October 6, 2018

Two excellent studio days in a row, preparing for the show in November. Skip emails to ask what pieces I’ll be exhibiting, and I want to fire back, “I don’t know. I haven’t made them yet.” People who manage to make it to the second floor barely stick their heads into my studio, or come in and do a tight little turn in the entranceway. My studio may have more of the feel of an exhibit than a studio. I try to be friendly. . . I have been unable to monetize any of my endeavors.

October 5, 2018


Andrew spoke to our playwrights, and was unexpectedly brilliant. John comes before his show opens. One of my students said to me, “If I go by what you say I’d think you hated the theater.” I stopped dead in my tracks, thinking about that. Am still thinking about it. I THINK that I love the theater and am pretty much pleased by everything, but that’s not the witness I give, apparently. Am I envious? If so, is my envy so sharp that it leaks through without my knowing?

October 4, 2018

Bear on the roof and then the lawn of All Souls, very black and very bewildered. The Dean stood in the doorway hollering, “Everyone into the Parish Hall!” Much singing of Brahms, which I understood at the time and later to be a great blessing. Gossip over red wine afterward.

October 3, 2018

One golden persimmon hangs from my persimmon tree.

Spectacular class on Shelley. 

Heroic gardening– Mount Hood daffodils planted, one raised bed fully prepared.

Thoughts on the massage table: the boy who took me to a sleazy hotel in Syracuse. I lied when I told him my name. He was very sweet and beautiful. On the way home I plucked a louse from my hair.

I was incredibly young. It was my bedroom on Goodview Avenue. Mt little lamp was on and I kneeling at my bedside. Mom and dad stood in the doorway, looking at me. They were teaching me how to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. . . God bless mommy and daddy and grandma and. . .” But the thought in my mind, clear and hard at that very hour was, “How odd these people are, and what an odd thing they’re asking me to do. But, if I’m here, I have to get along, so I will do what they ask, and smile and be child-like, for that is how it is done.”  How early is the recollection? Impossible to tell. But all my earliest recollections share the conviction that I had been cast among strangers, and had to conceal and adapt cunningly in order to survive.

October 2, 2018

Circe on the keyboard makes for interesting typing. Raft of rejections all in one day. Is there enough contempt to be spread so thin? We discussed the horrendous comprehensive exams, decided that their horrendousness was not our fault. Students don’t believe they have to know anything. Someone has led them to think a general aura of understanding is enough. Crushed a flea on white paper, where it looks exactly like a flea.

October 1, 2018

After class, gardening, heroic gardening. Bought a truckload of dirt from Reems Creek, dug out of its summer of weeds a chunk of the east garden and planted a stand of Japanese iris. Chopped out of the ground great lengths of invasive bamboo– what is it?– it looks like stems boring underground.  Shoulders ache with digging and carrying.

Women will be disappointed when the patriarchy doesn’t fall. For us there is no other natural option. It may be modified but not replaced. I’m not celebrating, merely observing. This is a moment in time when this cannot be said in any public forum.

September 30, 2018

Rose and took a brisk walk around the block, being only slightly winded on the slope in front of the donut shop–which I passed by. I did this to test my suspicion that a certain measure of my vitality is returning. I noticed first while gardening, that I could heave the great bags of mulch around without having to sit on the porch to catch my breath. Half moon above me. Energetic crying of birds, as if it were spring. Homeless sleep in the gazebo near the Fresh Market. Many of them. I was too embarrassed to count.

A volunteer mimosa grows too close to my serviceberry. Which do I save?

Never want to hear the name Brett Kavanaugh again.  He’s not a man at all, but a symptom of the careless corruption of the Republican party.

Oh, on the day after Pride, I’m thinking how I will praise the gods if I never have to sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” again.