May 6, 2021
Pale light. Sweetboi calling over the apartments roof. Short & Sweet Sydney has chosen to produce Alfie and Greta. Might go to Australia if I could. Discovered during errands that the truck too had been rifled, of course. Wonder if they found something I’m not accounting for.
May 5, 2021
Woke to discover a crapfest of a day had been topped off, at night, by the Prius being robbed, or at least rifled. Don’t think there was anything to steal. What there was– credit cards and binoculars– they left. They pulled open secret compartments I didn’t know I had. My writing journal lay open on the seat. Wonder if they took a look. Sense of violation, but no real loss. But when L and I went to Avenue M for dinner, I locked my house for the first time in 14 months. Had to look for the keys.
L’s visit turned out to be pleasurable, sweet, all the dark of it in my preconceptions. Certainly caught up on a lot of Ellet gossip. Hardly at all did we touch on the topics I thought would bring conflict. We’ve known each other since the 6th grade.
May 4, 2021
The terrible anniversary.
Rain.
AH came over in the afternoon, and we sat on the porch with wine, and rain falling a few inches away, one of the first purely social activities of recent months. He mainly talked of his mother, sick and old and mean in assisted living in Pennsylvania. The morning was spent struggling with my computer, which declared itself “offline” and could nohow be brought back on line. It took a call to the HP help service and a patient Pakistani two hours to find out that some automatic upload from Windows had messed everything up. My fury was extraordinary.
Much bad news from the internet, in the form of “no”s from publishers.
Message from L that she wants to come here next, after Akron, in her vast cycle of visitation of old high school friends. Our relationship is almost wholly a fabrication on her side, and our old age, in which she became a fire-breathing and lie-consuming Trumpist, did not improve anything. She sent out a message observing that I was the only one of her liberal high school friends who hadn’t called her names because of her politics, and the vehemence of them. I did not respond “that was an oversight.” I have no idea what we will talk about. I did get her a hotel room, resolving that, whatever else, she should not spend the night. I could have lied and said I wouldn’t be home, but some distant voice whispered, “see it through.”
May 3, 2021
Heavy rain, gray, warm, organic. Javier and Justin bang around downstairs changing out the lights so that I might enter my dotage without worrying about changing bulbs in the ceiling all the time. I expect it to be an all-day ordeal, so if it’s less than that I’ll be pleased.
Mentioned briefly to T B that I’d been in a dance concert. His response: The thought of you dancing is pretty damn amusing, but I know you'd approach it sincerely and in good faith and that I'd like to see. I'd have to mock you a tad though. We came back into contact so he could tell me that he had gotten into none of the graduate schools to which he applied. I wonder if he ever makes the connection between his attitude and his almost invariable failure.
Fed Sweetboi, but when I was done, there was Denise perched right over the truck. Threw her meat. Sweetboi screamed encouragement until she finally dived and picked up the offering. The workmen were in the next room, and I almost invited them to watch the interchange but, finally, didn’t.
May 2, 2021
Another glorious spring day.
Sweetboi was perched in the walnuts when I went to stand looking our the back hall window. He unfurled from the branch and dived right at the window, pulling up only as he reached the roofline. A great hawk of the air was playing with me.
Second evening of our dance was perfection. I was happy. Ann was happy. The consensus was that our piece was “deeply moving.” As a creator myself, I take joy in not having marred, in helping to convey correctly, the creation of another.
Most of the boys in the dances were gay. One was not. The gay boys moved appreciably differently from the straight one. Trying to ponder why, if intentional or unconscious, under what philosophy.
Beautiful Lyle now looks like a middle aged man.
First church service in 14 months gathered together in the sanctuary. It was not fully right, but it was a step forward.
May 1, 2021
Sweetboi very loud today. I’m thinking his chicks hatched and he is screeching fatherhood to the world. When I came into the kitchen this morning, he was waiting on his limb, staring fiercely into the window, patient as only the tumultuous can be.
Planted a huge box of daylilies yesterday in the cool & bright. I think I thought I was ordering three of each, whereas I was ordering, apparently, twelve.
So last evening was one of those rarities: I stepped on stage at Montford as a modern dancer. The dance was affecting, and people who saw it wept. I think pathos was what A was going for, and the fact that it had the effect she wanted made me think I did all right, or at least didn’t impede. She actually made the mistake– forgetting a whole passage and having to look over at me to see what I was doing. It’s not that one gloats, but that one is so relieved not to have marred another’s creation. Didn’t see the other dances, but heard and liked the music. Also, one observes that one’s memory is intact, though I note from this brief exposure that it’s not the same kind of memory that propels a scholar or writer. It is far more like painting, a memory almost semi-conscious. She said, “it’s wonderful to be paired with an actor instead of just a dancer.” I figured acting is what I could bring to it. Enjoyed this. A is a good enough choreographer to include only action that this imperfect body could actually do.
A bit of scenery interfered with where Ann thought she wanted the choir to stand, and in an instant she stood center stage pointing and declaring, “That must go now!” The boys in the organization looked at one another, knowing that it was bolted to the floor and getting it on and off would be awkward and time-consuming. I found somewhere else for the choir to stand, but what was running through my mind was that I would never have said such a thing or used such a tone. She studied under Balanchine and Martha Graham. I had no such mentors. Or mentors of even remotely equal rank. Not knowing them, I had no impulse to become them.
The weather for May Day was the most perfect in the history of the world.
My step counter sends me a message saying I did not meet my steps goal last month. I want to answer, “I was learning a dance. I revised five plays and wrote another one whole. “It suggests that I might want to revise my goal, so I’m not disappointed all the time.
Hunter the Barber’s wife read the copy of OBN I sent. Review: “She liked it. She blew through it.” I have at least one fan living in a trailer.
