Tropical rains

 

July 23, 2026

MB is dead. We became fast friends when we were Zeus and Hera in a Theater UNCA Metamorphosis. A witty, engaged, interesting woman. It’s  a shock when one of us goes, though it is past the time when it should be. It could be any of us at any minute. 

T writes this response to my resignation from the planning committee. No other response yet: 

Blueridgeboy. Hi David, 

     I was quite saddened to hear that you are stepping away from the creative team. I hope my comments didn't contribute to happening. I do feel your voice is an important one as I desire, and think the choir needs, to sing the kind of pieces you recommend. I want to be more of a voice for this type of music but I'm fairly ignorant, having invested much more of my life in musical theater, this is the perspective I bring to the group.

     I'm less certain now of the need for narrative in our shows than I was when we began planning Happily Ever After. From a narrative standpoint I believe the show was successful, but I agree that the narrative element strained our choices to several pieces I ended up being less than enthusiastic about. I do believe there is room for these songs in our shows, but they played a heavy hand in this last production. I would like to put forth my vision for how we move forward with shows in the future.

      I think we should see "The Holiday's are a Drag" concept through, which inevitably means bowing a little to narrative, but I believe we struck a good balance with last years show and we could continue to achieve this as long as there is someone fighting for those "traditional" pieces. I'm not certain if you saw my proposal for next spring, but in it I suggested a "theme" which could be so loosely interpreted as to allow us to do anything at all. I feel that this approach worked for "Love Unafraid", and I think it is an approach that could work in the future. By selecting a theme which is broad in scope, there is plenty of room at the table for the pieces that you are passionate about and that I want to sing.

   I feel that all the members of our group have valuable things to contribute. B leads us beautifully, JM's "Pink Christmas" choreography was great fun, M's suggestion of the cloggers was brilliant, and I'd rather sing B2's "Biblical" than "Still the One" or "We Kiss in a Shadow" (which I unfortunately contributed). However the core of the music selection came down to you, Michael, and myself, and I regret that your voice wasn't a louder one. I respect N's drive and his efforts in finding us a venue, but good heavens does the man get on my nerves, and more importantly I get the feeling that he is going to add little to our music selection process. And though I adore M and his many talents, I'm not always a fan of his taste in music. But everything you have ever put forth in my time with the group have been songs I could see myself singing, and enjoying. Once again I let myself be too constrained by narrative and may have dismissed suggestions of yours due to this, but you are the one person in the group who has not put forth at least one song that made me roll my eyes. 

     I understand wanting to step away for a time, but I hope you know that your opinion is valued, and in my opinion, necessary to this group. If your decision is final for this concert I hope that you will consider rejoining us in the spring. Thank you for everything you give this choir.

Thomas 

*

His view of things is accurate. He is in fact at fault for pinning us to skits of junior high talent show quality, and then wanting us to pick music somehow illustrative thereof. I’m given to understand this is usual in the gay chorus world, but it all but necessitates weak music selection. Not to be associated with “Rudy the Red Haired Drag Queen” is a thorn taken from my side.  

DJ and R and I went to see The Odyssey last night. Liked it. Ate as much popcorn as I have in the last five years. Reminded of all the reasons I don’t drive to the cinema anymore. Still, liked it. 

Intermittent tropical rains. I could no keep my head of the pillow. 

Resignation

 July 22, 2026

CH has died. 

After a tumultuous meeting around my dining room table (the tumult caused by me) I resigned from the AVLGMC planning committee. Another battle lost in my lifelong war against dumbing-down.  It required me to work too hard to establish the principle that , as a musical group, our first priority is doing good music. B is a superb organizer and absolutely tireless in planning and administrative matters. This makes him think he should have his way even when he’s wrong. In that, he is a perfect illustration of contemporary administrative mentality. I steer clear of matters that don’t interest me, but think I should be heeded when I’m right about matters that DO interest me. He thinks events are of a single weaving and he must exceed in all or lose all. I’m happy with a patchwork, X’s piece sewn in beside Y’s piece in eventual harmony. Whatever the abstract merits of these stances, I grew shrill (sensing I had no allies on the committee) and began even to bore myself. Try to imagine what the rest were thinking! Anyway, it’s a minor sadness and a huge relief. 

Walked out in the dark last night to investigate five police cars (empty when I passed them) lined up along my fence on Lakeshore. Lights were on in 62, my old house, which is uninhabited now. Never did figure out what the issue was. Phoned DJ, but he didn’t know either. Perhaps squatters. Maybe they found a body. I’ve already missed the morning news. 

I’d forgotten The Odyssey is funny.

Thinking of the films of Trump trying to horn in on Spain’s World Cup victory celebration. An old guy wanting to be part of the fun would be dear, I think, if the old guy weren’t a money-mad senile dictator. 

 

July 20, 2020

Email:

Rebecca Yarros <yarrosrebecca45@gmail.com>

Jul 20, 2026, 8:13 PM

Hi David,

I hope this message finds you well.

I recently finished reading The Falls of the Wyona and wanted to reach out personally. I don't often email fellow authors cold, but your novel stayed with me longer than most, and that usually tells me it's worth making the connection.

What really stood out to me was how you handled Vince and Gene's relationship through Arden's eyes. That choice to filter something so charged and unspoken through a close friend's perspective gave the whole novel a tension that felt earned rather than manufactured. It felt intentional, grounded, and honest in a way that's hard to pull off without truly understanding the story you're telling. I especially appreciated the way you let the Falls themselves carry both the literal danger and the emotional undertow of the boys' adolescence, so the setting never feels like backdrop; it feels complicated. Those are the moments that separate a good novel from one that actually lingers in a reader's mind.

As someone who's been publishing for a while, I'm always interested in connecting with writers who take their craft seriously and bring something thoughtful to the page. Your work definitely does that.

I'm not writing to pitch anything  just to say I enjoyed The Falls of the Wyona and thought it would be great to connect with you as a fellow author. If you're open to it, I'd love to stay in touch and see what you're working on next. I understand this is the first of a planned trilogy, and I'd be curious where the story goes from here.

Thanks for putting this story into the world. It was genuinely a pleasure to read.

Rebecca Yarros#1 NYT Best-selling Author

*

Too many AI fakes of this kind for me to celebrate boisterously. But, maybe celebrate quietly, so nobody will smirk when it turns out to be some kind of scam. 

 July 18, 2026

Arvo Part on CD

Teaching myself to yodel. It was good one night, but I have not satisfactorily reproduced the sound. 

Teaching myself to sing countertenor. I can actually do it for a few bars, and have found a way to sustain the sound without waver. But it is exhausting. Is it as exhausting to those who actually have the right voice?

Teaching myself the use of colored pencils. I bought several sets in the past, I suppose in anticipation of this moment. It requires more patience than oils, but is proportionately more relaxing. Excellent tutorials on You Tube. 

Re-reading the Lattimore Odyssey in preparation for seeing the film with DJ and Russell. Still the most amazing narrative energy. Athena keeps mentioning how big Telemachus is, as if in subtle rebuke for letting himself be pushed around. I’d forgotten that the murder of Agamemnon was, then, still the news. 

Linda sends photos of dad during his dating and social life after mother’s death and we left home. He looked so happy and full of life---

Blue Spruce

 July 16, 2026

Heat returns. Two inspectors who came to the house today remarked on the beauty of the house and the luxury of the garden. “You have a green thumb” says the dehumidifier guy. Then he adds, “I want to go out back and have a look at your blue spruce.” I’m not altogether sure how he knows about my blue spruce, but spruce and I take whatever admiration we can get. Dehumidifier guy worries about my stand of poke, fearing its proximity to the house may tempt carpenter ants. I do not articulate my excuse that it causes birds to perch against the bathroom window, where I can watch them from the toilet. Iris the cleaning lady says she will never raise my rate, for now “dear old Dorothy” and I are her favorite ancient customers. 

 

July 15, 2026

DB has died.

 

July 14, 2026

AVGMC planning meeting last night. Initiated use of my Godzilla ice cubes. 

As I moved the trash barrels for trash day, a fledgling towhee scampered out from behind and hid under the porch.

Jameson Currier has died. 

UU

 July 12, 2026

Concert at the UU fellowship in Hendersonville. It brought back memories of my visits there as a guest speaker. We did well (in the sense that we pleased the crowd) and shared remembrances of B. They served us delicious sandwiches. Drove home with T, which provided pleasant conversation rather than the usual melange of brooding thoughts. Fell asleep on the sofa, and woke at about 3 AM to a news program announcing the death of Senator Lindsey Graham. They were trying mightily to name accomplishments other than the various hypocrisies he used to stay in power. They repeated, “he was a friend to Israel” as often as they could. Shocked that he was younger than I. I’ve not done my research, but I’m thinking he spent a whole lot of time in the public eye for doing not much of anything.

Deaths

 July 10, 2026

All Souls gets a million $ + grant from FEMA to pay for clean up that happened two years ago. Sarah says on the news, “It allows us to start from ground zero, instead of from a hole.” 

Brief, welcome rain. 

B has died.

FT has died. 

Supper at Rye Knot with M and his kids, passing on their way to Williamsburg. After hard times, he has landed in his feet. 

