May 14, 2023

Bad night, something physical, I think. Maybe bad chicken from the Fresh Market. 

The iris bed like an emperor’s palace. 

The new iron garth gate at All Souls is a masterpiece. We’re taking bets on how long before it’s vandalized. 

 

May 13, 2023

Croaking like a frog after last night’s long and grueling rehearsal. Pollen and overuse attack my throat at the same time. Trying to figure out why so much effort is expended selling a mediocre composition. The Beach Mass is not a great lost masterpiece, but a formulaic, uninspired (though learned) exercise that has had precisely the renown it deserved. My mind keeps going back to Germaine Greer, who, in The Obstacle Race, set herself the task of discovering great unknown Baroque paintresses (her word) and concluded there were none, that female artists of the time, though disadvantaged in several ways, were known and celebrated because of their novelty, often out of proportion to their achievement. All the ones that were are already known and evaluated. 

Evening: morning rehearsal was less grueling than the one last night. My body was in broad and severe pain, which I tried to hide from the people around me. A couple of Advil sent all that on its way. Why don’t I remember that? Exhaustion=Inflammation. 

Looking at photos of my cats, weeping bitterly. I always felt grief at their passing, but loneliness was never before part of it. There will be no more sweethearts. An evening, I see now, given over to melancholy. It must happen from time to time. 

 

May 12, 2023

Last night’s rehearsal levels better than the one before. Hit the low A in the Casals effortlessly. 

Completed a painting. 

Sat by the riverside and wrote nothing, but watched bluebirds. Watched a large skink with an inflamed orange throat pursue a smaller one into the ivy. I assume it was a rape. 

Deep and inexplicable exhaustion. Perhaps related to this (perhaps not) my alternative imagination had lain very close to the surface. If I so much as shut my eyes an alternative cinema begins, having nothing whatever to do with the “real” world I was taking in seconds before. 

Fatboi

 May 11, 2023

Major gardening. Fatboi is back, looking enormous, like a little red bear. He has to do a job of flattening to get into his lair under the toolshed. 

The perfume rolling to my front door is peonies, of which I finally have nearly enough. 

No More Sweethearts

 

May 10, 2023

Did not intend to return to the garden today, but the urge to do so was almost physical. Huge areas cleared, a few things planted. Unearthed a snake, who zipped off into the grass. I don’t expect to encounter snakes actually under ground. I suppose the loose state of cultivated earth makes it easy to burrow. 

Eye red and watery. Pollen, I suppose. 

Rehearsal last night left me voiceless. We are not prepared for the concert on Sunday. I came in to the house and called, out Sweetheart!, not remembering

A cold voice from the interior replied, There will be no more sweethearts.

Beautiful Cattle

 

May 9, 2023

Good work on GB.

Mighty work in the garden, vining, spading, ending with the planting of ferns in an area less shady, actually, than I thought.

Today begins a sequence of two weeks in which there is a task almost every night. Retirement has spoiled me for that sort of thing..

Dreamed that I had bought some beautiful cattle, and when they arrived I had the dilemma of finding a place for them to live. 

Trump found liable in a civil sexual assault case. The first of a cascade, I hope.

 

May 8, 2023

First failed painting since I began again in October, one that could not be worked through but had to be painted over.

Dug out 61 culms this afternoon. Planted butterfly weed.