December 11, 2012

Tom visits to borrow a DVD, remarks on the bird-friendliness of my yard as a cloud of brown wings arises with his approach. I am lucky in my birds this winter. The brown hydrangea thicket boils with them.

Humanities exam last night. Everyone but one does badly, and no one seems to take it very hard. I gave them chocolates, so maybe the blow fell lightly. The one who does excellently to the last is a rough kid who sits in the back with his cap turned to the side– the last one you would guess. Prissy administrators take it upon themselves to chide the faculty for not meeting the schedules set arbitrarily for them by prissy administrators. An administrator’s only job is to help the faculty get its job done. Things run smoother when the actualities are remembered.

Tried to book a flight to London. The blocks and crosses were clearly supernatural, so I withdrew from that project at least temporarily.

Decided never to use my elbows when arising from the supine, so to keep my abdominals as long as possible.

December 10, 2012

Weekend so jumbled it’s difficult to remember what was experienced and what thought of. Lessons and Carols on Saturday. My students came, which was nice, and G brought her mother, but the event felt ragged and tired. The music was OK, though there was a vibe the opposite of relaxed confidence from the podium. The readings were amateurish, meant to flatter rather than to uplift. Maybe I was just not in the mood. Worked on my play in the café Sunday morning. I take it as an exercise to fight off the lousy canned music and to concentrate, though I think the lousy canned music is actually helping this one, giving it a contemporary and resilient tone. Long and disappointing Cantaria rehearsal, wherein we seem to have retreated from the level of excellence achieved at our workshop. Problems with retention, with learning something and keeping it learned. But, drinks afterward, and I forgot about it. My shoulders when they move sound like a can of pebbles. Looked up my surname, and found a surprising number of us, concentrated in Texas. Up in the dark, wondering what I’m supposed to do . . .

December 8, 2012

Curious dry, warmish winter continues. I let only a sweeping glance dart at the ground, lest the wrong shoots be coming up at the wrong time.

At loose ends last night, wondering whether I should go out to the theater or lie here nursing my off stomach. The phone rang, and it was John L inviting me downtown. Met John and Graelin and Justin at Southern, and we sat outside and drank and gossiped and laughed, and only now have I been sufficiently grateful for a merry night, a definitive interruption of what had been a gathering gloom. We moved from Southern to Sazerac, where we sat on the roof and– were there stars? I don’t remember. But in any case, I was happy. I think I may have induced them to come to evensong tonight. Brilliant conversation from them all, John able to navigate all intellectual waters, Graelin selective, definitive, Justin impassioned.  Justin has lost weight, and his blond male beauty and quirky, jerky body language are lovely to look upon. One must smile, and hope for him to take off his cap again, and smooth the golden hair, and twist his head to the side to gaze at Graelin, who is the woman one would have picked for him, had one been given the power to pick. I’m still smiling over everything. Do other professors get invited out drinking by their students? I suppose they do, but they are maybe not so astonished by it.

Rose late–day is dawning– but feeling fully purged from whatever ailed me.

December 7, 2012

Put Messiah on the CD player and decorated the Christmas tree. I was in a strange spirit while doing it, not the one I meant to be in.  For an hour or so I was the darkest Scrooge who was ever under this roof.

That memory and all others are filtered through the memory of last night’s sickness, a violent stomach issue, like flu, but without the body aches. My stomach is still curdled, my bowels are iffy and my head aches at this waking hour. There must have been some fever, for I was hallucinating a little, and interpreted the illness as one some kids in the group I was dreaming about were having. I was trying to quiz them about exactly what was wrong (they couldn’t tell me) a while before I realized the illness was my own. I ate bread yesterday– could all that possibly have come from that? Vomited red, hoping it was the red of the cranberry juice from the cosmopolitans.

Turned in senior grades, with the inevitable last-hour phone calls to and inevitable excuse-making from those who had not completed the work.

A rose on the back terrace, frozen twice, still offers a battered bloom, and a bud behind it.