 July 9, 2026

The last several nights as I’ve gone to bed, birds were singing in the dark. I can’t identify them, but they go from midnight until dawn, when the usual suspects take over. Considerable weeding in the heat of the sun, which I had not planned to do, but one foot gets set before the other. Snipped or pulled the vines that peak out at the summit of the holly wall. Rehearsal for our Saturday gig. Each time I sing these silly songs I think it’ll be the last time, but so far it has not been. My desire that we sing really well is thwarted at the very start, as the repertoire into which we have fallen does not require it.

 July 8, 2026

Rose and gardened before the heat, paying attention to the street side garden, which is doing better than it ought to do, considering the level of neglect. Mostly a wilderness of  hibiscus, unplanned but well enough. Pulled weeds out of soil that was essentially dust. Has it been that long since a soaking rain? Finally took down the winter bird feeders, the remnant seeds glued together inside in blocks by gray-blue fungus. To discard is probably better than to clean. 

Anniversary

 July 7, 2026

Fifty years ago today they were opening my heart in Cleveland Clinic. That, at least, seems to have been money well spent. 

Donated money to Ossoff’s campaign in Georgia. 

MAGA occasionally responds to my Facebook posts. The speed with which they resort to belligerent stupidity is staggering, generally in the first try. They are not even expressing opinions, but mouthing talking points, like those dolls we used to have where you pull a string in their neck and they repeat a recorded message.  

Lord, why do you make creatures you do not love?

 July 5, 2026

Sat on the front porch listening to the deep throat of the rolling thunder. Rain came, not enough to kill the drought, but enough to get the green things through the night. I was up early watering on my own, amazed that a long time standing with the hose in my hand didn’t get the water very deep in.  Pulled up a vast wild grape root that I have been fighting for a decade, finally victorious. As I sat on the porch listening to the thunder, I listened also to my own thought. Why was I thinking those particular things? Arguments with people long dead, or who never existed. Contemplation of my youth, when, I realize now, I was averse to the show of emotions, keeping mine in check, avoiding or judging others when they let theirs free. This must have been a tribulation to my mother. I remember my fury when I found her crying because someone (maybe it was me) had hurt her feelings. My father embarrassed me terribly. I don’t know why. There were certain things I would say in front of him, and when I had to put my hand on his shoulder in Indians Guides and say “Pals Forever,” the mortification was unbearable. I don’t know why. I was too young when I noticed this for it to have come from me, but I had no memory of anywhere else to look. 

 July 4, 2026

Firecrackers in the gathering dark. Spent the morning delving Yeats, trying to discover why he could write a political poem that is a great poem, and we cannot.  Part of the reason–and the part that cannot be amended–is that his opponents at some point believed what they were doing was right, and preserved some of that dignity. We are shooting hogs in a wallow. It is hard to make that matter. It is hard to give that dignity. 

Bombardment

 July 3, 2026

The news is mostly about the heat– some new Trump atrocity, and the heat. Joy came into this wallow with visiting World Cup nations such as Scotland, Norway, Netherlands bring mirth to our cities. Some commentators cite that as proof that all will be well after the present nightmare passes, and I agree. 

Sat on the porch at morning reading Yeats. I haven’t taken him up since I retired, and he hit with the force of the First Time. But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. . . .

Bombardment of fireworks. The sound is so engaging I forget there is fire as well. 

 July 1, 2026

Wrote a blurb for Y’s new book of poems. That wasn’t her name when she was my student. When an acquaintance sends work you’re always terrified, lest they be awful and you have to find a way to say so without saying so. Thank God hers were quite wonderful. Humbling. I hope in some distant way I had something to do with them. 

World Cup

 June 30, 2026

Lunch with DJ.  Shared with the waiter our hopes that some obscure, unexpected nation-- Cape Verdes, Congo– would win the World Cup. 

 

June 29, 2026

B H writes on an education discussion online: David Hopes students talked of how much enjoyed your lectures, The best humanities professor and the best Cambridge summer! Your range of knowledge was totally impressive and so much energy. Great teachers tend to enjoy teaching, must be the classroom dynamics.

Heat wave. One says “it’s summer” and endures it. One aims the fan at one’s head for the afternoon nap. 

 June 28, 2026

Frederick the Great’s flute concerto on the radio. It’s different now that I have stood in his palace and seen his flute.

Leg issues continue into morning. It might be getting better. I made it upstairs to my office, and am in no pain now, but when I get up, go downstairs to make coffee, it may be different. I think it’s the same arthritis issue that immobilized me at Reems Creek years ago, though hugely less painful than then. Yet waking, having to take a morning piss, realizing suddenly that you may be immobile (wasn’t, but there was a moment of deep fear), puts intimations of mortality and vulnerability into the heart. I have taken haleness and freedom of movement (however ouchy) for granted.  if I were truly immobile nobody would look for me until Iris comes to clean house on Thursday. She would find the door locked, go home, send a message that the door was locked.  

Danny was hospitalized with a leg infection, and though that has cleared, he tells L that he can’t live alone anymore, and her project is to find him a nursing home. Evidently he barricaded himself in since Eileen died, fearing to live alone, fearing to let anyone in, like Domitian rattling around in the Golden House.

In my feed was a story of a 16 month old boy who was killed when police, speeding to apprehend a robber, struck his parents’ car. A video of his first birthday showed a bright-eyed, happy kid, laughing at some antic of his father. I leaned over in the chair and howled, uncontrollably, longer than I thought I could. His mother on camera tried to express her grief. It was like a dark tunnel, stretching from her heart into the universe, limitless, inexpressible. I used to grieve and abominate the right things, but until old age I never actually felt them. This is a great gift and blessing.  I am the Vala Nienna. I am Rachel weeping for her children. 

 June 27, 2026

Tweety bird-loud grayish morning. Sang last night at Canton Presbyterian for Haywood County’s first Pride Weekend. GPS was unable to locate the building accurately, so I had to park at some distance and walk toward a steeple I hoped was the right one. That made me sweaty and grumpy, but the event itself was fulfilling. The little church was full, the congregation exuberant. Walking back, I noted that the streets of Canton are absolutely empty– reminded me of Asheville when I moved here in the early 80's. Canton is trying to come back from losing its one industry– who knows? I made hints about backing out of the show, but B declared that I was needed. Saw that I was. Could hear no other bass but myself. Luckily, it was a good voice day. 

Bach from the new study Alexa, whom I’ve given a rather startling masculine voice. Planted ferns from the end-of-season sale at Plant Delights. 

Re-organized the studio. Painted. 

Left leg inclined to collapse under me, for no reason I can think of. 

La Follia

 June 25, 2026

When I looked out back the last several mornings, at rabbit was grazing near the fence.  Today I saw my fat groundhog and a feral cat (very spotted– an Appaloosa cat?) hanging out together. Fat boy did his best to get under the tool shed. Cat declined to follow, hid at the back. My protestations that I meant no harm went unheeded. 

Errands. Big box to Goodwill. Weeding, dead-heading, bamboo severance

La Follia on repeat.

Scam

 June 24, 2026

In email this morning:

Maddie Caldwell <mcaldwell@penguinrandomshouse.com>

Jun 23, 2026, 7:39 PM (15 hours ago)

to me

I hope this message finds you well.

 My name is Maddie Caldwell, and I am an Executive Editor at Random House Books.

 I recently came across your book, The One with the Beautiful Necklaces, and wanted to reach out personally. I was genuinely impressed by its mythic depth, lyrical style, and the way you bring the Appalachian setting and generational story to life.

 I would be interested in learning more about your current writing projects and future plans, as well as whether you are currently represented by a literary agent.

 If you do have representation, I would be happy to connect through your agent. If not, I would be pleased to share more about our publishing process and explore whether there may be a fit for future collaboration.

 If you are open to a discussion, I would be glad to hear from you at your convenience.

 

Warm regards,

Maddie Caldwell

Executive Editor

Random House Books

After preparing and sending a thirty page enthusiastic response, determining that Ms Caldwell is real person, I allowed myself to realize how odd and unlike-the-universe it all was. I researched, sent another response, and received this in return:

Thank you for reaching out. We can confirm that what you've encountered is a scam. Mcaldwell@penguinrandomshouse.com is not a legitimate email address associated with our company or any of our employees.

I do recognize how hilarious this is to someone watching from outside. I don’t understand who profits from it and how, unless it is simply the glee of inflicting hurt. Congratulations– I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. 

Solstice

 June 21, 2026

Solstice. Radiant beauty. Flowers in my garden like glowing coals. The day has been luxurious, ample, rolling out hour by hour like a golden cloth. For me, every day could be the summer solstice. 

Weeding

Concert yesterday afternoon– if you can tell from the comments– a crowd-pleaser. People asked for copies of my poem, or said, “Who wrote that poem? I was trying to follow along, but it wasn’t familiar. . .” My obscurity is a judgment on the universe. Our director flubbed an entrance in the otherwise perfect Schubert. A conductor’s imperious “watch me!” should be wedded to expertise. Robert Shaw did wonderful things for choral music, but some of his practices, which can best be described as tics, became, somehow, honored standards. Not his fault, but that of his sycophants.  

