February 9, 2008
Milky yellow dawn sky.
Invited to two parties last night. The impulse was, of course, to go to neither, but I forced myself, after rehearsal, into a festive mood. I crossed the mountain on foot to get to Ed’s house on Hy-Vu, on those unlit mountain streets which are by night very dark indeed. Had I been traveling by the stars, all had been well, for the air was better than clear, and seemed to magnify the tiny white fires above, and the night stood still and cool and beautiful. Ed phoned while I thrashed through the darkest of the dark passages. Although I was on the right path, it seemed I wasn’t, and he came part way up the street to meet me. Ed’s is everyone’s strong friend, a bulwark, dependable and loving. I do not know where he finds the fortitude, let alone the time. I wonder if he knows I have written sonnets about him? And how deeply comforting is the cell phone ringing in your pocket when it’s pitch around you and you’ve been going uphill for a long time. Ed’s party was full of people I should have known, or did know at one time. One woman discoursed at length about my yard, saying, "it’s beautiful, but it’s definitely not the yard of a Virgo."
Wound then back down to Lakeshore, where Darren and his roommates were having a party at the house that’s numbered wrong. The local theater scene was there, doing jello shots under ropes of red lights. It was all much merrier and more innocent than the debauch I was led to expect. Came home. I don’t know what happened then. But I awoke in my own bed, with a headache and the cats impatient for breakfast.
I’ve vowed to stay put during Spring Break, needing to pay off credit card debt, needing to paint toward my show in September, looking toward a summer of who knows how much necessary travel. Nevertheless, my fingers walked me to the flight sites, and a heard myself saying that a week in London was less than my State tax return, and the like. I have not succumbed, but the effort not to is surprising. Travel is the one thing which makes me predictably happy. Well, sex and a new production, but it’s harder to plan for those.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
February 7, 2008
DJ and I ate at the Usual last night, and when we came out there was a bouquet of yellow violas on top of his car, with dirt still firm around the roots and scattered over the roof of the car, as though some one had thrown a pot of flowers, or as though a pot had leapt from one of the windows of the building, though there was no sign of the pot, and the car was undamaged. There was enough dirt and the flowers were fresh enough that I planted them when we got home, in the rain and the dark, thinking they must be a message from someone, a message, since so mysterious, certainly incomplete.
Mickey and I presented Crown of Shadows on the radio yesterday morning. Witnesses suggest it went well. Mickey’s street-girl demeanor makes her eloquence the more impressive.
DJ and I ate at the Usual last night, and when we came out there was a bouquet of yellow violas on top of his car, with dirt still firm around the roots and scattered over the roof of the car, as though some one had thrown a pot of flowers, or as though a pot had leapt from one of the windows of the building, though there was no sign of the pot, and the car was undamaged. There was enough dirt and the flowers were fresh enough that I planted them when we got home, in the rain and the dark, thinking they must be a message from someone, a message, since so mysterious, certainly incomplete.
Mickey and I presented Crown of Shadows on the radio yesterday morning. Witnesses suggest it went well. Mickey’s street-girl demeanor makes her eloquence the more impressive.
February 6, 2008
Jocasta was fighting with something under the rhododendron bush in the dark of the morning. I ran out and rescued her. She seems to be unscathed. She alone of all of us has tales to tell of the dark with the stars moving over and the strange things stirring in the shadows.
I do realize that I have spent a whopping portion of the energy of my life trying to grab more than was, evidently, meant for me. And I suppose furthermore that this has been a sin. I would consider it one myself if I stood outside of it. But it is also true that almost all the happiness I have known has occurred in that illicit realm, when I worked outside of the box that had my name on it. What should I think of this? That I have done well to refuse restraints? That I was meant to make a new world for myself, and I almost did? That I have invited ruin and sorrow by forcing my way into places where I was not meant to go? Even poetry seems like a jewel stolen from a treasury when I was very young. In my defense, I thought the treasures were meant for me. The lid was open. I thought we were meant to delight, and choose.
Ed C phones last night to invite me to a party. It seems like a voice from another world, the one I mention above, where I passed like a shadow, never at home.
Mardi Gras celebrated at the Usual with the Hat cast and their friends.
Evening: the day turned out to be a good one. Good workout at the Y. Went to the studio and painted almost to my heart’s content.
Jocasta was fighting with something under the rhododendron bush in the dark of the morning. I ran out and rescued her. She seems to be unscathed. She alone of all of us has tales to tell of the dark with the stars moving over and the strange things stirring in the shadows.
I do realize that I have spent a whopping portion of the energy of my life trying to grab more than was, evidently, meant for me. And I suppose furthermore that this has been a sin. I would consider it one myself if I stood outside of it. But it is also true that almost all the happiness I have known has occurred in that illicit realm, when I worked outside of the box that had my name on it. What should I think of this? That I have done well to refuse restraints? That I was meant to make a new world for myself, and I almost did? That I have invited ruin and sorrow by forcing my way into places where I was not meant to go? Even poetry seems like a jewel stolen from a treasury when I was very young. In my defense, I thought the treasures were meant for me. The lid was open. I thought we were meant to delight, and choose.
Ed C phones last night to invite me to a party. It seems like a voice from another world, the one I mention above, where I passed like a shadow, never at home.
Mardi Gras celebrated at the Usual with the Hat cast and their friends.
Evening: the day turned out to be a good one. Good workout at the Y. Went to the studio and painted almost to my heart’s content.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
February 4, 2008
Retiring in exhaustion early means rising early in cold indecision, and here I am.
