August 6, 2013

Thought I was going to get the truck an inspection after my workout at the Y, ended by spending $500 on the replacement of various objects and fluids. To be fair, I had not checked or replaced anything since I bought the dear thing, and it was time for a little attention. Hiked to Bruegger’s for coffee, noting how distinctive the coffee crowd was there from that at Edna’s or Starbucks, the places I habituate. Since I was already in the truck, I went to Reems Creek and bought a green-flowed hydrangea, snakeroot, sage, hyssop, black-eyed Susan, with much hacking and pulling got them all into the ground. Most of them were bought as quick-spreaders,  brutal and greedy,  to try to outrun the tangle of vines that have ruled Carolyn’s bank since time immemorial. I rather overdid, and spent the end of the day thinking I was exhausted and sick, when in fact I was only exhausted. A night, then, of the most fantastic dreams, radiant, lengthy, mythological. Perhaps I put that down to retiring stone cold sober.

August 5, 2013

Bad day yesterday in the mind, but rather productive in things you do to get out of the mind. Attacked the thicket between my house and Carolyn’s (with her fervent encouragement) now that the biggest lumber has been cut out. Labors there include the added necessity of cleaning out clutter and garbage (including, oddly, a number of potatoes) which somehow got flung there. I guess she’s just a farm girl living on a city lot.  Kelly wondered if another sweet gum limb had fallen, but I told her it was the arborists, and she looked wistfully up into the loftiest branches which still slightly over hang her yard and said, “What about those?” I did not reply what was in my heart, which was , “I hope I’m long gone dead before anything happens there.”

Pulled out a two-bucket harvest of tomatoes, which neither squirrels not rot had gotten.

But the best thing was getting back in touch with Jason. I cruised him on Facebook, and he accepted the cruise. I remember back in the day thinking about our friendship, how easy it was, how sustaining. how it accepted every new level one of us took it to. He was in a friend-lopping phase then, and I kept wondering if I would get lopped one day. I don’t think that’s exactly what happened– thank God neither of us said “What the hell happened?”–but I missed him, and thought I’d take a chance. He has a full-time teaching job at Lees McCrae in Banner Elk for next semester. His little boy is named Casper.

August 4, 2013

Dark, silent. TE posted a new Facebook photo. I spent a long time looking at it. The face I loved with such then-unparalleled desire, with such constancy and hope, the love I took to the dark hills of Syracuse praying that it might be returned to me in some measure, praying that effort and determination might make him love me as mere association seemed not to be doing,  the love that made me kid and giving and selfishly vengeful by turns, that face, which I would not have recognized had the name not been attached to it. He looks like his dad. He is an old wrinkly man, with slanted. happy eyes. I prayed that his life might come to nothing without me– that’s how bad it was– but have no idea where his life went at all. Nieces write under the picture how handsome their uncle is, and how they miss him. What does that tell me? That he went where I did, only me without the handsomeness and the missing? Don’t know, am afraid to ask lest the answer be silence. I would have been a better man had he said yes to me, the tree of bitterness forced to take a different root, or none at all. Perhaps I should tell him that.

New glasses, hard to look at anything too long, a day of writing wasted, though the studio garden got weeded and I finished a painting. Could focus on You Tube videos, and so watched them for most of the day.

August 3, 2013

Good time at the studio. Ample nap time under the near-perfect skies. Got my new glasses, which I suppose provide better vision, but which at the moment are making me sick. The gynocracy at the optician’s instructed me in every detail of care and adjustment.

Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys at SART. Simon knew how to write ‘em, so they clicked along like little clockwork toys. Despite classy acting, not a memorable evening of theater. Dear God, R has gotten old! Drinks at Avenue M, chat with handsome Jake, then hollowly to bed.

August 2, 2013

Remarkable network of dreams before waking, which I know are connected with my anxiety over The Falls of the Wyona. In the dream I suddenly remember the publisher who was keenly interested in my work, the agent who was enthusiastic and dying to see the next thing I produced. Of course, there were no such people, and my conscious mind tries to correct my dream mind, but the dream mind recognizes the layering of reality, and I know on all levels that I’ve dreamed of these people before, and they have the kind of reality that comes from a kind of experience. Dream mind makes conscious mind believe that prolonged disappointment has merely made it forget, so we plunge into the search. I find the agent in a gigantic ultra-modern office building beside an airport. She is interested. We discuss the text (which she has miraculously read) in depth. Of course, the book is not my book, and I learn it as we discuss it. On the page it looks like the Talmud, text in the center and annotations all around. She gives me a new copy of Pound’s Cantos, saying, “See, even the great ones get remaindered.” Then I hear Maud throwing up in the kitchen. The famous writer who was interested in me is visible even now, standing in front of a brick building at Exeter or Cambridge or somewhere, alive inside my head as though it were a cinema with two reels running at the same time.

Rutter on Spotify. Waiting for it to be over.

In the Cafe

So, a year ago today I was in Sligo. I had to read my journal to remember what actually happened, the time is so shellacked over with a sense of sadness. Today is better for me, though I am not in Sligo but in the local café, watching a candidate for mayor work the room. I told him I favored Esther Manheimer and what could he do to talk me out of it, and he passed on.

News boils over on all sides that the State has revoked the license of the local abortion clinic. One should not be surprised by any atrocity committed by our vandal legislature, but still one is, expecting reason or compassion to enter the argument somewhere. They do not. The Republicans are naughty stupid boys who stole the keys to the clubhouse and mean to do as much damage as they can before they’re tossed out. There’s not even a sense of shame or self defense among them, they play so purely to one another, without regard to any discernible constituency. Women on Facebook blame this on The Patriarchy. I confess that I have no conception of Patriarchy, and though one may say I don’t see it because I’m part of it, my perception is that men are as baffled by this tyranny as women are. The words “the patriarchy” describe nothing real, to me, though one hardly dares to say that in public. If men are in office, it is because women voted for them. Are women really controlled by men against their wills? If that has been the case, I don’t understand why it continues to be the case. I read somewhere that no rule can continue without the consent of the people ruled, and I believed it. Were I a woman would I think otherwise? No way of telling. On the other hand, a female-devised-and-driven Nazism is inconceivable. There is something in the male mind that allows self-satisfied group decisions (I suppose it has something to do with cooperation in the hunt), without the clear impulse to distinguish between helpful group initiatives and dreadful ones. Maybe that’s the patriarchy, the male tendency (and I recognize it in me) to turn temporary consensus into inflexible and eternal rule. Oh well. If some woman passed out flaming torches and wanted to lead us to burn the State House, I would follow her.

August 1, 2013

Submerged in something, don’t know exactly what. I suppose a renewal of the old War with Heaven, though as the years pass the stakes get lower and the engagement less dire, as the prospect of any reasonable reward for victory thins. What if I should receive everything I labored for through the years this very minute? One cannot really call a change at the end of life a change of life.

Hibiscus in glorious bloom. Have not yet had the chance to hack the area John the Fragrant Tree Man opened up into order.

Have a a running start on my third Lincoln play.

Thinking the swelling and stiffness on the middle finger of my right hand is, also, gout– which has not gone away this time but subsided into something barely noticeable.  Nothing is prevented, but all is made more laborious.

Slid almost imperceptibly from dreams. I lay there on the bed, and when I saw the outline of a cat’s head against the paler window, I though, “I am awake,” and then I was.