September 21, 2025
Lunch with DJ after church in the lingering autumnal afternoon light.
Thought of vocation. What was I actually called to do? Did I do it? The thought crossed my mind that the calling is not, at the end, as important as the doing, and that my real destiny was made by my clinging, step by step, to the path I set before myself. That thought was a benediction, for clinging to the path I set for myself is what I have done.
September 20, 2025
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
Woke laughing from a dream of some hilarity. I fell asleep on the sofa watching Seth Myers and Paul Rudd cavort in an episode of “Day Drunk,” and I carried that with me to bed, where the three of us were in a gift shop (or something) throwing things at one another and laughing till we were weak. Even when I rose to go to the bathroom everything I saw, everything I said to myself, seemed funny.
September 19, 2025
The most spectacular storm outside now since the hurricane. The wind roars. Thunder rolls from the south. If I’d carried out earlier plans I’d be on the road to Waynesville just now. Bad memories arise.
Pond pump out again. This fills me with stress, thinking of the creatures in the pond who depend on me, whether they know it or not, for their health. Maybe lightning will strike the pump back to life.
Coffee with K at the river. She told me of her plans for her new theater company, Phantom Lantern, and for her new baby, who should be born in Florida at the end of next month. Her new company will be largely improv, which leaves me out. I do understand the attraction of what needs no preparation and no rehearsal. The riverside café seems to have its full complement of chairs and picnic tables and gossiping clutches of caffeine hounds back, 11 ½ months after Helene.
September 16, 2025
Hard rain on the roof, shooting out in streams where the gutter man failed. I must have been cold last night, for there were dreams of snow covered landscapes. In one, my sister and I stood by a frozen river competing in who knew the names of more Norwegian birds.
The creature in my garden was an iris-borer, the larva of a benighted moth. Sorry I didn’t throw it to the towhees.
In the last hour when they would have been visible, two bears cubs and their enormous mother came to visit. It puzzles me why they walk across the front porch rather than around, which would eliminate at least two climbs. Maybe they’re looking in on me. In any case, it makes night porch-sitting an adventure. They drank from the pond, frolicked, disappeared into the night, leaving me with a sense of benediction.
Alert for the failing of my faculties, I light upon the myriads of typos that crop up in my writing, more, I think, than in times before. In the last entry I mistyped the word “turkey” three times in three different ways. There are sometimes two errors in four words. Right now I mistyped “different.” I suppose editing solves the problem, but adds lugubriousness to an activity that used to be fleet as the wind.
SS writes in a press release about T's upcoming production: I've long believed that the subject of a play doesn't tell you much about it: something that sounds amazing might be so badly written as to be an utter bore, and something that sounds unbearable might prove funny and transcendent. And I had a direct example of that quite a bit earlier, when another of our great local playwrights, David Brendan Hopes, sent me a script about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy. All I could think before reading it was, "Too sad! I don't want to have anything to do with this!"I hadn't read two pages of David's remarkable Washington Place (which I produced and directed at The Magnetic 10 years ago, and which opens in a new production at HART, coincidentally, in October) when, to my surprise and delight, I was having such a good time that I immediately knew we had to do it. For David hadn't focused on the horror, even though it was there; he had concentrated his considerable gifts on the lives and loves of the otherwise unknown victims, gracing them with intelligence and humor and a humanity that could not be denied. The results were astonishing, about which I'm sure those of you lucky enough to have seen it would agree.
September 14, 2025
Return with vengeance to the garden, spading, weeding, settling the fall bulbs, cleaning and moving the water gardens. In the grass I found big feathers and tufts of down from a turkey, and one long hawk feather. I wonder if hawk and turkey had a disagreement in my garden. I’d have thought a turkey too large for a red-tailed, but the warriors screaming in my trees might have tried anyway.
Failed to mention my trip to the Arboretum, where I walked in the gardens and bought two more indoor plants, now potted and settled. A bus had brought a load of old people. I kept thinking of myself as separate from them. . . but nobody else would.
Shamed by my sometimes not leaving the house for a full day, or two, I decided to go to the theater last night. It was a battle between going out and staying home, and only at the last possible moment did I put on a decent shirt and get into the car, heading to Waynesville to see A Little Night Music at HART. When I got there (through miles of detours) the main theater was dark. In the new theater, though, was a banquet with everybody dressed in– I think– Roaring Twenties costumes, all feathers and glitter, and a voluptuous banquet spread on tables at the entrance. It was like stepping into a Fellini movie. I turned around and came home. Still haven’t looked up what was actually going on, but was impressed that HART could get together a party so massive and, by the evidence of my wars, joyful. The sun was behind me on the drive home, lighting the mountains with gold touched by pink. Perhaps that splendor was the intent of the mistaken journey, for it felt purposeful in some way, not merely the outcome of not having prepared or bought a ticket beforehand.
September 12, 2025
Clouds seem to be gathering. Rain would be well. Covered myself in glory today in the matter of gardening. Restored the iris garden, planting fritillaria, alium, but mostly digging and dividing old iris, pulling grass roots away from their roots. Digging the dry ground was like trying to chip through stone. Uncovered a quite large larva (I guess) more than two inches long, with very prominent pincers and bright orange globular segments, like beads on a bracelet. Researching online has turned up nothing similar, except a sea-worm, which it definitely wasn’t. As I worked, a pair of red-shouldered hawks flew into the garden, screaming alone, then screaming at the horde of jays that came to scream at them. Denise with a new mate? I think probably two completely new citizens. They looked young and feisty. Tried to tempt them with leftover pork roast, but they were having none of that.
