May 16, 2020

Russian liturgy on the CD. Bored today, though I did good work on what is now called The Nurseryman’s Wedding. I’m going to need to find something more to fill the hours. The garden works on its own for a while now, and forcing writing when one is not in the vein is counterproductive.

People in time to come will not credit the degree to which a traitor and sociopath has been allowed to run rampant from the White House. I lived to see the end of the American Century. That was not among the things I wished to see, or anticipated seeing. The complicity of millions is, of course, more distressing than the pathology of one. I cannot on my own find the reason for this. We have not been taught to think of anyone but ourselves, or even that to do so is laudable. I will stand on the capitol steps with a machine gun in my hands if my whims are not honored, to the expense of all else. I will destroy education if what I already believe is not repeated slavishly in my ear. I will strike out of fear before I have even taken thought. I will uphold ignorance because it is my ignorance and therefore sweet to me. I will allow the rich to devour me because they point to someone they want me to hate more, and like a slave I do. I think maybe if a prophet should arise, but who would listen to him? The fact that he is right and they are not would infuriate the people of whom I speak. I think I could be patient like others and wait for the election, but for the first time in American history, that may not avail. If you allow the Beast to do as he has done, you will allow him to be dictator as easy as slipping down the stairs. We have allowed that already, though we hardly dare to say so. Sometimes I think it is my place to find out what to do and how to do it. Mostly, I do not. My leg is too swollen. Vodka calls from the freezer. It is the hour of evening when the thrushes make their last foray.

May 15, 2020

Thought I would miss no days during the quarantine (seeing there was nothing else to do) I was wrong. Mornings I wake to fantastically rich dreams. Yesterday I woke with the phrase in my head “remember the spice.” I’d been eating the Gingerbread of the Gods in the dream, I think-- a luxurious medley of Hindu phantasmagoria brought on by reading of the Vedic gods before sleep.

The disease withdraws in recognizable stages. The leg, red and itchy-stingy is what chiefly remains. That, and exhaustion, and the inability to bring my thermostat quite up to par. I chill easily and end most evenings with Dale’s Afghan wrapped around me.

Yesterday I drove to the Carrier water parks along the river and walked not only farther than I head since the disease, but farther than I have since leaving Ireland. Full May lies upon the riverbanks, overrun with flowers and birds and a delicious disharmony of perfumes, honeysuckle and wild rose and whatnot hidden in the undergrowth. A pileated woodpecker sailed the near bank. Came home and chopped bamboo, and by those two thing I was annihilated, but happy.

AGMC Zoom rehearsal last night. People say choral singing will be one of the last things to return. The Chinese I ordered Wednesday remains unconsumed in the fridge.  Ready to take the next step with Sam-sam. I’ve let it revolve in my head like a growing crystal.

Sat on the front porch. Ants crawled in a long single line up one of the cement urns. As I watched, a mockingbird landed on the far side of the urn, where he couldn’t be seen, and began harvesting the ants. But he really couldn’t get them without becoming visible to me, so he let out a little chirp and flew to the utility pole, his body language reading “as soon as you go away I can get those ants.” So, I got up and went inside and let him have the ants. I suppose I would never be able to convince him he was perfectly safe gathering ants at my feet, I am so very big and loud.

May 12, 2020

Still too cold for spring, me dragging around with Dale’s comforter over my shoulders.

An odd sensation– thinking on my life as a painter fills me with unaccountable–if mild– disgust. It’s even disturbing having my old work in the house. I don’t know what’s going on there at all.

Phone calls to social security (inspired by some panic from the UNCA HR people) unexpectedly informative and uncomplicated. All is well with me as far as medicare.

*** writing the above lines made me look once more for Dale, of whom I lost track long ago. An online obituary (where had that been before?) told me he died in January 2006. The sad mourning statements should have included mine, but of course they did not. Dale and I met in Lucille’s the first night of my first trip to New Orleans, and we were lovers to the extent that I would allow us to be. One year the King cakes stopped, and when I called there was no answer. He had both AIDS and MS. For what good it does– and I must believe it does some good– Dale, I remember you.

May 11, 2020

I could tell when the fever receded from my subconscious. The hour before morning was again filled with the rich and random strangeness of whoever rules that realm, instead of the sickening, rhythmic, repetitive barrenness of the hallucinations. I wonder if it is a backstep that I have barely been able to get out of bed all day, exhausted, cold to my bones. It would help if spring were allowed to be spring.

May 10, 2020

So through the night Young Aengus walked the perimeters of the garden, steam rolling from his shoulders, and when I rose not one blade of tender seedling was lost.

Today may be a backstep. I was tireder than yesterday, napped longer, maybe felt ouchier, not by much, but enough to irritate the spirit in me that want to be moving perpetually forward. I walk around, but it’s like having a bag of tepid water attached to your leg that you’re afraid to touch to anything lest it burst. Constant little throb as though the bag were on fire. Maybe this is simply one of those days in rotation when I am especially sick of the quarantine. Two days ago I made this hamburger onion thing, but it is too substantial for me ever to get more than a few spoonfuls down. Water, oddly, upsets my stomach. Chopped bamboo. Sat on the porch and watched thrushes any jays snap up the proffered peanuts.

Not a petal perished, Polar Vortex.

May 9, 2020

Rose early. The garden I can see from the windows seems to have survived the much-threatened freeze.

Comments about my retirement food my Facebook page. Insofar as you divide your life into episodes and volumes, I think I am able now to look on “Teacher” as a Triumph. A+. “Student” was a solid A, but with too many blunders for those extra points.  This contrasts with “Son,” which I’d put at a wobbly “C.”  Lover? D-. I was one of those kids in the back row in math class, addressing themselves whole heartedly to every problem, but always coming up with the wrong answer. There may be something lucky about that in times to come: one fewer thing to hold one to a darkening shore.
Started and drove my pick-up. It’s not been turned over since early March, and it started right up, drove like a dream.

