February 5, 2009
Brutal cold lingers. Rehearsal was sparse last night, because of the weather. Jason’s patience is greater than mine by an infinite degree.
Sparse snow, falling against a brick wall and a cold stand of yews.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
February 4, 2009
Snowy, and deadly cold. Schools are closed today, and I get to do what I was going to do anyway, but with that sense of urgency that comes with deadlines. Emma Kirby sings Elizabethan songs on the CD.
Worked harder at cardio yesterday than I had the day before, with less after-effect– except a few monumental muscle spasms late in the evening. They felt of righteousness, though.
I need to mention my playwrights’ workshop Monday night. It was one of those occasions when one remembers why one went into teaching. The kids were bright, eager, playful, happy, insightful, generous and rigorous at once. I told them such classes bring light into my life; I only hope they believed me. What would I have done had I taught at a place imbued by cynicism, as I understand some are?
The hardest cases in a playwriting class are those who think they have succeeded if they have presented the point they intended at first to present. The starting point is the point you depart from, nothing more. The Way is not known at the first step, but only at the last.
Printed out 24 pages of tax forms.
Snowy, and deadly cold. Schools are closed today, and I get to do what I was going to do anyway, but with that sense of urgency that comes with deadlines. Emma Kirby sings Elizabethan songs on the CD.
Worked harder at cardio yesterday than I had the day before, with less after-effect– except a few monumental muscle spasms late in the evening. They felt of righteousness, though.
I need to mention my playwrights’ workshop Monday night. It was one of those occasions when one remembers why one went into teaching. The kids were bright, eager, playful, happy, insightful, generous and rigorous at once. I told them such classes bring light into my life; I only hope they believed me. What would I have done had I taught at a place imbued by cynicism, as I understand some are?
The hardest cases in a playwriting class are those who think they have succeeded if they have presented the point they intended at first to present. The starting point is the point you depart from, nothing more. The Way is not known at the first step, but only at the last.
Printed out 24 pages of tax forms.
February 2, 2009
Groundhog would see a shadow a mile long.
Overdid at the Y, feel that airy, shaky feeling that I have not experienced in a long time. It is a good feeling. Hope I can stay awake through the day.
A woman is writing a book about Blue Pond and, finding it mentioned in A Childhood in the Milky Way, has been asking me about it. It’s odd how much I remember about a place I only 2 or 3 times saw up close (though nearly every day from a distance), mostly from my mother’s recollection. It had apparently been meant as a playground for Goodyear employees. In my life it was never anything but a great bog, of mysteriously ill-repute, though you could see ducks and herons in the shadow of the rubber plant smokestacks.
Groundhog would see a shadow a mile long.
Overdid at the Y, feel that airy, shaky feeling that I have not experienced in a long time. It is a good feeling. Hope I can stay awake through the day.
A woman is writing a book about Blue Pond and, finding it mentioned in A Childhood in the Milky Way, has been asking me about it. It’s odd how much I remember about a place I only 2 or 3 times saw up close (though nearly every day from a distance), mostly from my mother’s recollection. It had apparently been meant as a playground for Goodyear employees. In my life it was never anything but a great bog, of mysteriously ill-repute, though you could see ducks and herons in the shadow of the rubber plant smokestacks.
Monday, February 2, 2009
February 1, 2009
Walked under the brilliant stars to Kenn and Michele’s for a gumbo dinner party last night. Met new people, heard about one woman’s house that she is restyling, and another woman’s Chinese daughter, and what she had to go through to adopt her. The tall pathologist was comparing what really happens in his work to CSI. Kenn’s art show at Mars Hill opens in a week, featuring one of my poems rendered into braille and made into– well, something. I’ll have to see it to understand exactly what he was describing. The great grin of the moon was high when I left and low in the west when I walked back.
Hundreds burned, many fatally, when a gas lorry tipped in Kenya. The poor villagers rushed out to scoop up free spilled gas, and then it all exploded. I can hardly stand the thought of it, people imagining they may be getting a little break, a little windfall from the tight fist . . . .
Walked under the brilliant stars to Kenn and Michele’s for a gumbo dinner party last night. Met new people, heard about one woman’s house that she is restyling, and another woman’s Chinese daughter, and what she had to go through to adopt her. The tall pathologist was comparing what really happens in his work to CSI. Kenn’s art show at Mars Hill opens in a week, featuring one of my poems rendered into braille and made into– well, something. I’ll have to see it to understand exactly what he was describing. The great grin of the moon was high when I left and low in the west when I walked back.
Hundreds burned, many fatally, when a gas lorry tipped in Kenya. The poor villagers rushed out to scoop up free spilled gas, and then it all exploded. I can hardly stand the thought of it, people imagining they may be getting a little break, a little windfall from the tight fist . . . .