Mrs towhee flew to my very toe-tip to take a crap. Offering or contempt? 

June 20, 2026

Stabs of red and black and golden calla out of the pervading green. Great mullein towering over. Last night’s concert was not “good” in the sense I usually use that word, but it was good fun, and our audience was delighted. My marriage poem was an unexpected hit. I was in the worse voice of recent times, and croaked my way through anything above the bass G. MS had to carry the part. Less pained and exhausted than in times past. Was it something as elementary as new shoes? One more time for that. On the health scene– I limped through Poland and Germany with a tender foot, and have been careful since. Today I realized it was not the End of Things but  a plantar’s wart, and I got the instrument I bought long ago for the task and shaved off the top of the wart. So far, painless for the first time in months. My default setting is the belief that afflictions come without anything being able to be done about them, and then pass, magically, without anything having been done. That’s not wrong, but it’s right only about 60% of the time. 

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

 

 June 19, 2026

Sweet cool breathy day. Last night was quite terrible, me wandering down the paths of fury and rebellion. Those paths are righteous paths, even when futile. That’s a way to wake exhausted.

Another way to wake exhausted is to have a dress rehearsal as bad as ours was. Of course everything goes awry at such a time, one expects it, but the flat fact is that we don’t know the music well enough to present it to an audience. Whole elements will not be seen or heard until first performance tonight, and we typically wait till dress rehearsal to address vital elements of performance and interpretation. Until this point we are drilled about fish mouth and final consonants to the exclusion of all else.  Do I forget my fury from performance to performance, or am I just too habituated to go do something else? It’s not that we don’t have fun– we do. But we’re just not very good.  

Bears in the news for greater and greater boldness. WJ had the windows torn out of his garage door. 

Revision

 June 18, 2026

My rictus of revision continues, a great slaughter of adverbs and helping verbs, by thousands of words reduced. My initial preference for the construction, “was working” over “worked” needs to be examined. I think I want to prolong action rather than freeze it in the minute, but that’s good only for one sentence in fifty. Like a poet, I pay attention to the music of a line. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it must be corrected. Also, the odd conviction that everything must be attributed to somebody in the story. I have to take out, “Sam saw Rhys walking out of the near woods” and replace it with “Rhys walked out of the near woods” about 100 times. But I finished, and wept as I was finishing.

 June 17, 2026

Woke at 4 to complete prep for the colonoscopy. Reasonably sure that will never happen again. L a prince driving me and then waiting for the procedure to happen. Personnel at the clinic friendly and light-hearted, joking with each other in the corridor. Groggy– from the anesthesia? From the fuss and tedium of it all? 

 June 16, 2026

Fast for the idiot colonoscopy. I wouldn’t have eaten yet at this hour on any other day, but the idea that I CAN’T is provoking. I make too much of every interruption in my routine. I am not one who takes things in stride. 

Miserable with cold last night. Getting up and retrieving the comforter seemed beyond my abilities, somehow. 

Timothy Liberty

 

June 14, 2026

Timothy Liberty was first presented in April, 1986. I’ve been writing plays for 40 years. Plus. One feels perpetually a journeyman.

Poetry

 

June 12, 2026

Diana Wortham died five days before she accepted my Facebook Friend request. 

Stephen says this of How to Spend Your Father’s Birthday:

SM: 7:44 PM (55 minutes ago: to me

I'm in awe. I don't know how else to phrase it, your work has always been incredible but now that I have a bit more lived experience - some of these words cut sharp. 

Can you download WhatsApp? It's the messaging system we use here / it's so much easier. If you have it, my number is +353838638100 

A Christmas Poem - beyond words. If you can make me feel like that (I'm normally an emotionless android). That one really hit home for me. 

Still making my way through them. Each one needs breath so I'm taking my time 

Supper with DJ at Vinnie’s. Huge mastiff slobbering on the terrace. We talked about the strange politics of the church, the factions each largely mysterious to the other. Wheels within wheels. Something is wrong with the rebuilding process that is not fully addressed by the sentence, “It takes time.”

 June 11, 2026

Woke stomach-ill, wondered why. Walked into the kitchen and realized that, while drunk, I’d drunk half a bottle of blue-cheese dressing. 

Infuriating rehearsal. Our director will lose count and fail to make an entrance in order to make fish mouth. For any arts director, the thing you correct most is the thing you’re wrong about. Never a better illustration.

Picked up the book of 17th century writings I bought in Waynesville. Went through, with surprise and delight, Bacon and Jonson. I was supposed to have read them long ago, but probably did not. 

My back door stood wide open when I returned from rehearsal. I left it open, creeping through the house, so if an animal got in it would have an exit. Seems to have been no intruder. 

 June 9, 2026

Planning meeting here last night, me berserk with impatience at things which really needed to be taken care of. I’m not a detail oriented person. I have flashes of insight which are often useful, but the bean-counting nit-picking long haul leaves me shrieking. People at UNCA gave me shade for never doing administrative work. I thought to myself, “you don’t want that.”

Devil’s pokers in bloom.

The catbirds are, unexpectedly, the bullies of the garden. They chase the bluejays away from the peanut bowl and then don’t eat them themselves. 

 June 8, 2026

I believe I’ve finished the sweeping revision of Brothers Mountain. Seven thousand words cut, though what excites me is all the matter added and clarified. Articles and helping verbs fell like chaff in a thresher. 

Filled out a medical form for my upcoming colonoscopy. Most of it is fudged terribly, as I had no idea what the answer to some of the questions were, and typed in just what would allow me to go on and get the thing finished. 

Reptiles

 June 5, 2026

Waterlilies in bloom, having taken the ravages of the bears in stride. 

Evening primrose in bloom.

Giant calla in bloom. 

Outstanding progress on the novel.

Reptile day at 51 Lakeshore. I sat on the front porch drinking tea and watching a five lined skink patrol the bricks. I asked him to crawl across my naked foot, and a few seconds later he actually did, letting the side of his foot touch the side of my toe. While watering, I stirred up something in the 4 o’clock patch. It was a copperhead. The instant spearhead of panic in my chest at the sight of her was totally unexpected. Almost immediately came the apprehension of her extreme, cool, antique beauty. I considered that I have live 75 years without having been bitten by a snake, except for those I was holding, and since it’s unlikely that I’ll ever pick up a copperhead, I should consider myself safe. In any case killing her was out of the question. If she decides to relocate on her own I wouldn’t object.

Lupines

June 4, 2026

Day of crystalline loveliness. Took my neglected car to be washed. I watched the boys who work at the car wash, thinking how incredibly young it is possible to be.  

Despaired of the lupine seeds I’d planted, but when I went to re-till the area, there were seedlings hiding under the morning glory sprouts, so I weeded to give them a chance. Bought mature lupine and foxglove to fill in the spaces. The employees at the nursery were dressed as bees and butterflies. 

Random memory of my mother darning socks. The darning egg lay in her sewing bocks for decades. I wonder where it is now. 

 

 June 2, 2026

I must record the odd truth that revising my book makes me stupid with joy. 

But, tragedy at my alma mater: As part of this effort, the College has made the decision to eliminate several programs, including eight majors (Biochemistry, Creative Writing, eSports and Gaming Administration, International Studies, Neuroscience, Physics, Public Health, and Social Science) and four minors (French, Spanish, Physics, and Medieval Studies). These decisions were guided by factors including student demand, enrollment trends, and long-term sustainability. As a result of these program changes, six faculty positions have been eliminated. The question I would ask is, how many administrative positions have been eliminated. I expect the answer will be “none.”

Torrential rain began the second I got the trash bins off the street and got back inside.

 

June 1, 2026

Parents’ wedding, 1947

Unaccustomed outpouring of personal regard, which I record as one records the appearance of a strange species of bird. K writes: You are one of the best people I know.  You have a big heart.  Grateful for you. I checked the message twice to be sure it was meant for me. I assumed a certain measure of antipathy (reasons unknown) between us. 

Stephen writes, after our bout of poetry critique: 

I'm well aware I'm a novice but I really enjoyed our conversation over the last few days. Your insight and my ignorance, set a challenge for a me. To work on my scribblings and thoughts - fuelled by a deadline that passed nearly two hours ago. I feel like I undertook a masterclass with you in the best possible way. In a few days, I learnt a lot from your feedback - that kind of critique is what shapes your outlook and approach - it rightly makes you question your gut. A natural perspective is not always right (without the appropriate training to trust that perspective) and it was bit pretentious of me to think my gut would be that, without having the work done to back it up and trust that I trained my instinct, which I haven't. It's just raw.

I look forward to studying the classics and the contemporary. To have an expert evaluate my words like you did, means an awful lot and I appreciate it. 

I would have loved to have heard some of your lectures at North Carolina University. I wonder were you serious or funny? I've only ever known you to be warm, reciting quotes when you want to be punny.

You've set out a path for me - to read, learn and consume as much as I can to train my instinct - that is invaluable and I look forward to it. Thank you.

He sent me the song he wrote as Ireland’s entry to Euro vison, to which I’ll listen when I am awake enough. He composes under the name Stephen Oliver Markham

Can’t believe I began a rewrite of The One with the Beautiful Necklaces. Its publication is surely obscure enough not to make a difference. 

