun. I’ll test to see if I regret this later. 

Young A comes with his mother to church, then puts on his acolyte robes. He never arrives without his lacross stick, which I think is wonderful, a god bearing his attribute, Herakles his club, Apollo his bow. 

 

August 17, 2024

Saw flashlights in the neighbors’ backyard last night, the ones who live in Raleigh. I went out on the porch and shouted, “You! Get out of there!”

“Asheville PD!”

“Oh. . .  Never mind.”

DA’s birthday.

Finished the rewrite of The Riding Fun House. Sat and wept with gratitude. It had come out right.

Leg slow to heal. Wearing shoes to the grocery was painful. 

Madame turkey returned last night, just before the downpour. I tried to convince her to live with her babies in my garden, where it’s safe. 

 

August 16, 2024

Found a folder labeled, OLD UNCA. Within it I found an ancient Humanities syllabus intro:

CLASS REQUIREMENTS, EXPECTATIONS

Universities serve a variety of masters. One master is the interest of the student, which requires the professor and the institution to be alert to a student’s needs and adaptable to his or her interests, and to make certain accommodations to the exigencies of the student’s life. But it is important to remember that the Academy serves a social and cultural function, too: to assure society that each student has become familiar with a certain set of skills that may be called upon by that society in time of need, a certain breadth of knowledge which the society expects to be general among the educated, whether or not it coincides with the individual’s inclinations. Part of the university’s mission is to deliver into society people who are able to function in situations not specifically tailored to our likes and desires, who can cope when called upon to do things we don’t like to do, meet expectations which sometimes feel like impositions, to know things we think at this point we don’t need to know. It is part of our passage into the life of the community to adapt ourselves to these perhaps irksome but nevertheless ancient and, for the most part, reasonable demands. At the most basic level, society has the right to expect that we will leave the university knowing about things like deadlines and professional responsibility, about simple politeness, about completing the assignments given to us. 

For this reason, work will not be accepted late. Anticipate crises, and plan accordingly. You do have control over these things, and the control you have is to start work in a timely fashion to make sure it is done on time, with extra room to deal with computer disasters or family emergencies.

Attendance will be expected, and tardiness will not be tolerated. If you cannot get to class on time, drop the class and sign on again when you can make a responsible commitment. Tardiness will be counted as absence. Lateness is rude and contemptuous.

In an evening class, more than two absences or instances of lateness result in the lowering of the grade by one. More than 4 result in failure. In a day class, more than 4 absences or instances of lateness result in the lowering of the grade by one. More than 6 result in failure.

All out-of-class assignments must, of course, be typed.

Echoes from my teaching career have been gratifying, for the most part, sometimes almost unbelievably so, but I suppose those who hated me or got nothing in particular out of my class would not bother, at this distance, to say so.

 

August 15, 2024

Docent at the cathedral yesterday. Had a couple from Minnesota who spent their time relating how Governor Walz was a disappointment. About halfway through my stint, phlebitis struck. I did get home to my pills in time to render it not-that-awful, but I sat through a GMC planning session wishing everyone would shut up and go home, and I did have a night of such deep shivering my entire torso is sore this morning. Longed to stay in bed, but it was cleaning lady day, so I headed to the river (you can feel bad in one place as well as another) where I watched a father and son fish, wrote a poem, watched bears playing on the far side of the river. I called out to the fisherboy so he could see them too. 

Rally

 August 14, 2024

The Orange Menace holds a rally downtown today. Not going any closer than I am now. I know I’m not the only one to be excited and energized by the Harris/Walz ticket. They give me something to campaign for, rather than merely something to strive against. I hope our joy doesn’t make us complacent, for the horror of another Trump presidency still looms, if perhaps not quite so darkly. Donald Trump is the single worst person in American political history. This proposition can be denied, but it can’t really be disputed. We can look back on a colorful array of bigots, racists, robber-barons, war-mongers, thieves, xenophobes, liars, sociopaths and slobs, but never (in my knowledge) has there been one who rolled all possible political vices together into one toxic package. . .  and had within his grasp the power to put them into lethal effect. Never before was one who came so close to permanently blurring the difference between truth and falsehood, who came so close to slandering American institutions (the DOJ, NATO, voting, etc) into irrelevancy, who came so close to reviving on this side of the Atlantic the Old World concept of a fascist cult of personality. This perplexes because it is the most unattractive personality imaginable, rapist, liar, grasping (if unsuccessful) plutocrat, incontinent glutton. His being a failure at everything to which he set his hand doesn’t seem to keep people from equating him with Christ. In these latter days add “senile” to the list. Maybe he’s a good dad. Christopher Tolkien (I think it was, or maybe JRR himself) was asked the question, “Who was more evil, Sauron or Melkor?” The answer was that Sauron was slightly less evil, for at one point he had served another. Our disgraced and felonious ex-president has never served anyone but himself, and never will. To his credit, he makes no secret of this. His intention to end American Democracy is repeated often enough that not all of it can be attributed to incipient dementia.  Those who vote for him do so knowing (or having every opportunity to know) that he holds them in contempt. 

