January 31, 2015
  
A Facebook friend posted a horrible video of a child being brutally beaten by its mother. The video spoke for itself, but my friend added a comment about how it was never right and always assault to strike a child, etc. I disagreed with her in my mind, thinking of untempered brats I have known, and  remembering how we had been brutalized by our father from time to time and came out all right. But then I thought again. I can’t speak for my sister, but I’m not at all sure I “came out all right,” nor that our father’s brutality wasn’t the cause of it if I didn’t. I‘ve never struck anybody, so the purely social part of the equation balances. On a few occasions I’ve come very close, but deep-seated aversion kept me from it. I’m counting that as good. I have, however, defended myself, and am able at that. The problem is that when I think of my father, in those first seconds of remembrance before I am able to guide my thoughts, I think of the times he struck me or my sister (did he strike mother? Not in front of us), and of the thought that went through my head each time when I was big enough to make good on it: wondering whether I should fight back and knock him to the ground, as I knew I could, and end the reign of terror. Each time I hesitated, not because I was afraid of him, but because I couldn’t anticipate how the world would change in the moment after. I actually pitied him a little, for his brutality was never associated with correction or passion or drunkenness or the things you read of in novels, but always with our “getting smart,” with our contradicting him or failing to obey or to act in a way that was, he imagined, respectful. Someone should have told him that was the thing most counterproductive to respect. I must force myself past that ugly remembrance to get to any other memory, happy or dull. One time in particular: a high school boy by then, I was standing at the head of the basement stairs and had said, I suppose, something that irritated him. He came wheeling from behind the refrigerator and punched me in the face. I thought, “I can pull you down the basement steps and make sure you never walk again.” But I didn’t. The cold, cruel thing is that the moment keeps boiling up in my mind because something inside me is not sure I made the right choice. Into death he took the idea that he was an excellent father. In fairness, sometimes he was. Writing those words made me think of a time when I had pneumonia, and he was told to fill the bathroom with steam and make me sit in it, to clear my lungs. He sat with me, holding me from behind on the toilet seat. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4, but I remember distinctly, clearly, indelibly his kindness and solicitude at that moment, the touch that almost never came unless it was a fist, and my wondering if I had two fathers, one of whom I had never seen before, who was kind and sweet and cared for me, and held me in the steam while I got better, who now had come to take the place of the other one, and all would be beautiful forever.

In Z’s waiting room a radiant 4 or 5 year old moved over beside me to show me the games he was playing on his father’s I-pad. His social skills were perfect, confiding and gracious, making sure I understood what was going on with the Roadrunner and the Monster Trucks. We had our time together, then his father came out of his appointment and beheld us, shoulder to shoulder, peering into the screen. Dad’s face was perfectly torn between panic and the desire not to panic lest his son be warped in some way by it. I decided not to help him. In other ages I would have been thanked for keeping his son–whom he had left alone–amused and safe. I am not sure we have the right to all our paranoia.

Sleeping without medication now, but there are still spasms of coughing during which I must lean against something to keep from falling down.

Ordered giant horsetails. In one sentence the lady told me they wouldn’t be hardy in my area and that I should not put them directly in the ground lest they take over everything.

January 30, 2015

Woke grumpy. Tired of coughing, of the stuffy head, of the bad dragging on and the imagined good delaying. Plenty to do in the small hours of the morning, little will, today, to do it. Early morning BBC droning on about fridges in India.
   
Spoke too soon, tired of Neil Gaiman.
   
Go back to bed and start again?

January 29, 2015

Going on a liquid fast to address multiple digestive problems, Give the system time to reboot.

Trembling day after day with a kind of controllable mania.

Reading Neil Gaiman, one of the few contemporary fiction writers I can read for pleasure, it turns out.

S visits once since the New Year. Everything he does is clean and right. To leave then behind and move forward into now is clean and right.

My sister writes that when my uncle was dying he woke up and said, “I saw Marion.” Sobbed for a time.

The yard is a speckle of pale purple crocus, the first fruits of my fall plantings.

Let me find the treasure that is hidden.

Let me go in dark places unharmed.

   

January 28, 2015

Bitter cold, hard stars low in the sky. I was on my way to the gym but the bitterness turned me back. Later.

Instant coffee with evaporated milk, what I had for my mornings all through graduate school. I liked it. Why did I abandon it?

Class on The Duchess of Malfi, that cruel, brilliant diamond of a play. On that day I thought it was the single greatest play ever written, and the class agreed with me. I had them wrong on the first day. They are engaged 95%. One boy pounded his desk and thanked me for saying things like, “This is the greatest thing in the world.” I’m a better teacher now than ever before. I have not yet thought of retirement. When do I get tired and forgetful?

   

January 27, 2015

Sidney posts photos of Broadway and 85th buried under snow. Dark and dry here, though plenty cold enough.

Woke an hour into sleep with tremendous cramps, leg and chest. Crashed through the house like a screaming cripple, unable to stand up, unable to breathe properly, trying to get to a water source. Then it was over. I react to hiccoughs and cramps with blind rage, thinking of them as wholly gratuitous. But I don’t listen to my body, to know if it is thirsty or tired.

Thoughts would not come into my head yesterday.

Judging new plays and productions for AABF. One of our number likes anything that’s by or about women, regardless of actual quality. At the last meeting she suggested that our contest be open only to women, and not to men. I said. “No.” Later on she asked me, with what I thought was sincerity, “why?” She’s maybe just anxious that women get their fair share, with “fair share” having nothing to do with present achievement. If we get a hundred submissions from men and thirty from women– though we specifically solicit on women’s and lesbians’ noticeboards–she assumes it’s because we’ve discriminated in some ultra-subtle way. It never crosses her mind that but thirty women felt like submitting. If we have ten prizes to give, six should be to women, five because they’re half the race, the extra one to make up for evil treatment throughout the centuries.

January 26, 2015

Complete rewrite of See Where Capella with Her Golden Kids. Someone might actually want to do it now. I opened it looking for something else, but clearly its moment had come.

Taking care of DJ’s fish I returned to 62. Will has replaced gutters and downspouts that I never replaced, dug trenches that I neglected to dig. His having the house it better. I think it is happier with a family in it. This house likes me as that one never did. I came to it in too bad a time, and our relationship never recovered.

Panic at receiving a new schedule for Amadeus. The old schedule was so wonderfully without conflicts that I should have suspected it from the first. The new is– undoable, but the stage manager says it’s not a problem and it will all work out. I say praise.

Monday morning with hours yet before I need to be at school. Again, praise.

January 24, 2015

Strode out on the porch at 4 AM. The water was dripping and splashing in the downspouts like living things.

My time with Z was the highlight of Friday. I did practically nothing else, now that I think of it. The awful shadow of futility kept me from working, though it seems to have lifted this morning, so here I am. The things I hoped for have not come. The things I dreaded have not come.

Chit chat among my long-ago classmates reminded me that Pretty Boy Floyd had a hideout on the corner of Crystal and Income, which I passed every day of sixth grade. Very cool. He was arrested in Akron for killing a policeman. This was years before I was born, but the glamor lingered.