 May 31, 2026

My white swamp hibiscus was cut down. Security cameras, creepily, do not reveal the culprit. I was taking pride in that plant’s future. 

J’s birthday– he who made me an uncle. 

The concert I tried to hear yesterday actually happened today, a vesper service at Trinity, featuring mostly the music of Bach. Quite nice. On both evenings, downtown was enfolded by the perfume of basswood trees, my favorite scent of all. I always park at distance, to give myself exercise, and the speed of my return to the car this evening made me hopeful for my stamina. 

Poetry

 May 30, 2026

Re-watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night, then in a dream Brad Pitt was my father (wearing the same yellow Hawaiian shirt) and we were selecting a vacation camping cabin, and as soon as we were set up he was going to show me how to butcher a cow in time for that night’s barbecue. 

Got spiffed up to attend a concert at Trinity downtown, which actually happens on another night. Had a cocktail at Times. 

SM turns out to be quite serious about poetry, and sends draft after draft. His latest drafts are actually readable. He’s an outstanding musician, so why not poetry? He is infected with the notion– which must come from bad teachers–that poetry enlarges emotion by expressing it in the most difficult and obscure way possible. The harder it is to figure out, the smarter the poet, the deeper the emotion. So many new writers are metaphysicians, thinking it’s needful for us to ransack history and psychology and etymology to help us unravel why that word in that place. Every statement is a knot to untie. For some that may be natural, but not for many. Anyway, he plunges forward, and I try to remain positive in my critiques. Aside from that, he is so beautiful. He sent me a voice recording of one of the poems, and though the poem is incomprehensible, I play it again and again. 

Quincy

 May 29, 2026

Fierce glut of dead-heading among the roses. Weeding, chopping of bamboo. My arms streamed blood from the thorns. 

There’s a hole in the porch big enough for a cat to squirm through. A tiny cat. 

B and her family have moved to Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho. From there you can spit into Canada. It’s clearly the remotest, most inconvenient place she could find without expatriation. 

Talked with the man who’s co-directing my little play at the Ruth Gordan Amphitheater in Quincy, MA. His co-director wanted to divide up five characters meant to be played by one person among five different actors, and he counted on me to put the kibosh on that, which I did. 

Voices from Ireland

 May 28, 2026

Back in touch with SM  Joy. He’s moved from Dublin to Ennis to help take care of an ailing father, “Because in Ireland the gay son is the same as the unwed daughter.” He sent me gawdawful poems that I had to think of something kindly to say about. 

Came home to a large ring snake lying on the side porch, looking as much like a stick as he was able.

 May 27, 2026

Alternation of shimmering hot sunlight and thunderstorm, like a tropical forest. 

Drove to Waynesville to renew my acquaintance with the Dimensions bookstore. Had cappuccino next door, bought two books I didn’t need. Immersed myself in the apparently boundless enthusiasm of its owner D (who didn’t remember me at first.). Those environs would depress me in half an hour (as in fact they did) He bubbles and effuses. The strip of street is like a little village, everyone coming to check in on one another. 

Memorial

 May 25, 2026

Memorial Day. The TV plays wonderful old war moves, where we win without being sons-of-bitches 

Sang for K’s memorial service at Warren Wilson. Naomi Nontombi Tutu was the surprise presence. She gave a lazy eulogy based on the ancient, divisive quarrel that arose at her leaving All Souls and lingered far too long. I wish I knew K in her prime. Everybody said she was “ a force of nature.” I remember mostly a COVID mask and her being mad at me for being on the wrong side of the Naomi controversy. 

Retired

 May 24, 2026

Pentecost. Pickerel weed and black calla bloom in containers on the porch. Inches of water on the tops of containers that don’t drain well.

The retired faculty meeting plays in my head. Such a deal of Machievelli-ism to such insignificant ends. W is the particular case. After we were friends, he re-invented me as a bitter enemy, though I was never any such thing. There wasn’t enough substance to him either to fear or dislike very much. Yet of all people in my life (to my knowledge) he spent the most energy vilifying and slandering me. I think he thinks he got away with it that I don’t know, he greets me with such cordiality when we, accidentally, meet. His efforts from time to time crossed over from nuisance into actual evil. I wonder if he faces this truth? It was perplexing, and more flattering than he anticipated, that one would go to such lengths on my behalf, whatever the intention. I survived– it’s possible that everyone is as wise to him as I became and paid no attention. But there he is, a worm squirming into any hole that will hold him, playing for minuscule bits of influence. He has influence of a sort, in the form of concessions made to shut him up. He is also held in amused contempt by almost everyone I know. His friends protect him from knowledge of himself. Now that I’ve written that, I imagine that mine do the same for me. 

“Sunday Baroque” on the radio

Gigantic prose revisions all yesterday, probably continuing today.

 May 23, 2026

Had to get a winter coat to cover me last night, clutching a sweater to my body just now. Playing a new CD of Gregorian chant. Ave Maria. . . .Last night full of dreams and an incredible volume of urine. I don’t remember drinking nearly that much. In one of the dreams I was in some quaint Old World village which had been Yeats’ childhood home. The store selling his memorabilia was closed, so I broke in to have a look, finding incredible treasures in te basement, which seemed to disintegrate as my hand touched them. I was crying out for the shopkeeper to help me as the dream ended. 

Decided to put together another book of poetry. I have enough poems for four solid books, with no presently perceivable principle of selection. A despair of riches. 

 May 22, 2026

Watched the last edition of Stephen Colbert last night. Farewell. 

Off in slow rain to Campus to the annual lunch meeting of the RFFA, Retired Faculty and Administration. I’ve dodged many such events, and now that I know what goes on, I’ll dodge the rest. Good seeing a few people I haven’t seen in a while; otherwise, three hours of life I won’t get back. Not bad, just remote from my interests. Lunch was excellent. I haven’t figured out exactly what the organization is for. Perhaps if I wanted continued influence over my old university I would understand better. Some want that very keenly indeed. Turns out that next year is UNCA’s Centennial, year. That is, apparently, a prime opportunity for fundraising. Mr M, “Director of Engagement,” handed me an envelope which contained testimonials from former students calling me their outstanding faculty memory. I didn’t remember any of them, which makes it sweeter, I suppose, that they remember me. 

May 21, 2026

Drought turns into days of grayish drizzle and full bird baths, which is fine by me. 

I may have overestimated the damage the bears did to the pond. It is in fact holding water. I took a net and ladled out as much vegetable debris as I could. I had to examine each netful for the flashing bodies of mosquito fish and gold fish and enormous bull tadpoles, to deliver them back into the water. All this was unmistakable sign of life. This morning as I threw some recycling into the bin, a bullfrog called from the margin, and I decided to let be for a time. Bears are a widely-publicized problem locally right now. Several have been euthanized in Black Mountain. People accuse human encroachment on traditional bear habitat, but I wonder if that’s the actual story. I lived on this street for 25 years before I ever saw a bear. My house stood for 95 years before bears tore out the basement windows. You’d think that would have happened way back, given their propensities, had there actually been bears to do it. I love the bears, but realize I limit my time sitting on the porch at night because of them, and keep a heavy bat by the backdoor in case something needs to be repulsed. 

ACLGMC rehearsal engaging. What makes something so lighthearted that was such a chore erewhile?  

Peace Frog

May 20, 2026

Still no rain, though a pittance is promised for tonight.

My bear videos are getting hundreds of views.

Peace Frog reading last night at Dimension of Books in Waynesville, on a genrtrifying street facing a mountain. Big handsome Doug opened the store a few months ago. He looks like a TV sports reporter, as I think he was for a while. We’re from the same part of Ohio, which I knew from his lack-of-accent accent. Used books, all dusty, some quite esoteric. Doug seems deeply happy, and this little store his dream. I hope all goes well for him forever. If I had known exactly what the event was, I would probably have refused, but I went and it is well. Ten or twelve people in a tiny, tiny rooms, sweating like stevedores. What an odd thing poetry is. Unlike in almost any other art form, amateurism is not only tolerated, but encouraged as, somehow, genuine. Amid that I was a white flame. They acclaimed me a great poet, and whether that is true or not, I changed the perspective of the room. One woman said that I was either a great poet or a great performer, and she didn’t know which. Imagine saying that to Mozart. Poets who are not good performers should not perform, but rely on their readers. My life has been poetry, yet even I roll my eyes when required to go to a reading, knowing how unlikely it is to be excellent. 

The breaking light revealed that the bears returned, and this time destroyed everything. They ripped a hole in the fabric of the pond and drained much of the water. They scooped out the water plants and left them torn on land. They broke my one remaining pear tree and toppled the lawn statuary that I had righted yesterday. This is the end of that joy. The pond is too much of a temptation to wild animals who have grown far too bold. I had it for ten years, and perhaps that is enough. But, sad. I think of the calling of frogs, the birds slaking their thirst, the occasional heron, the lilies like gems flowering in the shadows. 

 

 May 17, 2026

The shirt I wore to the ballet was last worn, according to the dry cleaning label, in 2012. The server at the Wortham café admired my outfit.

