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 28, 2024

The mercury dropping into the first really bitter morning. 

Red-bellied woodpecker

 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. 

Act of Faith

 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. 

Prophecies

 

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 14, 2024

Spent the morning refurbishing my Urthona site on Facebook. Internet operations are not instinctual to me, and it was a long, slow session. 

People are surprised by Trump’s Cabinet choices. We must stop imagining that he has any intention of governing. 

 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? 

Dropping a Toad into the Underbrush

 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? 

One Shall Be Called

 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. 

Like Pulling a Bandage off a Wound

 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. 

Persimmon

 

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. 

Behind the Veil

 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.