November 7, 2008
My house seems in a permanent state of upheaval, on the porch now, as it has been for a week or so, tools and materials strewn over the flower beds, the front door unusable. Though Scott and John are inches away on the front porch, I feel I can’t close the blinds, as that would seem too obviously a gesture of shutting them out, or allowing myself some shameful activity within.
Let this year’s round of applications for grants from the NC Arts Council pass, wondering if 20 consecutive refusals should be teaching me a lesson. To be powerless against fraud is of all the sources of fury among the worst for me. I don’t take well to the phrase, “nothing to be done,” but sometimes that is the case.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
President Obama
November 5, 2008
A gang of us sat in Kyle’s living room watching history be made last night. When Ohio went for Obama, we knew it was won, but we stayed to savor every moment. It was like the night I sat with my dad in the living room in Akron and watched men land on the moon. That a person even of my not-quite-so-advanced years would live to see a black man in the White House would have been, a little while ago, inconceivable. Watching tears roll down Jesse Jackson’s face said it all. I am sanguine enough to believe a whole nation has wandered out of the wilderness and set its feet in the promised land. In his acceptance speech, President Obama pushed not one of the hysteria buttons that have been the singular watchword of the present administration. He did not call upon us to cling to him out of fear, or to cleave together out of hatred for others. He stretched out his arms and gathered. In one night America steps into a cleansing rain, and emerges clean and whole in the eyes of all the world, when it had been smeared almost beyond recognition. I know my friends in Ireland will be dancing in the streets tonight. I will be too if I can find a dance to join. Maybe I’ll dance by myself, under the great golden gum tree where only the squirrels can look on with bemusement. Though at the end it looked inevitable, we thought that something might at last happen to steal the new age away. It did not. I have been happy to be alive before, but never once before because of politics.
M phones that she is off to San Diego next week to the arms of a boy who has loved her since high school. Interfering with-- or even having a firm opinion about–the destiny of another is a dangerous proposition, and I don’t know how even to have a perspective on this, except that I will miss her. The Asheville theater scene will miss her, where she has left a deep mark in a very short time. Everybody will miss her. The only one we know for sure who will profit by this is the boy she runs to. I hope for him that all is well.
Wednesday is open for me, so I tried to write–and will try again–but since this summer I have found myself oddly scoured clean of fancy. My own imaginative worlds do not, for the moment, interest me. It’s not a bad feeling–rather clean and streamlined, the way I imagine other people to live, who do not drag around longings and imaginings that somehow they believe, if they labor desperately enough, they can make real. I miss it. I do not totally recognize myself. But I also don’t know what to do about it, so I busy myself with concrete undertakings–fixing the house, playing the market, waiting for the next night out. This is probably how I would have lived all my life if I had not been a poet.
Robin Farquhar shoots himself at the cabin at Flat Rock Playhouse. Who knows why anybody does anything, most especially this.
John asks for an advance on his check to cover “an unexpected expense.” I give it to him, noticing the perfection of his teeth. We chat for a moment, and he reveals that his oldest daughter is off next year to college to study psychology. “Where?” says I “Liberty,” says he. “In Lynchburg?” I say. He nods. I stop myself from saying anything else. He has said not one word about my Obama T-shirt, so I decide to return the favor. I realize there could no more be understanding between our worlds than if one of us were a Martian. This makes me sad.
A gang of us sat in Kyle’s living room watching history be made last night. When Ohio went for Obama, we knew it was won, but we stayed to savor every moment. It was like the night I sat with my dad in the living room in Akron and watched men land on the moon. That a person even of my not-quite-so-advanced years would live to see a black man in the White House would have been, a little while ago, inconceivable. Watching tears roll down Jesse Jackson’s face said it all. I am sanguine enough to believe a whole nation has wandered out of the wilderness and set its feet in the promised land. In his acceptance speech, President Obama pushed not one of the hysteria buttons that have been the singular watchword of the present administration. He did not call upon us to cling to him out of fear, or to cleave together out of hatred for others. He stretched out his arms and gathered. In one night America steps into a cleansing rain, and emerges clean and whole in the eyes of all the world, when it had been smeared almost beyond recognition. I know my friends in Ireland will be dancing in the streets tonight. I will be too if I can find a dance to join. Maybe I’ll dance by myself, under the great golden gum tree where only the squirrels can look on with bemusement. Though at the end it looked inevitable, we thought that something might at last happen to steal the new age away. It did not. I have been happy to be alive before, but never once before because of politics.
