September 7, 2019

Bright days continue. A flight of helicopters came over as I was digging room for new iris. The sound of invasion.

My first try at begonias has been a resounding success. Dug a new bed for iris, and then put them somewhere else. The new bed was not murmuring “iris.” 

Dreams last night of theater productions, probably related to the big reading downtown tonight. They were doing one of my plays, and one scene had everybody’s head poking through blue plastic. I asked what the hell that was about, and was shown in the script where I had specified that scene happened in the water.

David Lee Garrison writes that he knew me at Johns Hopkins. I was miserable at Hopkins, and assumed I was as invisible as I felt. Delicious to know that somebody remembered. I do not, in fact, remember him, though I’m going to drive out to my office and delve through the Baltimore journals till I find him.

September 6, 2019

Cashed out most of my stock holdings, for the first time convinced by the talk of Recession. I thank Google for $190,000.

Michael Gill writes from Ohio that his son is now the age he was when we met.

Good presentation, I thought, on Deism and Dryden and that golden/tawdry age.

September 5, 2019

The mystery tree volunteering all over my yard is clerodendron. It’s pretty, and butterflies love it.

Went to the Y and worked out, weights and cardio. Survived it. High 5 afterward, where I finished a chapter of Sam-sam, which now I must type up. Talked with JC about the reading Saturday night. All things seem to align.

Drove to Jesse Israel’s and bought a stone St. Francis for the garden.

September 4, 2019

Tom and I had breakfast beside the sinkhole, without mentioning the–year? Two years? –we had not spoken. He was betrayed by the man for whom he was writing the Christian script, as one knew he must be.

Good class on The Crock of Gold.

Summer returns with sweaty vengeance. Let it.

Finished a revision of Diving into the Moon, woke the next morning and revised the ending again.

Snotty students sending snotty emails. 

Sleeping gigantically.

September 2, 2019

Lovely birthday dinner at Maria and Russell’s, their baby asleep in another room. I realize that I’m not used to much ordinary conversation, have to keep on my toes to participate properly.

Harvested persimmons from my persimmon tree. They’re delicious and strange.

Sat beside the French Broad, listening to family picnics and watching the various bugs make their way across my table.

Tom emails to meet for breakfast tomorrow. That Ice Age may be ended.

September 1, 2019

My 69th year under heaven. Even to say the number is shocking. Sophie said, “You certainly don’t look like you’re nearing 70.” Very relative, but better than saying I look exactly like that. Excellent sermon at church, then a season-opening picnic with waterslide. Something at the picnic made me sick, and I didn’t do the waterslide, but I blessed from my heart the happy children who did. One must note that a really good poem appeared in the New Yorker, slipped through, apparently, the sieve that seeks for the worst. It was about a young girl looking at bodies at a swimming pool. Maria is making dinner for me tonight. The day has lain blue and lovely on all things. Almost enough birthday greetings on the Internet to satisfy me. None from school. That says it all.

August 31, 2019

Adequate painting in the morning. I was sad, and the painting made me sad. Looked in the photo albums from the old Urthona Galleries, and saw a hundred of my paintings, exuberant, joyful, exploratory. Where have they gone? As far as I know, all lost. Some were sold, but how can I know if even they are still extant? I destroyed most of them in despair that no one seemed to get them, no one seemed to like them. I did. I miss them. I wonder why I let myself be led away from them.

Also the day my fury at the Administration turned from fury into sadness. I realize that I am defeated. Being fully right and yet fully defeated is a lesson I am given over and over because I never quite learn it. I think that if I had just persevered a little longer, been a little more unanswerable in my reasoning. None of that matters, sometimes. I must learn that none of that matters, sometimes. Sadness is better than fury, for it allows thought of other things. I painted, weeded, then took out Diving into the Moon and started a revision.