in the hall of mirrors

Dialectic of Enlightenment

I open the door,
turn on the light
and smile in your direction.

Fog burns away, the morning glows.
Fractured reflection, light from your arms.
I touch them often.

Much later, in the hospital,
spots like acid burns
on your bloated torso.

Sea-waves in your eyes;
the waitress loves your jokes.
I lean back into golden haze.

The nervous friend, the co-worker.
When they leave, your eyes close.
I watch you breathe.

Spinning out conversations:
your favorite books, pet theories,
memories of beaches, mountains.

Your earnest last commands to fight.
Love like a gale behind me, pushing.
You ignore the nurse taking blood.

Anguish at the heat of your touch,
hands sliding down my back,
and touch again: when will this end?

Your sleep, disfigured, wasted.
I watch your bruised face,
amazed: so beautiful.

Sun cut the fog away,
such blazing light and air,
I thought you’d be here always.

I open the door,
turn on the light
and smile in your direction.

[Los Angeles 5/2-11/24/90, rev. Hong Kong 10/11/97]

AIDS and Memory

[Speech for the second World AIDS Day vigil in Newcastle, UK, on December 1, 2005. My speech for the 2004 vigil is here.]

It’s a difficult thing, to lose someone… but we still have the stories, the memories.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a fairly large package from an obscure address in the California mountains. I was expecting this – some weeks before he died, Jay had e-mailed me to say that his friend and executor Marilyn was sending me something – but I didn’t know what it would be.

It was a photograph, packed in way too many Styrofoam peanuts in a box too large for it – maybe because someone thought it was very precious, and needed to arrive intact. The photograph is frankly pretty amazing – it shows a man with a long drooping mustache, wearing a neatly wrapped nun’s wimple on his head, plus a vast, ruffled, elaborately constructed dress that looks like it could have been the style in the French court two hundred years ago. The dress is patterned with all sorts of music signs – notes, staves, G-clefs, and so on; he is carefully buttoning up a pair of very high, very fancy boots, each of which has maybe forty buttons on it.

It’s quite something, believe me.

I recognized the man in that amazing dress – it was an old friend of Jay’s, and also of mine. Bill Graham was his name, but he was known as the Reverend Mother – he was a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the hilarious male nuns that were such an important part of 1980s San Francisco life. You may know them from Maupin's Tales of the City – they’re the nuns roller-skating through the streets, putting up political posters and handing out condoms and safer-sex brochures. Bill himself was called Reverend Mother because he was such a kindly father- (or maybe mother- ) figure for all the other nuns, and for a lot of other people too. As you can guess, Bill was beloved by many – including of course Jay, who apparently hung the photograph over his desk, next to the window. Bill died in the late 1980s, rather quietly, during the height of the AIDS epidemic; for Jay the picture was a reminder of a source of wisdom and kindness in the midst of disaster.

Jay himself was startlingly handsome, in a Prince Charming kind of way – blond wavy hair, strong chin, dimples. He was also amazingly kind, wise, and helpful, especially to ditzy youngsters like me who needed somebody to explain what the hell was going on in life. In the late 1980s, he left San Francisco for a series of sometimes mysterious new directions – he lived in San Diego for a while, and worked with psychiatrist Jeff Leiphart on documenting and publicizing alternative health research related to AIDS, including good and bad stress (apparently they’re different), hyperbaric diets, and so on. When he left San Francisco, he became more of a loner, partly because, as he admitted, he found it unbearable to spend so much time thinking of dead friends; he avoided contact with old acquaintances, he purchased a boat that he used to sail around the world. He always had big ideas and launched into them with great energy, leaving them behind when they no longer seemed interesting or fulfilling.

He was diagnosed as positive in the mid 1980s, probably not long before he left the Bay Area. I had looked for him intermittently over the years, chasing rumors and often losing the trail; but it wasn't until the winter of 2003-2004 that I found him again. He had moved to a house in Hemet, a tiny town in the California mountains, where he stayed until he died. He was working on a massive historical novel about Charles Dickens. He described his life – very solitary, very quiet – a beloved dog, an elaborate irrigation project for the land around his house, reading and no television, a landlord he seldom saw. He told me that he didn't look well – lipodystrophy, wasting – but as I hadn’t seen him face to face since the late 1980s, I was skeptical, thinking he probably didn't look so bad. He started going into Palm Springs to see doctors, and also started working with a writing group – I believe some of them have been looking to see if his novel can be published in some form.

