October 12, 2014

Slow, gentle rain in the dark. I think of my laburnum deciding whether to put down winter root, and I bless it.

One of the first things I do upon waking is to straighten the rugs that the cats have set awry with their gambols in the night. That activity was poignant this morning, for Derin Togar once offered me pads for them all, which would have stopped the cats in their tracks, and it was Derin’s wedding I sang for last evening, a stately, clockwork event, distinguished by good looking Turks in tuxedos and black gowns.

The community is joyful with the news that gay couples can now wed legally in North Carolina. The issuer-of-deeds has been alacritous in his duties, and many have come away satisfied. I think this should have been worth doing if only for the joy it brings to people, a joy unnecessarily withheld time out of mind. I’ve never understood why somebody cared if somebody else got married or not, yet on the streets at certain times with their placards are grim-faced people who care about it very much. If you ask them, they will say it’s against the bible. That answer is wrong and perverse, but the battle cannot be fought, for they have written themselves their own bible which has authority over the real one. I have to admit that in my young days as a gay man, marriage per se did not enter my mind. It seemed to me one of those thing that loving a man separated you from, gladly and memorably. But many people are more domestic than I, and when money and legal rights come into the question, it is resolved on the spot. Joy all around, except for those who un-Christian convictions have separated themselves from joy.

Domestic hum of the washing machine. Cat on the foot. Rain on the roof. Maybe I should try to find someone to marry me.

October 11, 2014

Twice in the studio yesterday, and once today. I did good work. The mindlessness of painting was necessary. Laurie Anderson and REM on the dusty CD.  The garden is purple with re-blooming iris.

Walked by fading moonlight before dawn.

Changed the furnace air filter for the first time in my life. I didn’t neglect the task; it simply never crossed my mind.

Accidental rendition by the Beatles of “Let It Be” on the internet. I stopped and listened. In the midst of half an hour of unreachable, almost indefinable, grief, of helpless sobbing, I became an Existentialist. I’ve told my students for thirty years that it was a comfort. Never knew before that it is.

October 10, 2014

The moon woke me two nights ago peeping through the west windows. It woke me this morning, though it was itself invisible, by igniting the mists of the world so everything was clearly, ghostly visible hours before dawn.

Macbeth at HART. Enjoying my fellow actors. Got through the act flawlessly off book, so the rest is a glide.

Rehearsal of Medea with my game and merry students. They shout suggestions about production from all corners, hard to filter, but indicative of unusual, and dear, engagement.  I have one student who is clearly insane in a gentle and confused sort of way. Surely I can’t be the only one who noticed. . .  so I’ll just let it float. He seems happy enough when you talk him through the anxieties.

Drive to Marshall for rehearsal of Christmas music (not as ghastly as I feared) at the Presbyterian church. Felt privileged in my usual artistic life as I watched K, the able, musical, skillful, and superhumanly patient director, drag his little company through those simple songs. He wanted me to “bolster” the bass section, which is me and this galoot who claims he can’t sing above a G on the bass staff, and who doesn’t sing at all (that I could hear) except that when there’s a long note he has time to find, he can sing it an octave too low. I suppose that does add a certain richness. There were evidently many absentees. The whole thing must be torment to someone clearly as trained and sensitive as K. One wants to say “Well, they’re trying their best,” but I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been singing in “professional” choirs so long I forget the volunteerism that propels the music program in most churches. A remarkable amount of time is spent apologizing for colds and sore throats and deferring to one’s neighbor as the better singer. Like hens in a barnyard confirming a pecking order. One soprano brought two kids who played around her feet during rehearsal. The aged altos (THAT’s not their fault, I understand) spent most of their time rattling the pages of their music, missing cues and then saying, “We don’t see where you are.” They didn’t see that because they were nattering when the announcement was made. ANYWAY, a thought-provoking experience. Amazingly, it seems not to conflict at all with All Souls, and my heart goes out to K– who, incidentally, looks like he should be a personal trainer at the gym rather than a choirmaster.

Pinkish purple through the upstairs window. And so it begins.

October 8, 2014

Burly blond guy from Mountain Heating and Cooling happened to be in my area and remembered me, so the furnace was fixed yesterday rather than a week from today. Gratitude. Looks like the viburnum has taken to its new home. Gratitude. Chris answers me about rehearsal space for Medea. Gratitude. Actually enjoy my chat with Carl at the Y. Surprise. Lifting weights and running Macbeth in my head. I lament that Break is over, though noting that I have only one class today, and none on Friday, so we may think of it as a break with interruptions. Started new writing projects, unlike what I usually do. Interest. Legs almost clear. The moment now upon me is endurable.

