May 12, 2009
Brilliant summer day. I set aside all else I vowed to do, and gardened.
I made Titus, Maud, and Circe vow to live forever. They thought it was folly, but I told them I had my reasons.
Call from Bruce and Jack at Sunny Spot productions. They want to take a stab at producing The Loves of Mr. Lincoln in New York. I told them it was fine with me. A first reading will be at the Barrow Theater on June 5. They said they’ve been looking at hundreds of scripts for this year’s pared-down recession Gay Fest, but there was nothing remotely as good. Hope it’s true. We’ll plunge forward as though it is. They were setting up auditions with one hand while holding the phone with the other.
Took this computer in for servicing. I’d never done that before. Their talk of “wiping everything clean” made me nervous, but I signed the contract, and before I’d quite got in the door the phone was ringing; it was Sassy’s computers telling me there had been a power outtage an all my data were lost. I first assumed it was a practical joke, but it wasn’t. I plodded about in the garden, wondering why I wasn’t more furious than I was, or furious at all, for that matter. When I came in there was a message saying they had gotten everything back. Glad I didn’t waste the rage.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
May 10, 2009
Jocasta being gone means that I no longer have to include among my morning rituals looking for the cat vomit. But that’s the end of the good. She was the gentlest and most mysterious of all my little brood.
J and DJ and I went to see A’s dance concert last. Billy the Kid was pretty much a mess, but Ann’s original works, one to Matt Richmond’s music and one to Vivaldi, were wonderful. A is the most accomplished artist in Asheville, at least one of a very select number, but she does keep making the same mistakes, year after year, the kind of mistakes anyone can see but the one who makes them. What keep her from ultimate greatness. . . what keeps her in Asheville when I think her name was written on the stars . . is that she would never solicit, nor ever accept, the kind of response that would polish away these few habitual flaws. I wonder whom she has ever trusted? She is the best in the town, but she could have been among the best in the world. The inventive genius is there; the corrective genius is not.
Bob Brunk tells the story of, just this afternoon, selling a 18th century Chinese vase for $1,230,000.00. He’d listed it as a fine reproduction, when some expert from Hong Kong knew that it was quite real. The kicker is that the owner of the piece was essentially homeless, living in her car, raiding an old closet of her parents’ things when she needed a buck. There’s someone whose life has changed.
Jocasta being gone means that I no longer have to include among my morning rituals looking for the cat vomit. But that’s the end of the good. She was the gentlest and most mysterious of all my little brood.
J and DJ and I went to see A’s dance concert last. Billy the Kid was pretty much a mess, but Ann’s original works, one to Matt Richmond’s music and one to Vivaldi, were wonderful. A is the most accomplished artist in Asheville, at least one of a very select number, but she does keep making the same mistakes, year after year, the kind of mistakes anyone can see but the one who makes them. What keep her from ultimate greatness. . . what keeps her in Asheville when I think her name was written on the stars . . is that she would never solicit, nor ever accept, the kind of response that would polish away these few habitual flaws. I wonder whom she has ever trusted? She is the best in the town, but she could have been among the best in the world. The inventive genius is there; the corrective genius is not.
Bob Brunk tells the story of, just this afternoon, selling a 18th century Chinese vase for $1,230,000.00. He’d listed it as a fine reproduction, when some expert from Hong Kong knew that it was quite real. The kicker is that the owner of the piece was essentially homeless, living in her car, raiding an old closet of her parents’ things when she needed a buck. There’s someone whose life has changed.
Ave atque vale
May 9, 2009
Jocasta couldn’t climb to her place on my thigh last night. In the morning I let her out into the yard, so that if she had some favorite places she could revisit them. She tried, but in the end sat on a stone and quivered. I took a few photos, in which she is all green eyes, the one part of her still ablaze. I lifted her up and held her for a long time. Only then did she stop howling. Then I took her to the vet and they eased her into sleep. Jocasta has been my faithful companion for nineteen years. I buried her and planted mallow over her. Of course now I hide in the house until I can stop sobbing. I have wondered before, and it still amazes me, how those who have lost a child can go on, or why they wish to.
GD’s birthday celebration at Frankie’s Bones last night.
Went to the new Star Trek movie (which was sensational) with a clutch of friends. Came home and counted the cats, wondering if maybe things had healed themselves in the last hours. No. Jocasta the cat had been scrambling to meet me at the door for 1/3 of my life.
I found the first mention of her in my journals:
October 3, 1990
Drove to the Buncombe County Animal Shelter and got a dark calico kitten whom I have named Jocasta. She is black and chestnut flecked with gold. Far from the prettiest animal there, I chose her because when I came to the cage she greeted me with the most joy. She has spent her time patrolling the house and getting underfoot. Now she is gravely stalking a volume of Ovid.
Jocasta couldn’t climb to her place on my thigh last night. In the morning I let her out into the yard, so that if she had some favorite places she could revisit them. She tried, but in the end sat on a stone and quivered. I took a few photos, in which she is all green eyes, the one part of her still ablaze. I lifted her up and held her for a long time. Only then did she stop howling. Then I took her to the vet and they eased her into sleep. Jocasta has been my faithful companion for nineteen years. I buried her and planted mallow over her. Of course now I hide in the house until I can stop sobbing. I have wondered before, and it still amazes me, how those who have lost a child can go on, or why they wish to.
GD’s birthday celebration at Frankie’s Bones last night.
Went to the new Star Trek movie (which was sensational) with a clutch of friends. Came home and counted the cats, wondering if maybe things had healed themselves in the last hours. No. Jocasta the cat had been scrambling to meet me at the door for 1/3 of my life.
