May 6, 2020

Rose at a decent time, had coffee, went to bed again and am up again now at 5 PM.

Have eaten nothing since Sunday, and yet continue with deceptive and extravagant diarrhea. There are random eruptions of nausea. Drinking water upsets my stomach. The coffee was an unexpected comfort.  Did manage to conquer–or live through–the hallucinatory voices which are, all in all, the worst part of this. Even as I write I enter the cold sweat stage, which I recognize from times before as a sign of progress. TV shows caused me to say “The fever’s broken,” though whether that’s what’s happening I don’t know. I have been enslaved to this since the 9th grade.

Is pain the only thing that doesn’t lessen with long habituation?

I’m glad I’m too exhausted to take sorrow or indignation very far.

When I got to my email, three huge rejections. Of course. But, my student Hannah writes this: On a completely different note, because this is my last semester in the Literature department at UNCA, I wanted to offer a few things to you.

First and foremost, I want to thank you for providing me with an exceptional and completely hilarious educational experience. I know I didn't often speak up in class but I believe I was able to learn more through my silence than I would have, if I had talked over you or another student. In tandem with the typical note-taking experience, this quietness afforded me the ability to take down, as I saw fit, certain quotes said by you during class time. Since I first began taking them down, it has been in my sincerest wishes to collect as many quotes as possible and print them out for you to perhaps remember fondly or even laugh at; however, due to the current pandemic situation, that has become quite impossible. Instead, I now wish to impart a few of my personal favorites to you in this email. Though I am only providing a handful of quotes, please know that I’d be more than happy to provide more, or burn them at your discretion. One last thing before I get into it; the context for a majority of these quotes has been lost, but I hope that as you read over them, that they provide a nostalgic feeling for you. Without further ado, here are the quotes!

“People often stand back from greatness because they’re scared of it.” - September 27th, 2017

“Ever since I started watching Project Runway, my life has changed; I want to make a pretty dress damn it!” - October 18th, 2017

“I have absinthe at my house, you know. One day I’ll throw a party and we can all drink it and go crazy, or whatever it makes you do.” - October 20th, 2017

“Do women go and weep in the woods anymore? I don’t know, I don’t get invited anymore. I suppose you all would know.” - November 6th, 2017

“There’s a good bet that if Lucifer fell to Earth, he’d come to North Carolina. “ - November 15th, 2017

“You’ve got to be a little pinned down. Am I afraid of that? Well no, I’ve lived too long to give a damn.” - December 4th, 2017

“Be able to recognize the possibility of taking a good idea too far. Reason has its limits.” - January 14th, 2019

“When this poem hit me, I threw myself out of the window, screaming, and onto the quad. Those words ought to have sent you barreling right through that wall into the next room. Those are the only appropriate responses.” - March 1st, 2019

“Susan’s all grown up! Man, what a bitch!” - February 3rd, 2020 (of Narnia)

May 5, 2020

Today no better than yesterday. Misery is, in addition to being miserable, boring.

Shuffled out to pay Tony for mowing the lawn. “Now, is it David or Daniel? “ he said.  (He does sometimes call me Daniel)
“David.”
“Hello David, how are you?”
“I’m very ill”
“Your peach trees are doing so well. They’re covered with fruit. Mine have nothing. I think it’s colder in Weaverville.”

The left leg is pink as sunburn, painful, especially when lying down or getting up.

May 4, 2020

The bitter anniversary. Fifty years.

After one of the fullest and most accomplished days of the Lock Down, I sat on the sofa realizing I was getting very, very ill. Shuddering chills, projectile vomiting, and explosive diarrhea arrived at exactly the same moment, which made for interesting accommodations in the bathroom. In a few minutes I was so drained merely standing up and going to bed seemed beyond my capacities. I knew it wasn’t Covid, though it sure looked like it, but my old nemesis phlebitis. For one thing, phlebitis doesn’t affect the lungs. For another, it’s bacterial and there are drugs for it, whereby before 9 PM the worst of it was over, though I still had the turbulent, hallucinatory, fever-ridden night ahead of me. It is now early afternoon and I think I will live, though I’m exhausted, maybe still feverish. Not sick enough to sleep, not well enough to move around much. Making mistakes typing in almost every word.

May 3, 2020

Another day of pleasing accomplishment. Wrote well in the morning. Planted what described itself as “red velvet” sunflowers, the last packet of seed in the bag. For the first time since moving here I planted everything I bought.

Over the course of my academic career I forgot how to read for pleasure. Trying to ease back into reading a little now, a little later, lingering in the fictive world rather than trying to ransack it, wring it dry of meaning. Reading Anne Enright’s Actress . Picked it up in Eason’s on Nassau Street in Dublin. It’s the first thing I’ve read for no particular purpose in thirty years.

The quarantine seems to be fraying at the edges. Face masks are by no means as universal as they once were, and the streets of cities fill with people protesting the lock-down for various bad and good reasons. I don’t think Covid-19 will go away just because we’re sick of it.

May 2, 2020

Rose dissatisfied with my work on Sam-Sam last night. Sat down and wrote one of the best passages I ever wrote. Just sleep on it, children.

Evening: Surf Nazis Must Die rapidly becoming a favorite. Technically it’s very professional, the cinematography beautiful. The acting and the script are horrible almost beyond belief, but horrible in a way bordering on splendor– formal, excessive, every gesture and every line so much worse than you expect that every gesture and line arrives with a shivering thrill. It’s like No, stylized and formal. You want to laugh at No first time through, too, until you begin to develop the taste.

One of the best days of the quarantine. The day itself was blue crystal. The wings of the thrushes in sunlight blazed like coals. Excellent, breakthrough writing in the morning. At noon I began gardening, weeding mightily, planting grey stripe sunflowers and cornflower.

May 1, 2020

Brilliant sun when I arose has become troubled and blustery. My yard is beautiful, and almost no one sees it. What is revealed to be date nut bread was brought by “your neighbor Peggy,” whoever that is. Sent a letter to Dawn Deppen, after all these years discovering her married name and her whereabouts. I have no idea what her memories of me are. Mine of her are abundant and contradictory. I think we were rivals for the role of congregational intellectual, though many thought our rivalry was a kind of affection and we were destined to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Her mother was the first adult ever to take me seriously as a person. I think she might have hated me a little, but that was part of the package.

If I get Covid 19 I will die. I can hardly breathe anyway. It gives all of this an added level of immediacy.

Joined a new streaming service, watching Surf Nazis Must Die.

April 30, 2020

Cool in the string of days alternating cool and warm. The boys from Yard Fathers came, five strapping long-haired lads in a truck so full of vaping vapor you wondered how they saw through the windshield. What swagger! I bet they enjoy their time together. They fixed the fence, as I assumed they would, in under ten minutes. Drove to school. The campus is so beautiful in spring, it’s a shame there’s no one there to look at it. Much construction going on. You wonder where the money comes from, since the institution seems to have no money for anything academic. I loaded a box with stuff from my office to take out to Riverside, but a giant truck blocked our whole entrance, so I parked down by the water and watched the muddy, swollen French Broad flow for a while. Drove to take up time while the clean ladies cleaned. Went to the Brevard Road Ingles, where nobody was wearing masks. Nearly everyone at the Merrimon Ingles does. Different cultures within a single city. The quarantine seems to be fraying at the edges. If that comes out all right, all right, but the best minds warn that it will not. The cleaning ladies left me what I assume to be banana bread. AGMC tries again for a rehearsal this evening.