Helene

 

September 26, 2024

Dark before morning. Rain fell steadily all night, though right now seems to be a lull in which I can hear the night insects chirring in the garden. This deluge is driven before the hurricane, which was two hundred miles from landfall in Florida when it began. The real show comes tonight, the same downpour joined by sixty mile an hour winds. Or maybe it will pass us by. 

Docenting yesterday, large lacunae in the visitation, during which I took out the recorder that’s been languishing in my satchel for a decade, played old hymns that sounded pure, like a boy singing, in that reverberant space. My fingers remembered how to hit the holes. 

As I sit at the desk, the rain increases several-fold, sounding more like mighty wind. How does the air hold so much water? Why does it want to? 

8:30 PM. Wind and downpour increasing. Helene, now a category 4, has not yet made landfall 400 miles away. Reports say it will be a category 2 in the suburbs of Atlanta. 

 

September 25, 2024

Crows calling in a gray sky. 

Forecasts avow that Hurricane Helene will dump 12 inches of rain on us today and tomorrow. 

David Theodore

 

September 24, 2024

David Theodore Adam has come into this world

Odd, half-stormy morning. 

I realize that, except for replacing the broken pane and aligning them so they’ll again open and close, I can’t be sure that anything was done to the front windows at all. I didn’t watch over them, and there was a minimum of banging. Winter will tell. 

Hopkins at All Souls last night. Decent crowd despite the downpour.

Sitting at the downstairs desk for a ZOOM meeting, I saw in the dogwoods outside a summer tanager, the first I’ve seen since college. Signs and portents. . . .

Windows

 

September 23, 2024

Letter from The Kirkus Review: Ry Pickard.Sep 23, 2024, 11:00 AM

Hi, David. I have exciting news: The Falls of the Wyona has been selected by our editors as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Indie Books of 2024! Congratulations! Only 100 books make this list and Kirkus reviews thousands of books through our Indie program every year. Your title will be featured as one of the Best Indie Books of 2024 in the December 15th issue of Kirkus Reviews magazine, in a special email newsletter on December 16th, and also on our website starting December 16th.This is a great opportunity to take advantage of this exposure by marketing your title alongside the list announcement.  Our audience anxiously awaits the announcement of the Best Books list every year, and the online list is used as a guide for identifying must-read books all year long. Promoting this recognition can increase book sales and draw industry attention. 

A very heartfelt and much-deserved congratulations! 

All the best,

Ry Pickard Author Consultant KIRKUS MEDIA LLC. 512.637.8667

*

W and S and R are hammering away at the front windows. After a hundred years, they’re in need of resetting and re-aligning. Perhaps I won’t shiver the winter through. They once again function as peculiar little doors. 

Hard gardening. The bamboo garden is finished for the moment, spaded, ready for planting and mulch. 

SS manages to get a spectacular sum for HART’s Washington Place. I have perpetually sold myself short, for the most part giving things away.

PRIDE

 

September 21, 2024

Autumn. Hot and clear.

DM is dead. He looms surprisingly large in childhood recollection. 

Spent the morning down on Courthouse Square manning the AVLGMC booth at PRIDE with N. Our first visitor was a woman who’d just picked up two badges, one to describe her sexuality, which she called “mid,” and by which she meant she could only be sexually attracted to people whom she loved and respected, one for her sister whom she described as “Apo,” having no sexual attraction to anybody. She said she had to hide her inclination from her church, though I failed to see why any church would object to what she described as “mid.” A bigger problem church-wise would be that she was a Nordic pagan whose patron is Loki. She carried a golden backpack with Loki horns on it. 

 

September 20, 2024

Finally tackled the plot out-side-the-fence, with great effort, but with a sense that the task actually can be completed. The stinging sensation returned, like yellowjackets except there were no yellowjackets on me, like nettles except there were no nettles. Wrists and, inexplicably, back were hardest hit. Realized the pain, though sharp and shocking, can be endured, and it did not drive me away this time. Had it one other time, when I was weeding by the driveway, indicating that something in the ground near the street has an effect like broken glass, without being broken glass Intermittent relapses, even after I showered. 

