April 29, 2017

Up early, coffee and a little writing, a visit to the farmers’ market, then a good, brief session at the studio. Stopped homeward to buy a blue nikko hydrangea. While planting it I noted that of the five hydrangeas I’ve planted on this property, one prospers and another sports three or four leaves on the tip of its twigs. Last summer, hot and dry, caused considerable mortality among the new plantings. Doubt this year I’ll plant anything beyond May. Good news about Peniel, which I refuse to believe. Put it in my hands or keep it to yourself. The universe who cried “Wolf!” Looking out the tiny window as the sky grays. If the day should end in rain, it would be perfect.

Practicing tunes–at least one of which I hate-- for a brief concert at the Orthodox center tonight.

April 28, 2017

Driving onto campus as a hawk, flying just above the level of my car, made his way into the near woods with a squirrel in his talons. Made this into a blessing.

Baby shower for A and M at one of those beer gardens along the river. Wonderful fun. I pass them every day and barely notice they’re there. Large, happy crowds. It really doesn’t take that much to make people content, at least for a time.  A sign by the river pleads, “No hank-panky on the banky.”

Everyone at the university crashing forward, the end in sight.

April 27, 2017

Most beautiful rococo pastel sky at dawn. I went to the Y and ran on the treadmill, watching before me a man with the most beautiful back and the most beautiful sky-blue T-shirt upon it. Shapely men at Starbuck’s. Drinking coffee, reading Woolf, noting them.

My tulip seedling’s leaves are covered with a golden down that shines quite metallic in a certain slant of light. Still waiting for it to lift into the sky.

S thinks I’m going the right direction with. Meyer Wolfshein; that effort is, therefore, practically in “automatic.”

April 26, 2017

Three attacks of cramps last night, the second, prolonged and agonizing, maybe the worst one yet. I could feel my heels being dragged toward my ass, and I could not stop it. So angry the cats didn’t know if my screams were pain or fury. Woke exhausted because of them, but did good work at the studio, bought two new roses and planted them in big rich compost-y holes. Napped until late afternoon, alas, but there is time to do a little writing. The drive to Waynesville was hell for traffic yesterday, but, stopped dead in the road, one had time to contemplate the unbelievable beauty of the after-many-rainstorms spring mountains. A little rabbit has his form under the low roof of my hostas.

April 25, 2017

Sweet spring day. No class. Hit the gym for the first time since before Venice. Sit in the empty café writing grievous poems, weeping without restraint, glad that nobody but me goes there at that time of the darkness. The rain slackens and the sun comes out. Accidentally encounter TD at the High Five, feel hatred for him, a little, because of so many things before me in his life, even things that will bring him no benefit. Spade into mush another round of bamboo shoots. Finish planting all the annual seeds, though toward the end “planting” meant tossing handfuls of seed in underdeveloped dirt to give them a fighting chance. An ounce or so of forget-me-not seed could inseminate the world. Good news about Peniel; the press I sent it to adores it, but wants to offer it to St Julien first to give it a better chance. I say yes. I say yes repeatedly and inevitably. No one says yes more than I. I should be further along every single road.

April 24, 2017

Sweet cast for Gatsby. I’ve enjoyed the company in the last two shows I was in.  Left early for rehearsal, but because of the rain there was no highway construction, so arrived forty minutes early, listened to the radio in my car. Horrible night, though, some image or thought tilting me over into darkness. During the ride home I heard myself whispering The Lord has delivered me to the demon over and over as a kind of mantra. Strangely, it brought comfort.

April 23, 2017

Remarkable, Noah-evoking volume of rain. It started late last night and continues to this hour, at the edge of light, though the night roar has become a whisper. Good for my gardens, unless it was enough to be bad for them. I hope my fornicating opossums have shelter.

The sink on our level of the studio is constantly getting clogged, and what is clogging it and making it stink is food–remnants of salad, rice, wet tea leaves. Only one of us ever eats there, and when she wanders about tragically declaring the sink is clogged again, I want to ask “Why do you think that is?” It’s hard to believe she hasn’t made the connection between her salad floating on a pool of stagnant water in the sink and a clogged drain. Long ago, when Celia was doing the same thing and I outlined what happened I was accused of “mansplaining.”
Mansplaining is when I man gives a woman instructions or information which she needs, but resents needing.

Novel shapes drew me out into the garden in the still-driving rain. I knew what they were. Rain had brought spears of new bamboo out of the ground, six, ten feet away from the original stand, as had happened last year. Some of them were two feet long and had not been there at all on Friday. There I was, hacking away at them with a hoe while they were still tender enough to hack. The yard would be a bamboo thicket in five years if I allowed it.