 Achy. The long convalescence begins

The god of my garden became visible to me today. He’s a brawny ginger lad about 6'6". His name is Aengus. Of course he is Aengus Og come from across the sea to the prayers of one of his devotees. He wears a white Irish peasant shirt and white pants drawn at the waist, and he walks barefoot through the grass, smiling. He carried a spade glinting gold in the light. I think I was allowed to see him because last night I was embarrassed when I caught myself asking the Lord of Hosts to shield my garden from the cold. Aengus is exactly right. What he chooses for the garden I don’t know, but in the pure, diamond light of the spring evening he is a tower of white and rose flame.

May 8, 2020

Gray, rainy morning, Eton College choir on the CD. Surveyed the garden and thanked it for surviving two threatened nights of freeze. It laughs at freeze. I staggered out yesterday afternoon with a spade in my hand, knowing the bamboo would have gotten ahead of me during my illness. I’d underestimated the extent of the invasion. I must have gouged out or chopped down forty sprouts, some already as high as my shoulders. Vegetable cancer. Went back in shaking with exhaustion, but, momentarily, triumphant. Every iris, every peony, most of the roses in triumphant bloom, the little sprouts of the annuals helicoptering from the soil.

The Illness passes through stages I mostly recognize. Actual pain and tenderness in the leg is greater than usual. Caught myself screaming when I had to change positions. But, the rest of my body is chipper, even a little frolicsome. Most often even bad things come to an end. Ate half a stack of Ritz yesterday. Soup one day and crackers the next. Have hamburger thawing in the fridge; let’s see if it actually gets fried. Part of my elevation may be lightheadedness from hunger– which is not registering as hunger, actually, but as a sort of gastric euphoria. 

For my retirement (I keep typing “graduation”) reception I put on a white shirt the dry cleaning tag told me had not been worn since 2016. I apologized to it for the neglect. Anxiety attended thoughts of that reception, but I prepared a few remarks in my head, put a cap over my unthinkable hair, and it turned out to be the most remarkable, touching, and fulfilling hour– colleagues, former students, with testimonies I truly did not anticipate. Glad the visuals on ZOOM are so bad, for I was weeping almost from the start. It’s immodest to do more than summarize, but I hope to hold the tenor of the remarks to my heart. I can stand before God and say, “”I was a great an honest teacher” and let the rest fall where it must. That grazes my heart even now like a wing of descending fire. Interestingly,  no one said what I thought they would. They kept mentioning my kindness, and that was exactly where I feared I had fallen short– long on intention but fumbling and stupid in performance. Perhaps not, or perhaps they had read my intention. Mildred remembered her first year when I invited her to New Year’s Eve. “I was alone far from home and he told me to come to his house for New Year’s. I walked through the door and he handed me a bowl of the best beef stew I’ve ever had. In my culture (Uganda) to invite someone into your home and give them food means lifelong friendship.” I hope she heard “Mine too” from my side. No one mentioned my writing, except to express amazement at the volume of it, because nobody had read any of it. An odd quirk of our department. . .Anyway, an unexpectedly exquisite finish to it all.  People went out of their way. Anything I expected was miles short of what was. Use the word “benediction.”

Administration was not represented of course. That culture is so corrupt and self-infected that even minimally professional behavior cannot be expected. Very Trumpian, now that I think of it. That was well, actually, for I worried what I would do or say if my treacherous biddy of a Dean, for example, put in an appearance. Freed from that. 

I feel no grief at leaving the profession. Will I later? There is sadness at having no new disciples gathered about me, but there is relief also. Since catastrophic attacks from students came so late in the game, they are on my mind. The first thing to say is that the identities of the attackers were always a shock, since I felt no such thing for them. The complaint was–every time– that I was saying things they didn’t want to hear. My first and final reaction to that was “why didn’t they say so when something could be done about it? If I'm wrong in my analysis, why not bring it up in class?” Clearly, the intent was more to damage me than to solve a problem, but I continue to be mystified by such hatred from people for whom I felt–at the time–no comparable emotion. Again, Administration is at fault, enabling liars and gleeful in any opportunity to humiliate the faculty. Miss Jill could have spent her time bringing disagreeing parties together to discuss rather than weaving her absurd little webs of power from behind her keyboard. Altogether hateful, altogether wrong, and the sign of end times for the institution to which I dedicated my professional life. I was praised in the reception for courage, freedom, openness, truth-telling in the classroom, and I suppose resentment of exactly those things should not come as a surprise. The one thing that should never darken the doors of the Academy– Dogma–reigns unquestionable. If I thought I could do anything about it, I was wrong.

ZOOM reception followed by ZOOM AGMC rehearsal. By the end of THAT I could hardly rise from the chair. Our director’s energy and mine are out of synch, and it is up to me to find some way to harmonize that.

I sort of doubt that AGMC will ever take the stage again. That opens the door to questions about the entire field of endeavor chosen for me. Will theaters open? Independent theaters? Will they be able to–or have the will to-- produce new plays? How many publishers will go down the tubes? The ones already committed to me? Here is a strange thing. The unlikeliness–or at least the uncertainty– of anything coming to anything allows a kind of purity. I can do what I do with an unprecedented relaxation. I don’t need anything to put on my faculty record. No one’s getting produced or published, so I’m not falling unjustly behind. I have never written more or better. Let’s just continue with that and see what happens.

Maud the cat lies on the damaged foot, an unexpected comfort.