April 8, 2018

Covered new plantings last night against temperatures rumored to drop to the 20's.

Attended a rehearsal of Antigonus in the UNCA theater rehearsal space. Q is an excellent director, perceptive and patient beyond his years. His actors were another story. He was like a lightning bolt darting into a bank of dark and unformed clouds, all of his actors meaty and sleepy and resistant and grumbling, as actors do, about something.  I remember why I turned from the theater in school, though part of my heart was there. The best of the actors is also quite beautiful. Things are never fair, never equal. He came late, and I gathered he had no reason to, other than to establish himself as “he who comes late.”They play interesting theater games, but the enthusiasm thus generated  doesn’t seem to bleed over into the work. When they were actually saying my lines, it was electrifying.

Mention of Shakespeare sends these actors into howls of derision, as if they had discovered some great fraud that fooled the rest of history. Are they taught that by the Drama department? It is almost an article of faith that contemporary practice is better than Shakespeare’s by reason of. . . well, I have not heard the reason, merely the brave declaration.

Found Minos the turtle dead beside the pond. Maybe the bears had dug him out of hibernation, but they hadn’t eaten him. I was sad, but I also learned that he had dwelt stealthily in my pond since I put him there, boding well for future reptile plantations.

April 7, 2018

The bears suddenly occupy part of my mind that’s usually reserved for family. I worry about how and where she finds food for herself and her baby. In last night’s bitter rain, I wondered if they had any sort of shelter.

My show at Mars Hill has been rescheduled for November. My show at the Flood closes today, but also I receive news that the gallery has moved or is moving immediately. . . somewhere else. Making frantic arrangements to pick up my work, which I can’t do in the rain . . . .

I am a granduncle, Beka’s daughter, whose name is Clara Joy

Met Scott again in the locker room, discovering that he fly fishes for a living, leading fishing expeditions for a local sports shop. We discussed the good fortune of doing pretty much what you wanted to do your whole life. 

April 6, 2018

Strange dreams, the kind that hold on until you’re more than half awake. Read as part of Queer Fest, me and four lesbians. They presented coming-out stories. I did not. I presented Uzziah and Tecumseh on the mountain. Coming-out stores are, now, pre-literature, something you get out of the way before you write the story.

Tony mowed the lawn and didn’t see the bears.

April 5, 2018

Was buying seeds and bulbs when I got a message from the cleaning lady that a mama bear and her cub were in my back yard. “Great,” I thought. She sent a photo of them beside the pond. I got home and was digging a bed for the rhubarb when I saw them, or heard them at first, emerging from behind the tool shed. The mother is very, very big, and the baby very, very tiny, and they look comical together, the baby clearly setting the agenda with a squeal or a dash to one side or the other. She seems to be an excellent mother. I resolved not to be driven out of my own yard, and continued setting the rhubarb while she watched me from the fence. She pulled out the pond pump filter looking for fish, I suppose, or maybe just out of curiosity. The baby practiced climbing on my magnolia tree. I sat on my front porch and watched a mama bear playing with her baby in my front yard. Posted all this on Facebook and received a flood of advice, ranging from call Animal Control right now to please do not call Animal Control ever. Good hiding places around here, but I wouldn’t think there’d be anything to eat, so maybe they’ll move on. As for destruction, they can’t be worse than a couple of teenagers. We’ll see how it all looks in the morning light, now about an hour off.

Terrible rehearsal last night, frantic and loud and strained and I literally voiceless before the end of it. In that respect, I’m not having a good time. But then, there are the bears. . . .

April 4, 2018

Google reveals that The Falls of the Wyona won Honorable Mention in the Children’s Division of the 2016 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest. Did I know about this? Did they READ the thing, that they considered it a children’s book?

Fairly good day at the studio, though the god of mess presided, and everything I touched turned to smear.

Made soup out of the dead-nettles in my peony bed.

April 3, 2018

Stepped out onto the porch and saw the shape of a rabbit making its way through the dark. At the same instant I became aware of the most melodious and loud disharmony of morning birds. It was paradise.

A little research reveals that I am now the senior faculty member at UNCA. It’s a little grand, a little horrifying.

Dull reading after a good class. Wiley praises Night, Sleep, calling it a love letter to the region.

April 2, 2018

Twittering of birds through the one open window. Holy Week was meaningful this year as it has not been in a long while. The demon vanished like smoke. Sitting in the dark on Holy Saturday I had a vision of myself as a vast pavilion through which the moon passed in all its phases, led by one golden and full. The Sunday services were barely endurable, because of exhaustion, but endured they were, and we are delivered to a new morning. Easter brunch with DJ at Avenue M.