By May 2004 Jay and I started regularly e-mailing each other - supposedly once a day, and always at least three or four times per week - to keep each other working, to try to inspire each other, and to whine about our various minor HIV illnesses. He was a great comfort to me at a number of points where I just needed somebody to kvetch to about feeling tired, old, or whatever. This exchange ran for more than a year, until he found out, in June of this year, that he had liver cancer. After allowing himself a brief time to get upset, he started focusing on what time he had left: how could he plan for the future of his book, how could he responsibly leave behind his family, his belongings, and the handful of people with whom he still kept contact? I last heard from him in September – after that I sent a few e-mails, but didn't get any answers until a friend of his told me he had died the week before.

I don't know if I can sum up Jay's life: he was clearly remarkable, in a lot of ways – a born hero, in fact. He remembered so many of us from his earlier life, dead and alive, in such detail – he had a great love for his friends of the 1980s, and the fact that he went off to be by himself in his last years was not because he didn't miss us all. In fact, it was a result of one of the most powerful forces in his life – his need to look at the big picture, even the great picture; and his insistence on trying to live in such a way that his life would have a bigger meaning, and a greater impact.

***

Stories inside of stories. The memories and the love we held – well, really, the love we still hold – for all sorts of people who aren’t with us any more. That’s become a big part of my life – I know I can move on, but my memories are precious to me, as they should be.

On the other hand, there are all those people who haven’t left us yet – or who shouldn’t leave us yet. In the past two years, I’ve worked with, and come to know, a lot of people who were born in Africa; some of them have been sent back, sometimes ruthlessly, in the past few months; others have been threatened, pushed around, and as far as possible pushed away. The British government has sent back people with AIDS, many of whom have been on medications here – often ignoring the fact that those same medications aren’t available back in Africa, which means deportation is essentially a death sentence for most.

For those who have died, we have our stories and our memories. But there are a lot of people here – and a lot more out there, in the city, across the country, even across the world – who haven’t died, and who don’t need to die. I love my stories, my memories: I love those photographs, and I love remembering Jay, Bill, and many others. But I don’t want to be left with only memories: so many people in my life, in our lives, should still be here in five years, in ten years, in twenty – we should get to make new memories and to see them often, healthy and happy. I hope we do.

[December 1, 2005]

[a] Lear

[A performance text I wrote in 1985 in Los Angeles, under the influence of having played Cornwall in Robert Wilson's strange but beautiful workshop/performance art version of Lear at UCLA.]

Cast consists of three men (M 1, 2, 3) and two women (F 1, 2), on microphones.
The piece can be heard as a recording, or performed as a concert reading with tape.
'Dramatic' intonation should be extremely restrained.
Vocal quality should be very clear, with exquisitely clear diction; read the script from a distance, as though reading poetry.

The sign / represents a slight break, shorter than a 'pause'.
Such a break should also occur between most lines.
Background sounds are improvised, as sketched below.
Ideally, some sound effects should be done on tape.

Prelude: Toilet

M1 - It is / a Lear.
F1 - It is / a prelude.
M3 - It is / a toilet.

Tape: Toilet flushing, followed by pissing, zippers, water running, doors banging, etc., throughout the prelude. If there is no tape: improvised thwacks and thuds, irregular and sounding very 'Three Stooges.'

M2 - Hey, Gloucester.
M1 - Greetings, noble Kent.
M2 - I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.
M1 - Oh, Jesus, who knows what he's going to do at this point. This will be a real circus, methinks.
M2 - Is not that your son, my Lord, in the second stall?
M1 - I have often blush'd to acknowledge his breeding, Sir; but let's not discuss it now, the court awaits.

