January 29, 2011
Green spears of iris poking through the thawed ground. Radiant day, most of which I spent either in the studio painting or on my bed napping with the cats. Tharmas rules. I did write fairly in the dark of this morning, a long poem, but that seems so long ago now as to be part of another day.
“Wait” is worse than “no.”
Was going to the opera Brundibar, but my tickets turn out to have been for the matinee. I noticed just as it must have been letting out.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
January 28, 2011
Drove to Mars Hill after class to chat with BG about the Vance play. His counsel was to ignore premature advice and amateur direction, which I had already been doing. Snow on the mountains northward.
TD does my star chart online. The narrative could not possibly have been more wrong. It was as if someone had observed me and then written an astrological narrative for the person who was most nearly opposite. But maybe I have been living somebody else’s life. That would explain a lot . . . .
Drove to Mars Hill after class to chat with BG about the Vance play. His counsel was to ignore premature advice and amateur direction, which I had already been doing. Snow on the mountains northward.
TD does my star chart online. The narrative could not possibly have been more wrong. It was as if someone had observed me and then written an astrological narrative for the person who was most nearly opposite. But maybe I have been living somebody else’s life. That would explain a lot . . . .
Friday, January 28, 2011
January 27, 2011
Marin Marais on the CD. I used to play this CD over and over again, the Follies of Spain.
Something “clicked” today and I was officially back on campus, in spirit as well as body. Did it really take me this long to come back from sabbatical? My classes were delightful, and I’m willing to believe it was my change in perception rather than theirs in behavior. I’ve been grumpy. I thought it was more serious than that. Informal department gathering at Brew & View– I think that helped. Devoured a spinach salad so immense that consuming it gave me a sense of accomplishment.
Marin Marais on the CD. I used to play this CD over and over again, the Follies of Spain.
Something “clicked” today and I was officially back on campus, in spirit as well as body. Did it really take me this long to come back from sabbatical? My classes were delightful, and I’m willing to believe it was my change in perception rather than theirs in behavior. I’ve been grumpy. I thought it was more serious than that. Informal department gathering at Brew & View– I think that helped. Devoured a spinach salad so immense that consuming it gave me a sense of accomplishment.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
January 25, 2011
Drove through the snow yesterday to the Y, then walked to school and back. I felt, and feel, terrific. Let this be a lesson to me.
Crappy Humanities lecture. When there’s a crappy lecture you have to spend at least a while undoing damage, or at the least proving that things need not be so boring as they seem to be. Students come to a class, in which we engage in textual analysis, without books. I feel a blast of rage welling to the surface, quell it, merely go on with the class. I’m sure they couldn’t buy books because they’re paying for their grandmother’s chemo, or lost them saving babies from a fire.
Drove through the snow yesterday to the Y, then walked to school and back. I felt, and feel, terrific. Let this be a lesson to me.
Crappy Humanities lecture. When there’s a crappy lecture you have to spend at least a while undoing damage, or at the least proving that things need not be so boring as they seem to be. Students come to a class, in which we engage in textual analysis, without books. I feel a blast of rage welling to the surface, quell it, merely go on with the class. I’m sure they couldn’t buy books because they’re paying for their grandmother’s chemo, or lost them saving babies from a fire.
Monday, January 24, 2011
January 23, 2011
Filled the birdbath for the crows, whom I had seen pecking futilely at the ice moments before. The water froze over almost instantly.
DJ and I went to the Magnetic Theater to see the second installment of When Jekyll met Hyde. Had excellent pulled pork in the café while we waited. I think I should not have gone the second time, for the B version, though no worse than the standard Asheville dramatic fare, was no better, and I could have kept a memory of something scintillant. Trying to analyze what went wrong, I think it came down to a single actor who threw the balance and coherence of everything off, and not innocently. He has established a figure locally, and he played to that figure rather than to the script, or to his fellow actors. As a playwright I hate the idea that one person can demolish an evening’s theater, but he can. I witnessed it with the production of my Anna Livia in Chicago. Actors were shaky last night who have been solid in everything else I have seen them in. What do to? Soldier on, as I’m sure they shall. Nevertheless, the performance on Thursday night made me rethink my convictions about Ludlum and camp on stage. I still think Ludlum was exhausting, but his disciples, such as SS, might yet adapt his principles into a coherent and brilliant method of satire.
Picked up the Citizen Times for the first time in a year, and read that Judge B is retiring from the court-- for medical reasons, the paper said, but one wonders. By public account she was a bad judge, and I know her to have taken ruthlessness to a level that no one associated with justice–however loosely defined–should have. My astonishment that she was never disbarred diminished through the years, as I learned the ways of the world. Vain, and self-delighted as a teenage boy, she was just smart enough to know how to manipulate the law, and just shady enough to need to. She was one of several exhibits that taught me how different prisons would look if their occupants were chosen on the basis of actual harm done. She may have been the most malevolent individual I ever knew personally. And, she had the power to do real harm. Do I wish her health and long life? I do not. But the justice of the Lord is unlike hers, and if she is meant to have them, health and long life, she will, despite my remembrance.
Maud has taken to digging herself a cave in my T-shirt drawer, where she is visible sometimes only by a paw or the pink tip of a nose.
