SCAM

Evidently the call from the Indian gentleman pretending to be from Microsoft was a scam. I lost $650. Somebody who read my blog informed me, and the websites he sent me to exactly reproduced what happened. It was very convincing. I knew about 49% that it was a scam, but their confidence--and the fact that my computer has been running poorly-- gave them that little bit of edge. How did they have so much information about my computer without-- oh, never mind. What's done's done.

September 30, 2013

Windows open last night, one of summer’s late hurrahs. Complicated dreams of philosophy. I had developed a magnificent one, related somehow to string theory, which made sense in the dream but, at morning, leaves not a wrack behind.

Arrived late for Cantaria, while they were singing their Pride medley. The sound was thrilling, magnificent. Accuracy was not their long suit, but it needn’t be in the County Plaza.

Oddly beneficent all day, as if the Invisible Adversary and I were at peace. It’s far better. I’d live that way if I could.

September 29, 2013

Saturday was another entry in the log of heroic gardening. I intended to finish and winterize the Phil Mechanic garden, but in order to do so I had to find some way around the half marathon which seemed miraculously to block every street on this end of the city. One cop told me to try the Craven Street Bridge, and when I was blocked there I uttered a resounding profanity, and the other cop  waved me through. probably thinking I’d be a menace to society otherwise. Bought mulch at Southern States, where the handsome redneck helping me load and I had the following exchange.
Me: God, there’s stink bugs even between the bags of mulch.
Him: Yep. They’ll cover you up.

Planted alternating pink and purple iris, and a couple of radiant peonies, mulched thick. Only one plant, a peony, was lost from the spring planting, which I think was remarkable.

Came home and emptied the shipping boxes by digging a new beds for, mainly, iris. The soil was gratifyingly workable. I must have annihilated the vines earlier.

Lunch with Jon and Dalton, in for a day in the city. We laughed long and loud. Craggy faced guy got the deck about half done. Taking some divided orange iris to Mike Stevenson. Will need to spend the morning reading comp exams, a colleague’s confusion having thrown us into panic mode.

September 28, 2013

In my dream there was a further testament of Judaism which came after the Christian testament. On one of the holy days of Judaism, certain passages from the New Testament, which were deemed to be precursor of the new Jewish vision, had to be read in order at various point around Central Park. I was given the honor of reading one of these passages, something from Acts. I was very excited. At the end of the dream we were coordinating our watches so the passage could be read at exactly the right moment.

Turns out I’m receiving royalties from the electronic version of A Childhood in the Milky Way, but in such minuscule increments that they have not yet actually written a check.

Enormous bout of autumn gardening yesterday, wherefrom I was sore and tired in a good way, but nearly to the point of illness. Got surprisingly few things into the ground– two tree peonies, two camellias (hoping to cure my bad luck with camellias)– but did a lot of digging and toting. The flowers I mail ordered are arriving in roomy boxes, and Dublin looms.

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt has a new movie about the effects of porn on a relationship. His character’s girlfriend is also addicted, to romantic comedies (chick flicks) and I happened to think of them as two handles of the same cup (lousy image, but–) Porn demanding unrealistic sexual enthusiasm from women, Rom-coms demanding an unrealistic cuddly and chocolate-bringing responses from men. They are both a kind of porn. Gay men almost never object to the unrealistic enthusiasm depicted in gay porn, because we think we might in fact react that way, given the right partner and opportunity.

September 27, 2013

Woke from complicated dreams. I was trying to finish a huge mural that covered several rooms of my house, except it wasn’t my house but a large apartment high up in a building in a big city. Barry and Will had extra guests coming for some occasion, and they wanted the overflow to stay in my apartment, so I was trying to finish the mural, find room for the guests, repair the damage haste and distraction was doing to the painting, and keep the swarms of stinkbugs vacuumed up. They were worse in the dream even than they are in life. The apartment was all yellow because I was convinced that was the best base for the painting.

Bought my tickets for San Francisco. They were surprisingly cheap. . . not that I’ll get to see the city at all.

Faculty reading at UNCA,, poorly and yet sufficiently attended. Tom was there, as he was when I read at the Altamont. It’s like the old days when we were inseparable. I can’t figure out what the difference is now; the fact that I’m trying to is a little sad. Spontaneous interest in me is so rare (I think) that I stop looking for it, and probably identify it wrong when it appears.

September 26, 2013

Mason Wilson is dead. He was a kind, good man. He was kind and good to me. Unexpectedly stricken by the news.

Late last afternoon– lay on the bed in the half-dark in what seems from this distance like comic despair. No, it doesn’t really

I work too hard, yet the goal is not reached. Whenever I teach Hinduism and Buddhism I hear their mockery from afar of a person who wears attachment around his neck like an albatross. Yet if asked the question, do I want peace or the life I want, peace loses every time. It’s not as though losing one gains the other. Nevertheless–

The two boxes of plants become for. I itch for the next hole in the schedule not arched over by driving rain..

September 25, 2013

Two boxes of bulbs and peony roots arrived yesterday: the season is on!

Watched Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter last night with more enjoyment that I was led to expect. Thought it was cleverly plotted, which does not make up for absurdity, but rubs off absurdity’s edges. Was thrilled when the movie’s meeting of Lincoln and Josh Speed was so like mine, though that relationship later went awry.

None of my accounts was drained, so the hard-laboring Indian gentlemen must have been legitimate.

Glorious days have piled atop one another, so glorious in fact that one had to hide from them a little.

The traffic slows at the hummingbird feeders.