August 11, 2010
Working daily and nightly, and usually in great joy, on my novel, the third of the summer, but the first to be built from scratch. I try to read it over and ask “is it good?” but how can I trust any answer I give back to myself? It seems good. It seems imperfect. Then it seems far more imperfect than good. Then it seems marvelous. Just write, I suppose, and plod around in the morass of criticism later.
My insurance agent left the business, so now I’m looking for car insurance, and finding that having been rear-ended two Novembers ago is keeping me from getting the lowest rate. The accident was not my fault, and the police report says so, but the Insurance Computers seem to think a shadow lies on me none the less, for having been in the way of bad driving. Vicky at Geico talked with the omnipresent dipthong of some mountain women, where an “e” is inserted into every vowel. "Leyt mee loek this up an’ see whaet I caen deo.” One wants to say, “Love, don’t you know talking like that makes you sound stupid?” but one realizes that’s the point, that whatever news she comes back with she cannot be blamed for, because she talks like that, and what else can be expected? Very, very cunning.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
August 7, 2010
Compact, attentive audiences for the two evenings of the Jane Bingham Festival at All Souls. MA’s play was very smart, very young, gorgeously written in places, sometimes sacrificing the theatrical dramatic for the rhetorically dramatic, though– something every playwright must do the first time out. It was full of “fuck”s and I winced every time the word re-echoed through the holy space, though no permanent damage seemed to have been done. I edited most of the cuss-words out of mine for night two. My play the second night read better than I feared, worked better than I imagined, and is ready for the next thing I ask of it. This festival was the thing I dreaded at the end of summer, and now it’s over. Sam Bingham was in the audience to hear his mother honored. He fell asleep. He acknowledged this, and said it was honoring his mother, too, for it was what she would have done. Facing now the prospect of saying goodbye to almost everyone. Adam is already gone; Cody and Carly and Thomas and Michael are packing their bags. If this were a TV show I’d say “they’ll be back,” but I don’t think they will, and I hope, for their sakes, they won’t.
Excellent work out yesterday took away a measure of the August lethargy. Must repeat today!
Morning spent with Michael and Maria Bettencourt– meeting her and re-linking with him after six or seven years, at least. In those few hours I quadrupled my knowledge of Argentina and social work graduate programs. Ten minutes at the All Souls arts fair, enough time to buy a teapot from a former student.
People who talk about quality of life in Asheville fail to mention that Progress Energy the worst electrical utility in the nation. Scarcely a summer night goes by when we don’t have a flickering failure which crashes computers and necessitates the resetting of clocks. It would be a minor annoyance without the knowledge that we are the only ones (in the more than a few places I’ve lived) who have to put up with it. Did people simply not know how to hang the wires?
Compact, attentive audiences for the two evenings of the Jane Bingham Festival at All Souls. MA’s play was very smart, very young, gorgeously written in places, sometimes sacrificing the theatrical dramatic for the rhetorically dramatic, though– something every playwright must do the first time out. It was full of “fuck”s and I winced every time the word re-echoed through the holy space, though no permanent damage seemed to have been done. I edited most of the cuss-words out of mine for night two. My play the second night read better than I feared, worked better than I imagined, and is ready for the next thing I ask of it. This festival was the thing I dreaded at the end of summer, and now it’s over. Sam Bingham was in the audience to hear his mother honored. He fell asleep. He acknowledged this, and said it was honoring his mother, too, for it was what she would have done. Facing now the prospect of saying goodbye to almost everyone. Adam is already gone; Cody and Carly and Thomas and Michael are packing their bags. If this were a TV show I’d say “they’ll be back,” but I don’t think they will, and I hope, for their sakes, they won’t.
Excellent work out yesterday took away a measure of the August lethargy. Must repeat today!
Morning spent with Michael and Maria Bettencourt– meeting her and re-linking with him after six or seven years, at least. In those few hours I quadrupled my knowledge of Argentina and social work graduate programs. Ten minutes at the All Souls arts fair, enough time to buy a teapot from a former student.
People who talk about quality of life in Asheville fail to mention that Progress Energy the worst electrical utility in the nation. Scarcely a summer night goes by when we don’t have a flickering failure which crashes computers and necessitates the resetting of clocks. It would be a minor annoyance without the knowledge that we are the only ones (in the more than a few places I’ve lived) who have to put up with it. Did people simply not know how to hang the wires?
