April 7, 2016

Free for a moment, I drove to Togar’s and bought two beautiful rugs. D wasn’t there, so they let me take the rugs without paying until she should set a price. Wow. Stopped by NCUR at UNCA and heard S give her presentation on WWI novels written by women. She was poised & everything she needed to be. The girl before her was at pains to prove that Milton thought Eve the more upright and responsible of our first parents. Took all the kids from Houghton College to Marco’s afterwards for pizza and much conversation. S is S’s daughter. I knew her before she was born. I knew her mother when she was married to someone other than her father. I knew– but then, I didn’t know her. Might not have picked her out of a crowd until she spoke. Amazing. I mentioned that Asheville is Beer City, and they responded, almost as one, “We’re Wesleyan!” I reminisced that I had spent time in the Lamb, the pub in Oxford where the Wesleys invented Methodism, most certainly over a glass of port. The information passed over their heads into the void.

April 6, 2016

Quarrels with every batch of emails. It’s all right. Long-tailed bird in my yard today, glimpsed briefly as it flew, unidentifiable. Made a most excellent chicken soup on my first try. Day off that isn’t really. Blazing sky, pale blue with moisture. Taught Cantos for the first time ever. Have no idea what got through.

April 5, 2016

Unaccustomed jollity and relaxed atmosphere at rehearsal. Not so relaxed that I shouldn’t get a start on learning my lines.
   
Cold in the study, in the whole house.  The furnace went out the night before last, and though the weather is not the worst it could be for such an occasion, I’m averse to cold and it weighs on me. Tom the Furnace man says he’ll have it fixed by this afternoon. Tremendous noise as I sat in the living room watching TV, some sprocket or toothed wheel shedding all its teeth at once.
   
Tuesday is officially free, though filled up now with meetings and repairs and appointments so that it might as well be another work day. Actually, a perfect storm of distractions. Tom the furnace man grinds away at something in the basement. He calls and I stagger down the steps and he says “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Officials from various parts of Administration took over our department meeting to tell us the various ways in which we were expected to do their jobs for them. The faculty is thought of as a support system for the administration. Cart not merely before the horse, but wholly detached from it.
   
Email from the never-arriving pond people thanking me for my patience. Patience is a vice. It fosters dereliction.
   
Pulling up infinitudes of wild chives. Arranging the crates and boxes for tonight’s hard freeze. 
   
Yet my bloodroots make a drift of white in the shadow of the house.  For that, praise.

April 3, 2016

Skipped church, went to Edna’s to do some writing. The place was unusually crowded, and I realized that the power outage that had turned my power off for five seconds had blackened everything up Beaver Dam since midnight, and hungry and cold people were flocking to the cafes for comfort. Tom and CoCo were there. At the table beside me was Tory, a young man whose PTSD was set off by feeling trapped in a dark basement, and then feeling trapped at the end of Beaverdam because a huge tree had fallen across the road. You had to pick an alternate route through the forbidding hills and gated condos. Wrote at my play about Iraq. Revised Uranium 235. The sky is ablaze, but it’s not warm enough for me to do the outdoor work I would otherwise have done. Took the tubs off the delicate ones I meant to save from freezing during the night. Much napping with Maud wedged between my belly and the open air.

April 2, 2016

Baking of cookies for Jack’s party. Had all sorts of ideas, but in the end took the one that was simple, so I could get the quicker to the studio, where I did new things, pleasing things, until the coughing-almost-till-you-faint drove me down the cold stairs. The party was fine, except that I realize I shall now be primarily in the company of old men. Tarzan of the Apes on TV, me remembering the first time I saw it at the Linda three generations ago.

April 1, 2016

Lying on my sofa in the living room, I stare through a 15-paned glass door, behind which is a stand of interweaving dogwood and redbud and the dark irregular lines of the branches that uphold them. One afternoon it was rainy and the background was steel gray, and I thought there could be nothing more beautiful than that, until another day, when the background was blazing azure, and I was sure nothing could be more beautiful than that.
   
So distraught and behind today that I almost cancelled classes, but didn’t, and had among the best days in class, ever. Finished the work I needed to do in a tenth the time I’d given myself. My drama class’s mini dramas are fun and far more advanced than I expected. I knew more about everything than I expected to. The moon I loved all through March hides her head away.

March 31, 2016

Rain, almost too gentle to wet all the ground at once. Purple fritillaria blooming in back. Grumpy morning failing to write at Edna’s. Lunch with SS, who has decided (with my joyous approval) to do Uranium 235 at the Magnetic. I’ll become known as “the history playwright” but at least I’ll become known as something. His loyalty to his playwrights is beautiful. I don’t see the same equality among us as he does, but----.  Day off blasted to pieces by errands and vague and unspecific malaise, which I may have eliminated by one of the world’s memorable and most unexpected bowel events. My body is changing in ways I’m trying to get used to, and which in some ways seem to be an improvement. One doesn’t expect that at this stage of the game.