March 30, 2025
Thought of the last time I saw BE: after church at All Souls. He was walking down the front walk toward his car, stiff, every step a new discomfort, the way the aged are. I called to him and he turned stiffly, looked at me with such a beaming smile, his joyfulness daunted by nothing.
March 29, 2025
Theater last night at NCS. Well acted, well designed, well directed. Also, 95% exposition. I’m supposed to disapprove of that, but in the moment it was interesting. I asked, “Why isn’t this a film documentary?” But the question could be asked of some film documentaries– such as one I saw the other night about the tornado that destroyed Joplin, MO– why isn’t this a play? WP’s flawless stage technique–. The play is three hours long, and I expected that to be a tribulation, but it was not.
Pain in my hip– actually a genuine pain in the butt– makes walking difficult. For a while in the morning I cry out at each step of my left leg, cry out more shrilly if I hit some unevenness in the floor. It feels like a bruise deep and raw. Prednisone helps it, so it must be an inflammation.
Evening: Sang at Grace Episcopal for BEs’ memorial service. Kind, good man. It was my good fortune to know him, to invite him to bachelor parties at my house. When we left the church the air was heavy with smoke. It looked like twilight, but it wasn’t.
March 27, 2025
As I was about to leave to get out of the way of the cleaning lady, Ben the Pool Guy pulled up with my new motor, the thrice longed-for. The wait extended from January. It was installed in three minutes, and the water moved in my pond once again. I cold hear the fish taking a deep breath. Ben mocked the filthiness of my pool, so I spent time scraping truly monumental masses of muck out of it with a hoe. Drove on (the cleaning lady still hadn’t arrived) to High 5, where I sat at a table, sipped chai, and wrote, as I had not done since the beginning of COVID. The people at the table behind me gossiped about Minneapolis politics. I was able to tell them I had been there last summer. The old gents across from me caught each other up on grandchildren and gardens. At my table I began a play, my first return to theatrical writing since The Review. You don’t expect to shrink from criticism like some callow Keats, but it happens whether you approve of it or not. Drove to Reems Creek and spent $700 on mulch and dirt and plants. Frantic to be writing and gardening and painting and going to rehearsal all at once. Sky clouding before night.
From the Nursery road you see plumes of smoke rising from the mountains. Helene piled up stacks of kindling for fire to be born from and consume what was not drowned.
A red-shouldered hawk flew low over my yard, pursued by blue jays. I stood at the door a long time, wanting her to return.
Evening: Drove to rehearsal up Sweeten Creek with the smoke of forest fires heavy around me. The smell was sweet, all that burning wood. The dimness of the air–
R led us through a rehearsal without hysteria, tangents, wasteful undirected energy.
My pair of brown thrashers has returned.
March 26, 2025
Put the finishing touches on The Nurseryman’s Wedding.
Yesterday hiking at the Arboretum with L and J. Glorious day. Ate lunch at a restaurant that lingers in my mind because while it was being built, I “dated” the guy who installed the appliances. A good day. I was hardly even tired. Iron slowly kicking in.
Left half way through rehearsal last night, my voice was so bad, and my throat hurt making ugly sounds, so there was no point. I’ve had some sort of voice-strangling infection for six months; fury over that hit while I was driving home. God was wise to keep his distance.
The chipper came, loudly reduced and transported the brush the Duke workmen had left. I assumed all that was going to be a big quarrel, never-ending, frustrating, but it went pretty much as they said it would. The workmen were cute. They enjoyed each other and their jobs.
Have been weepy since waking. Watch a cat video and longed for a cat. Every thought-road led to something grievous. That recedes as the morning advances.
Fifty-one years ago today mother died on the operating table. I remember on the first anniversary standing outside my horrible apartment on Adams Street in Syracuse, in a blizzard, sobbing so hard I couldn’t go in lest somebody hear me.
Evening: Cultivated, then planted black lilies and daylilies. It was too cold, but the work warmed me up enough.