October 7, 2014

Autumn rain, surprisingly warm on the skin. My quest to get somebody to come light the furnace is complicated by the fact that any sentence beginning with “We can’t –“ is automatically dismissed by my ear. This is a learned characteristic. So many “We can’t”’s are turned around by explanation, argument, or demanding to speak to the person next higher up that a situation when the real thing comes along I fight a little too long, with a little too much acid. But this time everybody tells the same story. Nine days turns out to be a pretty general waiting time. So, nine days it is, with space heaters heating the place (for now) more than adequately.

F borrows the truck to move tympani on Friday. It’s still not back. It’s like having kids.

Drove unnecessarily through a storm to a rehearsal at which I was not expected. Combat rehearsal, and I don’t engage in combat this time. Glad I went, though, for A was back, as MacDuff and the fight choreographer, and it was good to see him.  Good to see also was the kindness and skill with which the teachers (turned out three men were pretty adept) brought the others up to speed. Men are kind to men when they are given a chance, or some set of mind doesn’t ruin it. A’s grace and growing expertise shone out of every gesture.

Agreed to try to be the Christmas bass at Marshall Presbyterian, where there are no native basses. No serious conflict with All Souls.  A Christmas adventure. . . .

October 6, 2014

The cold house is more damaging to my sense of well-being than it is to my body. Rose last night to go to the bathroom, and when I returned the spots where Circe lay and the spot where I had lain were hot, I mean, almost burning hot, as though I’d had an electric blanket, which I had not. New respect for endothermy. Massive Cosmopolitans before bed, so no dreams.

Asked Bill, who was at the rally but didn’t sing with us, if we sounded OK. He said, “The sound system was awful,” by which I assume that particular labor was for naught.

Accidental contact with a documentary on the New York Review of Books on TV. Deep satisfaction.

Finished off the bags of mulch and the bags of dirt mulching and planting, or in the case of the laburnum, transplanting. It looks noble in the backyard, where it is now. I hope I caught at the right moment, when it was almost asleep, but still could send out root. Allium to fill in the space of the laburnum.

Much revising of poetry, putting together of manuscripts, laying old ones to rest. On some days you’re simply in the groove and can’t be stopped. On other days, even fiddling with punctuation is pointless. One of my students used his class presentation to, humorously, mock the qualities of poetry, reviving the old canard that it is needlessly obscure, and why can’t it just come out and say what it means. What I have always loved is that it DOES come out and say what it means. My sense of that is so strong that I am not helpful to people like my student.  It’s like trying to point at something in the night sky, you keep crying “There! Right over there!” but if they don’t see it, they don’t.

The sun is very low now, in the south, and doesn’t light the same things it lit through the summer.

October 5, 2014

The furnace didn’t turn on, and won’t. Pilot light? Who knows? I go down into the basement and stare at the cold dead thing, wondering what it wants, wondering if Stewart saddled me with an appliance that was on its last season. These things always happen on a Saturday night, when no one can be called. But I survived the night bundled up, and am about my business in the same bundling. In the arctic dreams I was a pilot who specialized in giving tired condors rides. The condors would wait for me in the vacant corners of parking lots.

The cold began at City-County Plaza, where Cantaria sang for Asheville Pride. I had my first solo at such a venue, and I think we did well enough. A giant lesbian strode onto the stage mid-performance and ordered us to stand closer to the mics. The light was brilliant, but we were freezing. Keeping back the blinding light was the first good my new glasses have yet done me.

Revised poems late into the evening. Was disappointed when they were flawed, but said to myself, “this is why we are revising.” Edward Albee mentioned in an interview that he wrote poetry until he asked himself if he felt like a poet, and he did not, so he turned to other things. Do I feel like a poet? The answer is, oddly, after all these years, no. It always rather surprises and delights me that I can write poetry. It seems exterior, in a way, an achievement rather than a compulsion. Isn’t that curious, after all this time?

What do I actually feel like? I feel like a boy who walks through the woods.

Drank jasmine tea like a camel in the desert. Second round steeps in the kitchen below.