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.

Dresden

 March 30, 2026

It’s not that I’m not having a good time, but at any point, if some djinn had appeared and said, “You can continue on or be delivered home this instant,” I would have done some real consideration.

A narrow channel of turbulent water lies between my window and a stone wall. Moss grows on the square stones but not (or less) the long rectangular ones. 

Rations on the Viking Alstrid are beyond superb.   

Tour of Dresden with the best guide yet. Zwinger. Palace. Bus tour of the historical spots. August der Starke’s green diamonds and priceless toys. Maybe the best city yet. Then cold rain and wind. Not long enough in one place to do justice.

Sweet young trio (2 violins, bassoon) from the Opera doing Mozart, Hayden, Joplin in the lounge. Sweet. American audiences can’t be prevented from clapping between movements.  

Likely, if the djinn came now, I would say, “Take me home.” 

Bad Schandau

 March 29, 2026

Palm Sunday. Nobody mentions that. We took to the river at Decin yesterday afternoon, sailed this AM, and arrived at Bad Schandau. Looking at the gray river flow past my window is full delight. 

Skipped the trip to an interesting rock formation to wander the town on my own. My own pace, time to employ my morbid attentiveness. In five minutes I was happy. I was at home in myself. I was not bent double with leg pain. Wandered Bad Schandau to the market square, where the church bells were ringing. I decided to go to church. The person who turned out to be the pastor let me into the old church to look around, but it was not being used (probably, I think from going in, because it’s impossible to heat) and service was in a sort of classroom across the courtyard. Very Lutheran. The preludes and interludes on piano were Bach. I could sing the hymns and pick out the meaning of the scriptures, but the rest was lost to me. After service, an old woman stopped me in the garden and talked about the flowers, the burden of her conversation being do not judge the poor little garden, spring (Fruhling) is on its way. Wandered to the city park and down a few streets. Nothing was open, so my desire for coffee remained unfulfilled. Good day, which I needed after the physical uncertainty of the last few. Given my own pace, I can still conquer the unknown country. Lovely little town. Hugely liveable. 

My first walk into Dresden was moving west at sunset, and all the city a golden blur out of which came the ringing of bells. Made it as far as the town square before supper. Little girls ran alongside the boat as it entered town.

 

March 28, 2026

Dawn over Prague. My window open on big industrial headquarters, like Lilly and KPMG, through whose windows one sees people at their desks deep into the nght. Walking tour of the old city yesterday morning. Everyone was freezing and the rat-a-tat guide walked so fast he made himself pant, so it was no fun for me. By the end I could hardly walk; unfortunately, I mean that literally. Learned a lot, though, and saw the sights we were meant to see. Clear light over the beautiful town, dressed up for the Easter Markets. Great gray heron flew by us on the Charles Bridge. Our guide hated folklore, so that any question that hadn’t to do with flat history went sneeringly unanswered. He pronounced “Czechs” as “Chicks,” which startled me every time. “The Chicks finally established their own Republic.” L and I had Prosecco on the hotel mezzanine while the tour finished without us. Supper at Gate, in a part of town which was fascinating to me becuase of its alluring ordinariness. Best duck ever, A couple of bedtime vodkas at the lobby bar with its energetic bartender, who received my last zloti as a tip. Managed without Czech crowns. I find this gargantua of a hotel mildly loathsome. The atrium is gorgeous, but all its energy goes into brutal gorgeousness and none into client comfort. L and J love it. Breakfast is sybaritic.

Took the trolly, which Jim understands and I do not, to Wenceslaus Square, of enduring fame, and to the Natural History Museum. Their model of the male Neanderthal looks exactly like me, if I let the hair on my head grow long.  

Praha

 March 26, 2026

Mother’s death, 1974.

To the vanished Jewish Quarter (now a sort of theme park in which there are few Jews) last night, to a restaurant called Ariel beside Helena Rubenstein’s birthplace, for a traditional dinner and klezmer music. Lovely. German students gathered in the adjoining room, all of them nine feet tall. One doesn’t expect turkey to have been an ancient Jewish staple. Turkey feathers decorated the trappings of Polish hussars, the museum witnesses, so–

At the hotel bar last night Karel the bartender gave me a tutorial on vodkas, the subtle but clear distinctions between those made with wheat, rye, and potato. One should prefer potato. Everyone is packed with information they long for the opportunity to release. Karel had visited NYC on his way to Mexico. 

Enormous, complicated, uninviting Hilton outside of the interesting areas of Prague. I won’t be able to take the walking tour tomorrow, unable to go that far at the pace that society would dictate. This trip has far too many moving parts, far too many fellow travelers. Viking is efficient, but I don’t want efficiency on vacation, but peace that lacks the need for efficiency. L and J are here, which may prevent this town from being a bust. What we passed of Prague on the bus was truly beautiful, all Renaissance pastel. I may have gotten away with a free bag of groceries. I was making a hash of self check-out, so I waved my card across the window and walked out while the screen was still reading “Please remove last item.”  The clerk had been helping me to that point, so I had no idea what the last item was. A crowd formed behind me. I panicked, grabbed my groceries, turned and fled.  

Czartoryiski

 

March 25, 2026

Auschwitz. Birkenwald. I will say nothing.

