November 30, 2018

Some time given over each day to locating the new place the cats have chosen to defecate. This is a disorder I didn’t expect so soon.

Tumultuous days. J with Title IX proves an unexpected ally, or rather proves that justice is her goal rather than the automatic preferment of females. She helps me rebuff my “anonymous” attackers (they were never anonymous to her) and advises me that legal action may be the best recourse. I assume, as I always do, that the attack is over, and legal action may not be necessary, however much it is deserved. Both sides revile her, one for doing too little, the other for doing too much. That I’m not fired–or even inconvenienced–infuriates one side. That I am bothered by this at all infuriates me. I told her I understood how she could not win, and will not add to her afflictions. Attacked also by a local Trans woman (and former student, whom I evidently failed) who took correction of a personal error on her part as an attack on transgendered people everywhere. I told her she should learn the meaning of “transphobic” before she used it in a discussion that had already left her in the dust. She went ballistic. She has the charming idea that she can get me in trouble, get me fired, end my reign of terror over those in my power, and that it won’t matter that everything is a lie, because it is the age of Me Too and the woman must be believed.

Sang for World Aids Day and the hanging of the Quilt at the Masonic Lodge. Sparse, dedicated crowd. Useful chorus rehearsal, Barry in the next seat furiously refusing to acknowledge my existence. People don’t realize how quickly determination becomes absurdity.

I’m fighting with too many people. I’d let it be a lesson to me if I had been the active agent in any of the encounters. I merely turn and strike back after repeated blows. Something I do infuriates people. Certain people. An onlooker may see me doing it on purpose. I don’t think so.

Semester coming to a close faster than I anticipated. I have met with my last class. I think it is all well and everyone learned joyfully, but wait for the complaints to come in from one who was looked at funny or thought she heard a wrong tone from the front of the class. It is like China’s Cultural Revolution, Rule by Those with the Least Understanding. I do sort of see the attraction. How wonderful to explain away starvation because the dish was not set before you in the way you had imagined.

November 26, 2018

Ancient personal messages popping up on my Face Book account. That it, too, should be haunted would be no surprise. Hours spent in High Five reading Robert Penn Warren.

November 25, 2018

Naomi Tutu, our latest addition to the clergy, gave the benediction in Tswana. She said, “You may not understand, but God will.”

November 24, 2018

Bright and dingy alternation.

On the drive from Georgia I tormented myself for a while thinking of all the clothes my mother made me– knitted sweaters, shirts, jackets– which I scorned and which I would give anything to wear now. Many of them were quite terrible. I should have praised them and worn them anyhow. I was too young. I didn’t know what I would one day wish I had done. If I had only not squirmed when she tried to measure me. If I had not wept with embarrassment when she tried to get me to wear them to school. One does everything wrong.

Freddie Mercury died today.

Tremendous full moon in the morning light. Long talk with Colin at High Five. He is the one earnestly writing and reading Proust and Rilke in the mornings at the café. I gave him a book, and so he knows me a little. He is writing a Proustian epic wherein he turns his unpublished  poems into fiction. He wants to found a Press when he gets his finances in order. He is both very sweet and socially maladroit–probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. He is more attractive than you think when you’re brushing by with your coffee, trying not to be noticed. I was grateful, after all, for his company.

Actually got some writing done in the hotel room. Transcribing now. . . .

November 23, 2018

Gray day after Thanksgiving, Maud sitting on the keyboard, making it hard to type. Lived in the Hyatt Place in Alpharetta for two nights. I like it there, feel vaguely at home. There’s a stair at the back that leads to a cinema, which I used one evening to see Bohemian Rhapsody, to which I was looking forward but which turned out to be mildly boring. Tried another evening to see the new Harry Potter spin-off, but the guy behind the counter (who looked like he loved everything Potter) said it was horrible and not to waste my money. Thanksgiving merry. Saw the new fire pit, the new pond, beat all three nephews in their turn at chess. Trying to remember the last time I’d played chess. We played on the set I got one Christmas when I was a child. Caught up on lives and projects. D & D have girlfriends who seem right for them, and careers taking shape more conventional than their uncle might have wished for them.  I was a pretty conventional kid moving secretly toward the Wild. The stories of most are the other way around. Daniel has a dog, who lingers in memory as a dumb, sweet kid, down near the floor. The story is that Daniel wanted to move with Michaela to Colorado, but David could not live without him, and told him so, so now they’re all getting a house together. What a beautiful story! I hope all the ends of that are joy and mercy.  Thought more than I needed to about my blackguard student, considering how one determined liar can do a lot of damage. I believe I am almost finished thinking about that now. Time is short, and must be used only for the best.

November 21, 2018

Calm Wednesday, preparing for the drive to Atlanta.

It’s pretty certain my attacker is Z, from many classes, who, ironically, I thought of as a kind of pet, whose always-radical but not always adept poetry I fostered and encouraged. Completely blindsided. I knew it was she beating on my house, but I’d put that down to an undergraduate prank, essentially endearing. Before all the gods I do not know how I settled in her mind like this. Never having done or said or thought any of the things I’m accused of doing or saying or thinking, I search my conscience for some crumb that might have led to this disastrous road. Emotional imbalance on her part is the explanation, but there is still the question of how it chose me as its obsession. I make the mistake of placing these things, for a little while, at the center of my life. I’ll have 4 hours on the road to Atlanta to mull it over. Lori confides that the same thing happened when Trans students invented a campaign against her, which someone, for a while, had to take seriously. How much energy are we meant to spend dealing with our students’ emotional imbalances? Are these accusations ever legitimate? Perhaps I need to hear of a legitimate one, to leaven the mocking anger in my heart. I still must deal with the observation that a handful of people hated or hate me to the point of public demonstration, and I do not know exactly why. Or even approximately why, other than that I have spoken the truth to them. On the other hand, I do not recall a very public or very vehement demonstration of love. Maybe the lovers are subtler. Maybe the fault is in me, in which case it is also hidden from me.

But I feel better this morning than I did last night.

November 20, 2018

Four bears, one big and three adolescent, tumbling through garbage cans on Graceland as I drove home from choir. They were cute, but I might not have thought so had I been a pedestrian. Some crisis approaches with the bears, and I will be sad when it happens.

Unexpected ally in my sadly renewed fight with the harpy from my former class, Jill, the Title IX director, who is on my side. It is just for her to be so, but I didn’t expect it, and so I revise my attitude. I can understand being vilified for a stand one actually has taken, but to be vilified for statements never made, for attitudes and convictions antithetical to those one actually possesses is strange indeed. All could have been avoided through inquiry and patient dialog, but something in the present atmosphere makes it seem better to explode in instant indignation– whether righteous or absurd doesn’t seem to matter. To be indignant is itself righteous. Reason and Truth have a hard time maneuvering around Indignation. Had to block my first friend on Facebook, who based an extended tirade against me on a misreading of a sentence. Suggesting she go back and understand the sentence didn’t help, somehow. Some of us do not have time for this. Some of us have work to do. On a note: I realize that the woman who was running up to my house at night and beating on the window is the same one who cannot give up her baseless hatred of me. Hope her wasted time never comes back to her. But, I myself have hated with a pure white flame. I believed my hatred based on fact, but perhaps it didn’t look that way from all sides. So, I am not going to pretend to too much innocence.