January 25, 2026

News from home inconclusive, but no power outages reported from my sources to this hour. 

Sat at the hotel bar last night with a big Alpha male who ate steak and asked for suggestions where to buy his third house. He lives in LA, but wants a foothold on the east coast. He saw what credit card I was using, and counseled me on how to get more value out of it by using its various special offers. He lost a friend in the LA fire last year, and said that there were insignificant natural causes, but rather that the disaster was caused by governmental neglect and incompetence. “They blamed dry grass because it couldn’t fight back.” Dry hydrants, low reservoirs, cut-backs in the fire department. I believed him. He was clearly used to holding forth and being heeded. 

Walked along the beach at sea’s edge. I don’t believe I did that once when I was here in September. The wind is less and the weather kinder than yesterday. 

Kayakers, swimmers, surfers. It amazes me. 

Blood on the bedspread this morning from my split heel. Already made my apologies to the management.   

Strolled to Jack of Cups for lunch. The first person I met had fled Leicester, as I had Beaver Lake, to escape the storm. His cap suggested he was a cop. He wanted to buy me a drink, but as I was having water, the intention was taken for the deed. Bought candy from a girl who said she loved her job. Bought postcards from one of those beach memento stores. The clerk had been stopped for speeding this morning by the SC Highway Patrol, and she observed that her wages for that day would go to paying the ticket. The road was so rural she didn’t know it had a speed limit. I wouldn’t have bought anything without the sob story. Her friend, the kid who rented bikes from the shed behind the store, came in to exult at having two rentals that day, to the same man, who rode off on one while holding the other. He has cognitive issues, which gives him, as a grown man, the shining demeanor of a happy boy. The food at Jack of Cups, while interesting, gave me almost instant diarrhea, which I discovered accidentally. Luckily, I was in my room then, so the clean-up job, though complicated, was private.  One brings so few changes of clothes one must be meticulous. I divined that housekeeping would arrive just in the midst of it, as in fact she did. Wrapped myself in a towel and told the smiling Filipina that I wouldn’t need her today.

Low tide now, a gray lake of calm water separate from the sea, a happy dog soaring after a frisbee. The girl at the souvenir shop admired my purple cap. 

Folly

January 24, 2026

Third floor of the Tides Hotel, Folly Beach. My window looks directly at the pier, against whose supports the sea dashes with considerable fury. The drive was long, but easy. In the opposite lane battalions of plows and salt trucks headed north, lights flashing, to aid in the expected disaster. Overhead the sky was a ruffled gray the entire way, like old cloth folded and darkened at the seams. Flat darkening steel now. The wind when I went out for a bite to eat was almost unbearable, far worse weather here–now– than what I thought I was fleeing back home. Still, a few walkers and joggers on the beach. Everyone at the hotel is kind and forward and eager to tell me their names and learn my story.  My mood was quite contemplative through the ride, picking up the theme of the last few days, when I’ve wondered if I’ve accomplished anything. Part of it was surely the gloom of fleeing my home in the teeth of a storm, rootless and a refugee, at least for the moment. But that was a house built on older, darker foundations,  God is not us, nor does He speak our language, so He must send any message he wants to convey a number of times. As I sat over my seafood platter at Rita’s, Shelley’s great “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” invaded my thoughts– “I vow’d that I would dedicate my powers to thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?” I wept over the cocktail sauce. I wept so hard I prayed the waitress wouldn’t see me. That was the message. Whatever the results, I have kept my vow. 

Under that Yellow Half Moon

January 23, 2026

Meant to have left for the beach, but once I got everything loaded, the car closed down one function after another. Wouldn’t go into gear. Wouldn’t budge. Called to have it towed to the Dealership, but the tow truck guy assumed correctly that the battery was at fault, and got me rolling. Went to AAA to have the battery of batteries checked, and all is well now. The car worked fine last night. Random and inexplicable incidents like this I take as the work of the Lord. I was going to be in a wreck on the highway. For some reason I need to be at the house tonight. Something.  I accuse God of abandonment practically every day except those on which some supernatural hand is so evident I must grudgingly– and without full knowledge– give thanks. The tow truck guy and the technician at AAA were handsome. The lady at the hotel must be sick of my changing reservations three times in an hour. 