Czartoryiski Museum: small, dark, far more interested in showing me guns and swords than I was in seeing them. Some fine painting, including the famed da Vinci Lady with an Ermine, which is far from the most interesting piece in that collection, but which was nevertheless surrounded by a horde of French schoolchildren. You wonder about renown and how it is assembled. My guess is if the painter was Johannes Doe it would be hanging on the a common wall with other excellent, enigmatic, but not quite priceless artifacts. I liked the medieval pieces best, and a staff apparently inlaid with emerald. Stopped for chocolate, on Michaela’s recommendation, at Karamela’s, around the corner from the museum. The most chocolatey chocolate there ever was. I am still in a bit of a chocolate coma. Saw thrushes in yew scrub outside St Florian’s gate. Sat for a while in the market. Twice a pigeon landed on my hand (two sequential pigeons, I should say) and regarded me inquisitively. The amazing thing was the unexpected coolness of their claws.  

Krakow

March 24, 2026

Evening of an excellent day. 

Swans fly over and float on the green back of the Wistula

The reading was not at the university, but in the market square (“the largest in medieval Europe”), as part of a festival I never properly understood, but whose central events  were a giant balloon and a track meet rather than a gathering of dottering international poets. It’s all right. I was cheered madly by people who likely didn’t understand a word I’d said. I gave my book to a woman standing nearby. Maybe it will be the occasion of my return. The boys flying around the square with batons in their hands were unspeakably beautiful, carrying themselves upright like gods charging into battle. Lunched at Piano Rouge so I could continue to watch the heats. The French family behind me was loud and funny, enjoying one another’s company. 

Today’s foot tour of the city was informative, but– the Guided Tour has never been one of my favorite things, and I’ve fallen into the flaming, thundering core of it. The guide women are supernatural in their ability to keep the vocal stream going minute after minute without so much as an interrupting breath. Even pleasant voices cloy. Had to take the device out of my ear finally to keep from going berserk, thus missing city blocks of interesting information. Visited Wawel Castle, where it all started. Heard the charming story of the Krakow dragon. Got to St Mary’s Basilica in time to be in the front row for the Opening of the Altar, one firmament of sculpted gold opening to reveal a yet grander one. A nun enters with a stick and pulls aside the golden curtain.

Bussed to the suburbs to see the Krakow Ghetto, which, unlike Warsaw’s, still stands. Empty metal chairs stand in the town square, each one representing 3000 people annihilated. One person in six was a Jew in Krakow in 1938. The Jewish population of the city now stands at 350. According to Michaela, one and a half million people in Warsaw in 1938 had become 1000 and 1945.  You’d expect such a place to be a ruin for a thousand years. 

On my way back to the hotel for a nap I trundled through the covered market, where I could choose from a near infinity of items made of amber. At the end of it I met Tomas, who touched my shoulder and said, “You! I want to ask you a question!” I stopped to listen. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “What do you think of Trump?” I told him, and we spent the next several minutes enlarging upon each other’s loathing. Tomas lived in Chicago for five years, where a black man aimed a gun at him and he was told to go somewhere else when he pulled into an all-Black service station. He was born in 1986, and had been in the World Trade Center 17 days before 9/11. He was still reeling from an American girl he liked who turned out to be a Trumpist, that being the deal breaker. His aunt is now visiting from Virginia Beach. He typed the address of the art museum into my phone. His parents had sent him to school in London, and he asked me to critique his English, which is clear but also clearly Polish. Tomas is handsome, rugged-looking, with stone green steady eyes. He touched and poked me as he talked, as old (and Polish) friends might do, and I took that as a greater compliment than if the crowd had swooned over my locally unintelligible poems. I think the original contact was to enlist me for a tour, but almost immediately he said, “I don’t want anything from you.” Part of me murmured “pity.” His friend with the glasses speaks seven languages. Sometimes the angel steps out of the crowd and gives meaning to what was a tangle of unrelated impressions. I have a friend in Krakow.      

Black Madonna

March 23, 2026

Krakow. The Radisson. My window looks out on the greenbelt separating the old city from the rest of the town. 

Saw two storks flying as we left Warsaw. 

Was almost berserk with frustration at Michaela’s endless outpouring of data. The amplified human voice is a known torture method. We need only so much history. After a time she did exhaust herself and I feel asleep, until we got to Czestochowa, and the fortress-shrine of Jasna Gora. That place is jam-packed with history, and our new guide about gave himself a coronary trying to deliver it to us. The Black Madonna herself is disappointing from an artistic standpoint, though something has given her an aura of power and holiness. She has several dresses which she changes Easter Day. The most beautiful one is made wholly of amber. One is studded with rubies. The congregation was full of kids praying for success on their exams. America has no place even vaguely like it. The walls of the sanctuary are covered with discarded crutches. 

The land around Krakow is quite different from that around Warsaw. The Warsaw plain could be Ohio, though somewhat messier. Krakow is a fairy-tale city placed amid a fairy-tale forest. Staggered into the Market Square, found the spot with the most insolent waiters, had zuruck and wine while night fell and the fat crescent moon rode high. 

 

Warsaw 2

 March 22, 2026

Slept ten hours. 

My intuition that these cruise vacations were not for a single traveler turns out to be correct.  I am the single single. No table has five chairs. 

Evening. Last night and this morning I feared this trip would be an ordeal to be endured. A rigid schedule, forced and unsympathetic society, the revulsion of guided tours. . . but by turning things back to the travel I remember, this afternoon redeemed all, finally released from the tour, alone, sitting across from Sigismund Vasa’s palace, drinking Belgian beer (which is what the waiter construed from what I asked) and thinking “Yes, this is me, back on the road, taking it all in.” I was happy. I was the man I’ve always been on the road. The great sponge absorbing, the great chameleon becoming. 

