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.