February 6, 2012
Memorial service for Hans after Cantaria. I read Donne’s Holy Sonnet X, realizing in the midst of it that the sentiment was not quite right. Hans did not die the knotty and turbulent death the poem assumes.
Actress Kelly McGillis attended church in the morning. I saw one strange, striking woman; maybe it was she. More interested that Jake and his mother were there. I had forgotten she is clergy. She spoke of being at All Souls like coming back from the missionary field and being among peers again. Jake is probably the best son in the world.
My first Superbowl party ever: DJ and Maria and Russell and MP and me with way too much food. Madonna did a good halftime show. Very Vegas. I was not all that interested, but leaned vaguely toward the Giants, so it was well.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
February 5, 2012
Michael Porter rolled into town last night from Boise, ready to conduct Cosi Fan Tutti for ALO. DJ and I took him to Charlotte Street for dinner, the downtown being so packed it was unparkable. Great to have him back home. We took up our old ways in half an hour. He was put up in one of those gorgeous condos which used to be the Altamont parking lot, where there are appliances I never heard of. Great to chew a corner of ALO gossip again. Michael presents Boise as a sort of pre-adolescent Asheville.
Michael Porter rolled into town last night from Boise, ready to conduct Cosi Fan Tutti for ALO. DJ and I took him to Charlotte Street for dinner, the downtown being so packed it was unparkable. Great to have him back home. We took up our old ways in half an hour. He was put up in one of those gorgeous condos which used to be the Altamont parking lot, where there are appliances I never heard of. Great to chew a corner of ALO gossip again. Michael presents Boise as a sort of pre-adolescent Asheville.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
February 4, 2012
One mystery is solved. Our big opossum lives under DJ’s deck. I saw him sauntering there as calm as morning light. He is very dark, more black than gray.
Ecstatic morning writing, one short play written from nothing, one completed from a languishing idea, one rounded out and brought to fulness. Then I went to the studio and met a big calm dog and her mistress, and painted in my own space in perfect joy. A mother and daughter visited for a while, What they commented on was the Pepsi crate I had brought to carry things in. “Now THIS,” said mom appreciatively, her back to my paintings, “is an antique!”
Making chili for DJ’s Superbowl party.
Titus is sick. Blood in his stool, irregular bathroom habits, using the floor for the first time–well, in all my history of cats. He eats with relish, but I notice–for the first time-- how his sides concave a little, as though he were starving. Panic rises up like a wall in my brain, and other thoughts flee. God did well in not allowing me to be a father. The emergency vet says it will wait until I can make an appointment with my regular vet, and I suppose it will. I shuffle backward through my journals to determine how old Titus the Cat is. He and Conrad came to live with me in September, 1999. I have now to turn my mind elsewhere--
One mystery is solved. Our big opossum lives under DJ’s deck. I saw him sauntering there as calm as morning light. He is very dark, more black than gray.
Ecstatic morning writing, one short play written from nothing, one completed from a languishing idea, one rounded out and brought to fulness. Then I went to the studio and met a big calm dog and her mistress, and painted in my own space in perfect joy. A mother and daughter visited for a while, What they commented on was the Pepsi crate I had brought to carry things in. “Now THIS,” said mom appreciatively, her back to my paintings, “is an antique!”
Making chili for DJ’s Superbowl party.
Titus is sick. Blood in his stool, irregular bathroom habits, using the floor for the first time–well, in all my history of cats. He eats with relish, but I notice–for the first time-- how his sides concave a little, as though he were starving. Panic rises up like a wall in my brain, and other thoughts flee. God did well in not allowing me to be a father. The emergency vet says it will wait until I can make an appointment with my regular vet, and I suppose it will. I shuffle backward through my journals to determine how old Titus the Cat is. He and Conrad came to live with me in September, 1999. I have now to turn my mind elsewhere--
Friday, February 3, 2012
February 3, 2012
Fresh, invigorating fragrance fills the house. I look for what it is, and see Jessie’s hyacinth blooming mightily from the vitrine. I didn’t plant it outside, as I thought it would, but let it spill its perfume in my private air. Lilac crocus blooming beside the windflowers–as though the terrace were a color card of graduated purples. Spears of daffodil leaves emerge from the ground, all surging forward too early in this false winter.
Reading a huge volume on Hans Holbein. His is the skill I would have if I could choose any painter’s. Susan Foister’s, the writer’s, erudition is exquisite, and though I won’t (nor will I have any need to) remember the half of it, I’m impressed by how much erudition there is in the world, how much there is to know, and for every thing there is to know, that there is someone willing to search it out, examine and judge and bring it into perfect light. She has read payment records five hundred years old. She has curtailed speculation where speculation ought not to have happened. She has learned names of men that even their families forgot before the Industrial Age. One might rest assured that someone has paid attention to every last detail. I feel the same sense of awe in my little Thursday morning reading group, where we consider morality and literature. Some in the circle have read everything and reference French postmodern theory without a sneer; I squeak into my little corner of comfort and hope I can follow along as long as possible.
