August 31, 2020

Dark of the last night of my 69th year. I have had birthdays before, but 70 seems momentous in ways they did not, the biblical three score and ten after which is mystery.  The idea of being “70" is not realized within me, a goal never anticipated, a reality without context. Three and a half more hours and I can never again call myself anything by “elderly.” It’s shocking. Kyle plans a socially distanced party for me here tomorrow night. I think that is sweet and kind and I know I will look back on it with joy. 

Felt the approach of the Infection last night, took the pills on time and in sufficient volume, so this bout is tiny, tiny, almost nothing. . . except something. . . an hour of fever, ten minutes of chills instead of days and days. One is meant to thank God that bad things were not worse.

A new bear visited this afternoon, young and leggy, maybe not much more than a cub, maybe out on his own for the first time. I’ll name him Orson, after Il Orso the Bear. His muzzle is darker than Bubba’s. He was not used to me, and when I opened the door to greet him he sped off into the bamboo. Clearly he’d not been in the garden before, because when he got to the middle of it, he panicked, thinking he was cornered and there were no exits. There are actually two in addition to the one he entered by, but he’ll discover all in time. I haven’t looked between their legs, but I say “he” because both bears’ behavior is what I’d call “boyish.” I wondered why there’s a fairly clear aisle between the bamboo and the elderberries, and I saw today that is the avenue of the bears. Maybe Orson will come to my party.

Lane has bobcats. I am sick with envy.  

Something made me think of the university. The inwardness of recent years made me forget the public energy of most of my tenure there, hauling kids downtown, putting on their plays for the people, acing, singing, sitting on committees, minding the business of all the arts in this municipality. If I don’t remember unless I work up to it, I wonder if anybody does. I wonder if I care. My name must be down in somebody’s notes somewhere.

 

August 30, 2020

I think I’ve put the final touches on Heroes All in Cloth of Gold. I think it is beautiful, but if it is beautiful only to me and only because I lived it remains to be seen. Wonder why I dropped it so close to its being accomplished ten, twenty years ago? I suppose because it couldn’t possibly be published, under my name, when I worked at the college. It might not make them uncomfortable, but it would me. My guess is no one suspects that a tenth of it happened. So many are dead, so many passed into the mists of distance and forgetfulness. 

 

August 29, 2020

Swedish madrigals on the CD. There’s a bit of everything in the world. 

Right-wing demonstration downtown, people from out of state with Confederate flags, tearing down (so it was reported) the veil from the Vance monument.  Basically a fizzle, as the locals pretty much ignored it. Looked at one way, the campaign against racism and prejudice has taken mighty steps back. Looked at another way, the crazies and bigots and troglodytes that always lingered have been emboldened by Trump to crawl out of the ditches. 

I have a page in TG’s beautiful new book, Sundays. You’re reading along and suddenly there you are, in a moment both recognizable and wholly not. Every time it is revealed that someone thinks of me, for any reason whatever, I am astonished. I try to keep the astonishment secret. CM relates on Facebook the experience of sitting beside me in class in college. I didn’t know there WAS such an experience. A truth about my life is that I have no sense of my presence in the lives of others, the impression I might be making. It usually comes out when I learn somebody has hated me with wolfish ferocity, and me without a clue. Sometimes, though, the opposite: the Lord be praised.

Praise to my beautiful garden. It is a little too orange. I’ll remember that when I’m planting in the fall 

 

August 28, 2020

A pure white mushroom appeared in the pothos bowl in the kitchen. Now under it appears a fine, thick dust of white spoors.

Watching TV last night I hit the “mute’ button because I heard something strange. It came from the open back glass doors, the weak spot of the house’s defenses during the summer. I expected and feared a bear (though they are not nocturnal around here), but it was the gray tomcat from next door, finally making Maud’s acquaintance. I couldn’t tell by Maud’s attitude whether she was interested or apprehensive. When I shut the door, the tomcat stood staring at me for a while, as though trying to figure out my motivations. He must have noticed how I never bother him when he’s stalking through my garden, or sleeping at royal ease upon the grass.

Fatboy groundhog has churned the area under the door to the shed into a fine dust. This has created a dustbath for the birds, who now resort there in considerable numbers. Ecology at work.

 Alden Thompson–he must be 3 now– came over with his mother and roamed the garden for a while. Young Alden was keenly interested in anything mechanical– far more interested in the pump than the pond, far more interested in the air conditioner (though it wasn’t on) than the garden. “Would you please not put that back on,” he said of the fake stone over the pump, because he wasn’t finished looking at it. He begged his mother for five more minutes to look at this or that. I wonder how much of a child’s life is spent negotiating for things they cannot actualize on their own. 

Almost on a whim, I applied for a Guggenheim, to continue to address my cycle of American history plays. I’d intended to apply to do something else, but the plays were in my mind so heartily when I sat down to do the application that I succumbed. Kind friends agreed to do the recommendations. Begging recommendations has kept my from applying for things like this in the past, but it turned out to be easy. I won’t get it. I don’t receive that sort of thing, typically, but the mere act of applying was enlightening. I counted up 106 productions of my plays. Some of those were quite basic, but still the number is astounding, and I was prouder of my achievements than I would have been had I left them unexamined. 

Loutish teenage thrushes galumph across the front porch and through the grass, a successful season of generation.

Gemeniani on the CD

In the afternoon, warm hurricane rain, and after it blazing, wondrous heat.

 

August 25, 2020

Applied for a Guggenheim all in one laborious day. 

 

August 23, 2020

The birthday of Poetry for me. Fifty-four years a poet. The bones chill writing the words. Yet, it kept me busy. It gave me a name and a destination.

Started looking seriously online for independent publishers for my rout of books. Every one I’ve hit so far has said “Not accepting submissions at this time. . . taking a hiatus. . .  “

 Plowing through an old essay I found another reference to this house before I lived in it: I walked down Lakeshore Drive to the video store for videos. I could see the video store from my window but for a few things in the way. One house blocking the way is empty but for the periodic appearance of the realtor and prospective buyers.  The realtor has kept the lawn clipped, but not otherwise looked very deep or taken meet measures. The wild clematis all but devours lawn and hedge and porch pillar, beautiful,  a sure sign of neglect. It looks like the house is being swallowed by sea-foam. Anyone with a sense of the life of wild things will smell something wrong. A man was murdered in this house. That’s why they can’t sell it. A father shot a grown son, as sometimes happens. In the struggle between the old lion and the young lion for rulership of the pride, the old one sometimes wins. The wild clematis thinks it was called to cover everything up. 

 

August 22, 2020

Calm night, music of the Renaissance on the CD player that was not dead at all, but merely unplugged. Made some progress on the unnamed book. Look into my beautiful garden, but all day do not step into it.