Handel

 

August 13, 2024

Digging, weeding, mulching until full light. 

Much writing and preparing of manuscripts. This is very dull to read about. 

Pandora turns itself on, playing Handel. 

 

August 12, 2024

This is Monday. Sunday I rose early and went back to the garden, at least duplicating my previous labors. The ground stands bare except where the plants of which I approve now flourish. I saved one lupine out of all I had planted, dwarfed and browning under his roof of wild grass; a tall Mexican sunflower, three rose bushes (which had disappeared) a line of yellow perennials I forget the name of, a dozen or more irises. I planted in some of the bare space more iris. The rest of the redeemed space awaits. The turkey hen and two chicks came to bathe in the fresh dirt, and to pick through what sustenance I might have shaken free. My usual bear started at one end of the garden and walked nonchalantly through to Lakeshore, which I take to be his usual route. How many times does he stroll through without my noticing? Turkeys and bear were in the yard at the same time. I wonder what they thought of one another. I was watching the Olympics, looked up and noticed the turkey hen peering through the front windows, watching along with me. 

At the opening of the Olympic gold medal basketball game they played Le Marseilles and the Star Spangled Banner. All the French players sang their anthem; none of the American sang theirs. 

Buying bulbs voraciously, thinking of the new streetside plot I have to fill.

Orgy of revision, it turns out. Manuscripts must be falsified, at least at their openings, to spike them past the stupidity of agents and editors. 

 August 10, 2024

Yesterday crowned with vast labors in the garden, labors necessitated by neglect, but satisfying in any case. Preparing the iris garden for another year. Cicadae rattled in indignation when I disturbed their perches.  

Ill and largely sleepless last night. It must have been something I ate, but all I ate was guacamole, and my system should be used to that. 

Finished the rewrite. Watched the Olympics. Wrote an outline for the Christmas concert. 

 

August 9, 2024

Her obituary states that K was three days older than I. 

 

August 8, 2024

Dark, disgruntled sky– the fingers of Hurricane Debby reaching into the mountains.

Almost finished with the re-write of Songs Strong Against the Powers of the Air. Forty pages shorter than it was. It amazes me how many tangents I can allow, how many detours I don’t notice the first few times through. 

Wild GMC planning meeting last night. B has very definite ideas about what we should do, and is not easily talked out of them. His ideas are largely good, and save us the trouble of coming up with things on our own, so we’re satisfied with tweaking and modification. For me, the idea of Drag Christmas is DOA, but we hammered at it enough that it may be toned down enough. The scenario, as I understood it, was this: Boy wants to put on a dress; dad and others make him feel bad for wanting to put on a dress; three ghosts (ala The Christmas Carol) visit and convince him it’s fine to put on a dress, and that is the true meaning of Christmas. I pointed out that our last concert was about fighting to be what we want to be in the face of opposition, and we don’t have to hammer that theme home every single time. B thought we do have to hammer that theme home every single time. As a widely proclaimed “gay author,” I have fought the idea that our spiritual journey ends when we assert our “authentic self,” which seems most often to be indicated by putting on a dress. That is the start of our journey, not the goal of it. I never want to hear another “coming out” song, see another “coming out” play as long as I live. I roused passions when I pointed out that The Christmas Carol (supposedly our paradigm) is not about Ebenezer Scrooge’s finding his authentic self (and putting on a dress), but precisely about losing self in favor of concern for the other. Not identity, but compassion. Or, to put it another way, the authentic self is found when we stop obsessing about it and turn our attention to service. The idea that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ or the turning of the year or the joyful excess of Yule all are set aside to honor– I’m not even exaggerating this– the climatic and culminating drag show. The shallowness of very educated people can be astonishing. Or, perhaps the narrowness of the purely secular gaze continues to astonish me. The suggestion that anything has a metaphysical or non-transactional or selfless or outward-gazing element simply fails to read. 

Lunch with SS. He met R in Berlin, where she gave me credit for teaching her “how to think.” If so, then mission accomplished. 

As I type, the USA trails Serbia in basketball. Serves us right. 

KN

 August 7, 2024

KN has died. The first from our “inner circle.” She stopped coming to reunions because she thought she was too overweight to go out in public. She was a sylph in high school, and so efficient she did, or should have, run everything. She had the most charming, hesitating stride. 

 August 6, 2024

Reason returns to the Market.

Harris picks the Governor of Minnesota for her running mate. Just having been in his state makes me feel good about him. 