Over the ground as I worked, innumerable yellowjackets hovered and scurried. This enraged me. But I decided to test if my not stomping them would inspire them not to sting me. It seems to have worked. 

 

September 19, 2024

Odd that I often dream of painting but never (that I remember) of writing. Last night I’d finished a giant abstract canvas and stood back admiring it. Somebody I knew came in and asked if he could use my space for a show of just one painting, and I said yes. The painting was exactly the size of mine, and he hung it right against mine. When people entered for the show, they began painting over my work, improvising something harmonious with my friend’s, and inspired by it. I believe I actually started it, adding a stroke of pale blue to my work as people watched. I didn’t expect them to join in. I didn’t expect obliteration.

Pagers and walkie-talkies blowing up in hands and pockets in Lebanon. The inventiveness of evil never flags. 

Paul

 

September 18, 2024

Waking early of late, in the dark, allowing me the illusion, at least, of great industry before noon. 

Decided to get the front windows repaired and weatherproofed before another winter. A handyman named Will answered the call, compact, burly, grizzled, to me quite attractive. Oddly, maybe because of his attractiveness, I formed the conception that he was a con-man, or dangerous in some way. This concept disturbed me until I looked him up online, and there he was, clearly a handyman with an ordinary life. What signal had I been reading? 

A very tall, thin, very old man came to the door. I guess he was at least 90. His name is Paul. I invited him in but he wouldn’t enter. He said he lives across the street, and wanted to offer himself in case I needed anything. He was not very clear in what he said, but this is what I gathered. He was so tottery I wanted to help him down my treacherous front steps, but he made it on his own. Good neighboring was good neighboring back in his day. 

Cathedral Blake

 

September 17, 2024

Rain steady from midnight until now. 

Withdrew for All Is Calm. Too many performances over too much time.

Blake last night. I think it was a success. The crowd was twice the size it had been on the previous night, including people in their 20's. A wrote on Face Book: If you weren't at David Hopes' class at The Cathedral of All Souls last night, you missed out! I learned a ton about the proto-romantic poet and engraver William Blake, heard some great poetry, looked at some cool art, learned about Blake's dark-mirror cosmology, and best of all benefited from David's encompassing knowledge of the subject in its breadth and enchanting complexity. David's passion for the subject rendered it both hypnotic and stimulating. There are still two classes left. If you haven't been able to attend yet, I'm sure you could pick up in the middle.

Turned the furnace on, at least for the night. 

Lake Logan

 September 15, 2024

Time away at Lake Logan at this year’s choir retreat. I miss these often enough that people affect surprise at seeing me there, but in fact I loathe it and attending is a sacrifice I think, every time it happens, as extravagant. It’s actually the location at fault, a thesis I prove by observing that there is no wildlife at Lake Logan, not a bear, not a deer, no frogs in the lake (though some in the lily pond), not a rabbit, not a squirrel, and among birds only an evil troop of crows. Accursed ground. When I drove into my own drive I had to brake for a rabbit and stop short of my parking space to avoid inconveniencing my turkey flock. It’s also a fact that I have never arrive there without making a wrong turn. This time I had to ask for direction at the Farmers’ Market in the HART parking lot. Good talk at night with new friends, while I was slamming down vodka to insure unconsciousness as complete and long as possible. 

Serious meltdown on the drive home, continuing when I stopped to buy food at the Fresh Market. Weeping, sadness. Maybe just the exhaustion of a trying weekend. I feel none of that now.

Having promised to do so, auditioned for All Is Calm. C was on crutches but otherwise looking great. He saw A God in the Waters at BeBe, which makes me feel excellent. They didn’t have me sing, so either I’m a sure thing or so off the mark there was no need to bother. M, the managing director, said I was a great teacher and my class was the one everyone tried to get into. So let it have been. I was downtown less than an hour, so parking was free, the one bit of good luck the entire weekend. 

