February 14, 2012
Lecture last night on the general agnosticism, or at best deism, of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson seems actually to have sat in the seat of the mockers. No surprises, except for the tart vehemence of their opposition to the things most Republican demagogues imagine that they supported.
Report from one of Sam’s students that I was “random and inspiring.”
Thinking of how quiet it is in the house without Titus. Circe and Maud are excellent cats, but reserved, cat-like, feminine. Titus was a boy, noisy and messy, and, I see now, the energy of the mornings. I don’t have to tread carefully in the morning dark, for fear of cat-vomit. I don’t have to worry about his surprisingly strong body blocking my way and pitching me forward into darkness. Nobody’s head to press into my fingertips as if I can’t possibly scratch hard enough. All sweetness and openness, like the twelve year old he is. I speak in the past tense as if getting myself ready for what I feel, in the light of past events, must be bad news.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Hawk and Warbler
February 12, 2012
Odd how I did not mention two beautiful things, both in the air. When I was getting into the car I looked up and saw a warbler on the branch above me, his golden breast modulating into cream behind. It’s long since I’ve known the warblers on sight, and I didn’t rush to my field guides, so I’ll let him be a blessed mystery. Then, when I was walking to the sorority pot luck, I took a moment to sit in a little park nestled between Karpen and the university road. There was a great sir above me. Our red-tailed hawk had her nest in a branch of the pine above me. I watched her fold her wings, settle in, preen for a moment, and then hop out onto a neighboring branch, exactly like a countryman deciding to sit on the front porch for a while before going in. I could hear her feathers rustling.
News from the vet had been on my cell phone, un-listened to. Titus goes in tomorrow for surgery. I tell him every few minutes, “Don’t worry, we’re going to have it fixed in two days.” I hope he understands me in some way. Maud has made up with Circe, but not with him. She has no patience with mortality.
Cantaria pot-luck last night was, after all, unexpectedly sweet and homey, with all the guests gathered over their meals and over the pink tablecloths listening to the entertainment, which was quite good. Barry and Will sang “Au font du temple saint,” which I love. I have a dozen versions of it on I-tunes, and theirs would stand proudly among them.
AJ offered to proofread my novels. Since I am so manifestly bad at it, I took him up on it.
Got some painting done while the snow flew against the windows. This was a new direction, and had nothing to do with the show. I tell myself I have plenty for the show. I hope I’m right.
Took a morning nap yesterday. It was still dark when I lay down. When I rose up it was brilliant outside, and I thought I had slept very late indeed, but it was dawn on the falling snow. Soon the sun had climbed above the clouds and it was a dull winter day again.
Odd how I did not mention two beautiful things, both in the air. When I was getting into the car I looked up and saw a warbler on the branch above me, his golden breast modulating into cream behind. It’s long since I’ve known the warblers on sight, and I didn’t rush to my field guides, so I’ll let him be a blessed mystery. Then, when I was walking to the sorority pot luck, I took a moment to sit in a little park nestled between Karpen and the university road. There was a great sir above me. Our red-tailed hawk had her nest in a branch of the pine above me. I watched her fold her wings, settle in, preen for a moment, and then hop out onto a neighboring branch, exactly like a countryman deciding to sit on the front porch for a while before going in. I could hear her feathers rustling.
News from the vet had been on my cell phone, un-listened to. Titus goes in tomorrow for surgery. I tell him every few minutes, “Don’t worry, we’re going to have it fixed in two days.” I hope he understands me in some way. Maud has made up with Circe, but not with him. She has no patience with mortality.
Cantaria pot-luck last night was, after all, unexpectedly sweet and homey, with all the guests gathered over their meals and over the pink tablecloths listening to the entertainment, which was quite good. Barry and Will sang “Au font du temple saint,” which I love. I have a dozen versions of it on I-tunes, and theirs would stand proudly among them.
AJ offered to proofread my novels. Since I am so manifestly bad at it, I took him up on it.