January 31, 2009
Dominick Trifero, my high school trig teacher, has died. He was a dedicated teacher and, as one reads in the obituary and as one knew then, an outstanding citizen. He was the faculty adviser of Future Teachers of America. I won a small scholarship through FTA, and I was meant to send my first college semester’s registration in to claim the money. When Mr. Trifero sent the check he wrote, “An impressive line-up, but couldn’t there be one math class?”
LaNeita e-mails that Treva Browning’s little brother, Doug, is also dead. I remember him as scrappy and slight and hairy, a very male version of his sister. Shy, also, but I forget the reason. I have carried his image like a snapshot all these years, to be pulled out at news of his death.
Painted in the just-bearable cold of the studio with Jason and his student Merlin, a big red-haired oaf of a kid. Merlin is autistic–fairly high functioning, though startling from time to time–and through Jason’s good offices has developed a reputation as an artist. His imagination is intricate, heroic. and funnier than you’d expect from a person in that situation. Now he is doing assemblages in which he paints over a ground made of the comic pages of newspapers. Merlin paints what he wants to paint, then Jason surrounds identifiable images with thick strokes of magic marker, which makes all the difference in compositions which might look like chaos unless the eye were guided in some way. I finished my first painting in the new space, nothing spectacular on its own. Painted it on paper to remind myself of the perishability of all.
Dominick Trifero, my high school trig teacher, has died. He was a dedicated teacher and, as one reads in the obituary and as one knew then, an outstanding citizen. He was the faculty adviser of Future Teachers of America. I won a small scholarship through FTA, and I was meant to send my first college semester’s registration in to claim the money. When Mr. Trifero sent the check he wrote, “An impressive line-up, but couldn’t there be one math class?”
LaNeita e-mails that Treva Browning’s little brother, Doug, is also dead. I remember him as scrappy and slight and hairy, a very male version of his sister. Shy, also, but I forget the reason. I have carried his image like a snapshot all these years, to be pulled out at news of his death.
Painted in the just-bearable cold of the studio with Jason and his student Merlin, a big red-haired oaf of a kid. Merlin is autistic–fairly high functioning, though startling from time to time–and through Jason’s good offices has developed a reputation as an artist. His imagination is intricate, heroic. and funnier than you’d expect from a person in that situation. Now he is doing assemblages in which he paints over a ground made of the comic pages of newspapers. Merlin paints what he wants to paint, then Jason surrounds identifiable images with thick strokes of magic marker, which makes all the difference in compositions which might look like chaos unless the eye were guided in some way. I finished my first painting in the new space, nothing spectacular on its own. Painted it on paper to remind myself of the perishability of all.
Long-with-love-acquainted Eyes
January 30, 2009
Convinced, today, that Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” is the greatest of sonnet sequences. I keep repeating to myself snippets of–
With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climbst the skies!
How silently, and with how wanne a face!
What, may it be that euen in heau'nly place
That busie archer his sharpe arrowes tries?
Sure, if that long-with-loue-acquainted eyes
Can iudge of loue, thou feel'st a louers case,
I reade it in thy lookes: thy languist grace,
To me that feele the like, thy state discries.
Then, eu'n of fellowship, O Moone, tell me,
Is constant loue deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they aboue loue to be lou'd, and yet
Those louers scorn whom that loue doth possesse?
Do they call vertue there vngratefulnesse?
– ravished each time I come to “long-with-love-acquainted-eyes.”
Tea with Jason, then a session of painting at the almost-warm-enough studio. He’ll be good for me. I think my painting’s done when it expresses the meaning I meant it to express. He thinks it’s done when it is a work of art.
Convinced, today, that Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” is the greatest of sonnet sequences. I keep repeating to myself snippets of–
With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climbst the skies!
How silently, and with how wanne a face!
What, may it be that euen in heau'nly place
That busie archer his sharpe arrowes tries?
Sure, if that long-with-loue-acquainted eyes
Can iudge of loue, thou feel'st a louers case,
I reade it in thy lookes: thy languist grace,
To me that feele the like, thy state discries.
Then, eu'n of fellowship, O Moone, tell me,
Is constant loue deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they aboue loue to be lou'd, and yet
Those louers scorn whom that loue doth possesse?
Do they call vertue there vngratefulnesse?
– ravished each time I come to “long-with-love-acquainted-eyes.”
Tea with Jason, then a session of painting at the almost-warm-enough studio. He’ll be good for me. I think my painting’s done when it expresses the meaning I meant it to express. He thinks it’s done when it is a work of art.
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