February 28, 2018

Dark of the morning, the dishwasher roaring comfortingly downstairs. Woke from an iteration of a recurring dream. The dream is this: In the middle of a park is a large restaurant notable for interesting, excellent food, and for the rumor that there is a pool of dark water under it, wondrously deep and cold, and that the pool is inhabited by fabulous creatures who either prepare the food or have some influence over it. The creatures have the bodies of beautiful men and women, but are often seen with knives or other implements where their hands would be.  I’ve had this dream several times. This time I managed to get a job at the restaurant. After working there for a time, I met one of the creatures and satisfied myself that he was human, but he did flash around in the pool for hours without a breath, so he was a water creature too, He was standing beside a sink peeling potatoes, I think, but majestically. I desired to talk with him, but I wasn’t sure my status at the restaurant allowed me to. As I dithered, I woke.

A long bout of some sickness is over. I am not certain what sickness it was. The symptoms that have disappeared are morbidly dry, itchy skin, severe muscle cramps, thirst and dehydration, and lightheadedness at any degree of exercise. Also, the insatiable craving for radishes. Was this all anemia? Did just mainlining iron cure it all? I will exhibit gratitude if not understanding.

February 26, 2018

Attended C’s first organizational meeting at Noble Cider in Leicester last night. It was, as I expected, an eye-opener. If I ever considered running for office, the colossal commitment to detail should discourage me at step one. I am not a detail person. I sort of thought I might be, but, no. Not sure where I can fit in, but I adore C, and if I were casting a movie about an upright Liberal candidate, I would cast him.

The fevers at the beginning of the year seem to have affected a number of things: I failed to pay several bills, even lost them somehow, including the mortgage. 

February 25, 2018

Theater at the Magnetic last night. The play’s one selling point was the broadest imaginable Mountain accents, and one inexhaustible salesman of an actress, who prepped, expanded, delivered, and then approved of every line. It was a little bit horrible and, of course, very popular. Chairs had to be brought to accommodate the overflow crowd. One lesson: if your accent is perceived as the accent of “home” and triviality with be taken as wit. One good joke: When Unitarians pray, the prayer is addressed: “To whom it may concern.”

February 24, 2018

Rose early, ate cinnamon roles and hauled paintings out of my studio, into the truck, and eventually down the road to the Flood. I feared for rain out of the clouds the whole time, but rain never came. Carlos gratified me by saying he would hang the show himself. He seemed happy for the work, grateful, even, and I’m glad I walked this road, even with all the dragging of feet.  Thirteen paintings on various degrees of wood.

When I went out into the yard I saw that the door of the truck was open. If someone had broken in, they took nothing that I missed. Had I left the door open all night? If so, what adventures had the truck had all night with an open door? 

In a dream I am walking at night along a street I recognize as Alaho, back home. I come to our old house, but I don’t go in. I sit on the high place of the lawn and listen. I hear voices. I hear my mother’s voice and realize, as someone in the dream had promised out of the darkness, that she had come back from the dead. Other voices, too: perhaps a party to welcome her. I am about ready to go in and join the party when, out of the forest that used to stand beyond our house, my little black and white dog Bimbo appears. He runs toward me. He jumps into my arms and wriggles with ecstasy. And I feel such peace and joy as I have never felt in my waking life. I wake sobbing so hard I have frightened the cats, sobbing so hard it takes me a while to settle down. I am lost. I have always been lost. I wait for some power out of dreams to find me.

February 23, 2018

Cantaria voted to change its name to The Asheville Gay Men’s Chorus. Goodbye to all that.

Edna’s Café is closed.

The Lenten roses are abloom, just as they ought to be. The calls of towhees in the garden punctuate the shimmer of the wind chime. If the glance is focused enough, this hour is paradise.

Carlos decided that we must hang my show tomorrow. It’s nowhere near ready. Still, the mark of my recovery is that I marched up and down those terrible stars bearing paintings and did not get breathless.

February 21, 2018

Billy Graham, a fixture since the beginning of my memory, is dead.

The green spears that herald daffodils break through the earth.

Removing the white pine will cost nearly $4000. I called Nick to rebuild the fence, and have yet to learn what that will cost. I realize I hire workers based on their beauty. I suppose there are worse things.

Daithi offers me a part in HART’s The Field, which I will take if Yale doesn’t invite me to the summer playwrights’ conference. 

Emotional exhaustion after one of those weeks where everything seems to be awry, and not in any predictable way, but a blow from the universe, a descending comet.

February 19, 2018

Returned, I hope steadily, to my old routine of rising early and going to the gym. Brent was there, waiting for his class to begin. I stood in the starless darkness listening to the crying of hylas in the wetlands.