Got some painting done while the snow flew against the windows. This was a new direction, and had nothing to do with the show. I tell myself I have plenty for the show. I hope I’m right.
Took a morning nap yesterday. It was still dark when I lay down. When I rose up it was brilliant outside, and I thought I had slept very late indeed, but it was dawn on the falling snow. Soon the sun had climbed above the clouds and it was a dull winter day again.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
February 11, 2012
Wind howling in the dark outside.
The vet confab about Titus never took place, or they didn’t inform me of their thoughts, if it did. Keats would frown at my resistence to living in uncertainty.
A body shop in Weaverville across from a great slanted cow pasture will be tending to my wounded car next week. Far better scenery than I expected from a body shop. David the owner is buoyant and armed with high tech all about, and very efficient. He kept shaking his head at my car and murmuring, “and it’s brand new.” He is taking his daughter skiing for the first time this weekend.
The faculty reading was entertaining and well-received, I thought. I read from Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers, the part where the boys find the bones. I was happy hearing it aloud, hoping they were too. My susceptibility to typos is almost comic.
The girls of Gamma Phi Delta sorority invited their favorite professors to a pot luck last evening, and I was honored to go. The truth was that only recently did I know we had fraternities and sororities, but we do, and they seem supportive and useful things. The girls were dressed up and radiant.
Reading at Downtown Books and News afterwards-- a full day. The night readings were, on the whole, not very good. The widely-published poet was just plain– plain– and one wondered what there was about her lack of inspiration which attracted reputable publishers. Maybe I’ve answered my own question. “With this we can fulfill our poetry quota with arousing any emotions at all.” The widely published novelist was an engaged wordsmith, but scarcely allowed us any sympathy for, or any sure understanding of, what she was saying. All manner and no matter. Maybe there should be a temporary moratorium of books with the word “Girl” in their titles. The students were better far.
I’m all the time speculating on where the line draws between the competent and the excellent. Yesterday there were some readers who did nothing wrong–if they were in a class with you, you’d have nothing to correct, no precise objection to register– and yet also hadn’t done it right. How to explain this? My impulse is to say that there is a temptation to exert too much control, and those in question succumbed to that temptation– but how much control is too much? My answer at this second is, “When the author too clearly knows what’s going to happen in the next line.” I think Proust and Joyce could let the architecture show, but the modern ear–mine, anyway– wishes for at least a simulacrum of discovery.
It is atill dark. I have been up two hours. It is everything I can do not to stagger back to bed, already spent.
Wind howling in the dark outside.
The vet confab about Titus never took place, or they didn’t inform me of their thoughts, if it did. Keats would frown at my resistence to living in uncertainty.
A body shop in Weaverville across from a great slanted cow pasture will be tending to my wounded car next week. Far better scenery than I expected from a body shop. David the owner is buoyant and armed with high tech all about, and very efficient. He kept shaking his head at my car and murmuring, “and it’s brand new.” He is taking his daughter skiing for the first time this weekend.
The faculty reading was entertaining and well-received, I thought. I read from Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers, the part where the boys find the bones. I was happy hearing it aloud, hoping they were too. My susceptibility to typos is almost comic.
The girls of Gamma Phi Delta sorority invited their favorite professors to a pot luck last evening, and I was honored to go. The truth was that only recently did I know we had fraternities and sororities, but we do, and they seem supportive and useful things. The girls were dressed up and radiant.
Reading at Downtown Books and News afterwards-- a full day. The night readings were, on the whole, not very good. The widely-published poet was just plain– plain– and one wondered what there was about her lack of inspiration which attracted reputable publishers. Maybe I’ve answered my own question. “With this we can fulfill our poetry quota with arousing any emotions at all.” The widely published novelist was an engaged wordsmith, but scarcely allowed us any sympathy for, or any sure understanding of, what she was saying. All manner and no matter. Maybe there should be a temporary moratorium of books with the word “Girl” in their titles. The students were better far.
