March 6, 2024
Deep spring rain postpones the need to decide whether to work in the garden. Spears of iris breaking ground everywhere.
J backs out on The Green Cockatoo. Troubles in his life. Glad I didn’t get any further than I did.
Finished the big edit and revision of The Garden of the Bears. Cobbling together the snipped out parts of God in the Waters for another whole play (probably a one-act).
March 5, 2024
Hiram has called its 24th President. Not bad for 174 years. Which one was Jagow?
KD is dead.
Spent a shocking portion of the day trying to get Facebook back. I was thrown off it in the morning, and all attempts to regain access or change my password or send in required extra documentation was thwarted by “Unable to comply at this time” or “service presently not available” or “unexpected error” or simply a blank screen. Revolving doors. Trapdoors. Asked for 10 or 11 reset codes, checking to make sure the phone number was right; none of them arrived. Some combination of spell-casting and repetition got me back on, don’t actually know how. Then I went through the same process with my phone, whose time stamp had suddenly gone awry (or something). The worst part was the realization of how much I depend on this service for social contact.
Somebody observed that English speakers tend to keep their tongue resting at the roofs of their mouths. Now I can’t stop noticing that.
Maranatha
March 4, 2024
Two raccoons cavorted at the end of my garden while I made coffee. Allow me to think that they’re the two I rescued from my attic, all grown up.
Morning at the river. There was going to be no poem, so I allowed random thoughts. Ring-billed gulls cavorted on the water. Two physically demonstrative lesbian couples reminded me of a couple in my senior seminar late in my career. They fondled and nibbled each other all through class, murmuring lip to ear, and instead of critiquing, which was the purpose of the seminar, praising each other’s wisdom and expressiveness. I was sorrowful because I stood on the wrong side of love, though I considered it was more politics than love. Bringing balance, two young men sat in skirts, pretty sweaters, dangly earrings and brayed at each other in big male voices. The resident white Lab politely showed me to my seat.
Revision: sad-making. One of us sees a play as a garden, the other as a road. The piece is a better road now, a worse garden.
The daffodils are in bloom.
March 2, 2024
Rain cleared into magnetic blue. I sat on the porch and read a chapbook somebody sent me. It was quite good, and got me in a Muse-friendly mood. Wrote about my purple anemones. Discovered what I was writing about on the last line. Drove to the river at Woodfin and sat to listen to the frogs. Repeatingly prayed the Jesus Prayer in the immaculate, sinking golden light. A dog named Alex let me pet him before he dived into the river after a ball his owner had thrown.
March 1, 2024
Saint David’s Day.
For the first time remembered to say “rabbit rabbit” first thing on the first day of the month. I’m sure it will make all the difference.
Odd moments with Alexa. The kitchen was making strange, intermittent noises, not like the clawing of an animal or the dripping of water. I investigated several times and couldn’t figure it out. Later I checked one last time, and it was Alexa, making odd and random noises, like the static on old radios. I unplugged her and it ended. Plugged her back in and the noises didn’t return. When I went to bed I asked the bedroom Alexa “Who’s your favorite singer?” She said “Beyonce.” I said “What’s my favorite music?” She promised to “Play your most requested songs.” The series she played were all absolutely unfamiliar to me, and ones I had certainly never requested, though, with a few exceptions, to my Renaissance-y taste.
February 29, 2024
Last Leap Day, 2020, saw me make the last entry in the last of my studio journals. Knowing that the studio was doomed and I could not move my things, and had nowhere to move them, I advertised my paintings gratis, and that was the day people came to get what they wanted. Michael Thompson furnished his apartment. Old friends, choir mates, tourists, no doubt thinking “what an odd thing,” carried away works of. Somebody left a $20 bill on a stool. And that was that.