Finished and edited Under That Yellow Half Moon, as I was probably meant to do.  

Flight

 January 22, 2026

Jolly and raucous rehearsal. I realize that the things that distract and irritate me about rehearsal are the things that the new boys think are “fun” and attract them to the group.  

Impending storm is the center of all news reports. In a moment of either rashness or providence, I chose to flee to Folly Beach, which seems to lie outside of all the sleet-and-ice projections. Of course I think I will never return, and fly about trying to leave everything in order, trying to finish the play I was working on so it can be found intact. The nervous issue is that I fear the cold. I don’t know that I fear anything else so much. The prospect of the power being out and my sitting alone in a dark and freezing house is appalling enough to counteract my normal desire to squat at home among my tasks and things. 

I ask Alexa, “Who’s your favorite composer?” She answers “Beyonce,” then after a pause adds, “But with your preference for Baroque masters such as Bach and Purcell, I imagine there would be disagreement on that.” Nice to be known, creepy to be known by an appliance.

 January 21, 2026

Discovered that old CDs that will not play if you hit “Play” will do so if you hit “Random.” This gives me unexpected joy. 

Incredible flux of phlegm. How does the body have resources left for anything else?

Days of unexpected productivity, painting, revision, etc. Today it is Poets in Their Youth finally gleaming into wholeness. Yesterday it was the story of my heart surgery losing 5000 words and finally becoming readable. I carved out four days at the beach for myself for February. It felt futile at first, when I thought I’d just be sitting somewhere warm staring at the sea, but became an adventure when I thought I might have a project to work on. Work remains my life long after that impulse should have mellowed into something more restful. 

Gigantic mob to rehearse Mozart’s Requiem. Sat next to Patrick, the pastor of First Presbyterian. According to himself his congregation is doing exceeding well., I’d have guessed he was a clergyman from his singing, though I’d be hard put to say why.

 January 18, 2026

Coughed and hawked ferociously for quite a while after waking before managing to clear my throat. This is why God ordained I live alone. 

My sheet is freckled with little drops of blood. It must be from scratching, but that must be in sleep, for I have no recollection of it.

To church and home in bitter cold. I wear my coat for half an hour inside before I’ve warmed up. 

My neighbor sits on his porch even now, wrapped in a gray blanket. 

 

January 17, 2026

Security cameras record a figure in a wool coat moving by night across the garden, slowly, then returning at a run. He glances to the side to see if he is watched from a window. I figured someone tried to take a short cut, shaving the loop off Lakeshore Drive. You CAN do it, but it’s hard to find in the dark if you don’t know it’s there. He scurried back in confusion. His bulging backpack was suspicious. 

Received notice that I could flip the switch to the solar panels on. Did so. Finally. At long, long last. Are they working? I expected some sort of fanfare after all this sturm und drang. 

Bought dirt to fill the raised cedar beds, filled them about 2/3 of the way. The dirt was frozen, so the complete gesture is a time off. The boy at the garden store lifted all three bags at once, which I had to drag one by one from the trunk and quiver up the stairs with. Fiddled with the pond pump. Bought a new bird feeder and filled the rest. 

K’s rather gigantic birthday dinner at the Hilton. Fun. . . though I realize I’m not good in the middle of a bench with no way to get out when the need to get out hits me. C’s son to my right wants to go into city planning. He is working at a Pizza Hut to prepare for this. J to my left told of a wonderful trip to New York. She wants me to direct Amahl and the Night Visitors. The restaurant personnel was kind, but we must have raised a ruckus. Someone said as I walked through the lobby, “There’s David Hopes. I love his poetry.” I pretended not to hear, but, boy, I did.

