Spirits

 

June 23, 2025

Cool morning of what is expected to be a torrid day. I’ll be flying away from an Asheville expecting to hit 100 degrees to a Manhattan expected t hit 95. The task is to pick out clothes that can be sweated in without showing. The task is to beg the skyscrapers for their shade. 

The concert at the New Hope church turned out well, in some ways our best, as the pressure was off. Informal gathering afterwards to share insights and emotions-- really quite sweet, if not the kind of situation where I am comfortable. 

For two nights now I have meditated on my porch naked– or half naked, as the slats in the chair do not accommodate full nakedness. It has been lovely. One seldom feels like the animal one is blessed to be. I’m invisible from the street, and as much as I might long for it, no one ever turns into the drive to visit me. Wide thoughts, that are difficult to put into words on the morning after. Last night a great meteor appeared in the southern sky, pale green trailing into blinding white. It seemed so close I expected to hear a sound. Afterward, a spirit visited me that I recognized as Sweetboi. I recalled standing on that porch, and his flying toward me as if he were going to land on my shoulder, and in the last second veering up over the roof. I thought it was play. He was dead two days later. Now I think he was trying to tell me something; it was a signal, a warning I could not read. His spirit came into me by night. I spread my arms in the dark to accommodate his wings. He gave me strength, youth. May it hold.

Iran

 June 22, 2025

The Times reveals that I’ll hit New York the same time as a heat wave raising temperatures in Central Park to 95.

Weak little Trump has been teased by Netanyahu into bombing Iran. Add this to the list of unforgivable atrocities. The man cannot live long enough to undergo sufficient punishment. 

“Thank you” concert at Hew Hope Presbyterian. I had hoped to opt out of this, but they scheduled my pieces. All I want is for this round to be over. 

Concert

 June 21, 2025

Solstice comes to the garden in an overlay of gold and purple.

Thinking of conversation with P, the single most learned and intellectual man I know personally, or know well enough to taste the full savor of his learning. He has read everything. The obscure to him is a backyard and a cozy den. To call someone “intellectual” is not fully praise, for I notice certain things to which his nature is blind. He spent time dismissing St. Francis for being anti-intellectual. My suggestion that after Aquinas, et al, Francis might be good medicine did not register. Good deeds unbolstered by sound theory do not move him. He’s diving back into Pindar and Horace because, at 80, he fears he might be “losing my Greek and Latin.” People call me intellectual, but I think they mean by that “well-informed.” My approach to experience is not intellectual until several steps down, when it is finally time to compare and analyze. For P’s sake I opened up Pindar and read a little. Even in English, the majesty of it comes through. 

Weeding and planting yesterday before the heat of the day. 

Beautiful cream callas with purple throats. 

First of two concerts last night at Grace Covenant Pres. Our new voices are skilled, energetic, a little boisterous. In the one recording I heard (of “I Sing the Body Electric” ) the balance was better than it ever had been. We attempt too much in too little time, though, and the result is necessarily a little rough. We were reviewing notes in our warm-up time before the show. Concerts are problematic for me now in that they result in real discomfort, real pain from standing in on place so long, that takes considerable time to ease away. I had to lean on the piano to get my numb legs off the stage. I think my readings went well. In terms of individual exposure, I suppose I’m the star of the show. That’s funny. 

 

June 18, 2025

Lunch with P and talk of Blake, Pindar, Horace at Rye Knot. 

 

June 17, 2025

AG sends me a Facebook DM:

I’m not sure if you'll see this but I recently acquired this painting and am wondering if its one of yours and if you could tell me anything about it. Its small, 5x8.

It was mine, painted in Liam’s B&B in Sligo. 

Bought a T-shirt from a Facebook vendor. A seam opened after one laundering. I have T-shirts from graduate school. So we pass from gold to iron . . . .

Emptied the last jug of drinking water hauled from Atlanta during the hurricane crisis. 

Sat on the porch last night during and then after a thunderstorm. The frogs in the pond were hollering their heads off.

KH is dead.

Facebook videos of Cork and Dublin are slaying me. 

Brilliant, agate summer day, sometimes unfathomable blue, sometimes white and gray with storm. Gardening past the morning or before the evening is no longer possible. 

 

June 16, 2025

During the discussion by the actresses of my play, I noted how nuances that would be clear to a literary critic or an academic reader escaped their notice. It didn’t seem right to say anything. Later on I blessed my reluctance, realizing that though these nuances were discussable, they may not be actable. Anna says a number of things that would lead the attentive reader to assume she’s having second thoughts about a lesbian lifestyle. Neither actresses nor director noted this. Maybe they will, or maybe it’s something that would muddle rather than clarify enactment. Part of my history as a playwright/poet is to have left clues in the text to which more purely theatrical people do not respond.

Hit the “magic moment” with Purification, when the structure suddenly shimmers into place.