Tape: Door slamming. Toilet sounds continue. If no tape: add snorts and grunts to thwacks and thuds.

M3 - Edmund am I. And I say: why bastard? Wherefore base? Wherefore art thou Edmund? When my dimensions are as well compact and my shape as true as any of these supposedly legitimate motherfuckers. Or even better, really. Why, I probably work out about four times a week. Well, most weeks, anyway. Well, some weeks, I suppose you might say. . .
slowing through the following
I . . . well . . . I . . . but . . . well . . .

Toilet sounds stop.

One: Court

Dashes do not represent pauses; they divide phonemes into group of three syllables for convenience in reading. Gibberish, as well as any non-English language, is always to be stated conversationally, as though it makes perfect sense.

F1 - Babaga-dagaba-dadaba-badapa-gagaba- [a in father; continue over 15 sec.]
F2 - Pitiki-pitipi-pitiki-tikiti-pikiti- [i in pit; start after 3 sec., continue over 12 sec.]
M2 - Reketa-doobaloo/pekere-ketedoo/kekeke- [e in yet; start after 5 sec., continue over 10 sec.]
M3 - Nomono-ponolo-mopono-nomono- [o in no; start after 6 sec., continue over 9 sec.]
M1 - [Laughter; start after 9 sec., continue over 6 sec.]

Pause; if a piano is used, grandiose music starts. Marked, irregular rhythms, lots of octaves, fifths and fourths; bell-like. The piano should also be used in a Noh theater punctuating manner.

M3 - We have left the toilet.
F1 - We are in the Court.

pause

M2 - What?
M3 - I didn't hear.
M2 - Is that you?
F1 - What?
F2 - I don't believe we've -
M1 - What?
F1 - I wish you would speak clearly.
F2 - What?
M1 - When shall we three meet again?
M2 - Wrong play, guv'nor.
M3 - Can we get this thing started? I have things I really have to do.
M1 - Oh very well. Split the whole damned thing up. Do your own gerrymandering, it's not my problem. I'll just go dance and sing and drink and throw darts, that sort of thing. Some messing around, of course.
F1 - Oh father, get to the point.
M1 - Oh very well.
F2 - Not very well really.
M2 - Shut up.
F2 - I'll be Cordelia now.
M2 - Okay.
M3 - Have we started yet?
F1 - What?
M1 - Anyway, two of you say you love me, so that's just fine and dandy. But what I really called you together to hear are some really choice words from my truest and most loving daughter.

brief pause

F2 - Like what?
M1 - You know.
F2 - No I don't.
M1 - Words of love.
F2 - Name two.
M1 - Don't get nasty with me, young lady.

Tape: vague crashes begin, getting clearer and louder until the end of the scene.

M2 - Are they arguing?
F1 - Shut up.
F2 - Oh dad, get off. This is stupid.
M1 - I don't like your attitude.
M3 - What did he say?
M2 - When?
F2 - I mean, you're being so childish.
M1 - I can't believe what I'm hearing.
M3 - I can't hear what he's not believing.
F1 - Well, sit nearer.
M1 - All right, it's off. The whole thing is off.
F1 - What is that supposed to mean?
M1 - Nothing.
M2 - But the rest of us?
F1 - We have done no wrong.
M1 - Okay, okay. My two good daughters, split the kingdom between you. You know of course, I'll be staying with you a lot, no nursing home for me, no sirree. Be ready for it.
F1 - Oh god.
F2 - Am I Regan now?
F1 - Yes, for heaven's sake keep up.
M3 - What?
F1 - Shush.
F2 - Well, Pop, thanks for the land. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. For instance, you can get off that chair, it belongs to us now.
F1 - I'll just take this coronet and part it between us.
M1 - Wait. What are you doing. Wait. Ho. Ha.
M2 - Try something a bit stronger, milord.
M1 - Treachery hath made its masterpiece.
M2 - Wrong again, guv'nor. You've got to do better than that.
M3 - We must think on this further.
M1 - We must do something - and i' th' heat!

Music for the Interlude starts: many constant bells, wind chimes, finger cymbals, etc.
Claves are used for punctuation.

