June 29, 2012

Assembled the book In the Temple of the White from an evening of reading and revising. There are times when every poem I’ve written seems a masterpiece. There are times, like last night, when few of them seem to have gotten any near to what I meant. Those are the times to assemble a book.

Evening. The cats coped with the three digit temperatures by not moving more than ten feet throughout the day. I went to the gym and saw to a million errands, including getting my will witnessed, signed, notarized. Bought a fire safe. Bought a case of the most exquisite and complicated Spanish white. Saw stocks sky-rocket, and bought twenty thousand $ worth of new equities. Rejoiced anew in the constitutionality of Obama-care. I thought I had done some writing, but I guess that was in my head, ready to be committed to paper this evening. Trained a fan directly on my face above the keyboard.

June 28, 2012

Calm morning before what they promise will be a torrid day. Wondrous silent last night, not a sound as far as I could hear. Even the cats padding around seemed sinister. Was afflicted with nightmares, wherein I was paying horribly for some trespass of my father’s. Happily, the details have faded. They were those dreams where you wake and it takes a few minutes to reason out that is not really the life you live. I wonder if our waking after this life will seem the same?

DJ and I dining at Avenue M–merry meeting with Jeff and Jacob. Fixed on the Olympic preliminaries on TV.

Helped dole out Grassroots money to local arts organizations. Was impressed by how much work organizations are willing to do for relatively little money. Was negatively impressed by how hasty and abrupt my judgments were as compared to the balanced, thoughtful, many-factors-considering deliberations of the others. My swift punches avail about 60% of the time, but when they don’t, they don’t.

June 27, 2012

Virtual Palestrina. Kevin may be singing his morning song, but I can’t hear it.

The Foahs email from Atlanta to say that The Birth of Color, on hold maybe now for fifteen years, is on again, with a projected premiere next year in Rome. Lucio Ivaldi is the new composer. A month for the libretto, fifteen years for the music. Sounds about right.

June 23, 2012

Complex and extended dreams before waking. I was in prison, though the prison was like a big summer camp, all outdoors and crammed with sports and activities. David Mycoff was a fellow prisoner–he was probably brought to mind because the last time I was onstage at Montford, he was Faustus and I was Mephistofeles– and the prime punishment seemed to be receiving a kind of magazine in which your crime was printed up like a flashy ad. As the dream ended, I was looking through all the dryers in the camp for laundry I had dried and lost track of. It was my release day, and the other prisoners couldn’t believe I was delaying my release to find a load of laundry.

Good day painting. Instead of auditioning for Richard II, came home from the studio and baked zucchini pies. Same recipe as pumpkin, only with zucchini. The odd green aspect will be covered with Cool Whip.

June 22, 2012

Window-rattling, cat-disconcerting thunderstorms rolled though yesterday and this afternoon. Now the afternoon heat seeps back, enhanced by the fresh humidity. For a moment my patio was a lake.

My cichlid, who was merrily diving for food yesterday, lay dead at the top of the tank today, fins and tail nibbled by his neighbors.

Zach cupped me, as they did in elder days. It did feel good–made me feel tingly. He thought it brought the swelling down in my legs. I didn’t see that, so much, but am willing to trust his perceptions rather than my own.

Invented bacon/zucchini salad, whereby one of the green monsters has found proper use.

Day ends with Lawrence and me going to Montford for an excellent reading of Much Ado about Nothing. Well directed, well played-- though I would have paid attention to the usual cuts, which, having been tested, prove judicious. LH provided avocado and cracker hors d’oeuvres. The moon was the thinnest crescent.

June 21, 2012

The Falls of the Wyona received honorable mention from Leapfrog Press as a “Children’s” (probably Young Adult) novel. They did notify me earlier, but I didn’t read the email, assuming it was a total kiss-off. FW as a young adult book is problematic– and I wonder of I classified it that way, or they did– except for the fact that the characters are teenagers. Sent in the next 50 pages to the James Jones people, revising all the way.

Looked at another property in Weaverville. Loved the shed, loved the holly tree, hated the house. The dog smell was too heavy to imagine it without it. Karen was too sad over her mother’s cancer to be fully present, and that was all right. Should I have been sorry or glad to have distracted her for a moment?

Went to a lawyer to get a will made out. He was the first to answer a spate of queries I sent out while drunk the other night. I didn’t like him, but I assumed that, for this, nobody would tell me much different, so I plowed ahead. He talked a blue streak, and I was prepared to be pissed off about that, but he didn’t charge me for the time he talked, so all was well.

Harvested three gigantic zucchini from my garden. I swear they weren’t there when I looked a week ago.

Sending money to Thailand when my sister goes over to visit Jonathan. I’m told the money will buy coffee trees for farmers there. The only thing better would be if it bought somebody a water buffalo.

June 20, 2012

High summer holds the earth. All is healed. All is health.

The Falls of the Wyona is a finalist in James Jones Fellowship contest. They ask for the next 50 pages, and I am suddenly paralyzed to provide them.

Reading The Iliad at the café, a book or two until the cup runs dry or the stupid music comes on. It exceeds remembrance. Homer’s quality is the most piercing verisimilitude: one feels present at the scene. One feels that if one awoke thirty two centuries ago on the west coast of Asia, one would know how to conduct oneself. One could look out on the field of battle and be able to tell who was Odysseus, who was Diomedes. One would know Hector’s sword from the other swords; one would know the purple belt Aias gave Hector after their battle. Everything is palpable, visible; the references the characters make are instantly recognizable as part of the fabric of a complex culture. It is at once the best poem and the best novel. My Kindle reading at the gym is War and Peace, so between the two of them I’m having a majestic summer.