March 8, 2009
Odd, ugly dream before morning. DJ and I had been disappointed in attending some arts event underground, and when we emerged he said he wanted to have lunch, and wanted to have it in an exceptionally ugly (and remote) hole, which was like a concrete box carved out of acres of dirty concrete. He was furious with me and I didn’t know why. It was a cafeteria, and he got his food and ran to a distant table and sat down beside Amy Doyle. When I tried to join them, he knocked my juice over, staining my clothes purple, then lay down on the bench so I couldn’t share it. After a string of furious accusations, he said that we both suffered from “malevolent diphorism.”
Woke this morning in time to combat an onslaught of gout. Aspirin did the trick (though a second dose was necessary moments ago), but I thought how this has not been an especially good week, health-wise. Going to two services at church was doable, but not a good idea. A couple of times I thought I was going to pass out, and walking to the car I was shaky and bleary, and convinced it had been a bad choice. Besides, the altos stepped on my solo entrance. I needed the sermon. Perhaps that was why there was enough strength. It was about people who put themselves at the center of the universe and then blame God for not confirming the address.
Canceling the New York trip I wondered if I’d regret it, if Monday morning I’d be chipper and ready to have gone. The answer is “no.” I can’t imagine navigating an airport, much less the rest of it.
J blames me for making Titus crumble around his head. I have no defense. I would be thinking the same thing if the tables were reversed.
Daffodils out full. Not a cloud or host, though I must have planted that many.
Watched the DVD of the old movie Teahouse of the August Moon. I was lying on my side on the couch the whole time, so I remember it sort of sideways. Glenn Ford was an unexpectedly able and attractive comedian. Besides that, I was stuck on qualities of the script. The trailer insisted that the play was the most watched comedy of all time, and thought I doubted that, I do remember when Teahouse was fairly standard at dinner theaters and high schools, and was one of the scripts we read while choosing a senior play at Ellet. It was adeptly written and, in an official and saw-it-coming-a-mile-ago way, funny. It dealt with stereotypes, but the stereotypes were not mean. The American officers were a clueless as the natives were picturesque. It was very Plautian, with the wily servant and the bent course of love and all, but what bothered me was the clank of expectation-fulfilling machinery, the smug, tidy, inconsequential squareness of the Well Made Play, which I have always hated without considering very precisely why. Ford soars because he possesses (or successfully affects) innocence of the strings he’s pulling. Brando is mortifying because he is so very knowing–besides being got up as an Okinawan servant boy. That big body, the face that carries almost any emotion better than cunning, should have militated against such casting.
Watched a bit of Reflections in a Golden Eye, but found its pathological circumspection to be as sickening as my staph. One decade’s raw exposed nerve is another’s too-dainty shellac job. One wishes to enter certain dated works of art and scream, “Oh, just do what you want to do. Ten years from now it’ll be in TV comedies.”
Monday, March 9, 2009
March 7, 2009
Pulmonaria, purple and white crocus, Lenten rose, daffodils a day or two off. The day was hot, actually, though my house is a little refrigerator, and I had to walk outside to know it.
Progress of the disease disappointingly gradual. Today I can scarcely stay awake, though the continents of scarlet have receded. Have eaten, though certain choices–surprisingly enough hummus– proved instantly nauseating. Jason and Denise arrived with provision. Jason last night scolded me roundly for not calling on my friends in times like these, and he was right. They were looking at my aquarium, and Jason said “Oops, there’s a dead one at the bottom.” Denise said “No, it’s still breathing. Don’t say things like that!” Turns out when I looked myself, it was dead. I wondered what the set of assumptions in that conversation had been. It was as though Denise thought it impolite to interfere in a death in the family. Or maybe the deceased piscine seemed a secret best kept close.
Pulmonaria, purple and white crocus, Lenten rose, daffodils a day or two off. The day was hot, actually, though my house is a little refrigerator, and I had to walk outside to know it.
Progress of the disease disappointingly gradual. Today I can scarcely stay awake, though the continents of scarlet have receded. Have eaten, though certain choices–surprisingly enough hummus– proved instantly nauseating. Jason and Denise arrived with provision. Jason last night scolded me roundly for not calling on my friends in times like these, and he was right. They were looking at my aquarium, and Jason said “Oops, there’s a dead one at the bottom.” Denise said “No, it’s still breathing. Don’t say things like that!” Turns out when I looked myself, it was dead. I wondered what the set of assumptions in that conversation had been. It was as though Denise thought it impolite to interfere in a death in the family. Or maybe the deceased piscine seemed a secret best kept close.
