February 25, 2017

Much time spent at the studio, and profitably. Went the second time in the afternoon to drink in the lovely unfamiliar light.

The big hotels want to close down Pritchard Park. City Council– which is longing to obey, which has its tongue out panting to obey– won’t even admit the actual reason. The radio news said it was to save a maple tree, in a town that massacres great stands of trees with impunity. It’s all become so Trumpian– whatever the rich want, that becomes public policy.

Cast in HART’s The Great Gatsby.  Whoever the old guy is, that’s me.

February 23, 2017

Woke to Handel’s Dixit Dominus in honor of his birthday. Woke from dreams of being a writer struggling for the perfect opening sentence. Did errands, wrote a scene of my play at the High Five, where the beautiful barista’s skin was radiant. Found myself at Bent Creek, with a most unusual day unfolding around me. It was where I walked in the 80's, when it was not the Arboretum at all, but a wild place crossed by a few dirt roads and riddled on the weekends with rednecks camping and carousing. You went there to have sex with other men. You went there sometimes to hike or look at nature, but it was mostly to have sex, sometimes actually to make love, and the distinction between having sex and making love is never more poignant than in such a place. I remembered whom I met and where I met them. I remembered the signs and signals that nobody saw except those who were looking. I summoned back the dread and the thrill. I padded down a side path that leads along the creek, almost invisible now, and remembered in special one hour of making love in the most sensual and memorable way, and the man I met there, the shape and feel and smell of his person, the halo on him with the sun behind him in the trees. He might have been the one, had he followed me out of the grove that afternoon. I think he is dead and his spirit met me there. Otherwise, the sensation could not have been so keen. I stood for a while in one place, and then in another, listening to the water. I thought the water wanted me to hear something, some particular message. I listened very hard. Perhaps it just wanted me to hear itself. It was a sad time, a terminus for a lovely and futile complexity. I really don’t know what any of it was for, it having come to nothing.

February 22, 2017

Still spent from my”most bleak and terrible night.” On walks through one’s tasks. One lies down and hopes that a cat, a least, will lie against you.

Titus died five years ago today. I wrote: Titus the Cat left me today. He was the best of cats, sweet and calm and affectionate, a big loving boy. When I balance his virtues and his deficits–most of those have to do with being a slob–he comes out better than most people. Certainly better than me. I am bereft of the buddy cat, and I can’t think of it very often or very long. The vet was inept, and Tutus was frightened in his last moments. My prayer for the day is to get that out of my mind-- though anger did replace grief a little in the office, and I didn’t feel quite such a fool. Little spirit, at the end of all things, please find me.

Was I more miserable on that day? Possibly, but at least it could be spoken of.

February 21, 2017

Most bleak and terrible night.

February 20, 2017

Worked all Sunday on the Assassins piece– the structure is fully visualized, and now there remains but to walk through the corridors realizing and detailing. Somewhat against expectation I got into the car and drove to Waynesville to audition for the HART 2017 season. There are not many roles right for me (these diminish as I age) and the times are wrong, but I decided to do it as much for an evening’s adventure as anything else. Just to get myself off the chair and out. Glad to have done so. Saw many people I missed, some I missed so much I’d tried to conceal the depth of feeling from myself. I wondered as I looked about the crowded room whether others’ feelings are as my own. Does it feel the same for person X to miss somebody as it does for me? Are their emotions somehow keener than mine? Duller? Different in some way I don’t know how to express? When my Irishman hugged me, I’m sure we were feeling something very different– but what? Sometimes I think I would really like to know.

February 19, 2017

Day begins with some Mantuan’s “Vespers of Saint Barbara,” noble and distant. Night ended with a dinner party at the Ms’, convivial, a brief, lively panel out of Bruegel. Coughing with extraordinary–and rather satisfying–intensity. “Productive,” as they say. Bought the last piece of furniture I anticipate needing for my house, a roundy Dutch dresser for my bedroom, to put precious things in. I insisted on hauling it myself, to see if I still could. I could. The Starbucks flat white at my elbow seems to be refilling itself as I drink. Gray through the study window.  Looked through the NYC playwrights blog, and there is nowhere to send any of my plays. Dead-stopped. Against the wall.  Perhaps that’s well, since staying awake is almost all I can handle.

February 18, 2017

Met A in the High Five. He told me about his research for his play about the assassination of McKinley, and I couldn’t find a way to tell him (nor was I certain that I SHOULD tell him) that I’m writing on the same subject, inspired by him. I trust our approaches to be essentially and in every detail dissimilar. He is a charming young man, and I want to ask,”How’s your love life,” but he also seems so committed to his art at the moment that that is an irrelevancy. I envy him his fresh start and his uncluttered clarity of ambition. Fried a pork chop and through the fat out to the crows,who rejoiced.