Geraniums

 November 13, 2026

Woke after the coldest night of the season to find that my porch geraniums had not only survived, but the white one has bloomed. If you want to live, sweetheart, then you shall live. Hauled them inside, the white one and the orange one. The scarlet one is in an enormous pot which, full of dirt, cannot be moved. Not by me. This grieves me, but there must be some sacrifice to winter. Went to the hardware store and bought a white Christmas cactus. The check-out boy had a full face of metal inserts, including metal fangs. 

All flights are canceled now at American airports, some sort of communications problem. Every report quickly adds: “It’s not a cyber-attack.” So it probably is. 

Veteran's Day

November 12, 2026

My barber complained about Veteran’s Day, said it should be moved to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so people could have a long weekend. She had no idea that the selection of the date was not arbitrary. I explained Armistice Day to her. She said they’d never touched on WWI in school, and WWII only insofar as to read Anne Frank every year. The haircut was fast and good. 

 

 November 11, 2026

Radiant days continue, though colder on some days than others. Put together a new pump for the pond, $200 more expensive than the last one (which was out of stock), much harder to assemble, and doing, as far as I can see, exactly the same thing. How long will it last? I am completely at the mercy of the bears. Potted a cutting I rooted from one of my houseplants. They multiply into a jungle. Worked on the play, waiting for fresh inspirations to come like rapids along a river, which is how you know it’s working. 

Tony remarked that my garden looks messy in the winter. I split a stalk open to show him a bee (I think it was) hibernating inside. Every upright stalk, every heap of leaves is a palace for some tiny be-wintered creature. 

Tiny bits of AVLGMC rehearsals have been recorded on B’s phone. We sound charming. Our sounding charming does not contradict my conviction that we’re singing crap. But we sound great doing it. I need to shut my mouth abut this.  Nothing’s worse than a person ruining everybody’s fun.

Teeth

 November 8, 2026

Tooth marks in two of the pumpkins, where a bear tested them. Either not to his taste, or not softened enough to get a good bite. Bear proceeded to the pond to destroy the pump. It didn’t look destroyed, but if you pull it out of the water, the little motor quickly burns itself up. 

Robes on at church today– an inconvenience, but one which apparently encourages the congregation. The scriptures– both of which I read– were the wise and foolish virgins and Joshua admonishing his people to choose among gods. Both are problematic unless read as theater– characters speaking their lines, sensible in context, unsatisfying if taken to be universal. 

A review of JD Vance’s new and evidently hideous book led me to think of things in my past I did for praise or to gain approbation. The fact is I never completely understood the things that got me praised, nor those that got me disapproved of. They seemed to me part of a continuum, one point to me indistinguishable from another. I waited till the dust settled to decide if I had triumphed or flopped.  

Woke in at 4 AM revising my play, half in dream, half awake. The dream was about a colossal dinner party I was giving, worried that the plates were coming out too slowly and there wouldn’t be enough wine and that nobody had thought of ice. 

 November 7, 2026

Pileated woodpecker in my dead maple.

Brief walk at Sleepy Gap. It was colder than I had prepared for. A Japanese family was strewn over the grass, taking photos of one another.

 November 6, 2026

Continuing to feel a great weight lifted from my heart. I’m more political than I thought I was. 

Rehearsal last night barely infuriating at all. Plus, there were cupcakes. 

 November 5, 2026

Learned that classmate M shot himself after coming come from Vietnam severely wounded, blind in one eye, soaking in PTSD. Knew that he’d died in the 70's, but, having known his mean and bullying ass, I assumed it was drugs or murder. Live and learn . . . .

I continue to be stupid with joy over the election results. 

Cleaned leaves and pine needles and other detritus out of the pond. Fish come up in the net, and it gives me the opportunity to hold them in my hand for a second while I pluck them out and dip them back in the water.  I hope they remember it. I do. 

Victory

 November 4, 2026

Heavy, chill rain.

