September 16, 2025

Hard rain on the roof, shooting out in streams where the gutter man failed. I must have been cold last night, for there were dreams of snow covered landscapes. In one, my sister and I stood by a frozen river competing in who knew the names of more Norwegian birds. 

The creature in my garden was an iris-borer, the larva of a benighted moth. Sorry I didn’t throw it to the towhees. 

In the last hour when they would have been visible, two bears cubs and their enormous mother came to visit. It puzzles me why they walk across the front porch rather than around, which would eliminate at least two climbs. Maybe they’re looking in on me. In any case, it makes night porch-sitting an adventure. They drank from the pond, frolicked, disappeared into the night, leaving me with a sense of benediction. 

Alert for the failing of my faculties, I light upon the myriads of typos that crop up in my writing, more, I think, than in times before. In the last entry I mistyped the word “turkey” three times in three different ways. There are sometimes two errors in four words. Right now I mistyped “different.” I suppose editing solves the problem, but adds lugubriousness to an activity that used to be fleet as the wind.  

SS writes in a press release about T's upcoming production: I've long believed that the subject of a play doesn't tell you much about it: something that sounds amazing might be so badly written as to be an utter bore, and something that sounds unbearable might prove funny and transcendent. And I had a direct example of that quite a bit earlier, when another of our great local playwrights, David Brendan Hopes, sent me a script about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy. All I could think before reading it was, "Too sad! I don't want to have anything to do with this!"I hadn't read two pages of David's remarkable Washington Place (which I produced and directed at The Magnetic 10 years ago, and which opens in a new production at HART, coincidentally, in October) when, to my surprise and delight, I was having such a good time that I immediately knew we had to do it. For David hadn't focused on the horror, even though it was there; he had concentrated his considerable gifts on the lives and loves of the otherwise unknown victims, gracing them with intelligence and humor and a humanity that could not be denied. The results were astonishing, about which I'm sure those of you lucky enough to have seen it would agree.

 September 14, 2025

Return with vengeance to the garden, spading, weeding, settling the fall bulbs, cleaning and moving the water gardens. In the grass I found big feathers and tufts of down from a turkey, and one long hawk feather. I wonder if hawk and turkey had a disagreement in my garden. I’d have thought a turkey too large for a red-tailed, but the warriors screaming in my trees might have tried anyway. 

Failed to mention my trip to the Arboretum, where I walked in the gardens and bought two more indoor plants, now potted and settled. A bus had brought a load of old people. I kept thinking of myself as separate from them. . .  but nobody else would. 

Shamed by my sometimes not leaving the house for a full day, or two, I decided to go to the theater last night. It was a battle between going out and staying home, and only at the last possible moment did I put on a decent shirt and get into the car, heading to Waynesville to see A Little Night Music at HART. When I got there (through miles of detours) the main theater was dark. In the new theater, though, was a banquet with everybody dressed in– I think– Roaring Twenties costumes, all feathers and glitter, and a voluptuous banquet spread on tables at the entrance. It was like stepping into a Fellini movie. I turned around and came home. Still haven’t looked up what was actually going on, but was impressed that HART could get together a party so massive and, by the evidence of my wars, joyful. The sun was behind me on the drive home, lighting the mountains with gold touched by pink. Perhaps that splendor was the intent of the mistaken journey, for it felt purposeful in some way, not merely the outcome of not having prepared or bought a ticket beforehand. 

Red-shoulder

 September 12, 2025

Clouds seem to be gathering. Rain would be well.  Covered myself in glory today in the matter of gardening. Restored the iris garden, planting fritillaria, alium, but mostly digging and dividing old iris, pulling grass roots away from their roots. Digging the dry ground was like trying to chip through stone. Uncovered a quite large larva (I guess) more than two inches long, with very prominent pincers and bright orange globular segments, like beads on a bracelet. Researching online has turned up nothing similar, except a sea-worm, which it definitely wasn’t. As I worked, a pair of red-shouldered hawks flew into the garden, screaming alone, then screaming at the horde of jays that came to scream at them. Denise with a new mate? I think probably two completely new citizens. They looked young and feisty. Tried to tempt them with leftover pork roast, but they were having none of that.    

Blake and Archbishop Cranmer on the porch with P. 

Anniversary

 September 11, 2025

Ended the fast at 112 hours. Felt so good I started another immediately after eating the pork roast I imagined and brought to pass. 

Return to AGMC. Our numbers are larger than they’d ever been, and the sound is tremendous. 

 September 10, 2025

During SC rehearsal last night my official fast ended. I had a brief revery about pork roast, but went to bed fasting. It is now 108 hours and counting. 

Quite brisk morning.

FL proved once again my theorem about the thing directors mention most often is the thing they’re wrong about. A portion of last night’s rehearsal was taken up with slandering the letter “R,” having us cross it out of words. Vehemence on this point is inexplicable. 

 September 9, 2025

Heroic weeding and dead-heading, and by “heroic” I mean just about as much as I can stand for today. Looked up from weeding at a disturbance in the air, and saw a cardinal fleeing from the claws of a hawk. I don’t know how that drama ended. 

 September 8, 2025

Rameau on Pandora. He’s as good as anybody. Not as stridently martial and antique as Lully. 

At 72 hours on the fast. There’s a feeling in me which doesn’t necessarily read as hunger. Morning mucous is a tithe of itself. No drama in the stomach or digestive system– in which there are usually some issues, which I’d thought of as just part of life. De-hydration is the enemy. You forget you can have liquid. You want something to eat for maybe half a minute, then the desire dissolves, and the food you wanted seems oddly repellent. 

Potted several newly acquired plants, set up ( re-purposed) a marble table to hold them. Pulled a few weeds in the scalding light. 

America is in such peril that if one had written about it the text would be cursed as an improbability, a libel. The worst man imaginable doing worse things than one imagined. Some still stand back from cursing his name. It is unaccountable. One must turn away and talk of something else. Felon, rapist, thief, traitor, he is allowed to stand in the light of day, an abomination, the scourge of a Satanic being. Yet people draw breath. People drive to the beach and come home. I am going to go downstairs and turn on the TV. I will not be watching the news.