November 6, 2019

What do cats hear when they hear music? Playing Marais, Maud beating her tail against my foot in something resembling the metronome. Holy Stephen comes to my office again to talk. I want to say to him, “don’t you think I can see you texting on your phone during class?” but I don’t, seeing something else is on is mind, him not quite saying what. Janis gives me a giant bag of Mexican sunflower pods.

November 5, 2019

Lunch with Kermit and DJ. Kermit says a second reading of Wyona was even better than the first, because now he’s convinced he knows the characters from his own life. I think of the ways I might have ruined the book had I put it through the last intended revision before it won the prize. Or maybe it would have been better. Who knows now? Got the courage up to ask the second time about my prize money. Monica said she’d look into it.

November 4, 2019

On Facebook from my old school chum Sharon: I recently found some quiet time to sit down and read, The Falls of the Wyona by David Brendan Hopes. It is a wonderful novel, and I enjoyed every single page. One of my favorite passages (and there are many), "The river flows sad sometimes because everything changes and he alone remains the same". It goes on, "Everybody remembers something, and somebody remembers everything, and that's what knits the fibers of the world together." Read this book, and remember how lucky we are to be able to share in David's beautiful creativity. Thank you, "Ancient Friend". Sharon was the hippy girl with the guitar and folk song back in our day.

Good pieces from my playwrights, especially from one who did not present before. He was saving it up.

November 3, 2019

Second stay at church, this time to sing the Faure Requiem. It’s like an old friend now, easy and welcome. My voice is familiar with it, and goes to the right note by long habit. The event was oddly serene, as though we were really singing someone asleep. The change to– or from, I forget which it is–has given me a further hour to wallow in.  Two nights of frost, and the roses fight on.

November 2, 2019

Rehearsal for the Requiem, an extended lunch, then mostly the waste of the rest of the day. Poking around in You Tube got me in a Hollywood mind. I remembered that my mother’s favorite actors were Tyrone Powers and Alice Faye. My father seldom expressed any such preferences, but he did mention several times The Time Machine and Rod Taylor’s performance in it. I contemplate that, trying to derive some understanding. The cold annihilated the last of the zinnias, but the roses made it through. 

November 1, 2019

Had planned to go to the theater, but the certainty of a bad show–not badly done, but badly written, bad in the kernel–allowed me to stay home with a clear conscience. If I were a god, I would insure that good things got better attendance and better publicity than bad things. I’m reading more since I decided to retire, reading for pleasure for the first time in thirty years. Renewed my library card. Bought a book in Los Angeles about the Red Scare and HUAC in Hollywood, noticing that HUAC tactics are indistinguishable from the tactics of Administration relative to Title IX. Lessons are not learned, or learned again and again: don’t know which is worse.

October 31, 2019

Halloween.

Enraged because the housecleaning was taking so long, I let myself in and found Elvis, a sweet Hispanic kid on his first day on the job. He says he loves my house. He says, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” Didn’t even ask why he thought so. Funny how the rage went away when I saw him. He finds white mold under the dining room table. He says he did the houses of Oprah and the Koch brothers in West Palm Beach. He can’t find my house much of a challenge. He listens only to Christian radio. Very curious about me. . . .