The morning bus tour through historic Warsaw was informative and grueling in equal measure. Our very cute guide fixated on the cruelties of the Nazis and of Stalin, but, since the Old City has disappeared, perhaps that is the balance of the story. 87% of the structures in Warsaw were pulverized. We went to the Ghetto, which was devastating even though time has been successful in rooting out every trace of physical remembrance. I turned my back and wept at the monuments. Can I go to Auschwitz? I barely endured the Warsaw ghetto, of which almost no palpable remnant remains. Men sit up at night imagining new sins, new atrocities. Laborious cruelty has been the ensign of the nations.  

Staggering back to the hotel across the many vast public squares I regretted tomorrow’s rush. Having discovered the Old City, I could spend days here in delight now, wandering around, poking into corners. Even the state of my legs was endurable. 

Why is the symbol of Warsaw a mermaid? Turns out she’s a Lorelei, a Wistula Maiden who lured men to their doom in the river when there was no one here but fishermen.

Warsaw

 March 21, 2026

Watched Blue Moon on the plane, then slept in a variety of unrestful positions till the sea was crossed. 

Sofitel Victoria, Warsaw. The design of the city between the airport and here is largely Soviet, softened by elegant plantings of trees. It seems a new city, a development, as I suppose it is, having been obliterated in the 40's. Turned the radio on to a station playing Western standards, “Bring Him Home,” “Perfect,” which are then repeated in Polish. Long expositions between songs of which I, of course, understand nothing. We Viking voyagers are all elderly, some of us in wheelchairs, some so deaf they don’t know how loud we’re talking, asking the thitd version of the same querulous question. I’d not appreciated the profundity of my own decline. Stairs, a fast pace, a high step undo me. Fell twice. I’d not appreciated how much the Americans with Disabilities Act smoothed the path for people who are not counted as disabled. The Munich airport is all stairs, no elevators, the assumption being that if one travels one is up to a little challenge. I am not anymore. Racing for the Viking van I heard myself praying, “Let this be over.” Nobody my age travels alone. I noticed this in every corridor and waiting area. I’ve always been an anomaly, but some variations of that become more difficult to conceal. Give it up. Have some sense of proportion.

My first bartender couldn’t mix a cocktail because she was too young. She’s at school studying :to do somethng with hair.” My second  bartender gave me a cup of wasabi peas for a midnight snack, as I had praised the ones that were set before me with my drink.  

Keanu Reeves speaking Polish on the TV in a Shao Lin combat movie. 

After five or six hours, I judge the Poles to be sweet natured and tribal. 

March 19, 2026

Furnace people came to inspect this AM. One was a Tolkien fan and spent time perusing my bookshelf. 

Lunch with SS to get the skinny on what was a laborious casting process. We seem to be on even keel at the moment. I’m absconding for two weeks, so it’s out of my hands. But, a general comment is that everything is too damn hard.

Ready to fly out tomorrow. Ready for some unseen circumstance to cause me to stay. Glad that those impulses are in equipoise, and I’m ready for any outcome. 

Did not cram German as I meant to.  

Tidy

 

March 18, 2026

Much activity before departure. Sound of the dishwasher on the floor below.

I’ve remarked before how my chronological age is a shock to me when I think of it. The way I feel inside my head is indistinguishable from the way I felt when I was 25. I have the same excitement, the same anticipation, the same naive faith in the goodwill of the universe, the same caution about risk,–not that I’m averse to it in the abstract, but because I fear delay or detour to “What I Am Meant by Destiny to Do.”  You’d think that Destiny’s manifest indifference to me would have pushed that thought out long ago. 

The ferns by the back door are slaughtered by the freeze. Have not looked elsewhere, fearing what I would see, unable to effect redress.

Congratulating myself on finishing off this and that in the refrigerator before I depart. “How tidy he was” the officials will say if I do not return. 

Blessed St. Patrick

 March 17, 2026

Blessed Saint Patrick. Packing; unless I have a change of mind, packed. Angry snow last night, thinning out to a tiny sprinkle of diamonds every few minutes. 

My sister and I both leave the country Friday, to meet in a week in Prague. My emotion is anxiety, hers excitement, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same emotion pushed through different filters. 

Session of prayer deep into the night. “Warfare” would have been another name. It would be nice to be certain of something, anything, some time. I believe my life has come to nothing. To be certain of that would save expenditure of energy in the time left to me. 

The mercury plunges; I drag around in my winter cap and coat, wondering what to stuff into the slits under the windows. 

Sligo by Night

 

March 16, 2026

On the hypochondria front, in the dark of the morning I was seeing flashes of light behind my closed eyelids. I thought I’d read something about that being a symptom of stroke, and I prepared for the worst. Then, finally, I heard thunder & opened my eyes on an actual plain-old lightning storm, which still continues rain-wise, though the electronics are passed in the east. Bad night, all in all. Was it the weather? Something led me from one turbulent dream to another.

My most recent painting, Sligo by Night, was painted over the weekend on a panel that I've had for 52 years. It came with a painting I didn't like very much (but somehow remember in detail) which I painted over years ago, and painted over again this weekend. I love reusing backings, and this is an especially sturdy one. The vanished painting was by W Korybut. I looked that up. W Michael Korybut was King of Poland and Grant Duke of Latvia (or something). I don't think the painting was actually by him, but by Wanda Korybut, born in 1907, one example of whose work is noted for sale online. The lost painting was called "Quiet Garden" and featured a birdbath in yellow light amid a green landscape. As I say, it is vanished under other images, but I remember it well. There's a note on the back which reads, "To David with love from Keith and Denise, 5/4/74. " A gift from an enduring friend at one of the worst times of my life. The yellow birdbath is gone, but all else evolves. 