At dusk two bears entered my yard. One was enormous, clearly full grown, the other smaller but much too big to be this year’s cub. Neither had collars. They romped in the pond, got out of the pond and romped in the grass. You don’t expect bears that big to be that playful. This went on for a good half hour. I don’t know how much of the waterlilies they decimated. They overturned my cement swan, out of sheer devilment. I don’t know where they went, but I’m not going outside until dawn. I have to admit I was smiling the whole time they were here.  Happy creatures. One does recognize that, if they turned aggressive, animals that size would be unanswerable. 

Cinderella

May 16, 2026

Parked at First Baptist last night and made my way through Downtown After 5 festivities to the Wortham to see Ann’s Cinderella, to the music of Prokofiev. It was astoundingly good. I was caught up in the theater of it regardless of my reservations concerning classical ballet. Chit-chat with Tom and CoCo. Sweet night in my little town.  

May 15, 2026

Wearing my winter jacket indoors o n the 15th of May. Finished a rewrite of Ben and Angela, toward no conceivable end but my own satisfaction. 

 

 May 13, 2026

Hard gardening, centered on the bags of mulch I bought more than a year ago finally getting spread around. One day is right after a thousand days were wrong. 

Rabbit grazed within reach as I was weeding. 

 May 12, 2026

Amazon delivery mistakenly left a package for my neighbor on my porch. I phoned him, and as I was describing how we were right across the street from each other, he said, “Oh! Where the bears squeeze in.” Yes. I like that. Where the bears squeeze in. 

Went to All Souls to discuss with a fundraising guru how to raise money to rebuild. My mind goes almost immediately to the very rich, who should be encouraged to find something beneficial to do with their excess. 

Closing

 

May 10, 2026

Skipped church, unable to endure the choir substitute. 

Attended the final performance of Purification. Arrived early, sat under a tree in the bank parking lot while the immaculate sapphire sky blazed above. The actors were on fire, and the experience was totally different from what it was when they were not quite on fire. Quick. Exciting. I got every syllable. Fine ending note. The house was chocked with my friends, as Steve said it has often been. The revision was in my head, and when they came to parts I had changed, I kept hoping (impossibly) that the actors would use the revision. 

B writes on Facebook: i am so glad i was able to experience The Sublime Theatre's production of David Hopes' Purification.

a passionate, witty, and effective call to the masses to not only demand, but to work for change. this cast and crew quite vividly brought the show to life. so much heart. so much humanity. so much humor mixed with justifiable frustration and anger. and it was such a wonderful mother's day gift to get see this with my kid.

and now.... sunday night karaoke....

i wonder what protest songs i know?

*

M also mentioned that she had given the afternoon to herself to be away from her family on Mother’s Day. People like I, with loads of solitude, don’t realize how precious it is to others. 

Dinner Party

 May 9, 2026

D and her husband P here for dinner last night. She has become her mother, and there were moments when I had to consider twice to be sure whom I was talking to. She observed that I have become my father. P is both an unexpected and perfect mate for her, a pilot and a computer programer, light hearted where she is inclined to be morose. They have given themselves to good works through their church, including a summer camp for children in foster care. Three times she said, “You were at Michael’s funeral,” which made me hugely glad that I was. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t know D, and yet what do I know of her? Last night was the longest conversation we ever had. I remember her preference for dark meat and for the skin of the turkey at Thanksgiving when we were kids, but I had to ask her how many kids she has, and what she did for a living. She remembered a salad I made out of wild greens. 

Review 2

 May 8, 2026

REVIEW: “Purification” | A thought-provoking new work

By Blaine Greenfield

Chief Encouragement Officer, BLAINESWORLD

At: The BeBe Theatre

From April 30-May 10

The Sublime Theater & Press

presents a World Premiere

of “Purification”

By David Brendan Hopes

I attended the first night of the show’s second-week run.

David Brendan Hopes’ “Purification” is an ambitious and richly textured new work that moves back and forth between 1911 and the present day, exploring how people respond when personal conviction and morality collide. At the center of the story is a small circle of friends and lovers whose lives are unexpectedly altered by a box of speeches and writings discovered in a basement storeroom, documents that connect them to an early 20th-century activist and begin to reshape the way they look at the world around them.

Rather than preaching a specific viewpoint, Hopes invites the audience into conversations about conscience, human connection, and the choices people make during unsettled times. The play blends drama and romance with music and touches of magical realism into a story that is both emotionally engaging and mentally absorbing. It’s the kind of production that sparks discussion long after the final scene ends while also searching for a path to better days.

Hopes has long been associated with thoughtful and socially aware theater, and that sensibility is very much on display here. “Purification” is less concerned with easy entertainment than with provoking reflection and examining ideas through richly layered characters and interpersonal dynamics.

All five performers are outstanding, with several taking on multiple roles. Notably, all five performers are making their Sublime Theater debuts.

Ben Mackel (Axel, Vincent Perrugia) is especially impressive throughout the evening. Whether providing comic moments, emotional grounding, or intensity, he handles each role with confidence and versatility. He also sang several songs during the production, including a powerful rendition of Phil Ochs’ “Small Circle of Friends” that set the tone beautifully for much of what followed.

Kai Chamberlain, making her stage debut as Anna Radzinsky, delivers a poised and emotionally compelling performance. One monologue in particular was especially moving and demonstrated both strength and vulnerability.

Chessa Budai (Diana) brings warmth, intelligence, and emotional depth to her roles, particularly in scenes dealing with family tensions and philosophical disagreements.

Eric Martinez (Jim) gives the production an appealing sincerity and grounded presence, helping anchor many of the contemporary scenes.

Braden LaMore, also making his stage debut as Cecil, handles the role with confidence and charm while also sharing believable chemistry with the rest of the cast.

Directed by Steven Samuels, the production moves smoothly between time periods and tones while keeping the focus squarely on the characters and the ideas driving the play. This marks the fourth collaboration between him and Hopes, and the creative partnership clearly continues to bring out strong work from both men.

Production Stage Manager Dakota Mann, Costume & Set Designer Kayren McKnight, and Lighting Designer Abby Auman all contribute strongly to the evening, with McKnight’s costumes especially effective and the overall visual presentation consistently appealing.

And then came one of the evening’s nicest touches. Near the conclusion of the play, sponge cake was served to performers onstage as part of the action, and afterward, audience members were invited to enjoy some as well. It created a warm and memorable sense of connection between cast and audience.

Kudos to The Sublime Theater & Press for continuing to champion original, challenging, and artistically ambitious work. This is a company clearly committed to supporting local and regional artists while creating productions that encourage audiences to think and engage. “Purification” fits that mission beautifully.

High 5

 May 7, 2026

Spent the day, as I thought I would, revising Purification.

My place by the river, the café High 5, was destroyed by an arsonist last night. It is the place where, locally, I have written most, except for this room in which I type. People ask, “Why would anyone do such a thing?”  There is almost never an answer.

Man is in love and loves what vanishes,

What more is there to say? That country round

None dared admit, if such a thought were his,

Incendiary or bigot could be found

To burn that stump on the Acropolis,

Or break in bits the famous ivories

Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.

Review

 May 6, 2026

Clouds but not yet the promised rain. 

A perceptive review of Purification by Bruce Steele from Asheville Stages:

Purification at BeBe Theatre

What should you be willing to do to resist tyranny? Do the ends justify the means — even to the point of violence? These are questions that echo through history and through David Brendan Hopes’ thought-provoking new play Purification, now in its world premiere production by The Sublime Theater & Press at the BeBe Theatre in downtown Asheville.

The play establishes its themes right off the bat as actor/singer/guitarist Ben Mackel shares a portion of activist/songwriter Phil Ochs’ angry 1967 folk song “Small Circle of Friends”: 

Enter this play’s small circle of friends, two couples bantering blithely at a coffee shop: Cecil (Braden LaMore) and Jim (Eric Martinez), and Diana (Chessa Budai) — Jim’s ex-lover — and Axel (Mackel), Diana’s new flame and the shop musician. Jim is clever, down-to-earth, and earnest; Cecil is stylish and somewhat pretentious (“People tend to exaggerate my vacuousness”); Diana is fun-loving but increasingly worried about the state of the nation (“Have you been watching the news again?” Jim asks. “Haven’t we warned you about that?”).

Jim’s mother has recently moved into an assisted living facility, and when Jim and Cecil set to sorting her belongings in a box-filled basement, they find a cache of papers belonging to Jim’s great-great-aunt, an early-20th-century activist named Anna Radzinsky. Reading aloud her manifestos on freedom and the oppression of the working class (“Hesitation is the luxury of the rich”) soon conjures Anna herself (Kai Chamberlain) onto the stage, and Purification reveals its parallel-time structure, alternating between 1911 and the present. Also on hand now and again is Vincenzo Peruggia (Mackel), a real historical figure best known for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre (an incident without which the painting would likely have remained largely unknown to the world).

