February 11, 2019

Dawn class, then home to true and extended work as a writer. I think I will hold to my determination not to go to auditions tonight. Evening through the study window is gray, yellow, compressed, blustering. Even to trundled the garbage out to the street seems dreadful.

February 10, 2019

Giant musical undertaking at church today– joined with a choir from Tennessee-- Mozart’s K 220 with a raft of kids. Climbing out of my sea of phlegm, I was in extraordinarily good voice. I’d almost forgotten that I can sound good. I was happy for that hour or so. Interesting to sing under unfamiliar conductors.

Winter returns with some vengeance.

I think of myself as a placid, peaceable man, but then I begin to number the people– just at the University-- with whom I seem to have had a bitter quarrel at one time or another– the entire Drama Department, Ileana, Brian, Jill and the Title IX office. In each case I want to point out that someone tried to stop me from doing or tried to interfere with my work, and, after many exhibitions of forbearance, I struck back. Is it how it would seem to them? Ileana is long gone; the Drama Department is an irrelevancy. Brian is demoted. I want nothing from Jill but for her to leave me alone to do my work. Unfortunately, she has one of those positions where you can’t prove you’re working unless you’re wasting somebody else’s time. I should have awakened on the First Day and heard God say, “Tend my garden,” and I would have been happy. 

Not auditioning at HART tonight. Blaming the weather, but it may be I have said goodbye to all that. Would see Daithi and my heart would break.

February 9, 2019

I think Todd lost his mother and saw his first grandchild born on the same day.

Ruined Saturday by taking NyQuil Friday night. Bouts of irresistible sleepiness every few hours. But in the morning, before the first decline, I finished a titanic revision of The One with the Beautiful Necklaces. 

February 8, 2019

Windy, cool, back to winter again after yesterday’s brief spring. Went to the bank to buy shekels. Good classes, I think, but who has any knowledge of what actually happens on the other side of the desk?

February 7, 2019

Dream of auditions that involved recitations from Shakespeare and a gymnastics routine.

February 6, 2019

Strange session in the evening. Disappointment, a little depression, upheaval set me on edge, and I asked the Powers for peace. What came was the conviction that my mother was in the room, and out of me came the most agonized cry for forgiveness for all the ways I didn’t recognize her personhood, the ways I trampled her goals in order to get to mine, the foolish ways I fought for autonomy and independence, the ways in which I was a selfish boy. Do parents forgive that automatically? I couldn’t think of a single thing I ever did which was certain to have made her proud or happy. My only hope was that she could somehow hear me.

Bought my ticket to Jerusalem for spring break. Was happy afterward, so at the moment there are no second thought.

Someone was apparently murdered or committed suicide at the Mill, where my office is. Not enough details either to be afraid or to be comforted.

February 5, 2018

One of my students, the one whom Depression makes late for class, wants to “make a deal” for one of my paintings.