M phones that she is off to San Diego next week to the arms of a boy who has loved her since high school. Interfering with-- or even having a firm opinion about–the destiny of another is a dangerous proposition, and I don’t know how even to have a perspective on this, except that I will miss her. The Asheville theater scene will miss her, where she has left a deep mark in a very short time. Everybody will miss her. The only one we know for sure who will profit by this is the boy she runs to. I hope for him that all is well.
Wednesday is open for me, so I tried to write–and will try again–but since this summer I have found myself oddly scoured clean of fancy. My own imaginative worlds do not, for the moment, interest me. It’s not a bad feeling–rather clean and streamlined, the way I imagine other people to live, who do not drag around longings and imaginings that somehow they believe, if they labor desperately enough, they can make real. I miss it. I do not totally recognize myself. But I also don’t know what to do about it, so I busy myself with concrete undertakings–fixing the house, playing the market, waiting for the next night out. This is probably how I would have lived all my life if I had not been a poet.
Robin Farquhar shoots himself at the cabin at Flat Rock Playhouse. Who knows why anybody does anything, most especially this.
John asks for an advance on his check to cover “an unexpected expense.” I give it to him, noticing the perfection of his teeth. We chat for a moment, and he reveals that his oldest daughter is off next year to college to study psychology. “Where?” says I “Liberty,” says he. “In Lynchburg?” I say. He nods. I stop myself from saying anything else. He has said not one word about my Obama T-shirt, so I decide to return the favor. I realize there could no more be understanding between our worlds than if one of us were a Martian. This makes me sad.
November 4, 2008
Dream at dawn of going on a nature hike with Denny Taylor (as we used to do), only “nature” was a gigantic building with long white corridors, like a hospital, where occasionally there would be a diorama or a person with a cage full of rabbits or frogs that one could hold. I need to go home. I need to go to Ohio. I need to see Denny. I need to see places where I held rabbits and frogs.
Election Day. Dear God, let it be epoch-making.
Dream at dawn of going on a nature hike with Denny Taylor (as we used to do), only “nature” was a gigantic building with long white corridors, like a hospital, where occasionally there would be a diorama or a person with a cage full of rabbits or frogs that one could hold. I need to go home. I need to go to Ohio. I need to see Denny. I need to see places where I held rabbits and frogs.
Election Day. Dear God, let it be epoch-making.
November 3, 2008
Moths were fluttering under the lamps on campus, and it nearly winter.
Obama’s grandmother did not live to see him President. I hope she knew in her heart.
Jason visits to retrieve his painting for his show. He says that his brother is coming to live with him for a while. “I hope he stays forever,” he says. I am of two minds. The brother may distract and keep Jason from spending time with me; on the other hand, maybe the brother will like me and I will have two Sabbides to play with instead of one. I will pray for the fairer outcome.
A student comes to my office to excuse himself for missing class. His mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he rushed to be with her. He fights off tears during the dialogue. They do not understand how dear and beautiful these moments are to us. Sometimes when people say, “You have no children,” I do not know what they mean.
Am giving the Corolla to NA. It has been a good and faithful servant, and this seems a better continuation of its karma than selling it.
Circe will even leave a bowl of food to come attack the sheets while I’m making the bed. It is a kind of feline aesthetic of which I approve.
Moths were fluttering under the lamps on campus, and it nearly winter.
Obama’s grandmother did not live to see him President. I hope she knew in her heart.
Jason visits to retrieve his painting for his show. He says that his brother is coming to live with him for a while. “I hope he stays forever,” he says. I am of two minds. The brother may distract and keep Jason from spending time with me; on the other hand, maybe the brother will like me and I will have two Sabbides to play with instead of one. I will pray for the fairer outcome.
A student comes to my office to excuse himself for missing class. His mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he rushed to be with her. He fights off tears during the dialogue. They do not understand how dear and beautiful these moments are to us. Sometimes when people say, “You have no children,” I do not know what they mean.
Am giving the Corolla to NA. It has been a good and faithful servant, and this seems a better continuation of its karma than selling it.
Circe will even leave a bowl of food to come attack the sheets while I’m making the bed. It is a kind of feline aesthetic of which I approve.
November 2, 2008
Three droll Mexicans hauled my new furniture in. I wondered what they were saying to each other, about my house, about me. The furniture disappeared from my conscious view almost as soon as it was installed.
John and Scott working all day on my porch, in the most remarkable and un-workmanlike silence. I gave them the left-over refreshments from my little Halloween party. Scott said, “I’m going home to shoot .22's with my sons and their cousins. It’s good redneck fun.”