Found a flea on my hand last night. Mystery.

Tyler at the Verizon store says my phone is fine for traveling.

 March 15, 2026

Clouds gathering to the north. A turkey, having discovered how to flap to the top of the wire trellis and balance, perches there, looking into the guest room window like a nosy neighbor.  Got to read the Lesson from Samuel wherein God, despite insisting otherwise, holds a beauty pageant among Jesse’s sons to make rosy, beautiful-eyed David the next king. 

 

March 14, 2026

Returned to painting. Felt tension leak out of my body like cold water. I’d been dreaming of having art shows in tents and vast, rickety building, where I could revise my huge, bright canvases in front of the guests if I wanted to. 

Eugene

 March 13, 2026

Dad’s 107th birthday. The poems I write on his day involve travel, because when I was working this date happened in the middle of spring break, and I was often somewhere exotic. 

P and I on Blake. 

Some of my mind’s energy is spent wondering why I never “got” my father, why I seldom appreciated what he did, and why what he did was so seldom what I needed. I long to go back and thank him for this or that particular thing. He took us to California. He built the Big Slide and my teepee and Linda’s play house. He suffered through the Boy Scouts. Sometimes I was horrid. Sometimes he was horrid. Even if he was troubling to me, I should have recognized what my sister says all the time, “He was doing his best.” Something made me repelled at his presence, embarrassed by him, whatever the cause being buried in that time before there is memory. I think it was not my fault– how could it be? If I had known what it was I could have forgiven it. Or perhaps not, and it’s better that I never know. But I think he lived long enough for all those rocks and jags to become a level plane. And now, so have I.

 March 12, 2026

Bitter rain straight from the north. No gardening today. Power flickered a number of times, whatever it is in the house that whistles when the power goes out whistling its heart out. The news says that temperatures will hit 20 in the next few nights, so it’s possible that the gardening I’ve already done will be for naught.  However it goes in the next few days, a truth I take away is that I’m in better shape this year than I was last, the work do-able, even enticing, and never the debilitated staggering to a chair that ruled last season. Who can explain why things come and go? Years with terrible acid reflux– gone. Years with fierce and daily muscle spasms– gone. Difficult breathing and exhaustion– coming and going, but for the moment in abeyance.  Leg infections endure. One concedes they are small among possible afflictions. 

Checked Schwab. Thanks to Trump I’m $80,000 in the hole. It’s early in the day and the red numbers continue to plunge. Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has done absolutely everything wrong in his life, every blessed thing. It is amazing on its own, but that it should be tolerated, or have been tolerated past his youth, is more amazing still.

Briefly snowed. 

Hart's-tongue

 March 11, 2026

The pear tree that died three years ago slipped out of the ground easy as pulling a knife from butter, as I hoped it would all this while. Planted hart’s-tongue, pulled weed vines, watered. 

Had a panic attack when I realized I’d booked no hotels in Europe. A phone call assured me that Viking does all of that. Feeling, therefore, very old and very rich. 

Watched the much-reviled Melania. Unlucky triviality in a time when the expense of trivialities cannot be borne. 

Grudging submissions to various outlets and contests. 

Perfect weather. 

 March 10, 2026

Strenuous gardening day. Spaded up some of the streetside garden to plant mint and groundcover. Dug around the roses so they’ll be free of grass.  Replanted what had been dug up by the squirrels. 19 minutes deep in ASC rehearsal, and I’m not there. I’ll be missing the concert, but I thought I’d go to rehearsal anyway, for the sake of repertoire and society. I guess not. 

 March 9, 2026

The bloodroot is in bloom. Planted woodruff and a white plant whose name I forget in one of the raised beds. 

 

March 8, 2026

Gentle rain. Hacked bamboo yesterday, planted lupines, hit Mountain Madre with friends from the North Side. At table many remembrances with the details gone awry, or at least disputed. My restaurant bills are less now that meals do not include alcohol. Watched Netflix’s The Dinosaurs with anticipation and delight. Watched the film Hamnet. What do I think? I’ll know in a little while. The last scene, where hands reach from the Pit to comfort Hamlet dying on stage, seemed to me the epitome of the power of theater, the moment that all else leads to and recedes from. Wept alone in my own house without understanding that could be put into words. 

Howells this morning, “Like as the hart.” When I was singing at Second English Lutheran in Baltimore and impatient with anything after the Renaissance, that seemed to me the one modern work I would have called of a piece with the ancients. Still would, though it is no longer alone. Today we did it meager justice. Tried to speak to T as we left church, but his face was red with fury, complaining to his wife about K’s correcting his own personal missed note. “I KNEW I had the wrong note! He didn’t have to stop everybody and–” I have been him, my rage banked by having no wife to share it with. K has not learned how to deal with mistakes, addressing them as one would a character flaw rather than an incident. One’s misbehavior is publicized and laboriously exorcized. 

Slept too big, woke out of the mood to fill the rest of the day with deeds. 

SS has cast Purification, asserting it was agony to do so. Not going to ask why it was so hard. The first thing you expect is that nobody liked the script. 