 September 13, 2024

Two more days of heavy gardening. Planted the items I bought yesterday wandering about waiting for the cleaning lady to be done (succulents and veronica), filled the redwood barrel with dirt, moved Saint Francis out of the lilac thicket into the light, moved the stone swan up onto a block so it would not be concealed by grass, uncovered another ring snake which I think I managed not to kill. As well as the plants I bought bags of dirt for raised beds, and the smell in my car with them in the back was paradisal: like pure water running in a stone cave, but warm. 

Search my conscience to discover why K is perturbed with me, then decide it’s not my work to do. Some dynamic at AS generates middle school clique rivalries of which it is wholly–or at least vocally–unaware. Being–or pretending to be–unaware insures they drag out to eternity. 

HART gets in touch about doing Washington Place in October. I will like that.

Suzanne’s bouquet arrived, and she was happy. One of the flowers matched the jacket she will wear at her reading tonight. 

Hummingbird hovered inches from my face for a considerable time. Did she think I was a flower? What did she think? I’d like to know. 

*

Watching S’s reading, evidently in her church basement. Her features have sharpened, as have all of ours, but I would recognize her in a crowd.  The microphones are set wrong, and not one word of her intro is audible. I did hear her dedicate the reading to Philip Booth. I do hear her gentle, motherly, memorable voice, the tune if not the lyrics. . 

September 11, 2024

Waiting for somebody to do something to the furnace, which it probably doesn’t need, but which I paid for long ago when it seemed a good idea.

Weird prolongation of dry, high summer. Hard gardening yesterday, planting of the last of the present bulb cartons, spreading of red-brown pine needle mulch. Everything current is in the ground awaiting what people say will be a hurricane torrent this weekend.

Rehearsal. Enforcing an eccentric interpretation of Messiah requires K to repeat himself endlessly, with growing impatience, stopping after every measure to correct. If you have to correct too often, you are wrong.

Watched a documentary about Alvin Ailey last night instead of the presidential debate. I needn’t have been so fearful. The morning news reports that Harris more than held her own, that Trump revealed his true self more often than his supporters wanted. 

Furnace men discover that my de-humidifier was carelessly installed and had been simply leaking onto the floor. Furnace man decides to use my furnace as a training tool for his new apprentice. I conceal my thunderhead of impatience, silently climb the stairs. 

Bought flowers for Suzanne’s book launch. I thought I might go to Ottawa for it, but too much impinged. 

 

September 10, 2024

First installment of my poetry course at the Cathedral last night. I arrived 90 minutes early to effect a set-up which ended up taking five minutes. Got to sit in the quiet for a while. I think it went well. I felt back in my old form, Teacher on Fire, which I have not felt for four years. The median age in the room was probably 75, so I don’t know what effect the effort will have on the future, but perhaps it brought some pleasure in the moment. God insures that my efforts have the least effect possible, but they are not wholly prevented, so one counts that as a sort of blessing. Cold morning. I’m not used to the growing lateness of sunrise. 

Circumspection

 

September 8, 2024

Angelic voices from Alexa downstairs, all treble I think, and probably Bach. Celestial voices from the underworld. Pachelbel is the Offertory this morning. 

Rich dreams. A recent one remembered involved a gigantic clear lake with sculptures or murals at the bottom, and you could swim down and watch the moving figures and get a history lesson. I had discovered this first, and was deeply involved in convincing others to take the plunge. 

Contemplating my interest as a young boy in both drama and art. I did not pursue those things very much, or any beyond the opportunities offered at school. I remember R church offering me a summer gig in a traveling theater company. I realized after all this time my failure to pursue these interests (these talents) involved pathological circumspection. Painting and acting were things which were seen. People knew you were doing them. People had opinions and spread talk about your doing them. Your parents watched you. I turned to poetry because it could be done in secret– and, God knows, in my house it was done in secret.