I cannot type a sentence without making a typo. 

In the Very Hour of Recognition

 January 16, 2026

Satie on the CD, a painting nearing completion on the easel. Puzzling over the first headache I’ve had in twenty years. P in the afternoon to talk about Blake’s gargantuan “Jerusalem.” That Blake contains the mightiest verse in English is almost never mentioned. 

One sits alone in silence, stupefied that what one hitherto could not have imagined– a Fascist dictatorship in the USA–has come to pass, and, like so many of its like in the past, voted in initially by those who thought that’s what they wanted. I am unable to credit why bad that is so clearly bad is not snuffed out in the very hour of recognition. 

 January 15, 2026

Threatened snowstorm is, to the minute, no more than low and leaden clouds. 

Feel of a string of automatic days– not a bad feeling, but one of expectancy.

Coffee with A. To hear his adventures is to realize just how much I have deliberately reduced my life to hoard time for working. I could let up a little. I could go to the occasional show, the random party, so not every name that is mentioned to me is unknown. When I mentioned that I am seventy-five, his astonishment was gratifying. 

 January 13, 2026

Stupid with relief to discover that ASC rehearsal starts next week rather than tonight. 

Movie night at DJ’s last night: the latest Tron, meant to make us feel better about the rise of AI. It could be wonderful rather than horrible. People concerned about DJ’s welfare will be relieved to know that he had everything well under control. I admit I am not the first person to notice problems. . .  but neither am I the last. 

Thousands of citizens stand up against ICE on American streets. I have never been prouder of my people. 

Grateful that my neighbors have not taken down their Christmas lights. 

Woke from a nap with the theme from “The Patty Duke Show” running through my head. Seemed petty random until I realized that it was giving me the answer to a clue in the crossword I was working– Brooklyn Heights. 

 January 10, 2026

Fasting. So much done in a day I think back on what was done this morning I’m not sure if it was this day or another. Some things continued, some things started: nothing ended. 

Riots against ICE continue across the country. Europe arrays itself against an invasion of Greenland. 

Sat and listened to every version of “I Bid You Goodnight” available on the Internet.

Red Angel

 January 9, 2026

The murder of Renee Good, by all accounts a woman of matronly kindness and civility, has opened new avenues of cruelty and dishonesty to the Administration. Each lie is a gesture of contempt toward those listening, and no statement is other than a lie. This year would have been impossible to believe if it had not happened. The USA is a comic opera parody of a tyrannical and predatory state, while at the same time being a deadly serious tyrannical and predatory state. Not a day goes free of some new atrocity. 

Brown-headed nuthatch at my seed wall. 

Red Angel, I do not presume to tell you whom to smite, but smite, now; you see past this horror and can endure it. We cannot. 

 January 8, 2026

Decided to give away my DVDs as my player no longer attaches to the TV, but I realized how many hundreds of dollars I must have spent on them, so I bought a self-contained DVD player instead. Strange satisfaction. Re-shelved and alphabetized the whole surprisingly ample collection.

Sunset from Captain Will's Boat

 

January 7, 2026

While I was mucking out the pond, my Solar guy, M, appeared ahead of the latest inspector. M had to drive from Myrtle Beach because city inspectors will not open up anything electric, lest they receive a shock. Passed this time. Long talk with towering, sweet-spoken M, who finally said, “Do you sell any of your paintings?”

“How did you know I paint?”

“The last time I was here, I had to go upstairs and you were there painting. You looked so happy. I loved the paintings.” 

The painting he chose was, Sunset from Captain Will’s Boat, oil on panel, painted on January 1, 2025, a memory of the Folly River and its dolphins under westen light. He insisted I sign it, which I don’t spontaneously do. He said, “This is my first piece of art.”

I’ve awakened the last several nights in time to see the moon–last night misty–in glory in my western windows. 