F1 - Clear out, boys, we're taking a meeting.

Interlude: Sisters

F1 - I'll be Goneril if you'll be -
F2 - Who?
F1 - Regan.
F2 - Who?
F1 - Pay attention.
F2 - Yes.
F1 - Sister it is not little I have to say.
F2 - Yes
F1 - Are you well?
F2 - Yes
F1 - Happy?
F2 - Well -
F1 - Yes.
F2 - What?
F1 - No?
F2 - What?
F1 - I have said it.
F2 - And what?
F1 - Sister it is not little -
F2 - I know.
F1 - What?
F2 - I’ve seen it.
F1 - What?
F2 - What else?
F1 - Well.
F2 - Yes?

pause

F1 - Sister it is not -
F2 - Yes.
F1 - Sister it is -
F2 - Yes.
F1 - Sister it -
F2 - Yes.
F1 - Sister!
F2 - Yes?
F1 - He is not easy to bear
F2 - No
F1 - I would not allow it
F2 - Nor I
F1 - He should be spanked.
F2 - He should be whipped.
F1 - Tear out his hair.
F2 - Pluck out his eyes.
F1 - He shall command us in no way.
F2 - We shall have our several revenges.
F1 - We shall return each sharp word, every uncaring gesture, all our lost hopes, many many many thousandfold.

pause

F1 - Did you see him also
F2 - Who
F1 - I know you saw him
F2 - Oh. Him.
F1 - Yes.
F2 - Platform-bound
F1 - Yes.
F2 - Ripely muscled
F1 - Yes.
F2 - Such gorgeousness as does not yet keep me warm
F1 - Sister. You are a married woman
F2 - What?
F1 - I said and you heard.
F2 - You are also
F1 - You wouldn't say that unless
F2 - How dare you
F1 - I dare all
F2 - Slut
F1 - Bitch
F2 - O slimiest of creatures
F1 - O unrepenting whore
F2 - Douchebag

Pause; claves: 1 loud strike

F1 - Sister it is not bitter I have to say
F2 - Oops
F1 - Truce
F2 - Pax
F1 - Yes
F2 - Sorry
F1 - No problem
F2 - Thanks
F1 - Love the shoes
F2 - Really
F1 - Gorgeous
F2 - Let's have lunch
F1 - Let's have drinks.
F2 - Soon.
F1 - Very. Soon.

Pause - long

F2 - Think you, sister, it will rain?
F1 - Not a chance. Not at this time of year.

Tape: immediate burst of thunder and rain

Two: Storm

Tape: Continual rain, with intermittent thunder and wind.
If no tape, claves are played constantly and irregularly; piano is hit, irregularly, violently; strings inside beaten, etc. Low piano notes can be used for a wind rumble.

Word tradeoffs between M2 and M3 should have a slight 'contest' quality, though they remain calm and uninvolved in tone.

M2 - Blow / winds
M3 - Blue / wicks
M2 - Black / wigs
M3 - Blah / winks

pause

M2 - Nothing
M3 - Knitting
M2 - Knights
M3 - [German] Nichts

pause

M3 - [Italian, approx.; as one word] Trattoria-trattoréa-trattoria-trattatatta.
M2 - When that I was and a little tiny duck
With a hey and a ho, the wings and the brains
With garbled search I fought for my luck
For the brains they feign it every day.

pause

M2 - Nights
M3 - [German] Nicht
M2 - [French] Nuit
M3 - Fight

pause

M2 - [French] Fois
M3 - Fell
M2 - Full
M3 - Fool.
M2 - Solipsism.
M3 - Huh?