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Mitchell and Pisgah
August 3, 2010
B’s last day as my housekeeper. Did replace him, at a lower price, but, still, an era ends.
Denny and DJ and I piled in the Prius and drove to Mount Mitchell yesterday afternoon. The gift shops and the yapping families and the homey little restaurant make one forget how wild and beautiful the place is. Mist wrapped the world in mystery while we were there, but when it parted for a moment, the sun blazed on us with such ferocity it seemed we were near to it indeed. The roadsides were a constant fluttering of butterflies–which, now that I think of it, so is my front yard. I don’t remember their being so many or so large. Why I have gone so long without a major day hike I can’t explain, except to say, “painting. . . writing. . gardening . . . “ Miles of jewelweed and Jerusalem artichoke. Great envy of the ferns in hidden places under the trees. . .
Denny’s being here has put Hiram in my mind with some firmness. I remembered the absurd (though, ultimately beneficial) reason I had gone there in the first place. My father was in one of his moods, and had ruined my chances (so I thought in my ferocious youth) at my first couple of choices by refusing to fill out the financial aid forms. When the recruiter came from Hiram, I seized on it as 1) not Akron U and 2) named after Hiram Abiff, and I thought that concept would entangle my father, who had been an active Mason when I was younger. Whatever got him, the forms were filled out, and there I went. Went onto Youtube and entered “Hiram” and found what I supposed to be an official college recruiting video. It showed a bunch of oafy kids playing games in their dorm rooms, and the message–the entire and singular message–was that if you come to Hiram you can have fun with your friends in the dorms. I mean, that was IT. No mention of classes, of possible majors, of intellectual challenge. Camp Hiram, where the fecklessness of the 11th grade cane be extended indefinitely. I suppose as an alumnus I should have been more watchful, but, in the end, what could I have done? Tom Chema is willing to annihilate Hiram in order to have the right score sheet for his last chance at State politics. You can’t ask for whatever appointment he has his eyes on by saying, “I helped make our youth wise and good,” though you can by saying, “the deficit did not grow by a penny while I was President.” People who do thing for reasons other than the doing of them are the bane of all history. Dante forgot their Circle, but I will add one.
Denny said that not one member of the administration attended Wil Hoffman’s funeral.
Evening: The mountains got into my blood, and without at first intending to, I found myself this morning on the slopes of Mount Pisgah, and I began to climb. The day was like yesterday, blue, clear, mottled with the rolling mist of the high places. I’d been absent from Pisgah almost as long as I had been from Mitchell, and it was well to reconnect with two old friends in as many days. All I remembered of the path was the rockiness of it, the way you have to pay attention or you’ll fall or twist your ankle. Once I was among the trees I was a changed man, or a man who had exchanged his eyes for organs that were part sense and part memory. Summer overflowed in voluptuous variety. Giant butterflies fluttered over white and golden flowers. Enumeration was absurd. At one point in my life I could name all the plants around me, but the same things do not grow on the Blue Ridge as do in the river valleys of Ohio, and, in any case, the abundance was beyond any remembrance, beyond any previous experience. Every few steps there was a tiny, discreet Eden, a hollow log with realms inside it, or a cove where a stone rolled away, now filled with pebbles and a pool and a waterfall coursing down a stick, a paradise of ferns and salamanders. Put your hand inside and feel the mini-ecosystem with a temperature ten degrees cooler than the air you breathe. But what I am trying to revive, these hours later, was who I was on the side of the mountain. I entered again the first life I remember as mine, the life that woke in me when I first walked in the forest, a wild spirit, not separate from the world at all, but able to hear the touch of the feet of spirits on the upthrust rocks. One thinks of Wordsworth, for he had some of this right, but not all of it. For me the wild thing knowing not what it was, but wildly and intuitively alive, never passed away. It hides in the doing of the life I sank into, but when I return to the forest, he is there, waiting. I am the same spirit whom the wild things know, and I do not undervalue that blessing, though I have tried without success to spread it into the life I chose among men. For one hour climbing the stone path under the trees I was as happy I have ever been, as happy as I remember being day after day when I was alone in the wildwood, thinking that was how all of life would be. I was pure. I was wild. There was no thought that was not a sensation, no sensation that was not a thought. Every step, every breath is a prayer– is two prayers really. The first is Thank you. The second is I do not understand.