Friday, March 6, 2009
March 6, 2009
Everything since Tuesday afternoon obliterated by phlebitis. It has been an especially bad attack–not the worst–with nuances I don’t remember from other times. One such nuance is projectile vomiting, which I had not experienced before, and which I had thought a figure of speech. Convulsion-like chills, then hours of delirium and pain. One thing I thought would never happen to me was to miss a performance, but I missed Wednesday’s Titus, and I don’t see how, at this point, I could endure tonight’s. It was a strange thing. There was actually no choice. I was powerless. I could not be there. David Mycoff did the part on book, and word was it was fine. Walked to the mailbox yesterday. Driving to the doctor’s office today. I’m bored, but too achy and weak to do anything that’s not boring. When it becomes such a monumental task is when I realize how much time I spend cleaning up after cats. Jocasta, actually, who spews forth at both ends habitually, but does not have the wit to die, at her advanced cat-age. Have cancelled the New York trip. Even if I am well by Monday, it is not going to do me good to whirl around in the subways for hours on end. I lose hundreds of dollars in theater tickets. Trying to get MA to come get them (he too is going to New York) but I don’t think he believes I’m serious when I say they’re free. I even know what caused this: a torn toenail which I neglected, trusting in my habitual vitality. Our hubris is frequently over-penalized.
Everything since Tuesday afternoon obliterated by phlebitis. It has been an especially bad attack–not the worst–with nuances I don’t remember from other times. One such nuance is projectile vomiting, which I had not experienced before, and which I had thought a figure of speech. Convulsion-like chills, then hours of delirium and pain. One thing I thought would never happen to me was to miss a performance, but I missed Wednesday’s Titus, and I don’t see how, at this point, I could endure tonight’s. It was a strange thing. There was actually no choice. I was powerless. I could not be there. David Mycoff did the part on book, and word was it was fine. Walked to the mailbox yesterday. Driving to the doctor’s office today. I’m bored, but too achy and weak to do anything that’s not boring. When it becomes such a monumental task is when I realize how much time I spend cleaning up after cats. Jocasta, actually, who spews forth at both ends habitually, but does not have the wit to die, at her advanced cat-age. Have cancelled the New York trip. Even if I am well by Monday, it is not going to do me good to whirl around in the subways for hours on end. I lose hundreds of dollars in theater tickets. Trying to get MA to come get them (he too is going to New York) but I don’t think he believes I’m serious when I say they’re free. I even know what caused this: a torn toenail which I neglected, trusting in my habitual vitality. Our hubris is frequently over-penalized.
March 2, 2009
Slush in the birdbaths. A cuneiform of birdtracks cross-hatched the porch this morning. I threw sunflower seeds on the ground for the gallant towhee pair, handsome male and handsome female, who stayed with me all this winter. Classes were canceled, so I have had two days given me for leisure by the weather. Went to the Y, which was all but empty, and one moved from machine to machine at sweaty leisure. I bought the giant bag of peanut M&M’s, and thought to pace myself by selecting out only the orange ones before moving on to the other colors. Amazingly, the orange ones have proven inexhaustible, and though they appeared by no means to take up more than their share of the mass, every time I return for a candy, there is another orange to be had. Perhaps I chose the Inexhaustible Bag, and so long as I search for the one remaining orange, there will never be an end.
Slush in the birdbaths. A cuneiform of birdtracks cross-hatched the porch this morning. I threw sunflower seeds on the ground for the gallant towhee pair, handsome male and handsome female, who stayed with me all this winter. Classes were canceled, so I have had two days given me for leisure by the weather. Went to the Y, which was all but empty, and one moved from machine to machine at sweaty leisure. I bought the giant bag of peanut M&M’s, and thought to pace myself by selecting out only the orange ones before moving on to the other colors. Amazingly, the orange ones have proven inexhaustible, and though they appeared by no means to take up more than their share of the mass, every time I return for a candy, there is another orange to be had. Perhaps I chose the Inexhaustible Bag, and so long as I search for the one remaining orange, there will never be an end.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
March 1, 2009
Part of the stage was in imminent danger of collapse last night, so intermission was extended so it could be reinforced–with a tire jack, I think. Tony spent the evening reminding people that he had spotted the problem before curtain and sounded the alarum, but was unheeded. Lavinia burst into tears because her father was in the audience. Three wan laughs are predictable in the show: when Aaron, the Moor, says “More or less,” when Marcus says, “but I will use the axe,” and when Lavinia puts the severed hand into her mouth. I think the last one Shakespeare did not foresee. The most uncomfortable moment in theater? In the running, anyway.
Changing Scenes Theater near Seattle is doing a public reading of Before the Holy Temple, deciding, I think, whether to chose it for a main stage.
Evening: blinding wall of snow, wet and heavy. Tara phoned to say that Titus has been cancelled for the night. Cantaria, too, cancelled, and so I have an unexpected evening to myself.