One of those days when all bad notions come together in acute, blinding focus. Sat on the sunny cold porch with wine in my hand, cursing the Lord until I was too drunk to sit. Lay down in oblivion until the sun had traversed the sky. One benefit of the solitary life is that there are no witnesses to this terrible, and yet extended, moment.
To have some measure of control over something, paid off my car loan. Will probably total the car tonight.
Odd– I catch myself praying piteously to the Ghost I have spent two hours blaspheming.
March 24, 2025
City trucks in my driveway, sawing away limbs and branches near the wires, duplicating work done by somebody else after Helene, which I paid $2000 to get cleaned up. The guy on the crane amid the treetops said they’d brought a woodchipper and would clean up after themselves. Wait and see.
Saturday DJ and I hauled to St George’s for a LGBTQ discussion on how to protect ourselves during this predatory and heedless administration. My heart sank when I saw pens and stick-up notes and a white board, indicating the Episcopal (and Female) preference for process over action would predominate. And so it did. My inclination not to attend meetings presided over by women is thwarted by the fact that nearly every group I belong to is, essentially, a gynocracy. After an hour of self-examination, there was enough time for people to suggest a few pertinent phone numbers, and demonstrations to attend. There will be meetings before the demonstrations so we can– what? Participate with faultless self-knowledge, I suppose.
L and J came for dinner last night. Cooked myself into a stupor, and I think it was a success. It was revealed that dad’s macular degeneration was brought on by cataract surgery– thus justifying my own hesitancy to get that done, or anything done that involves entering a hospital. L and J are like kids, footloose and fancy-free in an expanding world.
Evening: The adventures of the pruners in my trees, on behalf of Duke Energy, went on all day, making me more miserable as the hours passed. Far deeper cutting than necessary, the almost-blossoming branches of redbud lying in heaps. My sadness probably exceeded the cause, but, in any case, enough with breaking and hacking and disturbance of the peace. Branches and debris lie higher than ever, higher than when I paid to have it all carted away. The sweet shy boy that I wanted to scream at but couldn’t said they’ll be back with a chipper and clean-up crew first thing in the morning. Even if it turns out, that means a day with a roaring chipper.
Thought of Sweetboi, glad that he had escaped all that. The glamour is gone from my sky.
March 21, 2025
Bach’s birthday. Can’t think of what I did all day, but planning dinner for L and J was part of it. Effulgence.
More Face Book comments on the passing of Sweeetboi than any other of my postings. This makes me glad. Considering how to honor him. A play? Fiction? A dance would probably be best. Maybe I should tell the full story to A and see what she can do. I run it through my head, and it’s a dance.
March 20, 2025
Blake seminar with P.
Vernal Equinox. Planted creeping phlox, fertilized the iris bed, met A for coffee and extended gossip, much of it about the astounding collapse of our university. Told for the first time the full story (as it stands now) of Sweetboi. Snow flying when I left rehearsal at 8:30.
March 19, 2025
What a terrible detective I would be! I posted about Sweetboi’s death on Facebook, and so far 90 responses have been recorded, which is lovely, but most of them assumed what had–until I read the posts– not entered my mind. I assumed he had thrashed himself to death after being caught in the bark. The blood on his breast and one talon I judged to be marks of that struggle– though I also noted that his body came loose from the bark almost without effort, and I wondered why he couldn’t have done it himself. The Facebook posts assumed he’d been shot, and wondered if I knew who did it. This makes mores sense. A new mystery opens. Who, then, deliberately hung him so I would find him? He had not been there the evening before, and he had not been dead long. I excoriated myself for not discovering him in time. He had not been there to discover in time. He had been killed and left where his body would cause the most hurt. I have a secret and vicious enemy. Furthermore, he had crept into the deep of my garden and done the deed without my knowing. He is an enemy of some intimacy, who knew what I loved and how to use my garden to display his deed. I’ve ever been bad at knowing my enemies. I have been reluctant to think I had any, not that the Universe hasn’t mocked this oversight in the past. Some grief fell from my heart, for my inattention had, if all this is the case, nothing to do with the wild fair being’s death.