 

June 15, 2025

Trump’s speech for Army Day was not actually idiotic. Disappointing, in its way.  Cameras reveal few viewers and vast expanses of empty grass in DC. Red Boise had more protestors against Trump than Washington had supporters, most of whom were soldiers under orders. A man with no shame. 

Watched a movie about mutant alligators infesting a city’s sewers. Thought about the main actor, who was able and competent. I imagined him thinking ruefully, “Here I am more than half way through my career, starring in a mutant alligator movie.” I couldn’t sit on the porch that night for fear of alligators. 

No Kings

 

June 14, 2025

Storms last night from the north. Given the times, I at first mistook the thunder for artillery. 

End of a big day, the fan on High pointing at my head in the sun-beaten attic. 

Went downtown for the No Kings demonstration. Arrived early, so fortified myself with a bloody Mary at the Restoration hotel bar, where the bartender showed me on her phone a list of things to do if I were to be attacked by the police. Discovered that the gathering place was Martin Luther King Park, so I hiked there and watched the crowd grow and seethe. Anti-Trump chants from all sides. At one point everyone crossed onto Charlotte Street and made for Pack Square. I was carried along like a stick in a flood. It was exciting. It was bracing. I wept for joy to be in the midst of so many people aroused to action for the good. I am not happy with crowds normally, but this one was not random, but directional, an arrow headed to target. Exhilarating. Had lunch at Twisted Laurel, made it home in time for a ZOOM rehearsal of Roses and Violets. I was reminded how wonderful it is to have New York actors. They ran through twice. I thought the first time was fine; the second, though, was epic. A suggestion is enough to sharpen everything. The three women spent most of the time talking over one another, but their messages somehow got conveyed. 

 June 13, 2025

Black calla blooming. 

Concert at Givens Estates last night. I think the event went well enough– except that S missed my first solo gabbing away to the crowd and then moving on to the next number. Turbulence before the concert, though, as S determined to use our warm-up to “rehearse” pieces not on this program, about which she had anxiety for next week. Her anxiety translated into an unusual pitch of the usual hysterical frenzy. She can be brutally rude and unproductive in that state, a condition people (including myself) seem to excuse more often for her than the would for another, perhaps because it’s alloyed with sympathy for her panic. You push down your anger to get through the show. You stop at the Village Pub with your friends to drink and bitch about it all until deep darkness. 

Progressing on Purification. 

Mounting absurdities in California. US Senator in handcuffs for trying to ask a question. 

One man walks away from an Air India crash that kills all others on board. He will spend the rest of his life contemplating this. 

 

June 10, 2025

Woke from a vivid dream of leading my father on a tour of London. I had dwelt there, apparently in shady parts of town, and I took him into pawn shops and dingy artists’ ateliers to introduce him to the people I knew. London was very hilly. He was an eager traveler, interested in everything. 

 

June 9, 2025

Gentle summer rain here, though the TV flickers on and off as though there is a great storm somewhere. 

Spent a chunk of the day on a painting which I thought was disappointing when I left it, but doesn’t look so bad now that I return to it. If I’d ever had an art lesson maybe they would have taught me how to deal with backgrounds. 

Pruned, weeded, planted what NEEDS to be this year’s last shipment of flowers, a big pink rose. 

A word on the haunted pool pump: when I finally got what‘s-his-name to replace the pump motor, it worked for a week, then slacked back to a drip. It pumped some paltry water out over the falls, but the suction/filtering feature was gone. Water stood still in the pool except for a trickle oozing over the rocks. I figured that was enough to keep the pool from dying. The last time I cleaned out the trap (last week) there was no detritus in it, as it hadn’t been filtering. I removed everything and felt around in the water (I almost don’t have enough arm to reach the motor) but there was not much glop to remove. Plugged it back in, and noticed that the stream was minimally better, but still not much, still not enough to inspire filtering. Once again I reconciled to a trickle that might, nevertheless, be enough. Today when I was down there fussing with something, I saw that the flow is easily ten times what it was, a veritable Niagara, filtering and pouring with the delicious tinkle of moving water. Did it heal itself? How after weeks of meagerness it is now rich and full? It is a machine, but one muct at times like this assign to it a mind of its own. 

At least four leopard frogs call my pond home. 

A bear tore out the barricade of cinderblock protecting the last airhole in the basement. Deep claw marks score the bottom of the window– which, now that I think of it, is no more than four feet from my head in sleep. Thank God bears have no application. 

Orange Hitler sends the Marines to enforce his illegal ICE maneuvers. Gavin Newsom is my hero. 

Whitsunday

 

June 8, 2025

Pentecost.

Missed Hendersonville Pride yesterday. It seemed something I was not ready, at this advanced age, to endure. Judging from the Facebook messages it was, at best, debacle- adjacent.

Planted two white native hibiscus

Nylon Fusion

 

June 7, 2025

Email from Nylon Fusion in New York:

NyLonFusion <ny.lon.fusion@gmail.com>

Fri, Jun 6, 7:37 PM (12 hours ago)

Hello David- GOOD NEWS! Thank you for submitting.

