September 8, 2017

All of my friends are younger than I. This is a blessing.

God says, “Have faith.” I answer, “My faith is not strong enough to overcome my experience.”

Blazing brilliant day. Furnace off. Windows back open. We look southwards and expect the hurricane. There is a hurricane behind the hurricane we expect.

Getting Peniel ready, Unnecessarily tedious, but also kind of interesting, and an occasion for revision. Five rejections in a day. This would be just or tolerable only if there were five acceptances on another day.

September 7, 2017

Addressing myself to formatting Peniel. One bout of confusion and fit of temper followed by another– exactly why I got out of the publishing business. Must frustrate R floating over the ruins of Houston and having real problems. Still, my day wasted for the lack of a three minute tutorial and how to do the task at hand.

Man in the line at the bank looks at me and says, “You have small feet.”

Three out of four projections for Hurricane Irma aim it at Asheville.

Closed the windows yesterday. Turned on the furnace, briefly, today.

Run of good classes, the students present, charming, and engaged.

“The Soul’s Capacity to Bear Sadness” appears in One. Brief editorial quarrel. Writers get mocked for believing their words are sacred. Editors too often get a pass for thinking their judgments are so.

September 5, 2017

Though I probably intended something else, repotted the houseplants, acquired two more. Luxuriating in the exceptionally long weekend. Watching video of another killer storm raging in from the sea, Irma allegedly the most powerful in recorded history. An area the size of Georgia whirling with tornado-force winds. With the Lord is terrible majesty.

September 4, 2017

I recall when I was at the studio Saturday, I was filled with such deep and perfect pleasure being there and working. The painting was going well, too. Will try to get back today and look. Received my new lease which I may have immediately lost.

Turned a dispiriting heap of red and yellow tomatoes into a soup delicious beyond my imagining. Nothing in it but bacon, tomatoes, onion, garlic, a tiny film of olive oil. Note to self: Open a guy restaurant, where you throw in whatever you have without measuring.

Read the Moses and the Burning Bush passage in church. Love that. God is such a tease. Shocked by a letter from RS in Houston–still submerged Houston-- saying my book is on track, and that it is I, actually, who am holding it back a little, having not received an earlier email with instructions in it. Need to do that. Need to clean the pond filter. Need to deliver imagined paragraphs of my Portage County story onto paper. Need to dig the fall gardens. Need to give thanks for days each of them better than its corresponding day last week. That’s how we measure in an imperfect world. Maud watches Trump on TV for a minute, lays her head against my arm in a gesture of sadness and exhaustion. Even the cats--

September 3, 2017

Note on my Facebook page this AM:

Esteemed Professor,
We don't actually know one and other personally, so I find it if not prudent, than cautiously familiar to tell you that you have remained a huge influence and inspiration for me, ever since I took your intro to English poetry class. 
Which was 2000ish.
I was close to A for many years, and if knowing her through the auspice of loving one of her daughters complicated my relationship to her, it never complicated my understanding of her gigantic talents.
She had only a few close peers, and you were one.
So, by the time I was in your class, I'd already had the chance to come to respect you socially. Which allowed me to put more of myself into the class than an average Liberal Arts major.
My relationship with academia is complicated and school was a place I had trouble fitting in, neither with my peers nor my role as a pupil.
You are a person who helped me stay dedicated to my own growth, and growing my talents.
I think fondly of how deeply that class impacts my life.
It feels simple and privileged to have fallen in love with poetry and the muse in such a bucolic setting.
I only hope to be a better and better acolyte of inspiration.
Happy Birthday, many laudations and toasts in your honor!
-OJB.

I remember the young man as being heartsick, sincere, and, at that point, almost ludicrously beautiful.

Ate at a barbecue place yesterday. Talked with me neighbor, a red giant speech pathologist who hates barbecue but comes there for a peerless chicken sandwich. My waitress is studying languages, and worried about her Japanese because she quarreled with her Japanese friend. As she passed me my bill she said, “I gave you a friends discount, to thank you for Readings in the Drama class all those years ago.” It is sometimes necessary to hear these things--

September 2, 2017

Talking on the phone when I realized a mantis seven inches long was attached to my study window screen, where she had probably come to avoid the heavy rain. Accepted this as a blessing.

Merry birthday do at the new AC Hotel downtown, at their roof bar which, evidently, had only opened on that night. Beautiful. Reminded me of Topkapi lifted into the air. The usual crew, plus Tom and Sam and Richmond and Heather. I went away happy, and that much happier suspecting that everyone had had a good time, and that I had supplied that time. One notes that reciting poetry in a silly faux-Chinese accent is always a hit. When we walked up the to desk the greeter said “I had you in Humanities.” I had to pause a minute to sense whether that was an accusation, praise, or the iteration simple fact.

Every time someone mentions Humanities, I put a needle in a mental image of the Boy. I pray I am alert to the moment and the circumstance of his humiliation. I sort of regret resigning my opportunity to be the cause of it, but sort of not.

But, anyway, happy birthday to me.

September 1, 2017

Dawn on my birthday. Great wind, a blast of light and a pop as a transformer explodes nearby. Circe looks at me at though it were my doing.

Drinks after Cantaria last night. New people in the chorus, and for that we rejoice, except the music for Pride is exactly that of which I was mortally tired at the end of last year. I will not be singing, so I can sail through for this while. A sub-group has formed to do the jazzy pop numbers, with choreography, it is alleged, but if I think that will save me from the music I’d rather not do, I’m probably wrong.

It is early. I don’t know what to do with my day, except to teach my classes: Candide in one, Milton in another.