pause

M2 - I'm wet.
M3 - Be quiet, you fool.
M2 - And I have to go peepee.
M3 - You should have thought of that before we left the Prelude.
M1 - Will you two shut up. It's hard enough to be grand and grandeured in this damnéd rain, in this miserable storm, without your griping.
pause
Let alone keep one's sanity.
M2 - Tree
M3 - Trail
M2 - Trial
M1 - That's it! A trial for those who have escaped our wrath. Those wild women, those Gorgons who have put me here. Let us have their mad testimonies! Goneril!
M3 - [falsetto] My lord!
M1 - Tell us all your bloody histories!
M3 - [falsetto] My lord, I –
M1 - Witch! Madwoman! But I'll not chide thee. Into your womb convey sterility! Dry up in you the organs of increase! If you must teem, let there be created a child of spleen! Unrepentant whore! O most slimy creature! But I'll not chide thee. No, no, I'm such a saint, that I won't call a slut a slut. No, no, I'll say nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
M3 - [falsetto] But I -
M1 - Silence! Enough of your endless prattling. Deafen me no more with your eternal derangements.
M2 - Daughter
M3 - [German] Tochter
M2 - Ticktock
M3 - Dada
M1 - Now most evil Regan!
M2 - [falsetto] Lord! I -
M1 - No more! You have spoken enough. Thy defense is so full of holes that a child of four could arraign thee in fair combat. Have we not eyes, ears? Do we not bleed? You are deranged! Your mouthings make no sense to my sensitive, wise ear! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing! Never! Not never! Not nohow! Help, help, oh Fool, I shall go mad.
M2 - Oh sirrah, you're crazy as a coot. Always was.
M1 - No, I'm not.
M2 - Yes you are.
M1 - No I'm not.
M2 - Are too.
M1 - Am not.
M3 - [Italian] Trattoria-traduttore-tralalala-la.
M2 - Tailor.
M3 - Titter.
M2 - Tattle.
M3 - [German] Er hat keine Töchter.
M2 - [French] C'est une méchante nuit pour se jeter à la nage.
M3 - [French] Le pauvre Tom mange grenouilles, crapauds, têtards, lézards et salamandres.
[English, aside] Ick.
M2 - Lear.
M3 - Leering.
M2 - [German] Liebe.
M3 - [German] Liebestod.
M2 - Now you say you're sorry
for being so untrue
well you can cry me a river
cry me a river
I cried a river over you.

pause

M1 - But I have one more daughter to attack! She who was so ignorant as to love me, so impious as to have good taste where I had none, so careless as to be loving and clear-eyed before me. The worst of them all, the fair Cordelia!
M2 - My lord!
M1 - No, not a word in her favor! She is all good! She loves me! She has ruined everything I spent so long to build up, every lie, every spying eye, every deranged sibling, all the misery of a family, a court, a nation! The logorrhea of my hateful people, none listening to the other, all lost together and so happy! She has ruined everything, and shown us where we are wrong! We were always wrong! It is her fault! Hang her! Hang her, my fool! Oh, my fool. Fool.

Tape: the storm begins to abate. Before the fool's last word, it is gone.

M2 - Hold the pickle
hold the lettuce /
special orders
don't upset us.

slower through the last stanza

You deserve a brick today, /
so get up /
and go away /
from your daughters.

As the storm fades, bells start again. They are hit more softly and less often than in the first Interlude, with no claves. At the note 'bell', one should stand out from the other bells.

Interlude: Daughter

F2 - I am sure my love's more ponderous than my tongue. And that my heart's more ponderous than my mind. But would that my pancreas were more ponderous than my sense of justice. Oh, woe, woe. Such woe it is to be Cordelia, and in France. That I were in Britain again, to retake my dank and blessed home from those two termagants who roost in it so awfully. And incidentally to save and retain in grace and majesty my good and blesséd father, as it were. Oh, woe, woe. Cordelia I nothing am.
pause; bell
And so, here I am. I create in a single breath a camp, a French camp, a French camp with French soldiers, a French camp simply bursting with French soldiers, which is nevertheless in Britain. The soldiers do my bidding, although I speak naught of their froggy tongue; or at least, not with an accent that pleases them. But with the goddess' help, my brave and silly troops may eventually win back all of mighty Britain. And mayhap I shall see my beloved father again.
pause; bell
Whenever did a young maid have such a tragedy, that she was forced to leave a cold and foggy land, a demented egomaniac of a father and two really incredibly nasty sisters, in order to become the Queen of France.
pause
Perhaps I should think about this a bit.

