December 20, 2018

Baked cookies for the AGMC party. Ate a steak and nothing else, inspired by my roomy tuxedo pants to go further.

Gave my blackswan.org domain to a women named Calisha Owen, so she could use it for her community arts program in York, PA. Hadn’t touched it in years.

December 19, 2018

Gradual procession through all the grays in the sky outside my window.

Snowed-out Lessons and Carols finally happened Sunday morning. It was sweet, and better, I think, than had it been a special evening service.

The second iteration of the AGMC concert was better than the first, and more richly attended. I believe we offered a real addition to the festivity of the season. High celebration at Avenue M afterwards. We brought the restaurant impressive added business, but also slammed the poor servers who received the wave.  “Just warn us next time,” Terri said.

Ruth said, “You’re the basso continuo that holds the group together."

Jack and Leland and I took down Night Wings and hauled it all back to my studio. Conflicting emotions about that. I was glad to have the work back, having felt a strange anxiety at its being spread across the North. I was glad to have THAT over with and the freedom to get on to something else. Yet, not one thing sold. I can’t believe that’s usual, even for a backwater like the Weizenblatt. NOT ONE THING. Hard not to attribute a sort of cosmic unfairness. I am HE WHO IS NOT MONETIZED. BUT, have painted well (and quite differently) all the mornings of this week. Tuesday an electric outlet in my studio burst into flames. When I pulled out the lamp plug that was in the burning socket, it caused a considerable blue-white explosion. I may have screamed, for the girls came running from their studios. Extremely tall people from Durham wandered through. The spiders one finds lurking behind one’s paintings are the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen which were not outright tarantulas. I try to concentrate on their elegance rather than their size.

Sudden flash to the fifth grade. We had a substitute, and I remember her looking out over the class and saying, “I have seen just about as much nose-picking as I can stand for one day.”  It was hilarious then; it’s hilarious now.

December 16, 2018

First concert went extremely well last night, appreciative crowd, no vocal calamities, festive cocktails at Avenue M afterwards. I think Jon and my commission piece is a true victory. Joy in the entire evening. I have lost considerable weight since I last put on my tuxedo.

December 15, 2018

Jon D attended dress rehearsal last night. We did badly, I think out of anxiety at his presence, but the main criticism he had to make concerned tempo, which was not the singers’ fault. I left my water bottle on the altar. Hope someone thinks it is an offering.

Auditioned as an actor for Magnetic’s upcoming season. As my stamina returns, I want to gain back fragments of my life which I’d had to let go. I was the first audition, it turned out, those who signed up before not appearing. Thought I did well enough, but who knows what’s happening on the other side of the lights.

Circe limps out of her den for food and water. That progresses, anyway.

Sat in High 5 and wrote a poem.   Colossal Cinemascope dreams continue.

December 14, 2018

Circe screamed quite horribly twice in the night. That, or I dreamed it. But in the morning she had stopped moving even to piss, so I lifted her from a pool of her own urine and took her to the Vet. He found a skin infection which might be serious enough to change her behavior. While she was at the Vet’s, she began to limp horribly. Dr Eddie put the limp and the screaming together and wondered if she might have “thrown a clot.” But I brought her home. I had to lift her out of the litter box, where she had taken up residence, twice, and opened a little cave for her in the bathroom cupboard. She was sitting at the edge of the cupboard this morning, looking bewildered. The limp is still bad. Either she did “throw a clot” or she got injured somehow in the car. She head-butted like mad to get comfort from me in the doctor’s office.  A few hours ago she left her cupboard-lair for the first time, to eat and drink. I think that is a good sign.

Stopped by Petco, where a woman asked me to help her in with an aquarium with two sizable bearded dragons. “I’m re-gifting these,” she said, “they’re my son’s, but he hasn’t been taking care of them properly.” I was returning flea bombs, which, I discover from the label, would have exploded once they hit my several pilot lights.

Rehearsal at Grace Presbyterian for the GMC concert. We probably did well enough for having another rehearsal before the Big Night. Jon will be here tonight to hear our piece for the first time. Mike the Australian stood beside me; he sounds really good. The men on either side of me are well over six feet tall. It must look ridiculous. Avenue M for cocktails after rehearsal.

Drove to Waynesville to go to a Christmas store I remembered there. Turns out it has been closed for two years. Nevertheless I bought a few things here and there. When I walked into one store someone shouted “Hamlet’s Father!” It was Polonius, recovered from his wounds. 

I have a reading in Los Angeles in September for The Falls of the Wyona.

Massive, vivid, complicated, narrative dreams. Last night– well, I’ve lost most of it, but I was in love and living with a handsome blond man. We lived in a sprawling sci-fi mansion stretched around a fabulous garden. Our life was perfect, even after someone suggested he was probably a robot. He admitted he was a robot, and though I didn’t care, he did, and, I think, faded away. Comforters came to me and tried to get me to write an opera, which they said would take my mind off the loss. I knew, but they didn’t, that he had turned into a sort of ghost, and we would laugh together at my comforters once we were alone.

Trump a step closer to prison, where he would be already were he anybody else. One tries not to rejoice in the misfortune of others.

December 11, 2018

Intricate dream. I’d been doing some important job, and needed a rest, so I decided to go home, to Akron. My father was still alive, but not home, so I’d have the place to myself. When I got to Akron it was gigantic and complicated, like a European city, and I didn’t recognize any of the landmarks. I’d decided to walk home, at night, through the snowy streets, and only with reluctance shifted over to public transportation– a kind of train that was like a strip mall moving. But I realized I didn’t know what stop to take. I also realized that I had not brought my keys, and my father was not the kind to hide a key under the welcome mat. I considered the possibility of breaking a window to get in, but it was winter. I decided to get a hotel room. I looked out the window of the street-train and saw nothing resembling a hotel as far as eye could see. Then I woke, cold, convinced that the furnace was off. It wasn’t.

Before light I re-excavated the car, and bashed my way through the ice wall to get it on the road. Drove it to Starbucks, which was not open. Drove it back, and, needing two tries, bashed it through the wall at the other end of the drive. Walked to the bank, and it had not opened. There was not that much snow.

December 10, 2018

As I foretold, the Armageddon of snow did not, here, come to pass, though other people are bereft of power. My bamboos bent to the ground, and a great hemlock branch from the neighbors’ fell across my drive. I emerged this morning to dig the car out, and felt the incredible weight of the snow. Could hardly lift the trash can lid. Could hardly lift the hatchback. I am amazed that any tree or roof stands up under that. Dug the car out, but as the plows had left a wall of ice at the end of the drive, I didn’t bother to move it. One hears an afternoon thaw all around, and I’ll try again at the end of it.

Threw bread out to the crows in the height of the snowfall. Were they grateful? They ate it.

Listening to “Speaking in Tongues” on You Tube. One wishes that all available examples weren’t so clearly gibberish.

I have not made much of the time the blizzard has given me.