Sang the Rheinberger Requiem, then Cantaria rehearsal. Came home sick with exhaustion. I’m wondering if I’m nourished by my association with All Souls. I hold with it hoping to be nourished, hoping to be surprised by some extraordinary stirring of the spirit, but it is long since anything of the like has happened. I’m not sure that I am a friend to my All Souls friends, or merely a kind of habit. I’ve offered my services to All Souls in a beyond-the-call way several times--running for Vestry, attempting to set up a drama program–and have been rebuffed each time. Am I needed? Am I a kind of outlandish appendage that is endured as other anomalies are endured? I don’t know whether it is merely vanity to want to be of service. I don’t know whether I am supposed to be “nourished.” Maybe I’m meant simply to endure this, too, as so many other things need to be endured. I think of the time poured into this institution, without any “return” either of the spirit or the emotions (should I look for a return?) and without any feeling that things wouldn’t be the same if I weren’t there at all. I have thought this before, but thought it doubly tonight because I was so weary, and the sight of those bricks and tiles was becoming sickening to me.
Three droll Mexicans hauled my new furniture in. I wondered what they were saying to each other, about my house, about me. The furniture disappeared from my conscious view almost as soon as it was installed.
John and Scott working all day on my porch, in the most remarkable and un-workmanlike silence. I gave them the left-over refreshments from my little Halloween party. Scott said, “I’m going home to shoot .22's with my sons and their cousins. It’s good redneck fun.”
Sang the Rheinberger Requiem, then Cantaria rehearsal. Came home sick with exhaustion. I’m wondering if I’m nourished by my association with All Souls. I hold with it hoping to be nourished, hoping to be surprised by some extraordinary stirring of the spirit, but it is long since anything of the like has happened. I’m not sure that I am a friend to my All Souls friends, or merely a kind of habit. I’ve offered my services to All Souls in a beyond-the-call way several times--running for Vestry, attempting to set up a drama program–and have been rebuffed each time. Am I needed? Am I a kind of outlandish appendage that is endured as other anomalies are endured? I don’t know whether it is merely vanity to want to be of service. I don’t know whether I am supposed to be “nourished.” Maybe I’m meant simply to endure this, too, as so many other things need to be endured. I think of the time poured into this institution, without any “return” either of the spirit or the emotions (should I look for a return?) and without any feeling that things wouldn’t be the same if I weren’t there at all. I have thought this before, but thought it doubly tonight because I was so weary, and the sight of those bricks and tiles was becoming sickening to me.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
November 1, 2008
Thirteen hundred dollars come to me in one day for poems: the carol in Best American Spiritual Writing, and two poems which won second prize in a contest for war poems put on by somebody called “Winning Writers.” I must have entered the contest, but the memory is mist.
Halloween gathering at my house, with the front porch hidden behind John and Scott’s scaffolding and the garden still ablaze with roses– though the nasturtiums and the cannas have succumbed. We watched Pan’s Labyrinth and the Lugosi Dracula with Philip Glass’s music. I don’t know if I like to entertain or not. It is perhaps one of those things which is better in retrospect; I certainly like having entertained.
Some bitterness as a weekend annihilated by tasks and rehearsals and waiting for the furniture deliver man. Monday will hit like a bomb and I all unprepared.
Thirteen hundred dollars come to me in one day for poems: the carol in Best American Spiritual Writing, and two poems which won second prize in a contest for war poems put on by somebody called “Winning Writers.” I must have entered the contest, but the memory is mist.
Halloween gathering at my house, with the front porch hidden behind John and Scott’s scaffolding and the garden still ablaze with roses– though the nasturtiums and the cannas have succumbed. We watched Pan’s Labyrinth and the Lugosi Dracula with Philip Glass’s music. I don’t know if I like to entertain or not. It is perhaps one of those things which is better in retrospect; I certainly like having entertained.
Some bitterness as a weekend annihilated by tasks and rehearsals and waiting for the furniture deliver man. Monday will hit like a bomb and I all unprepared.
October 29, 2008
Snow fell before it was deeply cold, so there was the rare sight of living roses with snow on them. The terrace is now a blanket of pink baby’s blanket roses, and there was a blanket of white over that.
John and Scott are hammering away at the porch. People are taking care of me, and I am taking care of them, and it is all almost disturbingly satisfactory.
Blue, cold, radiant today. I planted tassel ferns, then replanted the daffodils I dug up doing so.
Snow fell before it was deeply cold, so there was the rare sight of living roses with snow on them. The terrace is now a blanket of pink baby’s blanket roses, and there was a blanket of white over that.
John and Scott are hammering away at the porch. People are taking care of me, and I am taking care of them, and it is all almost disturbingly satisfactory.
Blue, cold, radiant today. I planted tassel ferns, then replanted the daffodils I dug up doing so.
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