Epiphany

 

January 6, 2026

Epiphany. Removed the Christmas trees and all decorations. The stab of grief that came when I tried to do it yesterday was gone, so it must have been due time. I thought it might be a fierce undertaking, but I finished by noon. To save myself the stairs I cleared space to store the trees and decorations downstairs, but in the end I hauled them up anyway into their old spaces, meaning I have new storage space downstairs for. . .  something. 

Cocktails and dinner with P and L at Deerfield. Their conversation made me think they were trying to lure me to Deerfield or a place like it, where I would be “safe” in case of a geriatric event. It had no attraction to me. A giant dorm filled with elders. Great traffic jam of walkers in the dining room. The whitefish was excellent. A lady by the elevator was relieved when I said I was visiting, observing, "You didn’t look like someone who would need a place like this.” I thanked her in my heart. 

 January 5, 2026

Thought I should take down the Christmas trees before our meeting tonight, but when I began, I was stricken with a such a pang of grief– an eight year old boy awoke inside me crying “just one more day!” I can’t account for the sharp edge of emotion. Perhaps now I feel that each Christmas may be my last. Perhaps I wish not for the gay lights and the beautiful music to pass into ordinary winter. Anyway, another day it is. 

AVLGMC meeting. We are gone in a direction where I have no expertise and no interest. We talk about costumes, but not about singing good music or getting what we do sung right. I am the discord. How to get out of this without sounding disgruntled?

 

January 4, 2026

Quiet night. Berlioz’s “Shepherds’ Farewell” this morning, one of my favorite things to sing. DJ back at church, to thunderous applause. 

 January 3, 2026

Began the morning on the phone with Daniel A.

Bought a clump of birdseed in the shape of a bell and set it on the porch. It remained untouched for several weeks. Moved it to the side yard, with the other feeders and food sources, tied it so it dangles from a bit of metal, and it was attacked by wrens and titmice within five minutes, an attack that went on until sunset. Flickers hammering great chunks out of the seed cones.

AI takes all joy from watching material on the Internet. I believe I can tell fake from real, but what if I can’t?

In a dazzling passage of effrontery, even for himself, Trump seizes Venezuela. Even his admission that the issue was actually oil (it was allegedly drugs, of a particular kind of which Venezuela is not the source) does not bring mobs with pitchforks and torches to the White House. There is end, no check, no timely antidote. No one with a backbone is near enough to strike. 

 

January 2, 2026

Music from downstairs. A day happy, but without what springs to mind as a specific accomplishment, except baking cookies that managed to clear out most of the materials in the fridge capable of being put into cookies. The canisters all seem to have emptied of their contents (sugars, flour, etc) at the same moment, allowing the washing of vessels which may not have been washed since I moved in. The Year of Tidying Up begins. 

 January 1, 2026

If I wanted this day to be the pattern for days to come I have done well. Cleared out vast spaces in the attic, filling boxes for Goodwill. Picked up the brush and painted merrily while listening to Bach’s B minor Mass.  Eight hours left till bedtime, and I am not yet tired. 

Little spirit

 

December 31, 2025

I looked up into the winter sky when I was a child and asked “Which is the star of Bethlehem?” Both of my parents came up with an answer. Mother found a bright one and pointed to it, “There! There it is!” Father said, “It’s not there any more.”  Both answers turn out to be true. 

Mildly regretting not having a party this New Year’s Eve. If anyone else stepped up, they didn’t invite me. Freezing rain is called for tonight, so maybe it’s for the best. My society has generally been based on extended labor on my part. The joke is that when I finally relax and relinquish, I don’t miss it that much, or only on certain nights. 

My west yard, under the dogwoods, is a feasting place for winter birds. In that I have done well. 

