September 27, 2017

Christine here last night to discuss the production of Night Music over pale wine. Discussion of two different play productions, me correcting proofs on a book– two days of what I thought my whole life would be.

Kent State on the Vietnam War series last night. I was there. It is still a shock, and the shock is made deeper and more hateful by the discoveries of time. Also, Nixon, who I had thought was a smart man blundering into a series of unhappy mistakes, was actually evil and crooked from the first. People said so; I should have listened. He may have been even more evil than Trump. Trump is a stampeding elephant; Nixon was a viper in the grass.

Uncovered unrevised poems from Budapest, Venice, Ireland, with no time today to look at them very deeply.

The day of travel is always upheaval.

September 26, 2017

Read-through of Uranium 235 in the basement of the Grove Arcade last night. I’d arrived early and had time for a leisurely glass of wine at one of the sidewalk bistros, a lovely ritual which I could pursue almost daily if I set my mind to it. Limpid, sweet, European. The read-through was satisfactory in most every way, and in some cases truly exciting. Several parts written for men are being taken by women–a personnel necessity, I suppose, but one of my pet peeves. Genders are NOT interchangeable, and the play will be marred by this. AG seems less agitated by it than I, so I’ll look the other way and let it drop. I am always grateful and amazed when people take their time to say my lines and actualize my vision.
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Tumultuous creative writing class yesterday. Chaos or excitement? I’m not sure. Superb poetry class, in which I introduced Shelley to general approbation. Today I need to get 58 things done in order to fly off to New York tomorrow. I tick them off one by one.

September 25, 2017

Rose ghostly early, caught up on bills, changed out the litter box that we were using when we moved here. Of course the new is not so good as the old.

No day goes by that our President does not embarrass himself and his country. Anyone else would have been impeached before Inauguration Day.

People getting into a sweat about what other people do during the National Anthem. Always a disaster to worry about other people’s symbolism.

My handsome leopard frog leaps into the pond with a squeak when I so much as walk out onto the terrace. This is disheartening. Who does he think dug the pond for him?

September 24, 2017

Theater last night, Lucia’s new play, one of the local pieces which I can, at last, unreservedly praise. The perspectives in the two person play are not equal– one is clearly right, the other clearly wrong– but the writing does not judge between them. Good performances, too. I have a peer. The people in the seat behind me said they saw Washington Place several times, and thought it was the best thing the Magnetic has yet done. AG paid for my drinks. Nevertheless, I was uncomfortable all evening, fearing that to enjoy myself would somehow be a betrayal of SS, not even sure anything I would do or say or feel were applicable to the situation. Wanted to offer my help as the theater moves forward, but ought I? WILL it move forward? No one was talking about “it,” and neither did I, unsure whether I was meant to know or not. But AG has not cancelled tomorrow’s rehearsal, so onward.

Thought of Aunt Barbara. When my cousin Diane, her daughter, was not much more than a baby, Barbara and Diane and I were blackberry picking. Diane (being a baby) was smashing berries and upturning her bucket and not doing it “right.” I wanted to point this out, so our outing would not be futile. I realized that Diane was Barbara’s daughter, and so she would be predisposed to be on her side, but also that I was right, and trusted an adult to be on the side of the right disinterestedly.  So I made my complaint. My aunt’s response was, “You are hateful.” That was more than sixty years ago–perhaps I was six-- but it is as vivid as this moment. I stopped at the time and considered, Am I hateful? Have I been hateful all day, or was it just that one comment? I realized I had been foolish to think that she would take my side against her baby, but I had thought she might, given the reasonableness of my stand. I wonder today if “You are hateful” was her final and permanent evaluation of me. I can’t think of much I did to encourage her to change her mind. She is alive. She can be asked, but I do not have the courage. Perhaps she does not remember at all. Who ever means to be hateful?

A little more planting. Watching the orange fish in the pond circle slowly, glowing torpedoes, growing without aid from me.