Reading from A Dream of Adonis at Malaprop’s yesterday. I guess it went well. Friendly faces, an attentive front row, who cried "Yes!" when I asked if they wanted to hear the poem with cuss words in it. Of my cast, Stephanie appeared. I think there was a Superbowl party.
I’m in a frenzy about my career, a frenzy which gets worse as time goes on-- or, as I should say, as time diminishes--and yet I seem not to do those things which would further it. I should have gone to AWP, but didn’t. I should be reading in New York, but am not. Wherever I read, I’m widely the best, but that seems not to lead to anything. People don’t remember. "Best" is not what they’re looking for, or something they mistrust because it’s not what they wanted it to be. I haven’t the correct sense to further myself, and no one has ever helped me. Probably I never let anyone think I needed it.
Part of the darkness of the present moment is the fact that I can’t– and I have tried to–get over the betrayals at UNCA. I love my students, but the institution has finally defeated me. W’s once-intimate face become a stone wall, become a mask telling me that nothing can be done, when I know that full justice could be done if anybody wanted it. L’s stupid, art-murdering, energy-squandering face making decisions that affect my life and drifting there above the couch amid its mass of shining hair as if her authority were anything beyond a mass of shining hair. The only thing left is to strike hard and undo what can be undone, but that spirit is not, at the moment, in me. Defeated this morning, and I rose early, so it will be a long morning and a long defeat.
Why can I shrug some things off, and others not? I can shrug those things off which were a hazard, or about which really nothing can be done. Thefts and betrayals I cannot shrug off, especially those which could be redressed and aren’t.
But Kit sends me a book of Irish history.
Music of Anuna on the computer.
Registered to go to Miami with Cantaria this summer. This instead of Cambridge. Miami in July seems madness, but I’m a creature of the heat, so perhaps I’ll find my element.
One Hundred Aspects of the Moon arrives from Dublin.
If some good angel sat me down and said, "All right, then, what exactly is it that you want?" would I be able to tell him?
Yes, I guess I would.
Maud’s fascination with fluid dynamics is profound. If anything is drained, flushed, or run, she is there to watch.
Retiring in exhaustion early means rising early in cold indecision, and here I am.
Reading from A Dream of Adonis at Malaprop’s yesterday. I guess it went well. Friendly faces, an attentive front row, who cried "Yes!" when I asked if they wanted to hear the poem with cuss words in it. Of my cast, Stephanie appeared. I think there was a Superbowl party.
I’m in a frenzy about my career, a frenzy which gets worse as time goes on-- or, as I should say, as time diminishes--and yet I seem not to do those things which would further it. I should have gone to AWP, but didn’t. I should be reading in New York, but am not. Wherever I read, I’m widely the best, but that seems not to lead to anything. People don’t remember. "Best" is not what they’re looking for, or something they mistrust because it’s not what they wanted it to be. I haven’t the correct sense to further myself, and no one has ever helped me. Probably I never let anyone think I needed it.
Part of the darkness of the present moment is the fact that I can’t– and I have tried to–get over the betrayals at UNCA. I love my students, but the institution has finally defeated me. W’s once-intimate face become a stone wall, become a mask telling me that nothing can be done, when I know that full justice could be done if anybody wanted it. L’s stupid, art-murdering, energy-squandering face making decisions that affect my life and drifting there above the couch amid its mass of shining hair as if her authority were anything beyond a mass of shining hair. The only thing left is to strike hard and undo what can be undone, but that spirit is not, at the moment, in me. Defeated this morning, and I rose early, so it will be a long morning and a long defeat.
Why can I shrug some things off, and others not? I can shrug those things off which were a hazard, or about which really nothing can be done. Thefts and betrayals I cannot shrug off, especially those which could be redressed and aren’t.
But Kit sends me a book of Irish history.
Music of Anuna on the computer.
Registered to go to Miami with Cantaria this summer. This instead of Cambridge. Miami in July seems madness, but I’m a creature of the heat, so perhaps I’ll find my element.
One Hundred Aspects of the Moon arrives from Dublin.
If some good angel sat me down and said, "All right, then, what exactly is it that you want?" would I be able to tell him?
Yes, I guess I would.
Maud’s fascination with fluid dynamics is profound. If anything is drained, flushed, or run, she is there to watch.
February 2, 2008
Got through yesterday. Bright yellow-gray outside the window, the profile of a cardinal tail-flicking on a telephone wire.
Excellent run-through of Gilgamesh. Mickey said (of Edward) "I don’t know how your New York cast can be any better than ours," and I must admit I now forget how they were better. I hope soon to be reminded. But the fact is, I’ve never seen such consistently fine performances from a cast, certainly never in one of my works, done locally, and never under such outsized conditions. Each time they discover something new, do something old better. Unless something unforeseen happens, we are going to have a sensational run. Of course something unforeseen can happen in the other direction, and we have a legendary run.
Found a way to get back into communication with Ann.
I have sworn on nine gods to make it to the studio today.
Resurrecting Sea’s Edge.
Shane McGowan on the CD.
Got through yesterday. Bright yellow-gray outside the window, the profile of a cardinal tail-flicking on a telephone wire.
Excellent run-through of Gilgamesh. Mickey said (of Edward) "I don’t know how your New York cast can be any better than ours," and I must admit I now forget how they were better. I hope soon to be reminded. But the fact is, I’ve never seen such consistently fine performances from a cast, certainly never in one of my works, done locally, and never under such outsized conditions. Each time they discover something new, do something old better. Unless something unforeseen happens, we are going to have a sensational run. Of course something unforeseen can happen in the other direction, and we have a legendary run.
Found a way to get back into communication with Ann.
I have sworn on nine gods to make it to the studio today.
Resurrecting Sea’s Edge.
Shane McGowan on the CD.
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