February 7, 2015

    Joined the Racquet Club after the name appeared in what seemed to be a prophecy.  Cheap, so no second thoughts. No particular wonderment. Forgot when it opened or I’d be there now. Fighting off the whatever it is. . .  Wrote poems on a little table in the YMCA. Poems turned out to be about the YMCA. Trip south nixed by a clash of schedules. I think today will give me a day at the studio. Hungry for everything but breakfast, wanting it all at once.

February 6, 2015

Annual reading of “Little Gidding,” tears running down my face in the café.
   
Unspeakable yesterday followed by a nearly merry today. It’s my monstrous resilience that amazes me. To say it that way makes it seem like a blessing, but it is not. Unless it is.

February 5, 2015
   
Rose at 4 and walked in the surprisingly clement night wind. Tested out the new sidewalks, which are broad and gleamed slightly under the moon, over which the clouds rushed knotty and plated as a crocodile’s back. My hollies sent off a blackish gleam into the air. Will said he saw the plans for the walks, and that they are not coming to my side, and so my hollies and my great pine are secure. This was a load off my heart, at least a 30th part of the whole weight. The walk was a prayer, I realize now, though what God and I have to say to each other at this point is hard to tell. Did the random lights mean that other people were awake?

February 4, 2015

T came to my office to chat yesterday, confiding and forward-looking, and very, very blond. As he talked, I felt a desire for him that was one third fire, one third appreciation, one third regret. Was shaken by that, and am shaken by it now, one more cruelty, one more gratuitous call heard only after it cannot be answered. He escaped unharmed.

The fireplace clock is stopped, and when I look at it, it shows different time, five after five for a long while, now five after six, as though it convulsed forward an hour when I was not looking, building up the energy for the leap.

Terrible yesterday, shattering and terrible. My good days are psychic constructions; my bad days are initiated by actual events.

Buying a phalanx of angel’s trumpets. Somehow that will make all things well.

February 3, 2015

Moonlight on snow, a few big stars not quite lost in the radiance.

Exhausted yesterday even before I got to school. The first stupid question set me off. Usually I can endure five or six.

God will sometimes let you claw to the surface for a frantic breath, but he will never quite let you out of the water.

February 2, 2015

Monteverde on the CD

Groundhog will see no shadow in this downpour. Something to be thankful for.

Driven almost to shrieking by the hoo-hah and cross-purposes of preparation for the Valentine’s gala. Too many people loudly in charge of too many different things. I am morbidly fuss-averse. Watched five minutes of football and the Half Time extravaganza, so I can claim participation in this particular Americana.
   
Terrible night, stomach upset from eating the wrong thing, and too much of it, too late. I know the reason but protest that the reason is not sufficient. Anyway, late and draggy start to the wet and raw morning.

February 1, 2015

Annapurna at NC Stage last night. Distinguished performance of an undistinguished– or rather, unevenly distinguished-- play. The central metaphor, the unattainable, destructive goal represented by Annapurna, is sublime. Too much derivative, gratuitous, overexplained around it. I think the play must have been heavily workshopped. It has the air of having been worked over to satisfy the unimaginative. The production is, so far as I can tell from one exposure, impeccable. CS caught me up on the throes of Flat Rock. Willy filled me with excitement for his upcoming  show, An Iliad. Elaborate cocktails at King James afterwards.  People there, and kinds of people, whom I never see in my regular life. Odd, abrupt waking this morning, without the vestibule of dreams.