December 5, 2012

First thing in the morning, email from Joanie Pratt:

The sad news, gulp, Charlie died May 27 after 3 months with a stage IV glioblastoma (brain tumor, the most.aggressive kind, surgery too risky, as it was located near/on the speech lobe of the brain)... The biopsy was Feb.23, and March 6, the day before a combo of radiation and oral chemo began, he woke up unable to speak, but able to understand everything. So began 6 weeks of therapy (he wanted to try this with the hope of gaining some "extra "time) but each day became increasingly difficult as he gradually lost the use of his hands, legs, and all parts of his body...yet he could be at home, had an appetite and no pain until the last 3 days, when (we had Hospice all of May..bless them), I could give him morphine to make him more comfortable. Our kids and grandkids all came( as they had often) the 26th and 27th, all gave him hugs, and Sarah and Tim stayed for the dinner the 27th and the three of us held his hands while passed very peacefully. We felt amazed that we could be together for that moment , and felt sure he probably "chose" our all being together as the moment to leave us.

Charlie was one of the most decent men it was my privilege to know. He gave me Exeter, and remained my friend thereafter. His death was a shock (I’d written him on behalf of Richard H-J). It never crossed my mind that he could die. Generations of students (and not only students) are incalculably better for having known him. This must have been in the Exeter alumni magazine, and I just breezed by. His buzzing New England voice is in my head in the morning dark. I am glad for that. It is a comfort.

Pot-luck in place of our Memoirs exam last night. It was joyful, intimate, sweet. Left there to attend a meeting at the Apothecary. Six young men and one young woman and I discussed the place, what it needs, how it should move forward, but what I was thinking mostly the whole time was how on-task, inventive, ego-less, responsible, foresightful, humorous they all were. I was so proud of them, glad to deliver the world into their hands, and the hands of their like. Had a drink at Sazarac afterwards, in the mellow December night where people were walking in shorts and shirtsleeves. A pretty girl from New York was singing really quite wonderful original songs, mostly to the two other girls who formed her entourage.

Charlie, ave atque vale.

December 3, 2012

Twilight. I always write at morning, before morning, and I’m having difficulty summoning the appropriate vocabulary.  The light I see through the study window at dawn would never be mistaken for the light through the same window at dusk. The light now is greenish gray, a little spent, like a happy child after a day of play. The past many nights one could follow the moon in its course from the front window over the roof to the windows in back. Pale light, pale gleam, the wood and weeds etched black and silver. Excellent morning at the studio. I made no visionary progress, but I decided what to do with old, problematic canvases, so when the new vision begins to unfold, it can do so unencumbered. Bought a Christmas tree, after having rather finally decided not do. Impulse must be preferred over decision. I think somewhere in the back of my mind was Lawrence the Fish, how it is his first year of life and he never had a Christmas tree. I’ll present this as a joke if I ever mention it aloud, though I’m not sure it entirely is. I had tree one year because Conrad was so sick, and I thought it might cheer him.  Forest scent in the rooms. I’ll decorate it tomorrow, maybe, or the day after. It can stand bare and pagan for the time. Something very youthful about the day; I feel happy and melancholy at the same time, the way I did when I was a kid. If all days could begin at the gym before dawn, continue at the Starbucks terrace as dawn was breaking, me writing away at a play in perfect harmony with the coming day and the passing voices, if I could buy a Christmas tree every day and have a sweet nap full of dreams that made me laugh out loud, then all might be well.  It is quite dark now. The moon has not risen, nor shall it for a time. My university mail was full of directives for things that HAD to be done today. We’ll, they weren’t, and nobody is the worse for it. Scolded for setting the Laurel Forum back wrong after the senior readings on Sunday. I thought I’d rather improved the plan, but–. I do feel as though it were thirty years ago. I have no idea why.

November 28, 2012

Dream: I am in Galway with Titus my cat. I’m walking the streets with him, and we are happy. I see a notice for an audition for the choir of St. Muire’s, and I decide to audition. I sit with the basses and wait. Then I realize I’ve lost track of Titus. I thought he would just follow me, but he hadn’t, and I flee the church, running through medieval streets looking for him. Then Maud the living cat steps on the radio remote, which causes the radio to turn on, and I am awake these hours before dawn, in my green Ireland sweatshirt, trying to catch up with the pointy end of the semester.

Actor Arnold Weiss writes from Hollywood praise of Overseas. He doesn’t say which part he played, but the letter was gratifying on all counts. I apparently have a fan base in Albuquerque. . . .

6:00 PM. Just now the blazing moon breaks from the top of Sunset Mountain, a great golden planet on his north. Moments ago it was tangled in the trees of the mountain, as though he were right there, on the earth, amid the owls and the sleepy squirrels.

I reported my Titus the Cat dream on Facebook, and the people there convinced me that Titus missed me in the other world and had come back to visit. The degree to which that was a comfort was sublime or pathetic, depending on how you look at it.