March 18, 2025
Warm spring day. I planted poppies and dug up ivy. I saw a strange pattern on the silver maple, and when I neared I saw it was Sweetboi, hanging dead with one talon lodged in the bark. Maybe he died from being stuck there, but there was a splatter of blood on his breast, and it was so easy lifting him down I couldn’t believe he couldn’t do it himself. Beautiful winged being. His lids were only half closed, and his eyes sent forth a fierce glare in the sunlight. I buried him. I crawled into the shadows to weep. I’m still there. El, the God Who Howls in the Wilderness, my Lord, I thank you for the companionship of this wild spirit. Let me believe I did right by him.
March 17, 2025
Blessed Saint Patrick.
The pond pump motor went out in January, and today I finally got someone to address the problem. He’s the guy who installed the pond, and I called him first, and just today he got around to fishing the motor out of the water and ordering a new one. The issue haunted me because I kept imagining the poor fish living day to day under worse conditions.
March 16, 2025
Evidently a storm of proportion last night, lightning and thunder, downed trees, power outages. I slept right through it, wondering in the morning why there was water on both my east and west windows.
Jazz concert at St. George’s. I slept through part of it, having dreams curiously unrelated to anything that was happening in my environment.
March 14, 2025
Rehearsal last night was turbulent (or is it me being impatient?) with a bunch of new singers finding their place in the order and our director showing them how much fun we have at rehearsal. It IS fun, but it is also wasteful. Gay men chatter more than women.
Shreds of bright colored plastic flutter from the branches of trees, blown there by the hurricane, and too high to reach. A lovely tatter of blue floats in sight of my front porch.
Dug bamboo. Planted spearmint in the ground and succulents in pots on the porch. Relied on rain for watering, but there was no rain.
March 13, 2025
Father’s birthday. I seem to be in unusual places on this day. Once Venice, once Valletta, once Tel Aviv. Today it’s the waiting room for the Service Area of Anderson Toyota, where the car and I have come to get our 5000 mile check-up and have some recall issue (explained to me in vain) addressed. Reading a biography of a fairly boring, very important poet. An old man and an old woman talk loudly about how they were always Republicans but how the last several weeks have turned them around. I realize I like the smell of tires.
March 11, 2025
Biggest day in the garden yet. On the inspiration of the clean-out last week, I attacked the tangle at the northern edge of the garden, pruning and wall-building, uncovering sassafras and persimmon from the cover of other trees, opening the gap under the lilacs wide enough for a bear or an agile person to pass through.
Discouraged at the slow slog of proofreading The Nurseryman’s Wedding.
Rehearsal turbulent. The music isn’t challenging and we have an unusually long rehearsal period, so our director has a chance to exhibit every exhausting tic directors develop to fill the time. “Now read the words speaking only the vowels. . . why don’t we count-sing that . . .”
Daffodils popping out like stars at evening.
March 10, 2025
Lenten Arts Series opened well yesterday. I feared the remoteness of the venue would limit attendance, but it didn’t seem to be the case.
Planted the last rhododendron (for now), pulled out wayward growth, enlarged the garden wall.
The huge shape in the tree behind me as I worked was a red-tailed hawk. Whoever bought me the subscription to hawk-of-the-day has my gratitude.
Watched a show called “Fifty Worst Movies of All Time.“ I’d seen one of them, Attack of the Killer Shrews.
March 8, 2025
Shoulder tender from yesterday’s vaccines– an unusual reaction for me. Back into the garden: weeding, uprooting of wicked vines, planting of white rhododendron and hellebore. Left unfinished (a hole dug and fertilized, but the last rhododendron not eased into it) because of the shoulder and a faint flu-ache that I think must also be related to the shots.
