July 30, 2019

Haircut from a kid who wore a shirt printed with roses, who came from Winston-Salem to Asheville for a girl. He said, “Of course it didn’t work out.” He was maybe 26 and had dyed his hair exactly the color of mine. I wanted to say, “Just wait a while.” He introduced me to the “Acro Society,” people who do acrobatics as a hobby, I gathered, to whom a more recent girlfriend was going to dedicate her energies as a masseuse.  Found a way to resurrect The Handsomest Man in the World. The $$ I have left over in my SECU account at the end of the month is the amount I used to get paid.

Thought of Jeff Rackham and his kindness through the day.

July 29, 2019

Coffee again with Bill A. More talk of days gone by and days to come. Received a call (7 hours after the agreed-upon time, but oh well) from the “Title IX expert,” who turns out to be from Connecticut. I’d been fairly precise on my written complaint, so not much of substance was added, but she seemed a reasonable and open-minded person, and I, for the first time, felt heard. Yet another bison lumbered his weight up off my chest. When I think that UNCA actually had to pay her for this, my gratitude increases. The only thing she didn’t do that she ought to have done is talk to the faculty. They are the ones that feel the reign of terror. They would have backed me up ferociously. Maybe I don’t need, this time, to be backed up ferociously.  I praise God for this. I feared it would blacken the last year of my career.

Wrote the last page of Jason of the Apes.

July 28, 2019

Rose and sat in the café but wrote nothing memorable. I was feeling sick. Urgent visit to the restroom while I was there. Came home, lay down, feeling sick. Circe lay on my arm and we slept. Around noon I felt well, and went out and did some gardening in the matchlessly beautiful summer day. Still felt, and feel, sickness and health warring inside me, relieved each time wellness comes out ahead. Purple flowers teeming with black butterflies.

July 27, 2019

Shoulder still in a bad way. Vodka helps. Wrote on the last chapter of Jason at High 5. Talked with Peter C. Some time at the studio, but fairly pervasive body ache drove me away. A big man came in and we talked about Gregorian chant. Watched my rabbit for a long time from the back porch. He is extraordinarily red, like the hair of ginger man.

July 26, 2019

The most astonishing, gratifying, unexpected email appeared in my University box:

Garikai "Kai" Campbell
Jul 24, 2019, 9:06 AM (2 days ago)
to me

Dr. Hopes, 

I am sorry that this is our first interaction, but I am the new provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. I have been updated about your very serious concerns about the process surrounding the handling of a recent Title IX complaint. I am aware that your concerns were brought to the attention of President Roper at the System Office. We, UNCA, have taken the charge of investigating our process very seriously and have brought in outside expert counsel to look into things. 

This person is a Title IX subject matter expert from another institution and the review that this person is undertaking involves talking with a number of employees to get a better understanding of our processes and procedures. The hope is that this expert can speak with you tomorrow between 3:00 and 4:00, either in person, by Skype or by phone. 

If you are interested in speaking, please let me know which you would prefer and if the latter, how best to set that up. 

The review will conclude with a follow-up to both you and Dr. Roper. I am running now, but will try to follow up by phone a little later today if we can't connect via email. 

Please do feel free to call or email me with any questions, and I will do my best to have those questions answered.
Best,
Kai

It is the first indication I ever had that anyone had heard a syllable of my crie de coeur. Unfortunately I read the mail too late to participate in the way suggested, but I emailed and phoned my gratitude and willingness to participate in any way now possible.  I don’t know why this needed to be a surprise. I have awakened almost every morning fighting this issue away from my consciousness, fighting the shade this insane unfairness and destructiveness cast on my hours. I could have been at some measure of peace had I known I hadn’t been ignored. The unexpected effect was of a bison rising up from my chest and letting me breathe free, palpable and considerable relief. Who knows how it will turn out? The person’s being a “Title IX subject matter expert” is a little ominous, and suggests I should prepare myself for contact with a True Believer. Nevertheless, someone other than me has been made to worry a little. This is one of the few incidents in my life where I have been absolutely in the right, and I must keep faith until the end.
Eventful day in other ways. I cleaned out and re-ordered the tool shed, broke down the table and various storage boxes that had been on the east porch since last Memorial Day. I hacked the bamboo away that had been overhanging the elderberries, proving that bamboo will surrender to a handsaw. Weeded a little less than yesterday. Fell when I was weeding– a rather prolonged and comic fall, I should have thought had I been looking on.  I suppose I should be grateful that my shoulder aches but is not broken.

