August 31, 2012

Pale haze, long before dawn, of moonlight diffused through mist.

Classes have been excellent, my writers eager and productive, not infrequently brilliant.

Dinner last night with ACB. We lived on Goodview Avenue together when we were kids, and though we were aware of each other, we were not friends until the mini-reunion I had in Akron years ago, to which she came. Not surprising, then, that there was less reminiscing than there was catching up on all we didn’t know about each other. Her brother, Mike, who was older than us and on whom I had a desperate crush, died years ago, an alcoholic. Tried to look him up on Google, but there’s a baseball player with the same name, and I was worn out by the first billion entries’ being his. She brought me birthday presents, a jar of basil from her garden and a book with pictures of Ireland. She remembers my reading my poetry in assemblies at school, which I don’t remember and which I think was unlikely because I tended to be secretive about all that. She congratulated me on being such a success and making everybody proud. Not feeling a success right now, or ever, I wanted to say, “What the hell could you possibly mean?” but decided just to let it be.

Desperate letters from Ste in Cambridge. I have no idea how to respond, especially since each letter contradicts the emotion and reverses the requests of the one before.

Kevin sings. I think I was waiting for him to do so before I moved from this keyboard. The lawn is dusty-sweet with the scent of the wild clematis. I eased my war against it, and now it covers everything like first snow.

August 29, 2012

Quiet dark of morning. Tuesday was a marathon, thirteen hours at school.  Met my two creative writing classes, and what must be said is that they may be the most advanced and accomplished group I’ve ever had, inventive, skillful, including not one of those poor souls one must drag along through indulgence and kind words from incompetence to graduation. Big discussion of Homer here, a rash of meetings there, stopping by DJ’s and drinking wine in front of the TV until my words didn’t come out straight. All I had to eat was popcorn, and I had forgotten what that does to my system, so there’s THAT to face in the dark of the morning.

Kevin sings from his tepid, lily-ridden water.

MG says I have a good fairy guarding my garden, since nothing has eaten the vegetables.

Woke feverish. Decided not to take medication, but instead to work hard in the garden, as I had intended to do anyway. That seemed to do the trick. Feverish feeling and aches are gone.

August 27, 2012

Surprise at the Cantaria rehearsal last night, which was that we sounded brave and youthful and, at a rehearsal, the best we’ve ever sounded. We’ve added four or five new members, some of them conspicuously good, and maybe that has achieved the critical mass. I’m trying to remember the last time I’d come home from rehearsal exuberant and energized rather than exhausted. There are low D’s in the Lauridson for me.

Long and joyful morning session in the garden.

God smites the Republican Convention with a mighty wind.

No one has sufficiently sung the praises of the crape myrtle tree.

August 26, 2012

Sank back into the marathon sleeps yesterday, often thinking in the last moments of consciousness of all else I should be doing. But painted well, and late, and responded to all the playwrights who had sent their materials to Black Swan. Some thanked me for gracious refusals, which is a sort of achievement, I guess. Painting (almost obsessively) mystical landscapes of Sligo. I will never have a fine touch.

The Internet reports that all the people hurt at the Empire State Building were hit by police gunfire. One hardly knows what to say.

August 25, 2012

Dream before waking that there was a machine that could print out an image of anything you ever saw, whether you had taken a photograph or not.  I had not quite gotten it under control, and it was printing out random images, some I remembered, some I did not, but that was fine with me. The older images were sepia, as if they had been ancient photographs. There was a group of images which I realized were boys my mother had dated.

Good painting yesterday, then rather heroic gardening. I have, of course, chosen the most laborious way to go with gardening. Planted acanthus and swamp hibiscus and a low, parsley-resembling fern that I’d not seen before. In the evening I attended the opening of the rather undistinguished faculty art show, then the quite distinguished recital of Italian Baroque works by the Asheville Baroque trio. Ate something which soured my stomach, and whose effects extend even to this hour.

August 24, 2012

There are those nights when you think, "It is right for it to end now," but it doesn't,  and the night insects chirr in the dark. Circe licks her paws against the side of the keyboard, moving it sometimes, so what you meant to type is not what you did.

August 23, 2012

On this night 46 years ago I wrote my first poem. The sheer process of creation has been pretty much as I imagined it even at that moment, though the meaning of such an enterprise in the world has been quite other than I had supposed.

Went downtown for a haircut, and ended up shopping like a madman. Shopped the way people do in the movies, hungrily, wanting to fill a gap that I hadn’t known was there. Bought, among other things, a beautiful glass paperweight with a scene in it of turtles on a log in a swamp. The effect might have been still greater had I sought out real turtles on a real log.

Good classes.