Some painting today, though the din of C’s stereo clashing with L’s finally drove me out. C’s is worse, because closer, and because she has the worst musical taste I’ve ever encountered. Can’t describe it. . . sort of bubble-gum, I-love-Jesus-almost -as-much-as-my-boyfriend girlie mall muzak cranked to the level of physical pain. Can’t even close the door against it because her speakers aim at my wall. Did ask her to turn it down, but by then the mood was gone. The mood returns tonight, and if I weren’t already drunk I’d load up and head for the studio.
The retaining wall collapsed behind Marco’s house. His luck is the worst.
In the dark of the morning I put together the volume Go, Song, having discovered I have enough poems in forms for a whole book.
Drank a quart of Gatorade against the muscle spasms I blame on dehydration. Hydrating cures them, in any case. Gave myself a fresh round of them laughing from describing to Zach, me on the massage table, having them last night on the toilet and being consequently unable to wipe myself until everything settled down, referencing particularly the resultant blue streak of blasphemy. When I’d recovered from that I recounted the time I was in bed and realized the power was off, and that it was a thrown breaker switch, and when I got up to grope my way outside and down into the cellar to the breaker box, I twisted so as to induce excruciating muscle spasms, and in flailing around I knocked over a lamp, which broke on the floor. I had to get water to end the spasms, so down my foot went on the floor, right into the glass. So, bleeding and cramped double. I limped to the bathroom. Couldn’t see, but I knew I was gushing blood. Tried to bend over and drink out of the bathroom faucet, but the cramps redoubled when I did. Stood in the bathtub so I wouldn’t bleed over everything, blind, unable to bend over and grope for the glass in my foot because when I did the spasms in my gut were too agonizing. Finally walked on my heels to the kitchen, screaming in pain all the way. Found the flashlight. . . drank the water until the spasms eased. . . went out into the freezing night, bleeding into my sneakers, to flip the breaker switch.
Tom and I regaled this AM in Starbucks by Sojourn, who has enormous hands, and who works at the VA changing beds and who remembers not too many nights ago being so drunk he had to hold onto the grass to keep from floating up into the sky. Tom attracts even more half-sane monologists than I.
SW brilliant on Tartuffe in my class.
Everyone is asking for photos, and my head shots, too, have miraculously disappeared from the computer.
I have the feeling that wonderful things happened today, but when I sat down to write of them, only the feeling remained. That is enough.
Recurrent image of the NE corner of W 46th and 8th Avenue in New York. I am waiting for something there– what? Who knows?
Fresh, invigorating fragrance fills the house. I look for what it is, and see Jessie’s hyacinth blooming mightily from the vitrine. I didn’t plant it outside, as I thought it would, but let it spill its perfume in my private air. Lilac crocus blooming beside the windflowers–as though the terrace were a color card of graduated purples. Spears of daffodil leaves emerge from the ground, all surging forward too early in this false winter.
Reading a huge volume on Hans Holbein. His is the skill I would have if I could choose any painter’s. Susan Foister’s, the writer’s, erudition is exquisite, and though I won’t (nor will I have any need to) remember the half of it, I’m impressed by how much erudition there is in the world, how much there is to know, and for every thing there is to know, that there is someone willing to search it out, examine and judge and bring it into perfect light. She has read payment records five hundred years old. She has curtailed speculation where speculation ought not to have happened. She has learned names of men that even their families forgot before the Industrial Age. One might rest assured that someone has paid attention to every last detail. I feel the same sense of awe in my little Thursday morning reading group, where we consider morality and literature. Some in the circle have read everything and reference French postmodern theory without a sneer; I squeak into my little corner of comfort and hope I can follow along as long as possible.
Some painting today, though the din of C’s stereo clashing with L’s finally drove me out. C’s is worse, because closer, and because she has the worst musical taste I’ve ever encountered. Can’t describe it. . . sort of bubble-gum, I-love-Jesus-almost -as-much-as-my-boyfriend girlie mall muzak cranked to the level of physical pain. Can’t even close the door against it because her speakers aim at my wall. Did ask her to turn it down, but by then the mood was gone. The mood returns tonight, and if I weren’t already drunk I’d load up and head for the studio.
The retaining wall collapsed behind Marco’s house. His luck is the worst.
In the dark of the morning I put together the volume Go, Song, having discovered I have enough poems in forms for a whole book.