I’m all the time speculating on where the line draws between the competent and the excellent. Yesterday there were some readers who did nothing wrong–if they were in a class with you, you’d have nothing to correct, no precise objection to register– and yet also hadn’t done it right. How to explain this? My impulse is to say that there is a temptation to exert too much control, and those in question succumbed to that temptation– but how much control is too much? My answer at this second is, “When the author too clearly knows what’s going to happen in the next line.” I think Proust and Joyce could let the architecture show, but the modern ear–mine, anyway– wishes for at least a simulacrum of discovery.
It is atill dark. I have been up two hours. It is everything I can do not to stagger back to bed, already spent.
February 10, 2012
Days devoured by anxiety over cat and car. Took Titus to a new vet. I wonder if he was aware of my will trying to drill into his brain “Do something for my buddy, NOW.” His affect was altogether different from the first one, far more direct and assertive. I put that down to gender, but who knows? In any case, he is consulting with colleagues today to see what might be done. He recommended mixing canned pumpkin with Titus’ food to loosen the stool, and that seems to have worked. That I could be so joyful over regular old cat turds would have been, under other circumstances, absurd. Titus is the sweetest cat in the world, nuzzling against the doctor who, moments before, had him drooling with pain and fear with his fingers up his rectum. But it is still a waiting game.
The Toyota people couldn’t fix the Prius (lacking a body shop) so I took it here and there for estimates, as I assumed the insurance company would desire. It never occurred to me to make a claim until the Toyota folks said, “get your insurance company involved,” which was the first signal that it was worse than I thought. It drove fine, so I figured it was fine. The kind people at Moss Paint and Body revealed the full horror, which I would as soon forget as itemize. I liked hanging out along the railroad tracks at Emma Road during the investigation, buying coffee, drinking it leaning up against the gas pump at the Ice Service Store, chatting with locals who had been sent by co-workers in the garages and welding shops roundabout for refills of coffee. Taking it to the insurance-company-approved body shop today to cut paperwork.
I need to take a look at the near-mania I have for circumventing process. My first impulse, when presented with procedures for what should, in my estimation, be much simpler, is to rebel, refuse, thwart. I am this way because 85% of procedures are unnecessary and 65% can be circumvented. But sometimes. . . not. I tried to shrug out of the insurance company process by paying it myself, but it got too expensive, and now I go from step to piddling step. I tried to get Titus help, and dwell in a state of upheaval because it was not done in one timely stroke. Consulting. . . running it past the committee. . . a time of discernment. . .please sign these papers first. . . engage my fury as almost nothing else. Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity.
Days devoured by anxiety over cat and car. Took Titus to a new vet. I wonder if he was aware of my will trying to drill into his brain “Do something for my buddy, NOW.” His affect was altogether different from the first one, far more direct and assertive. I put that down to gender, but who knows? In any case, he is consulting with colleagues today to see what might be done. He recommended mixing canned pumpkin with Titus’ food to loosen the stool, and that seems to have worked. That I could be so joyful over regular old cat turds would have been, under other circumstances, absurd. Titus is the sweetest cat in the world, nuzzling against the doctor who, moments before, had him drooling with pain and fear with his fingers up his rectum. But it is still a waiting game.
The Toyota people couldn’t fix the Prius (lacking a body shop) so I took it here and there for estimates, as I assumed the insurance company would desire. It never occurred to me to make a claim until the Toyota folks said, “get your insurance company involved,” which was the first signal that it was worse than I thought. It drove fine, so I figured it was fine. The kind people at Moss Paint and Body revealed the full horror, which I would as soon forget as itemize. I liked hanging out along the railroad tracks at Emma Road during the investigation, buying coffee, drinking it leaning up against the gas pump at the Ice Service Store, chatting with locals who had been sent by co-workers in the garages and welding shops roundabout for refills of coffee. Taking it to the insurance-company-approved body shop today to cut paperwork.