 

September 7, 2024

Intense clearing and gardening. What I though was impenetrable comes to clarity day by day. I’m amazed by my stamina. Though I totter to bed exhausted, I have made it through the day, and tottering to bed exhausted is its own blessing. 

 

September 6, 2024

More muscle gardening in the bamboo island. Transplanted peonies, put in St John’s wort, wondered why I took so long getting to a task which is not, after all, THAT demanding. 

Avl GMC is NOT invited to sing at Pride. We’ve sung at every Pride march from the first on; it is an absurdity for us NOT to sing at an event we helped to establish. Our performer’s application got misplaced or mishandled in some mysterious way, and we are replaced by the Community Chorus. The Pride Committee is now all lesbians, and the byzantine political strategies of lesbians are in full, and incomprehensible, application. I get through this life trusting that the people who rail against the patriarchy do so with full, if covert, understanding that there is a much, much worse alternative. 

Another mass shooting in Georgia. After every murder of children and teachers there’s an outcry to “harden” the schools and make psychological counseling available. That’s up there with “thoughts and prayers” as futile and hypocritical gestures. There is one simple solution– everybody knows it-- and everybody who does not spin his compass instantly to it should be removed from public responsibility. Remove the guns. No guns, no mass shootings. It really is that simple. Grumpy or alienated or infuriated people will just have to grow out of it or sublimate like the rest of us, and not lay to waste a generation– all too easy with an assault weapon ticking away in the closet. The saddest and most twisted mind in the world will not cause harm if there’s no weapon in its hand. Make mayhem exert a little effort. No one has a need or a right to possess assault weapons: this includes the police. Maybe there were second amendment concerns at one point, but constant abuse has worn that away. Abuse a right, lose a right, especially one not by any stretch of the imagination “unalienable.” Maybe we will have to fight the government or the police one day, but their firepower will perpetually overwhelm our own so that only the ballot box will be our viable weapon. I LOVE the idea of standing behind a barricade fighting against tyranny, but I know I’d lose. Move on to another way. We’re not concerned that children are being murdered. Not enough to stop it. We simply don’t care. This is not a canard but a truth repeatedly established. If you do not advocate reasonable gun control, you countenance the continued murder of innocents. If there were another solution, it would have appeared. We want it to stop by some magical operation when enough blood has been shed. We’re running through a munitions factory with lighted torches in our hands crying about safety. The solution is known, immediate, simple, inevitable. The last hundred school shootings have not been accidents. 

*

From Sidney in NYC:

SJB:

I am clearing out a decade of Emails.

This one has made my day, dear David.

It is Bitter Sweet (Noel Coward's spelling) as I am think of our deceased designers, Michael Hottop and Carrie Robbins. They were with us 100%.

SJB2ND

On Friday, June 7, 2013 at 01:50:31 PM EDT, <davehopes@aol.com> wrote:

Just wanted to say that I think your directing for LML is bold and visionary. The parts that strike me particularly include the bed scene, which you have taken further than I feared we might, and justified the appellation of "gay play," It shows more of their relationship than the words could. The dancing scene between L and J, is touching and beautiful. You have taken the extremes of emotion (when people howl and cry) exactly to the limit, but never over, so it is cutting and agonizing. I am very happy and very grateful. See you tonight.