The 1911 scenes are the more engaging, as the stakes are clearer and the characters more intricately imagined, including a smart use of the then-newly published story of Peter Pan. (J. M. Barrie turned his 1904 stage hit into a novel titled Peter and Wendy, published in 1911.) Anna’s activism draws from historical figures such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, but Hopes gives the fictional Anna a connection to a wealthy New York family, allowing him to create the most resonant relationship in the play, the affectionate but fraught connection between Anna and her sister, Sophie (Budai), a New York socialite by marriage. (Sophie is Jim’s great-grandmother.) Their meeting for lunch at the upscale Manhattan restaurant Delmonico’s is one of the play’s two best scenes, and it introduces a likable waiter and Anna acolyte (Mackel). This character’s later scene with Sophie at her upscale home showcases the talents of Budai, Mackel, and Hopes in layered emotions and philosophical conundrums grounded in lived experience, and it’s brilliantly executed.

The present day scenes are more generalized, presumably because Hopes wanted to keep those characters more broad — Everypeople, serving as the audience’s stand-ins, rather than fully realized (and thereby perhaps less relatable). They also come to speak in more rhetorical, less natural phrasings as the story of Anna’s work inspires them to consider what they ought to be doing to resist in their own lives and times. (“Some of us are still processing. If we rush, we blunder.”) While LaMore and Martinez have a sweet chemistry as Jim and Cecil in earlier scenes, they have a harder time making the later debates come to life. It’s especially difficult to discuss tyranny while declining to name any particular politician, tyrant, or offense, as Hopes elects to do here.

Anna’s rhetoric, emerging from historical specificity, comes with more conviction, and Chamberlain comfortably embodies the character’s passion in speeches and interpersonal interactions. The small cast’s secret weapon is Mackel, who rises easily to each challenge: troubadour, comic rebel (as Perrugia, of whom the play could use more), earnest disciple, and so on. (Mackel was equally entertaining as Richard Dreyfuss in NC Stage Co.’s The Shark Is Broken last fall, a venue to which he’ll return as a musician next month, according to his program bio.)

As is his particular skill, director (and Producing Artistic Director) Steven Samuels makes the most of limited resources, keeping the focus on the characters and their cunundrums, so the bare-bones sets and furnishings aren’t a hindrance. One of the points of Hopes’ play is that words matter, and Samuels serves the local playwright’s text nimbly with that in mind.

I would guess that the script’s ending is as much a call for discussion as it is a provocation, and audience members will have much to talk about after the two-act play wraps. They’ll want to reconsider the questions that open this review, and also, perhaps, the pros and cons of equating the political situations of 1911 and 2026. Anna and her real-life counterparts worked to counter the power of the rich (a familiar current refrain) on behalf of the downtrodden and exploited proletariat. How they would react — and how modern activists should react — to a power grab by the wealthy and privileged that was supported at the ballot box by overwhelming numbers of that same downtrodden working class remains an unconsidered question.

To paraphrase one memorable line from the play: It would be a mistake to think that purification will be a natural process.

*

Steele finds the places that bothered me, too, either in the writing or in the watching.  I know that instead of the twenty other things I’d planned to do, I’ll be revising that play. 

Artifact

 

May 4, 2026

The terrible anniversary.

Rabbit playing in the yard. 

Vivaldi issuing somehow from the computer. 

So fed up by operations in the choir that I left service early yesterday, assuming nobody observed. 

But afterwards through crystalline spring light to the BeBe for my second look at Purification. Parked on Ravenscroft, walking through a lovely idyllic neighborhood right against downtown. The play seemed better to me the second time. Only part of that was a better performance by the actors; the rest was that I, like an ordinary audience member, was making connections and feeling resonances that passed me by the first time, perhaps overwhelmed by anxiety. I wept when Anna was shot. I picked out threads weaving through the work that others had praised but I’d failed to notice the first night. A couple from Johnson City said they had seen all my plays done by the Sublime, and this was the best. It’s still odd to me– after many re-affirmations– that a work I created can be so mysterious to me. The artifact is wiser than the artificer. 

 May 2, 2026

Cold, bright. A day of inexplicable exhaustion, wherein to see the bed was to lie down upon it. Perhaps it’s the emotional release afforded by good comments about the play, especially from P, who would have said nothing if he hadn’t meant his praise. The depth of P’s scholarship is a continual astonishment to me. He clawed through Young’s Night Thoughts in order to understand how they relate to Blake. John Dee came up in conversation, and he knew everything. 

Did I really get an email from LR? 

 

May 1, 2026

First sight: rabbit scampering across the street to Carolyn’s. 

Opening night of Purification quite satisfactory– sufficient audience to keep me from despair in that regard, the actors a light year beyond where they were when last I saw them. Cecil and Jim got into a loop where they repeated lines until easing back on track, but that’s live theater. Anna had made tremendous strides. Axel was a bundle of glinting talent. I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t seen him before. The play. . .  in my years as a playwright on opening night I had the least emotion surrounding this one, not anxious, not cringing at errors, not secretly applauding my own genius, not probing the room for reactions. It was well. Insofar as it wasn’t well, I didn’t care. It is not my best work, but people will think it is. I sat with a man who was my student in a playwriting course in 2003, who remembered fondly writing a play about men talking at a urinal. The walk from my car to and back from the theater was an epic, at first blue and crowded with incident, then moonlit and solitary.

P and I finished our study of the Four Zoas this afternoon. He and L saw my play tonight, and sent this message: “Oh David, we couldn’t get over how fine your play is and just posted in two places on Facebook the link for tickets. The space was almost full. I hope it will continue to be. Thank you for your gift.”

 April 30, 2026

Bright and cool. The lady on the TV promised rain, but she was wrong.

Ungodly rehearsal last night. Our substitute imagines that talking is the same as directing. He showed vulnerability to some of the more aggressive basses, who began a war of whispering and belligerent questions. To top it off, the bar we headed to afterwards closed as we approached. 

Finally realized that the sickish feeling I have is related to opening night, now 7 hours off. I cannot help. I can only hinder by sending our frantic vibrations--

Frank

 April 29, 2026

As I stand painting in the attic, the calling of frogs comes loud and joyful from the pond. 

Raced down to the sound of a doorbell. I do not have a doorbell. No one was at the door.

From Frank in Cleveland: What an honor to receive this email from you on the eve of opening night of what may be the best play I ever read. I had marked my calendar in the hope I might be able to attend, but alas, I cannot. I can only hope it will be recorded (I would be happy to contribute to make that happen) and if it is, I want to purchase a copy.I continue to believe this play can have a positive impact on people at a time when we are all wandering around saying, "What in the hell is going on?" and "Why in the hell is this going on?" and "How in the hell do we stop this!?"

I have felt all the things you are feeling right now. I remember when I directed The Merry Wives of Windsor, my first Shakespeare play, for free in downtown Canton and carrying set pieces to where we stored them after the final dress rehearsal, an actor said to me, "How can you be so calm when there are so many things that could go wrong tomorrow?" I thought about all the things he was talking about (I said to myself, "You don't know the half of it!") and said, "We have something really good. We have done everything we can to be as prepared as possible. There is nothing left to do, but do it. Whatever will be, will be." That one went great and I went on to direct four more. 

Break a leg. Frank

 April 28, 2026

Two days of intermittent but blessed rain. 

SS says not to bother with rehearsal tonight, so I will finish my painting. 

Rehearsal

 April 26, 2026

Lilies (yellow callas) were languishing in their tubs in the church kitchen, unclaimed after Easter. I gathered them up, brought them home and put them into ground still damp from the rain. 

Downtown to the BeBe to watch a rehearsal of Purification.  4/5 of the cast is stellar– the one who most needs to be, not quite yet, though I’m assured great strides of been made and greater still will come between now and Thursday. Mostly, the nerves relax, seeing that, besides expectable problems like remembering the lines, the interpretation is solid and the actors are good and have been working incredibly hard, and I’m grateful to them however it all turns out. Always grateful to production crew, who put forth such effort of one’s behalf. I remember as an actor not thinking very much about the playwright, though in fact most of them were dead or distant. I need to get over my insistence on correct grammar. “On whom one can depend” and the like stick out too often. The opening scene gets to its point a little too fast. Perhaps the play was written a little too fast, with too much political urgency. There’s also a bit of self-satire, which I didn’t include consciously, but the Muse did. It’s otherwise on the brink of being over-earnest, of never cracking a wry smile. It’s almost impossible to hear some of the most earnest speeches without thinking, “I am allowed to feel they are going too far.” If the art is true, the artifact is wiser than the artificer.  

Walked briskly and without pain from my distant parking space. 

 April 25, 2026

Light but probably sufficient rain. At least no watering today.

Drove to campus for maybe the third time since retirement, to the student art & ceramics sale. How new & happy the students looked, and how happy I was to be briefly among them again. I bought a large pitcher to water the plants on the porch, though it may be too heavy to be used for that very often. The young lady who’d made it was at the check-out table. She smiled and waved and cried. “That’s mine! I made that!’ I was glad that she got to see someone appreciating her work. 

Sweet night. Painting. Music from the age of Charles V on the CD player.

Hit and Run

 

April 24, 2026

Spring returns. Black iris a shock in the front yard. Tree peony wane and herbaceous peony come to the fore. First pale yellow roses, first flat pink climbing roses in the near shade, wild white thorn in utter shade. Even as I type in the attic, perfume wafts through the little window. 