B’s last day as my housekeeper. Did replace him, at a lower price, but, still, an era ends.
Denny and DJ and I piled in the Prius and drove to Mount Mitchell yesterday afternoon. The gift shops and the yapping families and the homey little restaurant make one forget how wild and beautiful the place is. Mist wrapped the world in mystery while we were there, but when it parted for a moment, the sun blazed on us with such ferocity it seemed we were near to it indeed. The roadsides were a constant fluttering of butterflies–which, now that I think of it, so is my front yard. I don’t remember their being so many or so large. Why I have gone so long without a major day hike I can’t explain, except to say, “painting. . . writing. . gardening . . . “ Miles of jewelweed and Jerusalem artichoke. Great envy of the ferns in hidden places under the trees. . .
Denny’s being here has put Hiram in my mind with some firmness. I remembered the absurd (though, ultimately beneficial) reason I had gone there in the first place. My father was in one of his moods, and had ruined my chances (so I thought in my ferocious youth) at my first couple of choices by refusing to fill out the financial aid forms. When the recruiter came from Hiram, I seized on it as 1) not Akron U and 2) named after Hiram Abiff, and I thought that concept would entangle my father, who had been an active Mason when I was younger. Whatever got him, the forms were filled out, and there I went. Went onto Youtube and entered “Hiram” and found what I supposed to be an official college recruiting video. It showed a bunch of oafy kids playing games in their dorm rooms, and the message–the entire and singular message–was that if you come to Hiram you can have fun with your friends in the dorms. I mean, that was IT. No mention of classes, of possible majors, of intellectual challenge. Camp Hiram, where the fecklessness of the 11th grade cane be extended indefinitely. I suppose as an alumnus I should have been more watchful, but, in the end, what could I have done? Tom Chema is willing to annihilate Hiram in order to have the right score sheet for his last chance at State politics. You can’t ask for whatever appointment he has his eyes on by saying, “I helped make our youth wise and good,” though you can by saying, “the deficit did not grow by a penny while I was President.” People who do thing for reasons other than the doing of them are the bane of all history. Dante forgot their Circle, but I will add one.
Denny said that not one member of the administration attended Wil Hoffman’s funeral.
Evening: The mountains got into my blood, and without at first intending to, I found myself this morning on the slopes of Mount Pisgah, and I began to climb. The day was like yesterday, blue, clear, mottled with the rolling mist of the high places. I’d been absent from Pisgah almost as long as I had been from Mitchell, and it was well to reconnect with two old friends in as many days. All I remembered of the path was the rockiness of it, the way you have to pay attention or you’ll fall or twist your ankle. Once I was among the trees I was a changed man, or a man who had exchanged his eyes for organs that were part sense and part memory. Summer overflowed in voluptuous variety. Giant butterflies fluttered over white and golden flowers. Enumeration was absurd. At one point in my life I could name all the plants around me, but the same things do not grow on the Blue Ridge as do in the river valleys of Ohio, and, in any case, the abundance was beyond any remembrance, beyond any previous experience. Every few steps there was a tiny, discreet Eden, a hollow log with realms inside it, or a cove where a stone rolled away, now filled with pebbles and a pool and a waterfall coursing down a stick, a paradise of ferns and salamanders. Put your hand inside and feel the mini-ecosystem with a temperature ten degrees cooler than the air you breathe. But what I am trying to revive, these hours later, was who I was on the side of the mountain. I entered again the first life I remember as mine, the life that woke in me when I first walked in the forest, a wild spirit, not separate from the world at all, but able to hear the touch of the feet of spirits on the upthrust rocks. One thinks of Wordsworth, for he had some of this right, but not all of it. For me the wild thing knowing not what it was, but wildly and intuitively alive, never passed away. It hides in the doing of the life I sank into, but when I return to the forest, he is there, waiting. I am the same spirit whom the wild things know, and I do not undervalue that blessing, though I have tried without success to spread it into the life I chose among men. For one hour climbing the stone path under the trees I was as happy I have ever been, as happy as I remember being day after day when I was alone in the wildwood, thinking that was how all of life would be. I was pure. I was wild. There was no thought that was not a sensation, no sensation that was not a thought. Every step, every breath is a prayer– is two prayers really. The first is Thank you. The second is I do not understand.