Strange, pervasive change in perception, the greatest one I remember, greater even than the change from childhood into adolescence or adolescence into adulthood, though perhaps I don’t remember them as sharp as they were. The image laid before me to describe is of a vast dome filled with space and clarity, and that is my mind. Like clear water under morning sun. Still. White and golden. I think of Yeats’s smiling sages sitting on their height in “Lapis Lazuli.” In times gone by I have known compassion as a correct behavioral choice, but I had not known it as a living thing, a plenum through which the soul moves and by which it must be pervaded. I wear perception like a coat, pulling it around me. I did nothing to bring this on; it just is. You hunt the quarry for a hundred years and come home to find it standing at your front door. Rage still comes, but it is like the throwing of a stone into a river, whatever effect it has passing in a moment, the flow continuing. I compare my spirit to my actual age, and the comparison is ludicrous. I am a boy. This is a boy’s white morning. Through my security cameras I watch me hobbling up the front steps, grasping the pillars to make it to the top,

 March 6, 2026

Morning by the river. T was at the café, running in half a minute down the list of his recent triumphs, his new grandchild, how his kids have moved back to town, how his next novel comes out in a few months. He introduced me to his wife, pretty much (physically) a female version of himself. Our last contact was when he failed, or refused, to produce a blurb for Beautiful Necklaces on the day it was due, after assuring me nothing would please him more. “I just can’t” said his plaintive email. Whether he ran out of time or hated the book I never asked. Clearly he’s over it. I’m not.

Held off gardening until dusk, when I filled the concrete Grecian urns with violas. 

 

March 5, 2026

Gorgeous spring day. Shopped at Israel’s and spent the morning planting what I’d bought. Sat on the pond bench and watched a song sparrow and a robin bathing on different rocks. I can feel the heat of sunburn on my head and neck. It is the most terrible world, and yet the song sparrows come down and bathe on a flat rock. Contested in the dark with the Lord the Betrayer, who remains the Betrayer, and yet the song sparrows come to bathe on the flat rocks. 

 

March 4, 2026

Mozart’s Requiem last night. A privilege to sing. I heard frog singing in my pond as the moon rose.

 

March 3, 2026

Huge gardening day. Many porch pots filled and planted, items put into the east yard to try to get something to grow amid the gravel, in the clay and shade. The nursery lady said “try these,” and so I do. Bought wholesale a huge box of anonymous peonies, got them into the ground. Planting one thing digs up another, and so things get moved around, compromising what original plan there was. 

 

March 2, 2026

An hour before the AVLGMC meeting at my house, a van arrived with people in it who wanted to demonstrate the Kirby vacuum cleaner. I said “OK” because they said they’d get a prize if I just listened for a while. It’s been a long time since I was so beside myself with impatience. 

Saint David

 March 1, 2026

St. David’s Day. Daffodils peeking triumphantly through the loam. Chatterbox choir substitute frayed my nerves. Power drill-voiced Harry the Substitute Baritone frayed my nerves. Left lovely sandwiches behind to get out of church as fast as possible. Amazing nap dreams did not fray my nerves. 

 February 28, 2026

Gardening in cool spring light. Had a bad night– awful thoughts, awful dreams, which somehow transmuted into a glad day. Woke and wrote a poem while it was still dark. Finished filling the raised beds, planted a snow white Lenten hellebore. Lunch with DJ. 

Trump attacks Iran during the night. Cannot face the thousand ways in which the attack is illegal, immoral, monstrous. Trump and Netanhayu like two jackals that attack another jackal and think they’re doing something useful for the world. 

Squirrel

 February 27, 2026

Happy most of the day, I asked myself “Why so sad now?” No particular reason. A rejection from Omaha, but I expected that. Maybe just the cesspit of contemporary times. 

Bought plants and gardening supplies without actually using them. They sit in the gathering darkness, waiting for morning. 

Sent A money to cover her shocking utility bill. She has four children. . . but their sense of responsibility is not my concern. 

Some time today a squirrel was run over in the street. I sat at the downstairs desk and watched while a cyclist came by with a miner’s light on his cap and a strange implement in his hands and eased the body over into my west garden. The light and implement made me think he was employed for just that service, or maybe had decided on it as a Lenten penance for himself. That it is my problem now is a little disturbing. Hope I remember to bury it first thing tomorrow. 

 February 26, 2026

Picked up euros from the bank for the Germany trip.

Coffee with A at High 5. The usual, comforting topics.  Frothed over Trump. Moaned about the demise of our university. 

Picked up my tax return. Very much more palatable than last year, $255 to the Federal Government rather than $18000. I was careful juggling capital gains this year.  The amusing thing is that I owe $1 to the state of North Carolina. Considering whether to play the scofflaw and ignore it or send in the check with a sarcastic memo. 

Have been in extraordinarily good voice for rehearsals this week. More 3rd rate church anthems pulled out of the archives. Discouraging.

 February 25, 2026

Two big dogs were loose on the street. That was an everyday sight in my childhood, but you don’t see it anymore. It was lovely to watch them sniffing and trotting about, taking in the morning. A few moments later a young man walked down the street with a big walking stick and a sleeping bag slung over his shoulder on another stick, just as you see pictures of homeless wanderers during the Depression. He took the shortcut down my drive so he appeared picturesquely in my security camera. This is one day after our hellhound President assured us that all is most well in his State of the Union.

Mahler’s 1st from the speakers downstairs. 

February 24, 2026

Sent a plush Husky to Julia A, hoping it’s the first bit of mail she receives. 

Bajazet on You Tube.

 

Oliver

 

February 23, 2026

Intensely bitter weather. My front wall had developed a gap above the floor, to freezing wind blows in and freezes the feet. What I can see from the study window is the violent lashing of the tops of trees. New York, Boston, and the Northeast lie under feet of snow.  My feeders are Times Square for the birds. 

Writing like mad, but a deadening sense of futility prevents me from sending anything out. Happy creating, glum selling. 

Sitting at my desk trying to write, shivering with cold. 