I need to take a look at the near-mania I have for circumventing process. My first impulse, when presented with procedures for what should, in my estimation, be much simpler, is to rebel, refuse, thwart. I am this way because 85% of procedures are unnecessary and 65% can be circumvented. But sometimes. . . not. I tried to shrug out of the insurance company process by paying it myself, but it got too expensive, and now I go from step to piddling step. I tried to get Titus help, and dwell in a state of upheaval because it was not done in one timely stroke. Consulting. . . running it past the committee. . . a time of discernment. . .please sign these papers first. . . engage my fury as almost nothing else. Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Cars and Cats
February 8, 2012
Circe and Maud are reacting strangely to their brother’s sickness, or perhaps to the traces of his visit to the vet. They will not go near him. They were not huddling at the bedroom door this morning, scratching to get in. They insure that they are not in the same room as Titus. They shied from me a little this morning. They did not go to the food bowl first thing, nor have they gone yet, as far as I can see. Circe is at my hand as I type, but Maud is still in hiding. What do they sense? How do they interpret it?
Titus hides in a corner in the closet. He has never once hidden before, not even for a second, allowing his great calm self to strut before the world.
Proposition 8 is struck down in California. The idea of defending “the sanctity of marriage” is so hilarious one stops dead in the middle of hilarity, questioning the sanity of anyone who is not laughing. Many marriages are truly sacred. Their partners make them so. Marriage is not. Santorum sweeps three states. He may be the biggest idiot remaining in the Republican race, but it is nice to see their various idiocies troubled in any way.
In the morning light I saw that the car bumper had merely been knocked from its groove. I was able to work it back in by hand. The hour I spent researching body shops online was a joyful futility.
*
A very long day has passed, almost, and new evaluations can be made. Maud and Circe are not only angry with Titus, they are angry with each other, and stand at distance uttering horrifying deep-throat growls, followed by vicious spitting. These cats have loved each other and been constant companions since they came to me. Titus is the only variable, but how his being ill affects them, in that way, I do not understand. I don’t like it. It’s like a monster movie in which, one by one, the pets are possessed by demons. Late in the afternoon the vet calls with what she presents as good news. What’s troubling Titus is a polyp. It can be operated on, but no one around her can do it. I have Greenville and Tennessee to choose between for the surgery. I take the information but, frankly, think she’s lying. Too much of the firm’s energy goes into boosting profits for me to think of this as purely medical advice. Titus sleeps on my lap and I think of the unfairness of things.
I did fix the bumper, but when I drove over the Lakeshore speed bumps I dragged them, and I never had before. I crouched down and looked, and something is damaged and hanging down under the car, the covering of something ripped to shreds. My little red Prius is spending the night at Jim Barkley, and who knows what THAT diagnosis will be.
Something happened on the massage table, and now coldish waves of pain travel up my left leg. The day is not yet over; perhaps there’s something else to look forward to.
Circe and Maud are reacting strangely to their brother’s sickness, or perhaps to the traces of his visit to the vet. They will not go near him. They were not huddling at the bedroom door this morning, scratching to get in. They insure that they are not in the same room as Titus. They shied from me a little this morning. They did not go to the food bowl first thing, nor have they gone yet, as far as I can see. Circe is at my hand as I type, but Maud is still in hiding. What do they sense? How do they interpret it?
Titus hides in a corner in the closet. He has never once hidden before, not even for a second, allowing his great calm self to strut before the world.
Proposition 8 is struck down in California. The idea of defending “the sanctity of marriage” is so hilarious one stops dead in the middle of hilarity, questioning the sanity of anyone who is not laughing. Many marriages are truly sacred. Their partners make them so. Marriage is not. Santorum sweeps three states. He may be the biggest idiot remaining in the Republican race, but it is nice to see their various idiocies troubled in any way.
In the morning light I saw that the car bumper had merely been knocked from its groove. I was able to work it back in by hand. The hour I spent researching body shops online was a joyful futility.