A machine used by men working on the water lines sounds like someone screaming in agony. The first time it sounded like it was in my yard. I ran down the stairs to look. 

 August 5, 2024

$40,000. Gone from the market. Didn’t know there was a panic, and still don’t know the cause. See the red numbers, turn the computer off.

Y first thing. Nothing made much of an impression. What occupied my mind? 

Made major inroads in the streetside weeds. Something stung me memorably. I thought it was yellowjackets, but none were visible. The only other candidate was nettles, but they too were invisible. Surprisingly distracting. I want to hit the weeds again today, wondering if I can endure long sleeves. 

Dinner with DJ, the first actual meal I’ve had since Minneapolis. 

Most of my days spent watching the Olympics. I tell myself it’s OK because it’s only every four years. Thought for an hour that if I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, it might be in the steeplechase. My health was so bad from the start that it’s difficult even to conceive of that kind of mastery over gravity and inertia. I have never won a race, seldom even completed one, but I am (or was) curiously strong, and remember an episode of British Bulldog on the playground at Betty Jane. Almost everyone had been caught, and so almost everyone was in the center trying to bring the survivors down. I was one of the survivors, at the end the only one, and yet they– the big boys, the athletes and all– couldn’t tackle me. I kept plowing forward. I thought about that in class afterward, wondering what exactly was going on. The boys who couldn’t tackle me looked at me strangely for a while. Now everyone has forgotten except me, I suppose, and whatever the lesson was has never been fully revealed. Maybe that my victories would be anomalous, without context, lead to nothing. 

 

August 2, 2024

Rose early and hit the Y. Not early enough, though, for it was filled with unmindful old people who rest on the machines when they’re done. Thwarted at Starbucks because of long lines and a throng of people waiting for their orders. Took the pruning shears I bought yesterday and cut the limbs (mostly redbud and maple) that had been scraping the roof of the car as I drove in and out. Weeded the biggest weeds out of the front garden. Lived through this afternoon’s end-of-days thunderstorm. 

Hot Springs

 

August 1, 2024

Drove to Hot Springs to leave the cleaning lady free to work. I was there soon after I moved to NC, maybe with Tom, and never again. I remembered nothing, but I liked the stricken little town this time. Friendly people. One boy on the sidewalk said, “I like your shirt, sir.” The man at the tourist desk told me businesses fail in the area because it’s an Indian sacred ground, and people forget to bring a shaman in to placate the spirits. The scenery around the roads is shockingly beautiful, giving the impression of realms of untouched wilderness. Developing a plan to stay in one of the little B&B’s so I can go from intriguing tavern to tavern without having to drive the mountain roads. Madison County is “semi-dry,” which means you can get wine and beer but nothing else. This seems hypocrisy. Either alcohol is demonic or it is not– gradations are absurd. I feel the same about abortion. If you think it’s murder then you cannot rationally countenance exceptions for any reason at all. Exceptions prove that most people don’t think it’s murder, but merely want to punish what they see as loose living. Holding the American people to reason or consistency is the most frustrating endeavor imaginable.

Felt subterranean anxiety as I drove through Madison Country, realized it was fear of the police, who can destroy lives for no reason at all and, even in this day and time, are almost impossible to bring to account. I watch too many videos. 

Simone Biles’ smile when she landed the first element in her floor exercise, which would cinch the gold medal, lit up the universe.

 

July 31, 2024

Scrubbed and organized the east porch, the first such treatment it’s gotten since I moved in. Ready now for cocktails or an outdoor lunch. The raccoons won’t recognize it. 

Back to the Y this AM, where I was stopped at the door by a woman who took my Creative Non-fiction workshop back when she was working at The Citizen-Times. “I think about that all the time,” she said, “It was a wonderful class. “ Glad I went to the Y rather than doing one of the other things that needed to be done. She now works as a nurse-practitioner, and there is no Citizen-Times to work at, practically speaking.

Second time as docent at the Cathedral.  Interesting people. It fascinates me what, unprompted, I choose to talk about.

 July 29, 2024

Rose in the dark of the morning and was at the Y working out, quite well, before 5:30. Reminded me of my working days, when that was my routine before an 8 o’clock class. I do feel today extraordinarily well, for reasons unknown. Drank too much last night, staggered to bed with whatever followed the Olympics on TV, so it was not some healthy resolve on my part. Took the steps in the Y parking lot without gripping the rail and without turning sideways. Slowest iced coffee in history at Starbucks, where they argued about the schedule rather than serving customers. Followed this with considerable weeding, till the heat struck, and then the thunderstorm. The next generations of pokeweed and bindweed are gone. Both are attractive, so one wishes some corner for them to survive in, if they weren’t imperialistic and determined to cover the world. The ground was wet and roots yielded easily. One big plant with big leaves (I don’t know the name) had established huge stands, which came out of the ground like a spoon out of pudding.