Thinking of my grandfather Oliver, sharp as a knife amid his uncertain son, his soft daughters. He rowed me in a boat out to the middle of a green lake. He asked why I wasn’t dragging my hand through the water, as children do. I told him I was afraid of being pulled in by the mermen and becoming one of them. He didn’t scoff. He just said that lake was too small for mermen. I remember a man taking me into the forest and teaching me the names of flowers. Either it was him, or it was a dream. In any case, I knew the names of flowers before I could read. Trillium. Mayapple. Anemone I didn’t know if he liked me, or anybody. He was not like us– or rather, we were not like him. When he was alive I didn’t know he had been born in England, in Somerset, among the coal mines. He worked the coal mines in Pennsylvania. His name was Oliver and his father’s name was Jabez and Jabez’s father was Oliver and that Oliver’s father was Jabez, a line broken forever in a new world, The last time I saw him I stood in the hospital parking lot in Pittsburgh and looked up into a high window where he was shaking hands with himself, as though he were shaking hands with me. 

Voting

 February 22, 2026

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s birthday.

Lonely fragments of snow fell from time to time during the day. You wonder what goes through the mind of a solitary snowflake. At last look out the windows, heading for the study where the one window shows only light, the snow gathered, beginning to squall and fill the sky in a great slant from the north.  

My poor fish drift exposed in the pond, a glaring, heron-attracting orange until the lilies cover them again. 

Voted early in the primaries. Realized that they gave me the right ballot without asking my party. Maybe they knew me, or can tell a Democrat from a Republican by his walk. Maybe there are no Republicans in North Asheville. 

One of the 103 year old front window-doors burst open. Torrent of cold. Managed to nail it shut until such time as it can be replaced. 

Spanish Madness

 February 21, 2026

Talk of Blake with PR. Mixed in with a whole lot of talk about the Prophet Amos. 

Combed the yard with a trash back in my hand, picking up the detritus left by winter. Plastic. Food containers. Beer bottles. Objects whose original use I don’t want to know.  My lot is on a curve: things fly from windows, get tossed from the hands of cyclists. 

Turkeys in the yard today.

Beethoven’s Tempest.

Dream of A, which must have got mixed in with watching the Olympic skaters. I worked to help her keep her studio, an operation accomplished by helping her skate to obscure places on a vast frozen lake unseen. 

The west lot teems with bluebirds. The sudden red flare of the red-bellied woodpeckers. 

The Spanish Madness

Goldfinches

 February 19, 2026

The goldfinches are getting back their summer color. 

Both recent afflictions, the fiery red of phlebitis and the less fiery red of hemorrhoid activity, abate. Some. 

Ancient dream of the first day of school. The University was a cluster of tents. I didn’t know where my office was, or what my schedule was, and all ways of finding out seemed to be blocked. I asserted myself by stealing a chair to use at my desk, when I found it. 

Accepted a Facebook friend invitation from JF. He was once the most beautiful man in Asheville. He isn’t anymore. 

 February 18, 2026

T led rehearsal last night, and it was memorably useful--without drama, without the struggle to enforce wilful interpretations, without mannerisms, without the constant interweaving of mockery and correction. 

My once fairly robust alcohol use has turned into the consumption of rivers of tea. I’ve searched for counterindications of that, but it seems to be all in all a beneficial choice. Sense little actual difference, except that I sleep longer. 

Nap dreams of receiving huge deliveries, by truck, of apples and cherries, to a place I had high in wooded mountains.  

 February 17, 2026

Various hours, various days. Phlebitis hit. I was able to fend off the great sickness, though my left leg is pink and itchy (no heat though, which is encouraging). The pills still amaze me. I rose in the night at the brink of unbearable pain, took the pills, and the next time I woke all was almost well. I think of my mother with the same affliction and, through most of her life, no antibiotics. Several things that were wrong with me and I blamed on something else seem to be related to the attack. It is always thus; I never remember. 

AVLGMC meeting here last night. It veers further and further from anything I recognize, anything I want to be part of, and yet I stick with it because what unfolds has interest of its own, and the companionship is fun. Thomas’ Uber came early, so he had to heat his frozen burritos in my microwave. B’s mania for control would be alarming if it were exercised on anything of more consequence than a men’s chorus. 

Strove to bring the pond out of winter torpor. Had to put my garden hose back together before I could. The solar panel guy had unscrewed the hose from the wall and the two bits of hose from each other, leaving me to put it back together, for reason’s unfathomable. All workmen detach the hose from the outlet, and I never know why. Something they teach in workman school and keep from the rest of us? L detached the hose when he came to give me an estimate on a deck. Really? It’s an issue to me because my threads are ancient, my wrench the wrong size, and to get an unleaking fit takes a deal of labor. I want to stand in the yard and say, “Do not unscrew the hose, though every fiber of your being commands you to do so!”

I discovered the magical principle that lures bluebirds to my yard. 

No music on Ash Wednesday. Things fall apart. 

Jesse Jackson is dead.

 

February 14, 2026

Brilliant day. I went to the Mall to replace my aged phone, but the Verizon people had moved to I know not where. Instead I bought a shirt from Eddie Bauer, because they were going out of business, and a raft of Girl Scout cookies that went straight into the freezer. Each time you go there are fewer stores at the Mall, and the ones you went for are gone. No Valentine card in the mailbox. 

 February 12, 2026

Twelve years in this house. I turned off the space heater (having read an article on the fires they cause) meaning I’m now trying to write in a freezing attic. 

Sat in Starbucks reading Swann’s Way while Iris cleaned my house. What power in Proust, to make one genuinely interested in the minutia–often enough disagreeable– of his life. 