*
A very long day has passed, almost, and new evaluations can be made. Maud and Circe are not only angry with Titus, they are angry with each other, and stand at distance uttering horrifying deep-throat growls, followed by vicious spitting. These cats have loved each other and been constant companions since they came to me. Titus is the only variable, but how his being ill affects them, in that way, I do not understand. I don’t like it. It’s like a monster movie in which, one by one, the pets are possessed by demons. Late in the afternoon the vet calls with what she presents as good news. What’s troubling Titus is a polyp. It can be operated on, but no one around her can do it. I have Greenville and Tennessee to choose between for the surgery. I take the information but, frankly, think she’s lying. Too much of the firm’s energy goes into boosting profits for me to think of this as purely medical advice. Titus sleeps on my lap and I think of the unfairness of things.
I did fix the bumper, but when I drove over the Lakeshore speed bumps I dragged them, and I never had before. I crouched down and looked, and something is damaged and hanging down under the car, the covering of something ripped to shreds. My little red Prius is spending the night at Jim Barkley, and who knows what THAT diagnosis will be.
Something happened on the massage table, and now coldish waves of pain travel up my left leg. The day is not yet over; perhaps there’s something else to look forward to.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
February 7, 2012
Early in the night, dark and disturbing dreams centered on Emmanuel UC of C in Akron. What haunting memories could I possibly carry from there? My memory of the place is apparently very precise.
When I was driving to the Y, the moon hung in the north, directly over Merrimon, brilliant and round, like a portal one was almost high enough to enter. Driving back from the Y in the dim-but-brightening sky I saw the outline of a vast bird, far larger than a crow and wrong for a vulture. It was gliding down toward the willows along Beaver Creek, so I assume it was a heron.
Took Titus to the Cat Care Clinic, where the Vet’s first analysis was that his trouble was an abscessed gland. I drove to class rejoicing, thinking a few snips and all would be well. When I returned to pick him up, the solemn-faced Vet said that it was something she had never encountered before, that she didn’t know what it was, and that she had to send a sample of it to a specialist to see if it was operable or curable in any way. To say that my heart sank hardly does the moment credit. A further note of interest is that the original price of the procedure was $385. After not having done the procedure, and having omitting blood work that she decided against–she didn’t say so, but I knew–because the cat is probably dying, the price was still $305. They were going to get their money whether our problems were solved or not. For a moment I hated the Vet so much my fist was doubling in my pocket. Now Titus drags through the house, leaving a little pool of blood wherever he rests.
Dinner with JL, with fascinating stories of his time in China. When we were leaving, I swerved to avoid an oncoming car and went over an embankment behind the liquor store and into a pothole, smashing my left front bumper. It was been a fascinating day.
Early in the night, dark and disturbing dreams centered on Emmanuel UC of C in Akron. What haunting memories could I possibly carry from there? My memory of the place is apparently very precise.
When I was driving to the Y, the moon hung in the north, directly over Merrimon, brilliant and round, like a portal one was almost high enough to enter. Driving back from the Y in the dim-but-brightening sky I saw the outline of a vast bird, far larger than a crow and wrong for a vulture. It was gliding down toward the willows along Beaver Creek, so I assume it was a heron.
Took Titus to the Cat Care Clinic, where the Vet’s first analysis was that his trouble was an abscessed gland. I drove to class rejoicing, thinking a few snips and all would be well. When I returned to pick him up, the solemn-faced Vet said that it was something she had never encountered before, that she didn’t know what it was, and that she had to send a sample of it to a specialist to see if it was operable or curable in any way. To say that my heart sank hardly does the moment credit. A further note of interest is that the original price of the procedure was $385. After not having done the procedure, and having omitting blood work that she decided against–she didn’t say so, but I knew–because the cat is probably dying, the price was still $305. They were going to get their money whether our problems were solved or not. For a moment I hated the Vet so much my fist was doubling in my pocket. Now Titus drags through the house, leaving a little pool of blood wherever he rests.
Dinner with JL, with fascinating stories of his time in China. When we were leaving, I swerved to avoid an oncoming car and went over an embankment behind the liquor store and into a pothole, smashing my left front bumper. It was been a fascinating day.
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