The hawk-shape flying over my shoulder as I worked was not Sweetboi, but a Cooper’s hawk– sleek, silvery, more compact than the red-shouldered, and with a faster– maybe more orderly–flight.
Listening to Russian sacred music. Holy Russia is not to blame.
Dream during a brief nap. I heard slow, firm footsteps outside my bedroom window. I rose and saw a huge antlered creature–an Irish elk, perhaps-- making its way under my dogwoods.
Some great emotion builds in me. I don’t know when or in what form it will fountain forth.
March 7, 2025
Wandering the ruins of the garden. It’s actually much improved in every objective way, but right now I’m fixating on the destruction of things which I would have saved. Nothing could have been done except to walk every step with them saying “no” or “si.” The debris-filled dumpster is hauled away. Jason returned my two tools– hoe and shovel– which found their way onto his truck.
Got COVID and pneumonia boosters. The nurse talked about what a medical disaster RFK Jr is. “You’re just in time,” she said, “who knows how much longer these will be available?”
March 5, 2025
Folia on Pandora.
Ash Wednesday. Surprise phone call from Jason, and now my yard is full of Mexicans working at a red heat. He speaks to them in what seems to me fluid Spanish. They’re doing more than I wanted, but I know that later on I will wish it to have been done, so– Sound of chainsaws. . . I can’t look.
Read America: a Prophesy for our Blake seminar. The mightiest poetry that ever was in English, though blowing in from a place so foreign one doesn’t always know what’s going on.
Late afternoon. Started Folia again. The gang finished up in one day rather than the prepared-for two. I’m glad of that, and not only financially. The procedure was surprisingly stressful. I had to stop myself from running out screaming “Get out of my garden!” They cut down Sweetboi’s perch. I asked them not to. . . but. . . .things did not always translate. All six workers were finishing up, and I asked, “How many of them are in danger of being deported?” Jason shrugged, said, “I don’t know, but if they send them away, I close my business. I can’t go through that a second time.”
March 4, 2025
Shrove Tuesday. People wear bright beads, and I realize I’d forgotten this or any day can be joyful. Need to go into hiding from the media: I could be content among my birds and flowers. The clearing of debris from the garden will begin, to my surprise, tomorrow. Wrote gigantic checks to satisfy the IRS. The lady at the accountancy and I discussed the possibility that, the nation crumbling around us, nobody would know or care whether I paid my taxes. My personal taxes, it must be noted, are greater than Elon Musk’s, if things are as they’re reported.
March 2, 2025
The sermon related the story of Jesus walking amid the crowd after the Transfiguration, and the man running out and crying, “Master, look at my son, my only child!” The grief I felt relating to him was unbearable. Glad I was seated in the back row behind people taller than myself. Recalled later when I was in Israel our guide stopping at a service station for our comfort, then pointing casually to the hill across the road, “And that is the Mount of the Transfiguration.”
Revising. . . proofreading. . . unsure that anything will come to anything.
Terrible world, terrible age. I don’t know what to do.
March 1, 2025
Saint David’s Day. His flower is the daffodil, and I have a few just putting forth incipient yellow tips.
Cool, bright. More work in the garden, largely pruning. Excessive growth of hydrangeas and sweet shrub has constricted my driveways for a couple of years now. I am SO much the person who adjusts to his environment, rather than changing it to suit himself, that it never occurred to me to prune them back. I relied on maneuvering my car just the right way. J who came to do the estimate lit on that first thing. Another I pruned back to allow peonies in the front garden more light. Mockingbirds thronged me as I worked. A black vulture soared low over the garden, banking almost at the ground before rising again. His hugeness altered the perspective of size in the garden for a while.
Playing tracks of the Ukrainian National Hymn and weeping. This is America’s lowest point, a traitor to our friends and a lap dog to the worst of our enemies. Shame consumes me.