SS having trouble casting Purification. My inner self shrugs his shoulders and says, “Well, of course!” 

Missing AVLGMC dress rehearsal tonight, as I can’t bear to be at the Valentine’s Fund Raiser tomorrow night. There are points at which too much bother is too much bother. Bother is a young person’s game. 

Looking forward to a night of revising, and then hot mint tea before whatever’s left of the Olympics. 

Anniversary

 February 11, 2026

Twelve years ago tonight I spent my first night in this house. 

Episode last night between bouts of sleep, when the image of my pet rabbit Charlie came to mind. I treated him poorly, never playing with him, ignoring him in his hutch for days on end. The unexpected intrusion–how often in the interposing years have I thought of him? Almost never– I took as a reconciliation in the spirit, for in the spirit he came and huddled against my side as we slept, and I was at peace in the matter for the first time. Do we live into old age so the sins of our past can arise and be, somehow, expiated, or at least acknowledged? If so, fine. My father gave me to understand his memories in age were sweet. If I did anything particularly noble, or even amusing, my recent thoughts have hidden it from me, though my missteps stand revealed in blinding light.

Received the following note by email:                                       

Hi David,

I recently read Night, Sleep and the Dreams of Lovers and found myself really taken by it, especially the way the book treats desire, memory, and creativity as inseparable, slightly unruly forces. The conversations with cats alone felt like a quiet permission slip to let the strange and intimate coexist on the page.

I was struck by how Asheville moves through the novel as more than a setting, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowy  almost like another character carrying both history and longing. There’s a generosity in the writing that trusts the reader to enter at their own point, which I really admired.

I’m MH. I tend to write about the messy, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking parts of being human. My novel, Really Good, Actually, came from a place of starting over and trying to find humor in the middle of emotional chaos.

I’d love to hear what you’re working on now, or what first pulled you toward writing this book.

All the best, Monica

Bought her book. It’s lively, detailed, without forward motion (or what one would call ‘plot.), like a teenage Virginia Woolf at a slumber party.

Blue Plastic

February 10, 2026

A shredded spider of blue plastic has been clinging to the redbud since Helene. That’s year and a half. I supposed it was out of reach, but never put that to the test until today, when I took a leaf rake down and had the plastic out of the branch in two minutes. I think Gary Snyder has a poem about suffering a leak in his roof until one day he pushed on a board and–voila–the leak is gone. If I had my life to live over, I might adopt “do it now!” as a motto. Seven huge turkeys gleaned in my yard for a long time. Spillage from the bird feeders was a boon to them. God makes up with the beauty of their plumage for their striking stupidity. Maybe it’s not stupidity, but trust.  Warm day. Sat on the porch with tea in one of Kit’s mugs. I’m suddenly a fanatic consumer of tea, when months would go by formerly without my touching it. Sent manuscripts out. 

 

 February 9, 2026

Tinkering with the LT manuscript, still finding typos after I ran it through Spellcheck. The day filled and overflowed, even if I’m not sure with what. 

 February 8, 2026

Finished the umpteenth and second most radical revision of The Lexington Tract. I moan when things are not published, but when the Voice of the still room says, “Would you really have wanted it published like THAT?” the answer is no. Watched the American boy and the Japanese boy skate in Italy. I wanted the American boy to win, of course, but the Japanese boy was so full of life and so sad when he lost that I wished I hadn’t watched. 

Ashes

February 7, 2026

A day that turned out very different from what I expected when I woke, spent time re-arranging wanted and clearing out unwanted objects. Panicked because I couldn’t find Titus’ little box of ashes. Found it finally, put it in the cat shrine with remains and relicts of his sisters and brothers. Theseus and Conrad and Jocasta sleep on the hill across the street, where I cannot reach them, but where I remember them. Found old cat toys. Wept bitterly. Something about the feng shui of the house stands immensely improved. 

 

 

February 6, 2026

K sends a letter announcing a Sabbatical for this spring. Sends a revised schedule, from which he is largely absent. So, that’s that. I want to say “I saw it coming,” but I was probably the last.

 February 5, 2026

Another dusting of snow. 

Rehearsal somber last night. K is done with being a choral director. He has resigned ASC and provides the church choir with third-rate pieces whose mistakes he barely manages to correct. We have declined into a second-rate church choir, whereas we were once the best in the city. Whether that is a cause or a result of his disinterest is difficult to tell. It is well when your own change of concentration affects nobody else. 

Frenzy of rewriting– which makes me blissfully happy. 

 February 4, 2026

When I checked my Schwab account, every single holding was in positive territory. God knows what causes such things. I thought maybe it was Trump’s death, but checking the news revealed no such mercy. 

Ajax came again for his repast at sundown. The Twilight Buccaneer. He’s very young. This was his first winter. His plumage hasn’t darkened, and he tried to land on the car, sliding down the hood with wings flapping wildly. 

Ajax

 February 2, 2026

The branch where Sweetboi perched is gone, but on the branch nearest to it that can support such weight I saw a young red-shouldered hawk. Against such an unforeseeable moment, I’d bought the proper food days ago, so I threw the offering out onto the snow. In a few moments Ajax the hawk stood on my driveway ripping apart the pork joint. He called from Sweetboi’s tree, and I answered as I did before. I was stupid with joy. As soon as things open, I’m out in the stores laying up hawk-supplies. Build your nest in my tree. Stare into my window. Scream from your branch when you are in need. 