Yesterday’s referendum turned out better than I expected, actually better than I imagined, for when I wished my wishes for the Democratic majorities in House and Senate, they were less than what actually transpired. Victory almost everywhere, with margins unanticipated. Elation has kept me from functioning well during the day, but that’s OK. I was at ASC rehearsal, and when I turned the TV on it was at the moment Roy Cooper was announced as our Senator. I burst into tears. That was almost enough. I didn’t expect more and better was yet to come. I fell asleep in front of the TV sometime after 3. I had imagined some hero–like Jack Smith–arriving to destroy Trump and American fascism with a fist of iron. This was much, much better: the people ourselves rose up and said, “enough.”  Madison looks down from heaven murmuring, “I told you so.”

Shipped “Into the Forest” to Sam in Liberty, Ohio, in gratitude for his work on The Falls of the Wyona. Bought a painting at Loretto’s new show at the Trinity in Dublin. 

 November 3, 2026

Tobi at Red Hen Oks the audiobook. The first dew in a long, dry season. 

My heart misgives me on this election day. Only a smashing victory will do the good that needs to be done, and though the polls suggest that victory is nigh, the polls have mislead in the past. The entire world holds its breath.  

November 2, 2026

R has died. I knew him–what?– twenty years? Thinking of his beautiful yard in East Asheville, his absurd apparel, his roses, the painting I gave him in return for multiple kindnesses. He would arrive in my driveways with books for me to read and bulbs for me to plant. 

Filled the feeders and hung the seed logs for the winter birds. 

Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices may be the greatest piece of vocal music. 

 

 November 1, 2026

Faure’s Requiem at First Presbyterian for All Saints The acoustics of the building was new to me, dry and isolating, the sound of my own voice unfamiliar. I could hear myself correcting flaws I didn’t know I had. 

 October 31, 2026

Rehearsal downtown at First Presbyterian. As is my practice, I went early, parked distantly, and walked through town. Extravagant Halloween costumes were everywhere. A disabled man in a wheelchair sold his paintings near Pack Square, and I bought one, a messy, naive landscape with towering mountains spidery trees, and a waterfall. He showed me the red marks in the trees that are cardinals. He said, “My mother fed cardinals on our windowsill, and they came to her. When she died, I thought the cardinals were her spirit come to look after me.” 

Through the town I went at considerable speed. I never lost my breath. I never wobbled. Tomorrow will tell if this is restoration. 

 October 30, 2026

Perfect day. I sat on the front porch just at twilight and the peace and loveliness were so great one had to disturb them for a moment to appreciate them again.

M is dead

Patrick Stewart is dead.

R fell in hospice and is lingering in a coma in a ruined body. 

L is on the verge of death from Alzheimer’s. Carol L writes of her: We have an update on L. . .. She is deteriorating with her Alzheimer’s. She can no longer bathe or dress herself and cannot hold a conversation.  Her speech is also garbled.  Please keep her and her family in your prayers.  This disease is rapidly progressing since January.  Ellen received this update.

L and I lived a block from each other, and once, after long consideration, I walked to her house and asked her to be my girlfriend. I knew boys and girls kept each other company, but I was so without a sexual impulse toward women that I didn’t understand actual desire was involved, that a boy longed to be with a certain girl and the other way around. I figured it was just something you do, and I might as well get a start doing it. L replied that she already had a boyfriend. I knew him, so there was no awkwardness on any side. I wonder if she ever told that story, or remembered it. Ken C (we called him Ken Canoe because he was the canoe boy at Camp Manatoc) got on at the same school bus stop, and I never realized my sick-making, extravagant longing for him was the relevant impulse applied to a different person. Male love was so unspoken-of I presumed I had invented it. 

Moon

October 29, 2026

Days that seemed to have been productive, though I haven’t managed to write much of it down. 

Planted black violas is pots and the raised beds. Received a new (and forgotten) shipment of iris. 

Took paintings to the framer, which has become prohibitively expensive. It would be cheaper to rent a workshop, buy tools, and do the work myself.  One of the paintings is meant for Dan and David’s house above the river. I haven’t heard from any of the Georgians in so long– hoping it isn’t conflict over our inharmonious politics, which I try not to mention.