I found the first mention of her in my journals:
October 3, 1990
Drove to the Buncombe County Animal Shelter and got a dark calico kitten whom I have named Jocasta. She is black and chestnut flecked with gold. Far from the prettiest animal there, I chose her because when I came to the cage she greeted me with the most joy. She has spent her time patrolling the house and getting underfoot. Now she is gravely stalking a volume of Ovid.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
May 6, 2009
Royal purple iris outside my study window. The rain comes to nourish my flowers, and I bless it on its way down.
I’ve been attacking the wild front terrace with pruning shears and a saw blade, and interesting things emerge from the dying heap of junk vines: roses on the verge of bloom, two volunteer dogwoods, the nest of the towhees. The Mr. Lincolns bloom in the front garden.
Monday night my playwrights put on their show at the Flood Gallery, and it was remarkable for the pleasure t gave to the people who attended. I was very proud of them, and hatching plots to keep them with me, though we know all such effort are futile. Three UNCA faculty attended, the first time, I think, in eighteen productions. It is a new, bright age. I promised to party with them afterwards, but I was too tired almost to close the car door.
Wrote Bloom’s essay on Shelley and the Sublime between last night and this morning.
Penguin Rep in Stony Point, New York is interested in Saint Patrick’s Well. The Irish Rep in New York wrote me a darling rejection of The Ouzel and the Seal. . . almost as encouraging as an acceptance. Almost.
Jocasta is not sick, but she is a rag of fur wrapped around a spine. She cries piteously, and in a voice unlike her own, when it has been too long since she cuddled in my lap. She sleeps, and stirs only when I lie down, when she crawls to her accustomed place on my thigh.
Royal purple iris outside my study window. The rain comes to nourish my flowers, and I bless it on its way down.
I’ve been attacking the wild front terrace with pruning shears and a saw blade, and interesting things emerge from the dying heap of junk vines: roses on the verge of bloom, two volunteer dogwoods, the nest of the towhees. The Mr. Lincolns bloom in the front garden.
Monday night my playwrights put on their show at the Flood Gallery, and it was remarkable for the pleasure t gave to the people who attended. I was very proud of them, and hatching plots to keep them with me, though we know all such effort are futile. Three UNCA faculty attended, the first time, I think, in eighteen productions. It is a new, bright age. I promised to party with them afterwards, but I was too tired almost to close the car door.
Wrote Bloom’s essay on Shelley and the Sublime between last night and this morning.
Penguin Rep in Stony Point, New York is interested in Saint Patrick’s Well. The Irish Rep in New York wrote me a darling rejection of The Ouzel and the Seal. . . almost as encouraging as an acceptance. Almost.
Jocasta is not sick, but she is a rag of fur wrapped around a spine. She cries piteously, and in a voice unlike her own, when it has been too long since she cuddled in my lap. She sleeps, and stirs only when I lie down, when she crawls to her accustomed place on my thigh.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
May 3, 2009
Read for WordFest on May Day. I’m not sure I was very spectacular. I didn’t feel spectacular.
Student Stephanie N and her big friend came to clean my gutters. She wanted the job, and I insisted she bring somebody to hold the ladder, and she brought Goliath, which was well. Goliath’s name is Andy. Andy mentioned that he is engaged. I said, “To Stephanie?”
“No,” he said, “but it would be all right if I were.”
If I had seen them together on my roof without the preliminaries, I would have thought them very good friends indeed. The rain came not only as I was finishing my planting, but as they were finishing the gutters.
I whined that if I had a few days unencumbered, I could work wonders. Well, I had Friday, Saturday, and today (having been a truant from church) for the most part unencumbered, and I finished planting my garden (hours before the drenching spring rains); I finished the Whitman essay for Harold Bloom’s series on the Sublime, and I “finished”– preliminary to revisions and re-visions– The Falls of the Wyona. I think that is something to be proud of. I think that is almost miraculous. Moreover, I was joyful every second. It wasn’t as a task, a labor. . . it was youth returned, the golden age as I lived it. Now, if I fall in love tonight, all will be a sphere of gold. Yes, thinking of what I have to do yet tonight, that is extremely unlikely, but not impossible. The magic weekend is not over.
Read for WordFest on May Day. I’m not sure I was very spectacular. I didn’t feel spectacular.
Student Stephanie N and her big friend came to clean my gutters. She wanted the job, and I insisted she bring somebody to hold the ladder, and she brought Goliath, which was well. Goliath’s name is Andy. Andy mentioned that he is engaged. I said, “To Stephanie?”
“No,” he said, “but it would be all right if I were.”
If I had seen them together on my roof without the preliminaries, I would have thought them very good friends indeed. The rain came not only as I was finishing my planting, but as they were finishing the gutters.
I whined that if I had a few days unencumbered, I could work wonders. Well, I had Friday, Saturday, and today (having been a truant from church) for the most part unencumbered, and I finished planting my garden (hours before the drenching spring rains); I finished the Whitman essay for Harold Bloom’s series on the Sublime, and I “finished”– preliminary to revisions and re-visions– The Falls of the Wyona. I think that is something to be proud of. I think that is almost miraculous. Moreover, I was joyful every second. It wasn’t as a task, a labor. . . it was youth returned, the golden age as I lived it. Now, if I fall in love tonight, all will be a sphere of gold. Yes, thinking of what I have to do yet tonight, that is extremely unlikely, but not impossible. The magic weekend is not over.
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