October 13, 2025

Almost tomorrow. When I turn the heater on upstairs, the smell of cat urine wafts from the rug. This fills me with sorrow, missing Maud, who loved the study and, understandably, couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs and use the litterbox. 

Final performance of Washington Place yesterday afternoon. However many times I’ve seen it, I never wept in the last scene. I did yesterday, uncontrollably, shaking in my chair– though it was the least well done that it has ever been.  My nerves have been building toward a good cry: that was perhaps a prelude. This run has been extraordinary: full houses every night but opening, friends of mine not theater people attending, remarks from the crowd of unexpected admiration. An usher reports that as he was helping an old lady down the steps, she said, “I lived forty years in New York and saw a million shows. This was better than all of them.” The actresses said it was “poetic” and “inspiring.” Two people said it was “profound.” J said I am “a gift to the community.” One longs for such comments, then pretends they don’t mean anything. One doesn’t know how to react. I got tongue-tied in the talk-back and sounded like an idiot. Perhaps this will add to my mystique. 

Randomly came across a recording of Cantata 140 on You Tube. Such perfection! Why did I weep? The beauty of it, perhaps, or perhaps realizing I am one of the wise virgins keeping their lamps trimmed through the long night, awaiting the bridegroom. 

Went to Morris’ Funeral Home and talked with a funereal young man about my burial arrangements. J his name was, reporting that his secretary said I was “cheerful” on the phone. He handed me a giant folder full of information I must master before making decisions. It would have been easier to have died and left it to somebody else. The money I pay for the services goes into an insurance account. I asked, “So if I don’t die, I get all the money back?” He didn’t know whether to laugh. The firm had done Billy Graham’s service, and there huge photos of that on the wall, including Donald Trump, who was at the funeral. J said, “We are proud of these photos, though we know some of the images in them may be divisive.” 

Lunch with SS. I’m almost hopeless at practical planning. In any controversy I tend to forget the worst parts over time, which infuriates those who remember them. I forget who my enemies are, which may have the unexpected by-product of bewildering them. 

GMC planning meeting here. I was dark and combative. I’m fighting against the birth of a new world. It’s not better than the old world–worse, in several ways– but it is new and must have its day. Savage condemnation of anyone who does not honor the specification of pronouns and the desire of a person to be referred to as “they,” regardless of the knots in meaning that causes. Vehement dogmatism is always a testimony of doubt. Enlightened people do not recognize, often, where their enlightenment ends and something begins which in anybody else they would call bigotry.

Agitated and wary. When I search my mind for reasons, I come up with nothing. Maybe it’s just the general specter of the world in these latter days. 

Winter seeds and feeding stations set out.