Blake and Archbishop Cranmer on the porch with P.
September 11, 2025
Ended the fast at 112 hours. Felt so good I started another immediately after eating the pork roast I imagined and brought to pass.
Return to AGMC. Our numbers are larger than they’d ever been, and the sound is tremendous.
September 10, 2025
During SC rehearsal last night my official fast ended. I had a brief revery about pork roast, but went to bed fasting. It is now 108 hours and counting.
Quite brisk morning.
FL proved once again my theorem about the thing directors mention most often is the thing they’re wrong about. A portion of last night’s rehearsal was taken up with slandering the letter “R,” having us cross it out of words. Vehemence on this point is inexplicable.
September 8, 2025
Rameau on Pandora. He’s as good as anybody. Not as stridently martial and antique as Lully.
At 72 hours on the fast. There’s a feeling in me which doesn’t necessarily read as hunger. Morning mucous is a tithe of itself. No drama in the stomach or digestive system– in which there are usually some issues, which I’d thought of as just part of life. De-hydration is the enemy. You forget you can have liquid. You want something to eat for maybe half a minute, then the desire dissolves, and the food you wanted seems oddly repellent.
Potted several newly acquired plants, set up ( re-purposed) a marble table to hold them. Pulled a few weeds in the scalding light.
America is in such peril that if one had written about it the text would be cursed as an improbability, a libel. The worst man imaginable doing worse things than one imagined. Some still stand back from cursing his name. It is unaccountable. One must turn away and talk of something else. Felon, rapist, thief, traitor, he is allowed to stand in the light of day, an abomination, the scourge of a Satanic being. Yet people draw breath. People drive to the beach and come home. I am going to go downstairs and turn on the TV. I will not be watching the news.
September 7, 2025
I’d gotten in the habit of calling journeys uneventful, but the one home from the beach was not. D fell in a rest stop toilet stall. He himself makes very little public complaint about such events, so one hesitates to make complaint on his behalf, but it is a wrong and terrible thing, and God and I strove on my front porch in the dark last night about it. My task was to dead lift him off the floor. My fear was that, in these diminished times, I couldn’t do it. Turns out I could. It was good to be home. I could scarcely walk for driving all that time. We’d watched a TV program about a 4 day fast which is meant to do one worlds of good. At 8 PM on our last night on the beach I opened a can of water, drank it, and began my fast. It is 38 hours later and I’m holding good, and not particularly hungry.
Attended service at First Congregational, I suppose to honor old times at Emmanuel U C of C. I was greeted to within an inch of my life. Very elderly church, full of good will and good intentions. After that– or including that– a strange sadness about the day, maybe less sadness than an aura of valediction. Several activities and concerns of my life hovered before me as if made of smoke, and I brushed them away. . . never again. . . never again. . . .
46 hours fasting and still going strong, though probably if there were anybody to notice, I’d be grumpy. I did this sort of thing long ago, but feared to do it as an old man. Seems to be having no unexpected consequences.
September 5, 2025
Amazing that the record doesn’t get very far as, literally speaking, there’s nothing that should interrupt, but things do. One wanders to the pier and writes one’s poems. One remembers how mediocre the blood Marys are, but orders one anyway. One is patient, so a grackle comes and perches on the table. One sits on the balcony before the others bestir and writes one’s poems. One tries to recover from the giant meals. We go to Jack of Cups for a lovely lunch. One tips lavishly. We sit on the hotel terrace having cocktails. Lovely Olivia, a senior at the College of Charleston, waits on us. She’s afraid to open the Prosecco, so we do it ourselves. One hears of goings-on in far places.
Evening: the blues and pinks settle over the pale sand, the blaze of sun quieting. L and J left this morning after a bit of breakfast. A day of lounging, overeating, staring at the sea, quite successful napping. I am wild to be home, wild for it to be this time tomorrow. The sea is useless to me unless I am alone.The immensities are useless to me unless I am alone. The ways in which these junkets at the shore are a “vacation” are mysterious to me. To me it is a narrowing and a deprivation– except for the vast and profound presence of the sea itself. To keep myself in check is the task. With my sister’s help, I think I succeeded this time. Maybe not again. It’s too late in the day for me to try to deceive myself about myself.
September 4, 2025
Amazing dreams last night, extended, cinematic. Watching a dolphin cross my entire field of vision, left to right.
September 2, 2025
Yesterday I turned 75. The number is shocking, but the feeling is not different from any other day. I shamed the group into taking me to the South Carolina Aquarium. Lovely. All the animals were strangely charismatic. A wild osprey perched on the mesh over an outdoor display, wondering how to get into the voluptuous bounty clearly visible below him. A snapping turtle swam to me and leaned against the glass as long as I stood there. Maybe it was affection. Maybe it was the color of my shirt. J and L arrived. We had dinner together, then came back to the condo and socialized more successfully than I had imagined. The half moon spread a wide highway of silver across the sea. It will be wider and brighter tonight.
We went to the carrier Yorktown. It was deeply moving, as I had not expected it to be, the valor and sacrifice and the bright-eyed youth gone under the waves for an America that is, for the moment, lost. I stood and sobbed, as I don’t remember doing before in public. Dolphins passed under the bridge that led to the boat.
August 31, 2025
Blazing morning on a blazing sea.
Wrote a little on the balcony, then walked to the pier and finished writing the poem there. Expectable and lovely beach scenes, cocktails and lunch.
I watch my companions scroll their cell phone. It’s the most of what I do, unless I get up, walk the beach or the streets, the same things I’d do if I were here by myself.