Faure Requiem this weekend. Jonathan sounds terrific. Our sopranos don’t so much, alternately wispy or strident. The transparent textures of the piece are not served. 

Rabbit wait in the drive for me when I return at night.

An audiobook of The Falls of the Wyona seems to be back on track. I had assumed it was another scam.

Great fall moon follows me through my western windows, at a different place each night when I rise up and go to the toilet.

Zen

 

October 25, 2026

Glorious concert by Asheville Vocal Ensemble last night. Precision so sharp it hurt. I waffled about going, and now am glad I went.

Crows and squirrels delight in the corn I bought for the turkeys. 

Perfect day in the heavens. Some Zen posting on line put its finger on the exact issue that plagues me, perhaps worse than anything else: still reaping blame from trespasses I committed long ago. The posting calls them “the memories of a ghost.” Remember, it said, you are no longer that person. This is helpful, especially considering that for all my anxiety I could not think of how to make those errors right.  No need to make them right, even were there a way. The person who did them is gone; the people to whom they were done are gone. 

October 21, 2026

Began the day at the Y, the hardest and best workout since my return, and the one with the least staggering about afterward. 

Planted houseplants I’d snipped and rooted in jars on the window sill. 

Driving back from rehearsal, my headlights caught my rabbit in the back yard. Turned off the lights as fast as I could, so his terror would be brief. 

 

October 20, 2026

Cold and radiant. The blue of the last few days has been spiritual.

Coffee with A, who told the sage of getting his 95 year old mother out of her house and into a rest home. 

Thought I might fast today, but it is barely 9:30 and I’m ravenously hungry. 

 

October 18, 2026

V is dead. I lost track of him through the years, but his obituary makes his life seem as one of singular achievement and blessedness. 

Watched a film about Nureyev’s Swan Lake, and couldn’t get past my irritation with his misuse of the corps. There were scenes in which only two were dancing, yet the corps were lined up on stage like fence posts, trying to be inconspicuous, or like God knows what with their arms waving in the air. Do they get extra money for every scene they’re in? If only two need to be watched, get everybody else off stage, bring them back on when needed. Classical ballet is not my favorite thing. So much of it is waiting for a dancer to strike a pose already known and approved, and to be judged on the exquisite sameness by which it is achieved. Even at passionate moments– lovers’ paux de deux– there is no actual passion, just conventional gestures intended as indications of passion. I suppose the very things that sadden me are those in which a fan delights. 

Engaged and productive day, after several in which I seemed to be spinning my wheels. Grasped where a play went wrong. Planted the delivered boxes of Siberian iris, most in the ground, but two in a giant green pot I hauled onto the porch. Emptied the dirt of pots whose flowers had died into the new one, with a little fertilizer. Left the geraniums, because they caught new life after the rain and may have a week or two left to them. 

Pure and gleaming day in the peacock mountains. Were I a tourist here I would think I’d gotten my money’s worth. 

 October 17, 2026

Cold. All windows closed. Heater in the study on, furnace set at the lowest point I can endure. 

Thomas confides, as we pass the very spot, that he was conceived in the Burger King parking lot on Patton Avenue. 

If I sit at the desk downstairs I see the sky-blue (sometimes) and lavender (sometimes) hydrangea flowers held on stalks to tall and thin they look to be floating. 

 October 15, 2026

Y again, two days in a row. Went harder on upper body to avoid yesterday’s wobbly legs. Had my times wrong, so I missed PT. 

Voted on the first day of early voting. I hate when people who have not seen each other for five years meet in the voting line and need to catch up. Heard at length about the wilderness retreats and spiritual journeys of the people behind me. The man was R, whom I worked out with at Rusty’s and whose silly paintings I praise on Facebook.  I didn’t re-introduce myself, unsure whether I had any spiritual anecdote to offer. I stand in the midnight garden and hurl challenges at God.