And, I watched a raccoon climbing about in my towering pine.

July 25, 2019

Mother’s birthday. I’ll try to think as much about her today as I can. She has been gone 45 years. It is cruel and wrong. D mentions that her father, my mother’s little brother, never recovered from her death.

Yesterday I took advantage of the cool and gave the world one of the banner days in the history of weeding. I was almost inexhaustible, though my back tells the story this morning. Most of the needing-to-be-weeded ground was at one point cultivated and mulched, so things were easier than they might have been. One finds things that one didn’t expect– seedlings of native hibiscus, a pink garden phlox that must have imported itself from somewhere, forgotten acanthus that just needed excavation from its roof of vines. Two or three more such days and the weed issue will be solved.

Thought of this: It puzzled me why I didn’t get a job my first year having completed my Ph.D. Then the credentials department at Syracuse made a mistake and sent me a copy of my packet, with all the records and recommendations in it. I opened it and read the recommendations that I was not supposed to read, and discovered that my adviser had been sabotaging me, but not completely out of malice. He was a fine dissertation director, and I learned much from him. At one point he said, “I think we can schedule the defense now.” I said, “So, I can go ahead and put together a final copy?” His answer was “Yes.” No one typed his own dissertation (this was 1979) because of the footnotes and corrections, etc, that are not too much of a problem on a computer but suicide-inducing on a typewriter. I was a grad student, working at a liquor store, and the going rate for typing a dissertation was $250. This panicked me. I mentioned it to my dad, and he offered to pay. You’d have to know the history of my dad and me to know how unexpected and wonderful this was. So, I hired this lady (forget her name, but have a vivid picture of her in my mind. She looked like Rosemary Harris, Spiderman’s aunt in the first movie). Had my defense, which was actually kind of fun. (Side note: I am NEVER late. But I was late to my Dissertation Defense because I had it marked down for the wrong day, and I had to run from my apartment to the U, and arrived pouring sweat). At the end my dear Professor said, “Well, now, I think we can make the final revisions and get this printed up.” My heart sank through the floor. It was all done and paid for, and he wanted revisions. Actually, he wanted one revision, that he had hinted at in the past, but kept saying “you’ll figure it out” when I asked him what it was. In the following days I brooded on this. It wasn’t just the money. Since my dad had paid for it, had participated in my education at that point, the typed dissertation was a sacred object to me. Also, I thought the desired revision was petty and arbitrary. Today, of course, it would be the effort of a moment. I decided that I would rather leave without my degree than do this. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to explain my thoughts or my emotions, but simply said to my committee that I would not revise and would leave without the degree. All of them but my director, were on my side, and so, somewhat to my astonishment, I won the day and got the degree. The rest is history. Do these things cast shadow on your succeeding life? I’m sure they do. Do I owe a debt on this or am I owed one? To paraphrase Viola in Twelfth Night, “Time, you must untie this knot, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie.”

Dreams last night included B, twice. In each case he drove a car too close to people who were standing along the street. The first time everyone jumped back in time. The second time there was a wall or a rail, and the last person in line had his legs severed. B looked back from the speeding car, smiling.

July 24, 2019

One of my colleagues brags on Facebook that she will not allow debate in her classroom on certain convictions she has related to gender and race. I want to respond “you must resign,” but fear the world would hear my words and not hers. The University no longer presents itself as a forum for Free Speech. We are a tree forsaking its roots. We cannot stand as we were, but become a mouthpiece for various fashionable dogmas. How can I convince my colleagues that one dogma is, in the formal sense, no different from another, and equally in need of debate and scrutiny? That to shut off debate is to admit to not being sure you have the truth. I clearly do not have the power to fight this one, having been bitten in the ass by this very debate. Perhaps I should thank the stars that I will be exiting before it becomes the necessary fight. I want to stand in the Quad crying “Alas!”