December 10, 2014

Days ruled by imagination– as much as I can of the daylight spent writing, spent in the midst of worlds I have created or altered. When I lie down there are the fantasies one has when one lies down, places and people and situations created to fill gaps in the world one has stopped waiting for the world to fill. I can live like this a long time. I rejoice living like this, and resent interruptions, even those I give myself, like pulling on my shoes and going downtown yesterday afternoon to hit a few galleries, just to get out of the house. Bought a wooden tree ornament carved to look like a woodpecker. Bought chocolate at the chocolate shop that was like the mud of paradise, thick and chocolatey, almost beyond even my enlarged capacity for sweetness. Watched people passing in the gray light.

Woke one morning with the Christmas tree tipping to leeward. Called Leland to help me straighten it. I had not screwed all the screws. Curious.

Finished helping a young women get her MFA at Antioch U. Part of me rebelled, for her general social incompetence and scatter-brainedness should have counted for something, but there was nowhere on the report to speak of that. “Why me?” I wondered the whole time. The reading she organized was preposterous. She was never sure what she was doing, with that or in her relations with me. She called frantically, interrupting my evening because she had neglected to mention a deadline, and then didn’t want to speak to me because I returned the call in the midst of her supper. Fortunately, her own writing is quite good, so I could swallow hard and sign the documents.
    I know the present mood is that credentials belong to those who desire them, and that earning them is a process of a disgraced hierarchical tyranny, but in this I fear I cling to the old ways. We have decided to give trophies to everyone on the team, from kindergarten stick-ball, where it doesn’t matter so much, to the arts and society, where it does. I am trying unsuccessfully to think of a problem with current society that does not at some point involve people pretending to be something they are not, and being allowed by some conspiracy of perception to do so. Carnival rides pass for theater. Hysterical self-interest masquerades as public service; murderers and cowards wear badges and call themselves keepers of the peace. Bigots pass as men of God. Ignoramuses get Ph.d’s and teach college because no one dares call them on their ignorance. Bloodthirsty vengefulness is a called the desire for closure, or for justice. Oppression is called Safety. Tyranny is called Order. Self-indulgence is art. I try to make a hierarchy here, but I don’t know what is worse than what, and suspect that mendacity in small things may be as damaging, ultimately, as mendacity in the great. None of is allowed to turn from the things we are bad at and give our energies to those things where we might do good.

Yet, I am having a fine time, holding off these matters with one hand, writing with the other.  Dark, dark morning. . . hours yet before I need to put in an appearance, true or false.

December 7, 2014

Baked pistachio cookies.

Bought a Christmas tree from the usual place–the biggest one I ever got, having the highest ceilings I ever had–in driving rain, set it up in the dining room, got it, at this hour, almost completely decorated. Bubble lights. Other peoples’ antiques. Memories oddly clean of melancholy.
   
Lessons & Music at all Souls. I found it exceptionally meaningful. Didn’t know that S had walked all the way from campus to be there. I mentioned the service to him off-hand, but– Anyway, there he was, looming darkly over the crowd at the end. We left and went to Avenue M, where, rather surprisingly, the entire crowd came pouring in a few minutes later, so we had a social evening rather than an intimate one. I take him to the bus station in a few minutes. He doesn’t seem happy to be going home, but neither was I at the same point in my life.  What various and rich potential–he seems to know this, though, so the dad instincts in me can lie low for a while.

Dark morning, fierce wind. When I switched on the light, the two cats standing accusingly beside their empty, empty bowl.

December 6, 2014

Student Heather knitted me a fine green ski cap.

Spent yesterday afternoon with S, hearing about is adventures in Europe last summer, seeing his father give a rather fatuous speech about Hollywood on You Tube. What a cosmopolitan, eventful life he has had already! I have treated him as though he were as young as his years, and he is not. He takes a magnificent picture. Entered grades, sealing the semester, as far as I’m concerned.

