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.