August 2, 2010
The Internet is full of messages from people pleading that we vote for their show as the best of the year. This is why Asheville will never quite be the holy city of art it perpetually feels itself on the brink of being. Its artists don’t really believe in greatness, in quality. They do not seek greatness out to honor it or learn from it. They resent it, because it forces–or would force if hearts were pure– a re-evaluation of their own efforts. They do not seek to be better, but rather seek for the definition of quality to be altered to contain them. Predictably, not one voice which has asked deserves. They think Eternity can be created by a poll in a newspaper. Something can be created by a poll in a newspaper, but it is not Eternity. Maybe just a page in a scrapbook. I do not scoff at that. It is something.
The Internet is full of messages from people pleading that we vote for their show as the best of the year. This is why Asheville will never quite be the holy city of art it perpetually feels itself on the brink of being. Its artists don’t really believe in greatness, in quality. They do not seek greatness out to honor it or learn from it. They resent it, because it forces–or would force if hearts were pure– a re-evaluation of their own efforts. They do not seek to be better, but rather seek for the definition of quality to be altered to contain them. Predictably, not one voice which has asked deserves. They think Eternity can be created by a poll in a newspaper. Something can be created by a poll in a newspaper, but it is not Eternity. Maybe just a page in a scrapbook. I do not scoff at that. It is something.
August 1, 2010
Furious morning rain. I was shoveling the sweet gum detritus off my patio with the rain falling on my back. It feels cool and refreshed now as it dries. The sweet gum dropped a big limb into the neighbors’ yard the day I returned from Europe. Kelley looks up at its vast eminence and says “that really worries me.” She expects it to launch an attack upon her dog or her child, when so far the tree in its major shedding has missed everything. But who knows? My scorn of the danger doesn’t mean there is no danger. I have always loved that tree, and do now, for it is beautiful and tremendous. When I bought the land I considered husbandry of it one of my concerns. But perhaps Kelley is right, and it is just too vast to sit where it does. It could endure forty years without dropping another limb. In this rain, in the next five minutes, it could launch a branch the size of any other tree into her yard, or DJ’s roof, or mine. Come autumn I think I will remove it, with much sadness. But I’m already thinking what to put in its place. Basswood, I think.
Writing and writing. It is amazing–and I am truly grateful–how fluid my invention remains. Invention was never the problem for me. Publication was. I suppose Fate thinks this evens things out, though it really doesn’t: the one aspect failing negates the other, so the net result is emptiness.
In minor contradiction to what I’ve just said, returned to fan notes about Bird Songs of the Mesozoic and the poem “Lament for Turlough O’Carolan.” How people find this material is a mystery to me.
MM spaces out, and so the Jane Bingham Festival must be severely re-tailored. Re-tailoring is the thing I hate most in the world.
Furious morning rain. I was shoveling the sweet gum detritus off my patio with the rain falling on my back. It feels cool and refreshed now as it dries. The sweet gum dropped a big limb into the neighbors’ yard the day I returned from Europe. Kelley looks up at its vast eminence and says “that really worries me.” She expects it to launch an attack upon her dog or her child, when so far the tree in its major shedding has missed everything. But who knows? My scorn of the danger doesn’t mean there is no danger. I have always loved that tree, and do now, for it is beautiful and tremendous. When I bought the land I considered husbandry of it one of my concerns. But perhaps Kelley is right, and it is just too vast to sit where it does. It could endure forty years without dropping another limb. In this rain, in the next five minutes, it could launch a branch the size of any other tree into her yard, or DJ’s roof, or mine. Come autumn I think I will remove it, with much sadness. But I’m already thinking what to put in its place. Basswood, I think.
Writing and writing. It is amazing–and I am truly grateful–how fluid my invention remains. Invention was never the problem for me. Publication was. I suppose Fate thinks this evens things out, though it really doesn’t: the one aspect failing negates the other, so the net result is emptiness.
In minor contradiction to what I’ve just said, returned to fan notes about Bird Songs of the Mesozoic and the poem “Lament for Turlough O’Carolan.” How people find this material is a mystery to me.
MM spaces out, and so the Jane Bingham Festival must be severely re-tailored. Re-tailoring is the thing I hate most in the world.
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