Think of the 5 and 10 at Midway Plaza– maybe Grant’s? Woolworth’s?–that had a woolly monkey in a cage. Mother bought fabric there frequently, and I would go with her to see the monkey. I’d stand before the cage and hold his paw that he could push outside the bars, looking steadily into his eyes and he into mine. His sad, expressive brown eyes. His solitude. His loneliness. Despair.  I felt such grief. Grief that for a child was inexpressible, uncomprehensible. My powerlessness was a mountain as big as the world. I knew it was futile, but I asked my mother if we could take him home. It was so absurd she probably didn’t remember it the next hour. I went back to the monkey and explained. His pitiable still eyes! I heard mother calling, but I couldn’t answer until I’d stood alone for a while and stopped sobbing. Images come back through time. Why? How could I possibly have done otherwise? Are we blamed for things we could not possibly have forfended? If we blame ourselves, why? The monkey has been dead for sixty-seven years, and yet lives. Is that tribute enough? Have I done my part? 

Little spirit. . .  Little spirit. . . . . 

 

December 30, 2025

Trying to work in the freezing attic. The only possible space is right here where I sit, back almost against the heater, covered by my sister’s afghan. 

Message from the Solar Panel people. My inspection failed because one of the bolts was not screwed in tight enough. Make-up scheduled for January 6. They demand new proof of insurance, my old policy having expired (and been renewed automatically) on Christmas Eve. I will not provide that document until the array is turned on, come what may. The hill upon which I am willing to die. Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen

AVLGMC planning committee supper at Mountain Madre– convivial, sweet. My walking there and back in bitter cold was a victory for me.  Misty moon, fat and waxing. 

 

December 28, 2025

The relaxed feeling of my legs is surely due to their getting exercise yesterday. Let’s see if I can carry the resolution even two days in a row. Fantastic dreams, clearly meant to influence the decisions of waking life. 

MST

 

December 27, 2025

Walked on the Mountains to the Sea Trail, my first foray there since the hurricane. The wild high woods are filled with debris and broken trees, but the area accessible to the road seems worse, as woodsmen cut down everything they perceived as too damaged, so it looks like the Ardennes in 1914. On the trail I met an old woman and a tall blind boy who led himself forward on two ski poles. I assumed grandma was taking her grandson for a jaunt in the woods. A Hispanic man walked with his wife (I assumed) trudging fifty feet behind him. He played a Spanish music station on a tiny device in his hand, the sound of which was dismaying in that otherwise holy silence. Three joggers hurled by wearing orange vests and each crying “happy holidays!” at me. A bulldog followed, also wearing an orange vest, but not crying “happy holidays!” As I walked I considered what a disaster a fall would be, even if I were uninjured. The woods might be better than the floor, though, as there’s plenty of stumps and trunks to haul oneself up on. Plus, I have no recollection of ever falling on the trail. The comparative emptiness of the woods reminds one that these are the tops of mountains, and all the resources and advantage lie below. 

It being a spring-like Saturday afternoon, the line of cars waiting to enter the Arboretum stretched for half a mile. 

 December 26, 2025

St Stephan’s Day. 

Christmas Eve I was full of a rare kind of spirit. I wouldn’t drink tea without choosing the cup carefully, wanting the memory of some particular person from the vessel I chose. Everything was sweet and bristling with dimension. It was like moving inside a memory. Charpentier in the never-quite-fully-lit interior of St. George’s. Eight hours of driving dilutes merry feelings somewhat, but did not push them wholly away. Met little David for the first time since he was a sleeping lump in his mother’s arms, a good-natured, curious child. Holiday gathering at my sister's.  One tries to take everything meant as a blessing as a blessing received. 

The second year in which I received no Christmas gifts. What do I need? Nothing, but as Lear says, “Reason not the need.”  Something wholly unexpected and gratuitous would be nice. Did bring home a piece of shimmering silver damask that my mother had, that L thinks was a gift from her first love, perished in a tornado, and two small plates from grandmother H, painted with bluebirds. 

