October 30, 2019

Flu shot, and subsequent body ache that everyone says is not the flu. Downpour followed by downpour. I want to go to my studio, but there’s no reason to assume water is not gushing from the ceiling. Rehearsal, drinks, everyone’s problems and victories, drinks, and home.

October 29, 2019

Inexplicable need to be on an airplane, right now, heading out.

Sent Diving into the Moon to a contest in Vermont. Read over the first few pages. Lovely.

Found Ellen. Listened to an interview she did on the radio. She seems to have settled into being a successful location manager for films. She was always meticulous. I miss her. Hearing her voice made me miss her more. Her interviewer was irritating as hell.

So, one time I have felt sorry for Trump: when he was booed at the World Series.

October 28, 2019

Panic about Night, Sleep. Send out a premature and, at the same time, long-delayed announcement. Turns out it’s print-on-demand, and Carlos had allowed his attention to drift elsewhere before the demand was assessed. Believe me, I demanded. To my questions he responds:

David,
We distribute world-wide with Ingram. It will be on Amazon, Abes Books, Barnes & Noble etc etc. Usually about 200 stores will advertise it
and Ingram gives me monthly accounting of where it sold the last quarter, which I will send to you. This takes about one month after publication
to get on all the book store sites. Books, at that point, are print and sent out within two days usually. So for about one month just tell people to
buy from our website, after that let them know they can buy it or order it just about anywhere. We will also provide a sell sheet that is PDF that
you can send to people. Sometimes authors prefer to send us their email list and we will send out the sell sheets and marketing for you. Let me
know how you want to handle that, it doesn't cost you anything for us to do it. Other marketing is up to you, readings at bookstores usually sell
well especially if they people know you there. We arranged a reading at City Lights in Sylva that did well but the author was from WCU. Let me know
if you want us to try to arrange any bookstores. Thanks!
Carlos

Unnecessary sleepless middle hours of the night. But, I didn’t know anything. Communication is key. Read the book over in the night to see if I were going to be embarrassed, and I’m not.

Outstanding playwriting class. Introduced Kabulki and No and Bunraku

October 27, 2019

Went to the Magnetic last night to see Camp and the others for the second time. Liked it all better the second time, except for A's, which was even worse than I thought it was. Serena is now Blair and sailing the tossing seas of gender identity. Sat in a row of gay boys, including K H, who introduced himself as a playwright. I hadn’t revealed which play was mine (maybe they guessed) in order to hear their reactions, which were gratifying. They agreed that mine was the “best written.” That is somehow different from “the best,” but I’ll take it. No one in the room was there because of me. No friends, no followers, no students, no one ever once from UNCA. I make friends there, and they come away thinking my work was the best, but somehow I have not gathered a cadre, or sustained the interest of people who generally seem to be my friends. I suppose I repel, or at least don’t encourage, such a thing, but you’d think people who know me would come out anyhow, if nothing else, out of curiosity. I feel anonymous in my own village. Talked with MP afterwards, who is as sad as I as the direction of NCS. Someone is right now generating new additional (I almost said “fresh”) versions of Jeeves so they’ll have something to stage.

But this has been a blinding brilliant blue autumn day. I let the state of my throat give me an excuse from church, went to High 5, where I got the next section of Sam-sam longhanded out. Then went to the studio and worked long, hard, and well. I worked long, hard, and well despite the fact that my studio was flooded and most of my big finished canvases were ruined, or at least compromised in some way. Maybe they’ll dry without warping. Maybe I’ll toss them in the dumpster without caring too much. Everything is prelude. In the past the flood has seeped in through the walls. This time it poured down from the ceiling. The trash can and other upright vessels were full of brownish water.  Add to that the annual sickening influx of stinkbugs. One of the men whom Stephen describes as drunken frat boys who manage the property came by and promised to fix everything. “That would be nice,” says I, like an idiot. Closed my eyes to all that, and painted, and was happy.

Carlos admits the Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers is delayed (by three years, by my count) by cash flow problems. I promise to write a check. I don’t know if I could sustain the shock of actually once being paid for my work.

October 26, 2019

Dark of the morning. My oldest computer gave up the ghost last night. Went to see From the Red Room, the anthology of horror stories at the Magnetic, of which mine was one. It was quite entertaining. Only one of four plays failed, and mine, Camp, was good enough that I could drive home in the darkness worry-free. I wonder if I’m still capable of the outpouring of energy that’s involved in actually performing a show. Rodney’s play, about a coven of vampires luring victims, was wonderfully inventive, gory and funny at once.

October 25, 2019

Have begun transporting books and cherished objects from my office at the university, to make a heavy task lighter by division. I find satisfaction in it, bring far-faring emotions back home, within reach. The University is going to feel bad if I don’t develop more regrets about retirement than I seem to have now. Chat with WK in the Fresh Market parking lot, remembering when we were the bad boys of Asheville art.

October 24, 2019

Sobering thought: the widely lamented Elijah Cummings was a year younger than I.

Early to High Five, where I added many pages to Sam-sam. I had been feeling weak and breathless, more than usual, and that worried me. But unexpected bulbs arrived, and I had to deal with them. Planted peonies (how many peonies can one possibly desire?), anemone, tiger lily, and tore out the vast stand of cosmos that had taken over the front garden. At the end of all that, I was not exhausted, but rather energized and ebullient. As I worked, a clutch of crows chased a hawk with a pure white belly across my yard.