I remember writing this because I was infuriated by the over-acting, the edges blurred and the borders crossed. It was a way of exorcising my disappointment before we met again face-to-face

 September 5, 2024

Tremendous gardening, digging & clearing. Ms Turkey and her (now huge) babies came by and watched me, carrying out their routine without much regard for me thundering around in the garden ten feet away. I killed a ring snake with my shovel the first time I penetrated the iris garden. I was upset, but could think of nothing to do about it. Total harmlessness would mean not moving at all. But I mention my poor reptile friend so that its existence is noted. Cleaned out the end of the bamboo garden that I had told myself I was keeping as a wild space, when in fact I was just too idle to clear it and put in a purple buddleia, as I did this morning, mulching between it and the extant rhododendron. Dug up cobblestones and old bottles, some of them unbroken. More work to do there, but fortunately eager (and fit) to do so. Given key lime pie for my birthday after choir rehearsal. Talked with K at my mailbox, met her new dog. Her friend had her chicken coop and most of her chickens destroyed by a bear. Cut swamp hydrangea seed pods for B, then we both fussed in the church yard to free a spider that had got into the bag. 

Labor Day

September 2, 2024

Productive Labor Day. Moderate gardening– dead-heading, weeding. Almost stepped on my rabbit under the pink front rose. Saw him again sitting on the garden’s edge at twilight, gave him a wide berth so I wouldn’t startle him twice in one day. Sat on the front porch for a time, and a blue-tailed skink foraged his way across the bricks, touching my foot with his nose twice. No reaction. I might as well have been a stone. 

Smiled thinking of a dirty song TD and I shared long ago. Our estrangement is so pointless and so complete it must have been ordained by the gods.  

74

 

September 1, 2024

Posted a photo from my first birthday in the apartment on Pondview. The chair to my right, already then an antique from my great-grandmother’s house, now sits in my bathroom.

Her husband writes that my beautiful Syracuse roommate Sue Shane died last night.

Enough birthday greetings on Facebook to satisfy my insecurities. 

Distant Thunder

 

August 31, 2024

Rain finally came, accompanied by what seemed like endless thunder from the west and south. Blessed. After the rain came stillness so absolute you began to be afraid, longing for the least breeze to trouble the smallest leaf. 

The team goes off to Edisto today. I’d decided that I would be in London for my birthday this year, but I am not in London.

Realizing I’m a dualist. Soul is soul and matter and matter, though the matter we’re given as our portion can be energized by soul, as soul can be calmed and refocused by matter. I believe in a transcendent body wherein these two elements are reconciled and alloyed. I will not see it in this life. 

Feeling the burden, the isolation, the confusion. I weep ten times a day. I think of those I’ve loved, and the futility, at the end, of loving them. I pick up an invisible cat; I reach back to a face lost thirty years ago. I kept my feet faithfully on the path and managed to be lost beyond all redress. 

 

August 30, 2024

An incredibly fine and diaphanous insect got into the house last night. I saw it only when it passed in front of the TV, but a couple of times it brushed against my face, cool and slight as floating hair, difficult to credit as a living thing. 

I went to sit on the back porch tonight, but changed plans because Madame Turkey and her two offspring were already there, displayed in attitudes of royal ease. 

Agitated over social issues, over disappointments and opportunities, interpreting comments, judging glances, reading subtle attitudes, trying to be sure of where I fit in. It’s like being in high school again. I thought there was a point when all that was left behind. 

Drove my Josh Stein for Governor sign into the ground. How long will it last? 

 

August 28, 2024

Start-back of Symphony Chorus. Sharing music causes agony in my arthritis-y hands. Plus, I get to sit beside the guy who never knows where we are. The universe arranges that to teach me patience. Renewal of my conviction that if you have to explain the same point too many times, you are wrong. 

Video on Facebook of our rehearsal of “All Good People” in Minneapolis. I couldn’t find myself, then realized that I was the guy who I thought was too handsome to be me. A nice moment. The basses were solid. 

Docenting, very few people, could write within the lulls. Never wrote in the Cathedral before. The great-grandfather of one woman (Susan) was a worker on the Biltmore project beginning n 1894. We convinced ourselves he had been in that very room. One couple came from an RV colony in Florida called The Great Outdoors. He asked me to pray with him for his niece, who, as an alcoholic, had fallen and hit her head so many times her brain bleeds and she’s now near death. What he asked me to pray for was that she come to know her Lord and Savior before she dies.