Sunday work-out at the Y among young gods. I have to remember this.
Treva asks me on Facebook “Do you paint?” I say yes I do, though I never did back in high school. As I’m typing I realize I should add, “It was too hard to keep secret.”
Filled the birdbath for the crows, whom I had seen pecking futilely at the ice moments before. The water froze over almost instantly.
DJ and I went to the Magnetic Theater to see the second installment of When Jekyll met Hyde. Had excellent pulled pork in the café while we waited. I think I should not have gone the second time, for the B version, though no worse than the standard Asheville dramatic fare, was no better, and I could have kept a memory of something scintillant. Trying to analyze what went wrong, I think it came down to a single actor who threw the balance and coherence of everything off, and not innocently. He has established a figure locally, and he played to that figure rather than to the script, or to his fellow actors. As a playwright I hate the idea that one person can demolish an evening’s theater, but he can. I witnessed it with the production of my Anna Livia in Chicago. Actors were shaky last night who have been solid in everything else I have seen them in. What do to? Soldier on, as I’m sure they shall. Nevertheless, the performance on Thursday night made me rethink my convictions about Ludlum and camp on stage. I still think Ludlum was exhausting, but his disciples, such as SS, might yet adapt his principles into a coherent and brilliant method of satire.
Picked up the Citizen Times for the first time in a year, and read that Judge B is retiring from the court-- for medical reasons, the paper said, but one wonders. By public account she was a bad judge, and I know her to have taken ruthlessness to a level that no one associated with justice–however loosely defined–should have. My astonishment that she was never disbarred diminished through the years, as I learned the ways of the world. Vain, and self-delighted as a teenage boy, she was just smart enough to know how to manipulate the law, and just shady enough to need to. She was one of several exhibits that taught me how different prisons would look if their occupants were chosen on the basis of actual harm done. She may have been the most malevolent individual I ever knew personally. And, she had the power to do real harm. Do I wish her health and long life? I do not. But the justice of the Lord is unlike hers, and if she is meant to have them, health and long life, she will, despite my remembrance.
Maud has taken to digging herself a cave in my T-shirt drawer, where she is visible sometimes only by a paw or the pink tip of a nose.
Sunday work-out at the Y among young gods. I have to remember this.
Treva asks me on Facebook “Do you paint?” I say yes I do, though I never did back in high school. As I’m typing I realize I should add, “It was too hard to keep secret.”
Sunday, January 23, 2011
January 22, 2011
At this hour, the windows of one house on Sunset Mountains blaze into my windows unbearable golden brilliance from the setting sun.
Lectured on Blake’s cosmology to two classes last week, and had to smile at the recognition of its truth in my own life. I cannot be awake long, cannot go about my activities long, without being engaged in spiritual war, all my armies arrayed on the horizon. Therefore almost every spare moment is spent in sleep, the rule of Tharmas, at once escaping from battle and strengthening myself for it.
Bought a floor lamp from an antiques store on Broadway. The owner tried to guess where I was from. He didn’t believe it was here, or, more distantly, Ohio. I told him I visited England often and that seemed to him nearer to the truth. That I am a resident of his town was too outrageous to believe. I have been in his store twenty times. Must have made no impression heretofore.
Tom and I were talking a little too long about things he didn’t know this morning at Starbucks, so Jack turned to me and said, “Do you have any children?” He has three strong sons, if I remember rightly. It leveled the field immediately. No, it put him on the high ground.
At this hour, the windows of one house on Sunset Mountains blaze into my windows unbearable golden brilliance from the setting sun.
Lectured on Blake’s cosmology to two classes last week, and had to smile at the recognition of its truth in my own life. I cannot be awake long, cannot go about my activities long, without being engaged in spiritual war, all my armies arrayed on the horizon. Therefore almost every spare moment is spent in sleep, the rule of Tharmas, at once escaping from battle and strengthening myself for it.
Bought a floor lamp from an antiques store on Broadway. The owner tried to guess where I was from. He didn’t believe it was here, or, more distantly, Ohio. I told him I visited England often and that seemed to him nearer to the truth. That I am a resident of his town was too outrageous to believe. I have been in his store twenty times. Must have made no impression heretofore.
Tom and I were talking a little too long about things he didn’t know this morning at Starbucks, so Jack turned to me and said, “Do you have any children?” He has three strong sons, if I remember rightly. It leveled the field immediately. No, it put him on the high ground.
On the Lord’s Acting in His Own Time
The Lord’s acting in his own time–
the grinding stones worn fine and flat
the journey spun out inch by mile--
Believe me, we will not have that.
Slouch when you are told to straighten up.
Publish the numbers to all the locks.
Bring a sieve when you need a cup..
Keep silence in the witness box.
Only then will the Lord will deliver you.
Believe me, someone will be sent,
hurrying, his white skirts gathered,
redeeming, revising, before he meant.
The Lord’s acting in his own time–
the grinding stones worn fine and flat
the journey spun out inch by mile--
Believe me, we will not have that.
Slouch when you are told to straighten up.
Publish the numbers to all the locks.
Bring a sieve when you need a cup..
Keep silence in the witness box.
Only then will the Lord will deliver you.
Believe me, someone will be sent,
hurrying, his white skirts gathered,
redeeming, revising, before he meant.
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