September 23, 2017

Office hours yesterday were taken up by visitation from three students, S, C, Quinn, who pretty much “just wanted to chat” and who each was a unique blessing, cheery and smart and candid. I counted them against great swaths of the Darkness, and they came out ahead. S was Exploration; C was Music; Q was Performance.

Hugely active day. I was digging in the garden before full light. Cultivated. Cleaned out about an acre of crabgrass (grown over mulch, so came out fairly easily with a rake), planted Dutch iris, German iris, double snowdrops. Lately I have been afflicted with tiredness coming on fairly quickly–one flight of stairs, a couple of heavy lifts– which does not involve pain or shortness of breath but simply a leaden, pervasive exhaustion. I thought this would get in the way of gardening.  The tiredness did come on, but did not grown any worse after the first iteration, so on I went. Less tired now than I would be at the end of an ordinary, not-much-physical-exertion day. After gardening I went to the studio and painted well, but no one was climbing the stairs, and I left a little discouraged. Second bout of gardening ended by rain.

Tried to buy a ticket to the Magnetic for tonight. The web page was out, and when I warned SS about it, he emailed back that he had been relieved by the Board of his duties. Impossible to know what to say on the basis of limited information, except that I had the impression he did 85% of the work done there, and what will they do now? Who is the Board and what were the issues? Asheville Arts organizations have a history of Boards turning on founding or dynamic directors, and it has seldom turned out well. Though, it must be said, sometimes. What does this mean for me, who have two plays scheduled there in the next four months, and hope for more in the future? What of him? Is there another theater to run? Should there perhaps be one? Can I get submerged in all that again? I did finally get a ticket for tonight– the piece looks boring online, so perhaps it is wonderful on stage–and maybe I’ll discover more. You never know whether to reach out to someone in this situation or to leave him alone. Even if it were me, I wouldn’t know which to prefer.

TG sends a touching blurb for Peniel. Realized I expect that, too, to fall through in some presently unforeseen way.

September 22, 2017

Woke the last two mornings with a recently rare sense of physical fullness and well–being.

Autumn. Cleaned the pond filter. Raked fallen branches out of the murky water, watching the dim silvery flash of fish beneath.

September 21, 2017

Summer turns its back. Autumn knocks at the door looking exactly like summer. The volunteer goldenrod are in misty gold bloom (the goldenrod I planted elsewhere having vanished long ago). I keep wanting to dig in the garden, but arrive home at the wrong time, or too tired.

Odd class day. There is one student (such students are always female in my experience) who has taken it upon herself a tone of imperious disrespect, like a judgmental older sister tired of my missing the mark all the time. If only you would do THIS we might learn something. . . if only you would explain the assignment in THIS way we might understand. A few days ago it was her literally shrieking at me, red-faced, at the end of class, “Grammar is subjective! Grammar is subjective!” I had told them that the grammar of a poem would reveal its meaning. Yesterday it was. . . I’m not sure what. . . the fact that we had a paper due on Monday, and that I had thought assigning the paper and giving the topic and putting it on the syllabus was enough. My program of underexplaining is quite deliberate, giving the student greatest leeway to exercise personal inspiration and individual slant, though I do therein admittedly neglect the student 1) too lazy to think for herself, 2) too frightened of doing it “wrong” to dare any personal commitment, 3) who has somewhere obtain a sense of entitlement whereby she comes away with a sense of grievance of things are not directed specifically to her expectations.  I also resent time spent in class talking about the conduct of the class. Just listen, and all will be well; I know from the testimony of generations that this is right. This student is unusually snotty about it all. After class Wednesday a crowd of my students followed me down the hall, and they did so to praise the class and my handling of it, to say it was their favorite, to say that they loved my lectures and were put off when missy redirected discussion to her anxieties, and what could be done about that? Two young women in the lobby said, “We can’t believe the disrespect she’s showing you.” I had interpreted the student’s attitude to grade-panic and perhaps mishandled humor; the class saw disrespect, and now I do too. We’ll see what onslaught comes today. I suggested that they could say things to her that I could not.