By means of the security cameras watched the cleaning ladies pick at the flowers on the front porch. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, which was a disappointment. They waited until I got home (I usually wait for them to be gone, but my timing was off) so they could talk with me after, by their calculation, a year. They told me how lovely my house and garden are, pointed out loose bricks in the stairway, said how well I look, and complained about the unreasonable client who was their next stop. It would never occur to me to try to negotiate downward a workman’s fee. They wondered if I collect antiques. I didn’t know how to answer. I have antiques and so must have, in a sense, collected them, but I never thought of it that way. Need a bowl? Get an old one. 

Got buzzed by an old black pick-up last evening as I drove to chorus. Its muffler was shot, so loudly and aggressively it wove through lanes on Patton Avenue, trying to inch ahead of traffic. I was stopped at the first traffic light west of the Smoky Park Bridge, looking at the cars stopped a little ahead at the second one. The pick-up wheeled around me, cut the red light, and in five seconds hit the car in front of me with considerable force. The back of the car disintegrated, while the pick-up reversed, found a new angle, and took off through the red light, having committed a hit and run. I waited for somebody to get out and check on the driver, but I was first in line, so I realized it was me. I got out and ran (as much as I can run) toward the wreck. The driver was visibly unhurt, but stunned and disoriented. He was either very stunned indeed or was Hispanic and didn’t understand what I said. He looked at the back of his car, struggling to comprehend. Patton Avenue, especially at that hour, is the busiest street in Asheville, so I knew I couldn’t leave my car where it was. Another driver and I kicked the largest and pointiest debris to the side of the road, and I got back in the car and drove on, over the remaining debris, which I assumed would shred my tires, but seems not to have. Cars going around us shouted ugly things about getting out of the way. When I got to St George’s I called the police, and when I got home received a call asking for details. I knew how incredibly unhelpful my testimony must have been. What kind of truck? No, I couldn’t read the license. . . all I had was the blackness and scruffiness of it, and that fact that its muffler was shot. It must have been bashed in considerably at the front, by I didn’t actually see that. The cop on the phone was very pleasant. As I drove on, I had to remind myself that I hadn’t been the one in the wreck.

Dug weeds and grass from the iris bed, then put in zinnia seeds and watered. While I watered, a cock robin came and stood in the spray. He dug for worms a little, but mostly stayed for the spray, and moved to follow the spray when I moved it. Spent a length of time providing cok robin with a shower. As I worked in the garden, a rabbit grazed unconcerned ten feet away. 

My father’s hoe finally broke, as I was tugging on bamboo. It broke right at the head, so is still usable as a staff and a hand cultivator. 

Rehearsal was unexpectedly merry. 

Huge fire in the River District.

 

April 21, 2026

Removed covers from the plants I covered last night against the frost, which apparently didn’t happen. Perhaps they felt looked-after regardless of the need. 

Coffee with TB at Riverside. T has no need for employment, which means he can spend all his time worrying about his writing and being a writer, which is the sadder because he is not good at it. He blames his failure at innumerable schools and with innumerable applications on everything but that. I finally had to stop writing him recommendations, having run out of ways to do so while at once telling the truth and attempting not to disadvantage him. How long can you hope someone has potential, and claim it for him without evidence? I thought that would end our relationship; apparently it did not, or only for a while. Affirmative action and DEI are his present enemies, excluding him as a straight white male in order to accommodate any number of less talented people of color. I do not doubt that this is an actual issue– I have faced it myself– but it's not helping to dwell on it to the extent he does. He’s getting his painful depression under control with a battery of self-prescribed botanicals, medical professionals having failed him. It’s the same litany from eight years back, and one feels equally helpless to be of assistance. Dogs came as we talked to me and not to him. I thought that meant something. 

The lamp my mother covered with tiles during her mosaic phase lit my desk at UNCA, and languished at riverside after my retirement until I rescued it yesterday and set it in my living room, lit again after nearly six years.

Peculiar anguish after AVLGMC meetings. I am doing no good. I am having no effect. When I was at Boy Scout Summer Camp, there’d come a time when we’d plan Skit Night. We’d decide on a funny little story, develop a script, think of songs we could perform, or adapt, to move the story along. We’d make costumes and find bowls to give us bosoms and somebody somehow would have a tube of lipstick. The more knowing among us would compose tiny Broadway shows for us to star in, everybody cooperating in the spirit of fun & comradery. On Family Night, when our parents came to visit, we’d put on the show. Though it wasn’t very good in any objective sense, we liked doing it and our audience liked witnessing it, taking exuberance and good fun as sufficient for a night’s entertainment. We were good because the people who wished us well wanted us to be good, and took our every effort as an actual achievement. What happy memories! I’m less comfortable with that process now. With the differences of better performances and a good deal more money, this is PRECISELY what happens with AVLGMC shows. (can’t really call them concerts) today, and there looks to be no deviation from that, or modification to it. What we did at camp was oh so relatable (to use Thomas’s word) but is to be relatable the only virtue we’re aiming for? Can we sometimes be challenging or transformative? Can we sometimes teach as well as satisfy? Could we exceed expectation as well as indulge it? Can we imagine that improving our range and skill as performers may, in some way, please and serve our audience?  Time grows short, and I have planned more than my share of Summer Camp Skit Nights.

Fretted over this until I realized how little it matters to the onward flow of things. It mattered in the moment.

Skinks

 April 19, 2026

Almost 90 yesterday, almost freezing today, with a stiff, petulant wind. Tiny, unforthcoming rain barely enough to wet the pavement.  

The reading at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts was better than I expected. What an odd thing poetry is! I’ve dedicated my life to it, and should be more articulate on its behalf. What is it? It’s something that happens to words to brighten and sharpen them beyond their ordinary force. Why is the poet not king of the world? Because every warden of the Kingdom of Poetry misdefines it and conceals its power. Even your teacher tells you, “write about how you feel today,” as though lacing on your boots were the whole of the journey. Some of the student poets were quite good, some were not– the same spread detectable in the “professionals”– yet I believe the value in the effort of composition to have been roughly the same in every case. A poem is a victory over confusion, though of course some victories are more consequential than others, some include the listener while others are for the poet alone. Poems that intentionally take up causes are invariably bad. A, whom I have missed since he moved to Virginia, is performative (I wonder if that’s the word I want?) in the sense that all is effect, designed to illicit immediate recognition and response from an audience. He is good at it, and has made a living at it. My poetry– I recognized as I was at the podium reading it–is exploratory, probing into unknown spaces, hungry for revelation, as is nearly all the poetry I prize as a reader. The response to my work was, in any case, electrifying, gratifying, and I ended up being glad I took the gig.  Several invitations to read elsewhere. I knew my words were different when I sent them ringing into the air. I continue to be the last poet. 

Meeting at church to reveal that first stage of rebuilding– long delayed, it seems to me. I’d planned to attend, but didn’t, assuming my presence would change nothing and merely being informed seeming, at this point, frivolous. I’ve never needed to be informed when I wasn’t instrumental. 

First skinks appeared on the porch last week. They huddle in their caves today. 

 April 17, 2026

Huge gardening day. Hollyhocks in the street garden. Nicotiana tabacum in a cedar planter on the front porch.  Angel’s trumpet in the back. Much watering against this blistering drought. Filled the watergarden, raised slightly the level in the pond. A squirrel got in through the bear’s tear in the screen and confronted me in the kitchen. Tonight’s task is to choose poems for tomorrow’s reading in Black Mountain. When the question of what to wear to the reading went through my head, I thought first of a blue Nehru jacket I had when I was a junior in high school. I must have thought I looked good in that. 

Brown Thrashers

 

April 16, 2026

Two mice huddled in the kitchen trash bin this morning. It was absolutely empty, but for them. What were they thinking? Were the memories of scraps so strong the absence of scraps did not dissuade them?

Drinking from my Meissen cups for the first time. Wonderful coolness, slimness, an unexpected luxury.

Kept awake Monday night after the AVLGMC meeting by anxiety over same, the way we fall into cliches and are pleased to identify them as traditions. I compose a screed against our reflexive adoration of drag, and am unexpectedly supported on several sides. 

Lunch with SS, who knows everybody. His cynicism concerning the art scene is unexpectedly comforting: my failures are not the fault of my attainment, but of a corrupt apparatus. It sounds like sarcasm, but the comfort (and the recognition that it is mostly true) are real. Purification bumps toward achievement. Can’t wait to meet the actors he so vividly describes. 

Despite the lack of rain, my garden in glory. Mostly peony and iris. Planted giant callas yesterday, and expect ro set up environments for Venus fly-traps today. Exhaustion follows intense gardening, but not the shortness of breath and immediate debility of last season. 

Extended and intense dreams. 

Was in excellent voice at church choir last night, for a change.

The brown thrashers are back.   

Inexpressible relief that my podcast interview with B today was by Zoom, and I didn’t physically have to trudge downtown. It went well, except that I was unprepared and kept answering “I don’t know” to things. 