 

December 24, 2025

Woke this morning with weird cheerfulness– like a kid on Christmas Eve. If that weren’t enough, I can walk without pain and took the stairs like a grown up, one foot to a step, instead of tottering step-together-step-together, like an infant, as I’ve been doing these many months. One doesn’t expect permanence. One examines the near past to see what might have caused such a thing. Still, I am the last one to reject (or even question very much) a Christmas miracle. 

Baking so that I can take a considerable heft of cookies to Georgia tomorrow morning. 

Solstice

 

December 21, 2025

Longest night.

Woke too early, with bitter thoughts in my heart. It’s almost time to go to Advent IV service, and the thoughts have tempered somewhat. Sound of the washing machine from downstairs, harmonizing with Handel from the bud. The music for Christmas Eve at St George is a sweet Charpentier pastoral.

I have spent my life awaiting holy moments, moments of peace, moments of unexpected regard, of sudden vision, and marking them down as faithfully as I can. When I was a boy at home I’d beg not to go wherever the family was going, so I could sit alone and await the Coming. One year my father put a lonely string of Christmas lights in the crabapple, which, when lit at night, made a glittering road into the heavens, bright and dark at once, with an end unforeseeable. Last night I stayed home from a party and a concert so I could do the same, to sit in the silence until silence resolved into a song. Tonight there was caroling at church, and an organ concert at another church, and I found a way to resolved to go too late each time, so I could be here, listening to distant music, bathing in the strangeness of the Longest Night, awaiting the Voice. 

Was I asked to do this? I thought I was. I thought it was a sacrifice of what was everyone’s pleasure for a secret joy that was my reward for listening, for watching with such intensity. It has come to nothing other than itself. Perhaps I was indulging myself, doing what I pleased in a way which I could not at the outset know would separate me, however subtly, from the society around me. After a surprisingly brief time, there was no way back. There is certainly no way back now. Little hermit of the night. Little spider in the corner spinning and spinning. I thought I would be the Announcing Angel. Maybe so. Probably not.  If it comes, it must come quickly.

The bluebirds returned today. Blessing. 

A sleek red-shouldered hawk missiled into the dogwoods above the feeders. The other birds disappeared. She stayed a long time. I had my binoculars and could take in every detail. I wanted her to wait until I could through some meat into the grass, but suspected that dispensation will never come again.  

Bluebirds

 December 20, 2025

Bluebirds came to my feeder this afternoon. My binoculars were handy, so I spent time looking at them close up, the famous cerulean, the blending of the rust and cream, the incredible radiance of the light on their eyes. They were patient and let me stare. The gratuitous beauty of things is a constant wonder. Why should things be beautiful? Why should the back and eye of a bluebird, to use Whitman’s phrase, stagger sextillions of infidels? My answer is ever the same: some Eye is pleased, and He has granted us to look with the same eyes, that we too might be pleased. 

Repeated playing of Handel’s “As Steals the Morn.”

 December 19, 2025

After twelve weeks of dithering, the city inspector showed up. The inspection was the guy sitting in the truck for about ten minutes, then getting out and looking at the electrical array from six feet away. “Just making sure they didn’t change anything,” he said. “I inspected it once, but they didn’t have the right paperwork.” The solar company’s version was that they changed requirements in the middle of the inspection in October. I deduce I was caught in the middle of a jurisdiction squabble. Bad cess to them all. The panels are still not “on,” merely cleared for one day being on. 

Loving the season, the music drifting upstairs from the kitchen. Have cookbooks out looking at cookie recipes, without any certainty that I’m actually going to bake anything. As long as I don’t call to mind the particulars of my life, I’m happy as a kid. 

Burial

 

December 18, 2025

Signed the papers and paid the fees that will take care of all arrangements when I die. The mortuary guy had forty five minutes of gentle speeches to convince me to do what I had already decided on. I begged him to skip it, and he complied. Notified my sister and she wanted to know how many headstones I want in how many places, etc.