February 27, 2015

Finished In the Paramount Hotel.

Perpetual dull headache from the sinus clog, which itself is perpetual.

Almost immovable with lethargy.


My golden crocus unfolds, heedless of a week of bad weather.

Videos on the Internet of The Islamic State destroying the sacred heritage of Mesopotamia. Wired the way I am, this of all such images strikes at my gut, makes me howl with rage and despair. We set our own nest ablaze, but there is no proof we are the phoenix.

AABB gives a pile of money to a lesbian theater collective. Their work was not good, but one of our members fights so hard to make sure only women will get money from us, on the ground– to which she clings no matter how many time it is refuted by actual data on the page– that women have been given a raw deal in the theater. I open my Dramatists Guild Directory to FORTY FOUR all female or female-first theaters or production opportunities. And not one which so much as uses the word “male” or “men.” It no longer embarrasses us to be politically passionate about the aggrandizing of our own selves, about anointing our own prejudices as sacred.

Leonard Nimoy is dead.

Cold bright day. It deserved better than I gave it.

February 26, 2015

Padding around in the snow before dawn snapping photos, though photos of snow with a flash do not work very well. Crows were calling from high up. Maybe they’d found something. Maybe they were greeting the sun. Snow fell thick and beautiful all the night, and I slept in the windowy front bedroom so to have the illusion of its falling all around me.

First attempt at off-book last night did not cover me with glory.

Met E, the new owner of the Studios, yesterday morning, being led around by gorgeous Luiz. Who knows what they will do, how long I will stay? He had a money-grubbing aura. Met also my new neighbor in the studio, Elizabeth, and her daughter Maddie. Elizabeth grew up in West Clare–and could be Mrs Markham’s sister-- one of my favorite places on earth. She picked up a copy of Bird Songs of the Mesozoic years ago, loved it, copied parts of it down in her diary, sought me in Asheville in 2010 but didn’t find me, moved here, took a studio at Phil Mechanic so to be beside me. So she said. I was thinking the whole time “Jesus, I hope actually meeting me is not a let-down.” When L used the studio last he blew the circuit breakers and just left, so I came in to outdoor freeze condition. I didn’t test to see whether oil paint freezes or not. Met the new owner, fled into the morning.

A great racket of crows overhead.

February 25, 2015

Blue dawn, striped as an agate.

Did something I’ve never done before: went to the Y and did not work out, but merely sat in the steam room. But I feel great right now. The gents in the steam room were talking about real estate. One man was looking for a small place for his son, to start him out in life.

I leave the night rehearsals staggering with exhaustion. Partially it is by dint of having a day job; partially it is because I am the oldest person in the room, probably by at least a decade. Yesterday I was the youngest. You blink and the world changes.

February 24, 2015

Snow blanket. My yard lay perfect and untouched by any foot when I walked out, but for the track of a single mouse skirting the edge of the drive.  Now that I’ve pushed the trash and recyclables out onto the street, all pretense of purity is gone. The falling snow is sweet, though, soft and hushed, almost blue in the tangled night light of the city. Fully awake now that I’ve been plowing around in it.

February 23, 2015

Ghastly dreams before waking, very vivid. Four people had been mutilated horribly by their lovers, and I was part of a committee to decide which atrocity was the worst.

Church, meeting, rehearsal, rehearsal was how yesterday went until I dragged home to see the end of the Oscars. Amadeus rehearsals feel at once massive and unhurried, quite unlike anything I’ve experienced. Great conviviality among the cast members. Constanza makes the treats mentioned in the play, and we gobble them up. One of our cast members is autistic and left because things were too confusing for him. I’m still in the stage of ignoring things until they miraculously fall into place, as I know they shall.

A day not quite “off,” but with little enough to do that I can catch my breath.

February 22, 2015

Coughed myself into dry heaves this morning at waking. That was new. It was also kind of funny. For all that, feeling perkier than I have in many a day.

Am not on my way with S to Carrboro to hear my play, alas. That means four other duties may be done.

February 21, 2015

 One of those skyscraping apartment houses in Dubai is on fire.

The light through the north window s the color of dishwater.

Great progress on the New York play.

Almost unbearably rich dream of Sligo. I was sleeping in a loft in a church, one wall of which was the Rose Window. I wandered the tangled streets at night, having adventures. The essential city of dreams.