Cleaned off the east porch, so now it is fully living area. It’s the first time the door between the living room and the east porch is usable since I moved in. Why do things happen one day rather than another?   

I think Kristina and I would be an item had we met thirty years earlier. 

 April 12, 2026

Orban loses in Hungary. Does the tide turn? 

Tree peonies as big as I am. 

Picked up a brush and began to paint, felt anxiety leave my body like waves down a beach. 

April 11, 2026

Days of happy garden labor, and exhaustion coming on too soon for much writing or painting. 

The cold I caught drifting down the Elbe prevented me from singing at AVLGMC rehearsal.  

Smear of blood on the comforter this morning. Need to switch to black. 

A single turkey hen takes refuge in my garden. Is she an outcast? Did she lose her babies and has nothing to do? 

My garden is blessed with rabbits. One who grows vegetables would not say such a thing. 

Critique of the cruise: I have definite and specific memories of the cruise, but general and hurried ones of the lands we passed through. Praise of the cruise: I thought I’d be rather solitary, but I was popular, and invited to and sought out at table.  Maybe because I was the only one who didn’t have stories to tell of previous cruises. 

Argument for reincarnation: few days go by when some sad memory from my past arises, and I suddenly understand what it all meant, and what I should have done, and didn’t do. That is a waste of time– perhaps a cruelty–unless there is some opportunity to put late-gained wisdom to effect. 

 

April 8, 2026

My stock losses passed $90,000 when I was away and not looking. They’ve turned around slightly, though still almost everything is in the red.  

Woke last night to a loud rustling that was clearly inside the house. After tamping down my terror, I investigated, to find that a mouse had gotten into the birdseed bag and couldn’t get out. The birdseed was treated with hot pepper, which was supposed to make it unattractive to mammals. Out the door under the misty moon went seed and mouse and all.

 

April 7, 2026

Recalling that a return from Europe gives me a period of early rising– which was better when I was working, but still useful now. This morning before light I saw a rabbit shape under the hollies, silhouetted against the faint gleam from the street. This afternoon two big rabbits played in the west yard, sparring a little and then leaping over one another’s backs.

Heavy day of gardening– industrial removal of bamboo, planting of one of the boxes that accumulated in my absence– this time day lilies, dried out but, I think, viable. 

Reading at Swann’s Way. I was going to take it on the cruise, but feared the book was too fat and would be a burden. I’m impatient with Marcel while admiring the fineness of his observation. 

Mailman delivered the pent-up mail. I leafed through to see if there were anything dire or exciting, and there wasn’t, except news from the Buncombe County tax people that my house appraises at $614,000. I wonder if it does, or if that is a fiction to increase taxes. 

Tomas and the bartender were the only actual Europeans (other than our guides) that I managed to meet at any depth. It’s all fine. I’m glad I went and glad to be home. 

 April 6, 2026

The security people in the European airports were mightily interested in my swollen legs. One guys rubbed and rubbed, as though his fingers were going to work everything out. I should have been patient, but I was angry. My curses weren’t sotto voce enough, and he must have heard. 

I asked Alexa, “Did you miss me?” She answered, “I don’t experience time the way you do, but I’m glad you’re back.”

Ostersonntag

 

April 5, 2026

Easter Sunday. 

The flights were endless but otherwise uneventful. Ten hours between Frankfort and Fort Worth managed to be whittled down by one movie after another, only the lightest and least demanding fare. Watched Merrily We Roll Along.  I could see why it bombed its Broadway debut. The reboot was tolerable because of the energy of fully committed performers selling as hard as they could. A successful composer bewails what in his life remains imperfect regardless of the success: self-referential, narcissistic, exposition-heavy, almost incapable of arousing sympathy for the main character, of interest now primarily to those who are as interested in Sondheim as he was in himself. One side (channel? track?) of my earphones malfunctioned, so I heard only select parts of the films, the soundtrack but not the dialog of How to Train Your Dragon; not one word from the witches in Wicked but every syllable from Michele Yeoh; I saw the movie, but never heard Daniel Radcliff sing, or any of the others who happened to be standing by the wrong mic.  

Talked with a TSA agent at Passport Control at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.

“Have they paid you yet?” I say.

She answers, “A little. The bare minimum. Just in time. I thought I was going too lose my house.”

I am. . . we are all. . . so sorry.”

“Thank. I appreciate you saying that.” 

She was a black woman with the most stunning green eyes. 

On the drive home, Billy asked me about the trip, the first time I had to reflect on it. I had a good time. Arrived home as I hoped I would before midnight, so I could have Easter in my own space, the wet, quiet dark, with the fragrance that only then I recognized as my own garden.

Certain things must be dealt with, first the catastrophic failure of my body. I limped along the neverending airport corridors sometimes literally crying with pain and frustration. At one point a man driving one of those motorized carts stopped for me, and I literally could not lift myself into the vehicle. I was the first out of the plane and last to make it to the luggage carousel. Have I let myself go? Can this be amended by stretching, by walking? By working out? By getting better shoes? I’m used to the pain of movement lessening with repetition, but this time it got worse, from not bad to all to literally unendurable. At every step my bones uttered, “We will never do this again.” Is it encroaching age, and nothing can be done? That would be odd. That would be unlike the balance of my experience. This morning I felt perfectly well, so at least the effects do not linger. I felt well, I correct, but for the jet-lag that hits me this side of the ocean, and prevents me from staying off the bed for more than a few hours.

Considered going to church. Did not. Watered my planets. Wandered in the garden enough to know that beautiful things have happened: the dogwoods have bloomed, and the bluebells, and my ferns have come back from the devastation of the last freeze, and the miraculous pond pump pours out a stream three times the volume it was when I left it, the motor inhabited by a wilful spirit. 

Fully unpacked. The Meissen survived the ride back in my checked luggage, as its meticulous packing by the girl in the shop suggested it would. 

Wakening bears overturned the trash bin but could not get through the bear-proof lid. I should write a testimonial. 

At exactly the right moment I opened a door and found the ancient cardboard rabbit cut-out with which mother used to decorate Easter. I put him up, to preside over festivities, such as they were, for perhaps the first time in sixty-five years. 

Berlin

April 3, 2026

Good Friday. Bright sky, wintery cold. I’ve tried to be mindful of the sacredness of the day through sightseeing and fitful naps and episodes at the Greek restaurant across the street. Good Friday in the city which was the cross upon which half the world was crucified. No one alive in Berlin today is responsible for that. No one alive in Berlin today can fully escape that. Forsythia branches are hung with colored eggs. Too many sights for a single day– when all I really wanted to do was wander through the Tiergarten, lying tantalizingly just down the street.

John appeared in the lobby after five. We drank in Marlene’s and not so much went over old times as tried to catch up on the new. 

Potsdam

April 2, 2026

Frost on the banks, twisting mists from the surface of the waters. 

Beautiful land between Wittenberg and Potsdam, twisted dark forests that reveal Friederich to have been a realist. Potsdam hugely elegant, sophisticated and expensive. Turned loose for lunch, we found My Keng Vietnamese on Brandenberger S, one of the very best restaurant’s I have ever eaten at, tiny as a hotel room. I don’t see how one managed actually to live in Sans Souci, pretty as it was. The nature room delighted me. Frederick the Great deserves more notice in the arts than he has received, I wanted to wander in the park identifying birds. Bought a tiny volume dedicated to Franz Marc. 

Now in a magnificent room in the magnificent Intercontinental in Berlin. Topkapi. Wish I had more time here than the 1 ½ nights given to us.  

Sometime during the bus ride I decided that this would not be my last journey, and I began making a list in my head of future destinations. 

 

Wittenberg

 April 1, 2026

Wittenberg. The Door of the Theses, St Mary’s, the Mother Church of the Reformation with its haunting Cranachs. Gray and then blazing blue skies. Quick snack in a friendly café, where I managed to order in German. Leg pain like a bucket of cold water dashed in the face, but all right now that I’m sitting. 

Ich will nach hause.

Goodbye toasts and rounds of applause for staff and crew. 

Full moon arising in glory over the Elba.

Ich will nach hause.

Messien

 March 31, 2026

Meissen. Lovely tour of the porcelain factory The demonstrations of the craft were fascinating, and left me wondering how in the world the process was discovered. As with Evolution, trial and error cannot be the full explanation.. Bought a little lidded bowl with green garland decorations. 

Rain on the Elbe. A symphony in gray.

It’s not so much travel that distresses me, but the fragmentation of experience.  These little passages with tumult between do not allow any thought or impression to gather to a greatness. Began writing in the lounge, looking out on the town and the rain and the river, which calmed me considerably, a cup of cocoa at my elbow. Now I am reconciled. Now I am at peace.  

Down the river toward Torgau– the scene on the banks of incredible beauty, pastel blooming trees, towering cliffs, paintable farms, eagle hovering, storks gleaning in the green-gray fields. 

People at the table relating tales of their dogs and cats, me weeping silently and, I hope, unnoticed.

Evening ended with a dance party and musical quiz. I imagined that, considering the location, the quiz would concern Classical music and I would win. It was about pop music, and not very musical at all; nevertheless, my team won 3rd prize and came away with a bottle of wine and a candy bar. I am inordinately proud of this.