Drank a quart of Gatorade against the muscle spasms I blame on dehydration. Hydrating cures them, in any case. Gave myself a fresh round of them laughing from describing to Zach, me on the massage table, having them last night on the toilet and being consequently unable to wipe myself until everything settled down, referencing particularly the resultant blue streak of blasphemy. When I’d recovered from that I recounted the time I was in bed and realized the power was off, and that it was a thrown breaker switch, and when I got up to grope my way outside and down into the cellar to the breaker box, I twisted so as to induce excruciating muscle spasms, and in flailing around I knocked over a lamp, which broke on the floor. I had to get water to end the spasms, so down my foot went on the floor, right into the glass. So, bleeding and cramped double. I limped to the bathroom. Couldn’t see, but I knew I was gushing blood. Tried to bend over and drink out of the bathroom faucet, but the cramps redoubled when I did. Stood in the bathtub so I wouldn’t bleed over everything, blind, unable to bend over and grope for the glass in my foot because when I did the spasms in my gut were too agonizing. Finally walked on my heels to the kitchen, screaming in pain all the way. Found the flashlight. . . drank the water until the spasms eased. . . went out into the freezing night, bleeding into my sneakers, to flip the breaker switch.
Tom and I regaled this AM in Starbucks by Sojourn, who has enormous hands, and who works at the VA changing beds and who remembers not too many nights ago being so drunk he had to hold onto the grass to keep from floating up into the sky. Tom attracts even more half-sane monologists than I.
SW brilliant on Tartuffe in my class.
Everyone is asking for photos, and my head shots, too, have miraculously disappeared from the computer.
I have the feeling that wonderful things happened today, but when I sat down to write of them, only the feeling remained. That is enough.
Recurrent image of the NE corner of W 46th and 8th Avenue in New York. I am waiting for something there– what? Who knows?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
February 2, 2012
More fantastic dreams. In these I was giving friends a tour of Dream Ireland. I should have chosen Ireland for March, I know, but it will be cold and Malta will be warm. The dreams may have been occasioned by my being in bed by 8 PM, exhausted and, I thought, sick, though maybe it was just exhaustion. Missed choir. It would have been a misery had I gone. I have in fact been working hard. Guest speaker in Sam’s class yesterday. They were lively and interested. Put The Asheville Cantos together in a matter of three days, though I’d started writing them during Christmas break. The difficulty of publishing has been the single largest factor in my life as a writer–one of the big two or three issues in my general life-- and yet it is so universal it can hardly be spoken of. It’s like talking about a plague that everyone has or a flood that had put everyone on the roof. It has changed my nature from what it might have been. That at least must be acknowledged
More fantastic dreams. In these I was giving friends a tour of Dream Ireland. I should have chosen Ireland for March, I know, but it will be cold and Malta will be warm. The dreams may have been occasioned by my being in bed by 8 PM, exhausted and, I thought, sick, though maybe it was just exhaustion. Missed choir. It would have been a misery had I gone. I have in fact been working hard. Guest speaker in Sam’s class yesterday. They were lively and interested. Put The Asheville Cantos together in a matter of three days, though I’d started writing them during Christmas break. The difficulty of publishing has been the single largest factor in my life as a writer–one of the big two or three issues in my general life-- and yet it is so universal it can hardly be spoken of. It’s like talking about a plague that everyone has or a flood that had put everyone on the roof. It has changed my nature from what it might have been. That at least must be acknowledged
February 1, 2012
Complicated dreams– AD had a sort of ballet farm–her style involved a bit of long-distance running– and I was developing my chops as a ballet dancer.
Dinner with JRE last night. We tried not to listen to the trivia contest. She gave me a potted pink hyacinth, which I will put into the unseasonable ground today. It may be finished blooming by the time real winter comes.
Complicated dreams– AD had a sort of ballet farm–her style involved a bit of long-distance running– and I was developing my chops as a ballet dancer.
Dinner with JRE last night. We tried not to listen to the trivia contest. She gave me a potted pink hyacinth, which I will put into the unseasonable ground today. It may be finished blooming by the time real winter comes.
January 31, 2012
Computer back-up yesterday is hard to figure out. It seems to have erased some files (unnecessary ones, so far) in the process, files that had been on the drive that was being backed up. Can’t figure that out, exactly. Haven’t panicked, because the files weren’t at the heart of things. Just. . . odd.
Bought passage and reserved rooms for Gala in Denver. The talk about it in the group made me think some great labor or decision-making process was involved. It took five minutes. The options couldn’t be clearer. I learned long ago that big decisions are exactly as complicated as little ones. They grow in the imagination of you let them, if you delay and dither. We live amid a throng of ditherers.
Computer back-up yesterday is hard to figure out. It seems to have erased some files (unnecessary ones, so far) in the process, files that had been on the drive that was being backed up. Can’t figure that out, exactly. Haven’t panicked, because the files weren’t at the heart of things. Just. . . odd.
Bought passage and reserved rooms for Gala in Denver. The talk about it in the group made me think some great labor or decision-making process was involved. It took five minutes. The options couldn’t be clearer. I learned long ago that big decisions are exactly as complicated as little ones. They grow in the imagination of you let them, if you delay and dither. We live amid a throng of ditherers.
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