The crew ate at an excellent new neighborhood barbecue place (they ate: I court disaster if I eat before I sit), then headed off to Flat Rock for a version of A Christmas Carol all but annihilated by Disneyfication and over-production. Some people hate perfection and must add a chipper song or a too-long dance just to leave their mark.  I had to leash back rage. We went to support Maria, and Maria was excellent, so I suppose one might call it a success. Marley/Christmas Present was also magnificent. King James afterward, the best frittes I have ever had. I get profane when I get exhausted. DJ called me a savant of profanity, which I rather like.

Watching the two peaceful cats eating at their bowl this dark morning. Circe, when she came would hiss and spit over every morsel. Now that she has learned there is always plenty, she is impossible to provoke. This is a lesson I transmit to the world.

Disappointing cookbooks arrive from Amazon– disappointing because they all seem to have some axe to grind (one must NEVER measure, but only weigh), or call for Betty Crocker mix of this and that rather than telling you how to make it from scratch. What the hell is potato starch?

Maud sleeping in peace upon my left foot.

December 5, 2014

Early to bed ,early to rise, with my hand hovering over a multiplicity of choices. Final finals yesterday, grading one while giving the other, so my semester is largely wrapped up.  No one has given me a dilemma by disappearing at the last minute. After the Humanities exam, S and S and T hung around to talk, and we jabbered for more than an hour. They jabbered, while I looked on fascinated, delighted by them and their speech and their mannerisms, by their beauty, and also mortified by the tininess of the time I have dedicated to simply sitting and being with someone, without an activity or a reason. Eddie complained about this years ago, that I never just sat beside him on the sofa and watched TV. It never occurred to me to do so.  Even yesterday I kept trying to think of a reason for us to be together, trying to figure out why they wanted to be with me doing nothing rather than heading out for lunch at White Duck Taco, which it was their original intention to do. A day still filled with appointments, as they shall be for a time yet. In any case, grateful for a time when nothing happened.

December 4, 2014

Final playwrights’ meeting. One superb play; another that could be superb when it’s finished. One was faked cleverness just to have the project done. Bade goodbye to R, for whom I’ve been a soundingboard and confidante for four years. I thought there would be more ceremony.

Terrible hoarseness, which destroyed rehearsal last night. It seems, I discover, to be largely curable by a drink of water.

Two finals today.

Annihilated a batch of cookies by failing to add the flour.

Longing to write. Anxious to write. Looking for a day (tomorrow?) In which I might write almost uninterruptedly. Maybe not that until next Monday. If not writing, I wish I were in London.

Foot hurts knee hurts side muscles cramping from too much weightlifting sore-ish throat. Anything else?

December 3, 2014

 Finished The Beautiful Necklaces last night.

 Choir in Marshall was actually fun last night. I can blast there in half an hour, a truth I keep forgetting, so I arrived early and sat on a chunk of cement near the church, watching the passing show, which in Marshall is very sparse and very dark, yet enough to reawaken my old hunger for adventure. Had it been an Irish town of the same size, I would have found the pub, settled in, and staggered home with some drunk Adonis on my arm. Two Adonises did pass me on the street, one dark and one fair; I decided to think of them as allegories.

 Baked cookies yesterday. I hardly recognize myself. I can’t eat them, so I’ll take them to my exams.

 Got my free Starbuck’s Christmas coffee for having drunk five orders of the same and had my card punched. It was very exciting.

December 2, 2014

Pastel morning sky, all of the pastels.
   
Sang for World AIDS day and the Quilt at the Renaissance Hotel last night. It was a gala occasion, and I felt invigorated and joyful when I left to have drinks with the crew at Pack Tavern. Such events are, in Asheville, amazingly mixed, with excellent things intermingled with dreadful things, the dreadful things included because they are sincere or represent an under-honored minority perspective. My stance that bad art is never anything but bad art is not popular these days, and so, for the most part, goes unexpressed. To regard the quit is ever sobering; so many of those dead in the plague were born within two years of me. If I ever doubt that I was blessed, all I need do is ask myself how I escaped.
   
Have been unusually happy in recent days. Bad news has stayed away; expectations have been supportable. Knee ravaged by, I think, the wrong shoes largely healed by exercises at the Y. My body took me there half against my will, knowing it was what we needed. My thoughts are on Christmas decorations and the baking of cookies– as though I were my mother.
   
Huge progress on The One with the Beautiful Necklaces.