We’d like to present Roses and Violets as part of our festival-on June 27-28 at Tada! 15 West 28th. 

I can put you in contact with team if all is good with you. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 

The festival will have new plays by John Patrick Shanley, Lyle Kessler (orphans) and Migdalia Cruz (fur) 

Ivette 

I looked at the play after receiving the news. I wish it were longer. On the bill with me are Migdalia Cruz, John Patrick Shanley, and Lyle Kessler, who turn out to be famous people. 

Trimmed the droopy-down big-flowered magnolia. Trimmed the mulberry branches that extended out into the street and whacked cars as they passed.  Weeded mightily in the beyond-the-fence garden

The loud crash last evening– I thought a car had hit the back of the house-- turns out to be a bear pushing over the (quite empty) garbage bin. They still maraud, but by night, like little gangsters, so one doesn’t have the pleasure of seeing them. 

Booked flights to and accommodations in New York.

Deerfield

 June 6, 2025

Concert at Deerfield last night, more nearly a success than one expected. My voice was 70% clear. Appreciative audience. They seemed– the choristers too-- to appreciate my readings of Millay and Shakespeare in particular. One wasn’t sure they would. R said the poems were the highlight of the evening. I argued for master poems because the original suggestion was for spoken-word testimonials from us choristers concerning love, the thought of which made me cringe. We’d never dream of doing songs we’d written for ourselves (knowing they would be, largely, terrible) but poetry is apparently an amateur sport, wherein everyone has equal say. Sincerity counts in art only if technique has already been mastered. Fought hard, and in the test there was victory. Many people came to talk with me, including the mother of a former student –SW– who said she recognized my name immediately because I had changed her son’s life, and he mentioned me often. He mastered Chinese practically on his own, and now teaches in Taiwan. In the lobby of the Community Center at Deerfield is a huge vitrine housing exotic finches, at least one of which has tiny golden fuzzy babies with their heads sticking out of the nesting hole. 

Trump and Musk hissy-fitting like schoolgirls. Anything that weakens this presidency is good for the future. 

 June 4, 2025

Meditated on the back porch last night until the stars came out. The Big Dipper hangs directly over my garden. 

The chorus of cicadas softens. Bits of them, wings, hollowed out bodies, severed heads, lie everywhere. Every other spadeful of dirt while I’m gardening buries a body. 

Flickers gathering ants (I suppose) from the grass. One stopped every now and them to feed the other– father still doing his job even after the chick is fully his size. 

Three days now of quite heavy gardening, today the least of them, but still, progress. Fiddled with the pond.

Meditation

 

June 3, 2025

Madame Towhee is building a nest in the laurel tree. She flits around, gathering sticks and dry grass, conceals herself in the thick leaves and builds. My weeding has aided her in this, causing an abundance of dry stalks to be seasoned just right for the purpose. Is she repairing an old nest? Building a new one? How many broods do the towhees raise in a summer? She seems so happy at her labor. 

Transcendent night in meditation on the porch. I don’t remember getting to bed, but I surely did. 

 June 2, 2025

Last night was particularly dark. Magna nux animae. Again. So with some surprise I woke today with alacrity and seemingly inexhaustible energy. Were the concerts, or the thought of them, wearing me down? Hard to see why. Some demon passing in its own sweet time? Whatever the case, I rose and made the most of the day. Dug, spaded, weeded, put in three more small plots of 4 o’clocks, to try to do justice to the magnitude of seeds purchased without apparent forethought. GMC meeting, underlining the perception that I should never be part of something that moves forward gradually, needing to recap the last four steps before getting on to the next one. I do keep from screaming, and for that I give thanks. 

New vision for painting.

Whole scenes for my play waiting to be typed onto the computer.

 June 1, 2025

Parents’ 78th anniversary. 

Spring concert at St George, the one planned for AS last fall and wiped out by the hurricane. Though all the music was Baroque, copyright issues allegedly muted most of it from the You Tube feed. What I heard was disappointing. The soloists were wonderful, the audience was pleased, so all is well.

Disappointed and exhausted tonight. It has to be more than the concert. 

Eileen Goodnight

 May 31, 2025

The half & half I bought yesterday at the Fresh Market was soured. The first gulp of coffee was a bitter awakening that has not yet faded in memory.

A father downy woodpecker brings his chick to feed from the winter’s seed column. He pecks out a chunk, puts it in the baby’s moth. The baby is at least his size.

L texts that E died this afternoon. Spent time looking at an old photograph of the “S” grandkids. E is sitting on the ground smiling an enormous smile. Every one of the faces in the picture (except grandma and grandpa) stood at the open door of their life. None of us came through unscathed. It is possible– though my bitching and moaning about every little cross disguises the fact–that I knew the least tribulation. I hope every one of us would say that. It is a strange thing. One world fades. In twenty years, no one will know who those faces are. 

So exhausted after rehearsal that I went to bed. Woke in pale yellow of late rainy afternoon.