Spoke to the adult class at the Hendersonville UC of C this morning, about the Inaugural celebration, and the new administration and the arts. I was under-prepared, but they seemed to like me, and only the only person who was a Republican was upset, said my host The intro note alleged that I had caused a stir with my poem, but I forgot to ask what stir it was. To cause a stir with a poem is an ambition not to be downplayed.
DJ saw Titus last night and said it was quite horrible. He is the only person I’ve spoken to about it who is not, to some degree, involved with MPP. I feared that, but the infectious enthusiasm of those around me encouraged me to imagine it was better than judgment suggested. I have enjoyed the fellowship; let it go at that.
The house glitters with candles. Have just dared to turn the computer back on after a series of electrical events. The lights went out three or four times. I watched out the front window as a transformer exploded in green fire, and all went black, coming on again out by house, and finally the giant red letters of the Ingles sign in the distance, which I never notice unless they’re gone. Some phenomenon of light, maybe refraction from downtown, makes the snow in every direction unmistakably pink. It is a beautiful and violent night.
Part of the stage was in imminent danger of collapse last night, so intermission was extended so it could be reinforced–with a tire jack, I think. Tony spent the evening reminding people that he had spotted the problem before curtain and sounded the alarum, but was unheeded. Lavinia burst into tears because her father was in the audience. Three wan laughs are predictable in the show: when Aaron, the Moor, says “More or less,” when Marcus says, “but I will use the axe,” and when Lavinia puts the severed hand into her mouth. I think the last one Shakespeare did not foresee. The most uncomfortable moment in theater? In the running, anyway.
Changing Scenes Theater near Seattle is doing a public reading of Before the Holy Temple, deciding, I think, whether to chose it for a main stage.
Evening: blinding wall of snow, wet and heavy. Tara phoned to say that Titus has been cancelled for the night. Cantaria, too, cancelled, and so I have an unexpected evening to myself.
Spoke to the adult class at the Hendersonville UC of C this morning, about the Inaugural celebration, and the new administration and the arts. I was under-prepared, but they seemed to like me, and only the only person who was a Republican was upset, said my host The intro note alleged that I had caused a stir with my poem, but I forgot to ask what stir it was. To cause a stir with a poem is an ambition not to be downplayed.
DJ saw Titus last night and said it was quite horrible. He is the only person I’ve spoken to about it who is not, to some degree, involved with MPP. I feared that, but the infectious enthusiasm of those around me encouraged me to imagine it was better than judgment suggested. I have enjoyed the fellowship; let it go at that.
The house glitters with candles. Have just dared to turn the computer back on after a series of electrical events. The lights went out three or four times. I watched out the front window as a transformer exploded in green fire, and all went black, coming on again out by house, and finally the giant red letters of the Ingles sign in the distance, which I never notice unless they’re gone. Some phenomenon of light, maybe refraction from downtown, makes the snow in every direction unmistakably pink. It is a beautiful and violent night.
February 28, 2009
The voices I heard last night, or in emails this morning, said they liked Titus, and I will take their perceptions as the truth. I know that working beside JS is working beside someone possessed. Modulation might improve the performance, but for sheer force and stamina, I doubt that anyone is his rival.
The voices I heard last night, or in emails this morning, said they liked Titus, and I will take their perceptions as the truth. I know that working beside JS is working beside someone possessed. Modulation might improve the performance, but for sheer force and stamina, I doubt that anyone is his rival.
February 27, 2009
Rainy, clement morning. Dream before waking that I was trying to convince somebody that I’d had an intimate relationship with Ben Affleck. My memories of it were very vivid; I don’t know about his. To prove it, we went looking for him. The dream ended in a crowded mall, in some corner of which Affleck lived. He was repeating the directions to his place over the loudspeaker, but there was so much noise I couldn’t quite get them. I think Andie MacDowell pushed me into celebrity mode.
Long ago somebody made a quilt out of yellow and cream flower-printed cloth, with yellow tufts of yarn here and there for decoration. My mother? My mother when she was a girl? I wanted it to be recorded somewhere that I used that quilt from the time I found it in my father’s house until it finally fell to pieces this morning.
Rainy, clement morning. Dream before waking that I was trying to convince somebody that I’d had an intimate relationship with Ben Affleck. My memories of it were very vivid; I don’t know about his. To prove it, we went looking for him. The dream ended in a crowded mall, in some corner of which Affleck lived. He was repeating the directions to his place over the loudspeaker, but there was so much noise I couldn’t quite get them. I think Andie MacDowell pushed me into celebrity mode.
Long ago somebody made a quilt out of yellow and cream flower-printed cloth, with yellow tufts of yarn here and there for decoration. My mother? My mother when she was a girl? I wanted it to be recorded somewhere that I used that quilt from the time I found it in my father’s house until it finally fell to pieces this morning.
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