Brigid the Blessed

 

February 1, 2026

Brigid the Blessed

Woke listening for the hum of the furnace that would testify that the power had not gone out. Held my breath for the flushing of the toilet that would testify that the pipes had not frozen. Watching what seemed like multiple thickness of snow fall from the air did not prepare me for the hard, compact, shallow snowfall revealed by morning. Patches of grass showed through. Places were swept bare by the wind. My red brick porch is clear of snow after the first day. 

Watched the film Sinners.  I tried to make it better than it was. I’m the ideal audience for things I don’t initially understand. Always the benefit of the doubt. 

What do I think about all day? It must be something, for I awoke in the first light and now tap at my computer in the last light of Saint Brigid’s Day. Something must carry one hour to the other. The odd thing is that I am happy. 

Snow

 

January 31, 2026

Beethoven string quartets on CD.

Snow began gently after midnight and has not stopped. At 6 PM it is thick, cold, shearing almost horizontally from the north. Pedestrian traffic down the street of kids and parents dragging sleds behind. I’m trying to think of where the sledding hill would be. A week ago I arrived in Charleston to avoid such an accumulation of events. Many birds at my feeders. I couldn’t account for the mob of robins and others not interested in seed, until I noticed that my gallant little pond pump is the only local source of liquid water. My swollen feet will not permit me to acquire boots, so if I need to go out in this, sneakers are my only available footwear. I’m unduly agitated by winter storms, which more often than not pass without consequence. Beethoven was actually not the right music to play right now. 

It has been suggested, as the Epstein files emerge, that all the agitations of Trump’s administration have been to distract from his criminal pederasty. What a world I aged into! It’s a good bet that those who have clung to him all this while will cling still, the sting of having chosen wrong being harder to acknowledge than atrocity. 

Naledi

 January 30, 2026

For the second week in a row, public run on grocery stores for supplies for a winter disaster foretold. I’m not fleeing to the beach this time. That will probably be a mistake. 

Chaotic but amusing rehearsal last night. Good fellowship, good-enough music making if what you want is good fellowship.  

Four days without alcohol. Without craving and never impaired, I didn’t worry about this issue until several health professionals recently wondered if I should cut down. “No problem,” I said, until I decided to do it, and the idea made me grumpier than I thought it would, reaching that end taking more determination than I imagined. A hill, but a little one. I like to do it, and invariably do it where it has never had much consequence. Drinking is part of my night ritual, but by that I mean the intake of liquids: turns out tea will do just as well. I sense practically no difference in my life, except that I can sleep longer sober, wake up less abruptly. I’m not sure those are necessarily improvements. But also, my dreams are vaster and more durable, able to return after a trip to the bathroom, able to mutate into epics. I like the feeling of going to bed tipsy. Also, I hear alarming creakings and scrapings in the house that I don’t hear inebriated. Anyway, the alarm abates somewhat, seeing how stopping is possible, so merely cutting back remains an option. 

Cold. You spend some time deciding what to wear indoors so you can be warm enough for the cold spots in the house, and yet endure the overheated ones. Tied a towel around the outdoor spigot, as if it were a little animal that could generate its own heat. Filled all the bird feeders.

Watched a documentary about the Naledi, a diminutive species of the genus Homo that seems to have been burying their dead with some ceremony and carving their emotions on cave walls a quarter of a million years ago. The experience was holy. We do not understand the abundance– no, infinitude– and variety of the stories of this little world. 

 

January 28, 2026

Rooting back into the home sod. 

Jackie

 January 27, 2026

Woke to a perfect beach dawn, drove hard, entered my driveway at the stroke of noon. Almost no trace along the way of the terrible storm that was to have been. The power failure I intended to avoid by gong to the beach did not happen. In one sense, the journey was a waste. In the other sense it was a good time and (for the most part) exactly what I needed. In the bar last night I met Jeff the bartender, a through-hiker who’s looking for land in Black Mountain. Jackie floated in on a cloud of Ariana Grande perfume, which has a fluffy tassel you can add to your key chain when you finish the bottle. I noticed Jackie the whole time I was there, with her leopard coat with a Rolling Stones logo, and her provocative black gown. Turns out she is actually the stripper and club entertainer one assumed her to be. She showed me photos of her last gig in Asheville, where she wrestled and, apparently, made love to another stripper, who had one hand. They looked like sisters.  “She’s a sober woman with one hand; I’m an alcoholic with two hands. That’s how you tell us apart.” Her impression of Asheville is not entirely favorable. “There’s a lot of performative wokeness in that community.” 

Grackles

 January 26, 2026

Breakfast at the Drop In, still bright with Christmas lights. The “Red-neck Home Fries” was immense, and I may have finished a third of it. Walked to the end of the pier. Strolling seaward in the sunshine was comfortable, but walking back with the cold wind blasting from the continent was a tribulation. Encountered a woman named Logan, who I thought looked familiar, so I called to her, which was a mistake. She pursued me thereafter, wanting to talk about being seen by God and about “the only name of God’  acknowledged by the scriptures.” I made my getaway. People who open with some nicety of theology known only to them and their little group are always liars. The pier was thronged as it normally is by grackles, but the abnormal things was that every one of them was male. Where were the lady grackles? One imagines them saying, “You go out in that blast if you want to; I’m staying home by the fire.” Cut a day off my stay, going home tomorrow rather than Wednesday. There’s not that much to do here– but eat and drink– when the weather is bad. This allows me what most people would call a real vacation, just lounging about, with no anxiety about getting my money’s worth out of the local attractions. Whirlwinds of pale sand on the edge of the beach. 

Evening: The lady who sat defiantly in a deck chair on the beach all the windy day folds her chair and retreats at fall of darkness. The white volleyball net shimmers out of the gathering dusk.  

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.