bell; pause

M1 - Mphltsk. Snort.
F2 - Father. It is you.
M1 - Prbtlskphup. Snort. Snort.
F2 - But you are not well.
M1 - Snort.
F2 - What have they done, or have allowed to happen, as it may be. Whores, whores, whores, whores, whores. O you men of stone, had I your balls I'd take this kingdom myself, and shove it where the sun shines not.

bells

M1 - Do not laugh at me. I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.
F2 - And so I am. I am.
M1 - Are your tears wet?
F2 - And so I am. I am.
M1 - I pray, weep not.
F2 - And so I am. I am.
M1 - If you have poison for me, I will drink it. You have some cause.
F2 - No cause. No cause.
M1 - I was in a wilderness, with John the Baptist and a great number of beasts and fishes. I was bound on a wheel of fire. Blue demons who looked like your sisters, and little red angels who looked like you, fought over who would have my eyes. They would tear them out, you would bathe them in your tears.
F2 - No cause. No cause.
M1 - But my bonds are gone, and the wheel with them. Wait! I have remembered something. I thought of it while the wheel turned. I forgot to say, I am sorry for embarrassing you at court. I didn't mean it that way.
F2 - No cause. No cause.
M1 - And I remembered that I loved you.

bell; pause

F2 - Father. You must listen. We are in the French camp, and normally would be surrounded by many who leap to obey my every wish. But I have sent them out to fight and kill as many of your old friends as they can, so that you will be revenged on my sisters. So we are alone here, and in grave danger of discovery and capture. For thee I am cast down; myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown.
M1 - We two alone will sing like birds in a cage. It doesn't matter what they do now. I've seen their worst, and it's nothing. If you're here, what matter politics, murders, or these sisters. We'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.
F2 - Father. You're not listening.
M1 - What?

Tape: crashes. Drums begin: dull, repetitive, marked. Segue into Part Three.

Three: Denouement

F2 - Oh my god.
M1 - What's wrong?
M3 - Some officers take them away.
M2 - They shall be held in our prison, safe during the battle.
M3 - What battle?

Tape: As much noise as possible. Crashes and thuds, and all earlier sounds repeated and overlapped, all for about ten seconds. Drums continue. Claves continue afterward through F1: "... requests".

M2 - A bitter battle. And bitter also, away from the battle.
F1 - I have killed my sister. Our lover is killed by his brother. I shall kill myself.
M3 - Please don't.
F1 - It is far too late for gracious requests.

sound: claves, one stroke; pause

M2 - Sir. The old king and his daughter have been apprehended while trying to escape. The woman was inadvertently killed while resisting arrest.
M3 - Write a statement for the papers.

Claves. One stroke. Pause. One stroke.

M1 - Howl, howl, howl. Woe. Nothing. Sa, sa. Nothing.
M3 - Who let the old man in here?

Tape: White noise starts and builds; it gradually overcomes drums.

M1 - She's gone for ever. I know when one is dead, and when one lives.

M1/F2
If this feather stirs, she lives. If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.

M1/F1/F2
I might have saved her; now she's gone forever. Cordelia, stay a little.

M1/M2/F1/F2
No, no, no life. Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never.

M1/M2/M3/F1/F2
Pray you, undo this button. Do you see this? Look, her lips. Look there, look there!

White noise gets louder, then fades. Bells. Single clave strokes, irregularly. Pause.

M2 - He faints!
F1 - Brilliant. Actually I think he's dead.
M3 - Vex not his ghost.
F2 - What?

White noise comes on and off, repeatedly, irregularly, over following six lines.
Bells continue unchanging.

M2 - Our present business is babada-gagada-babada-gagada-ba.
F2 - Huh?
M3 - The wonder is that eki-eki-eki, patang, whee bop.
F2 - Huh?
F1 - The weight of pitiki-ipifiviev---kddkkdkdkd
F2 - What?

Pause. All sound rapidly fades; silence.

M1 - I can't remember what I was going to say.

[May/June 1985]

[Painting: Dan Gheno, King Lear]

Drive the cold winter away

Remarkable how often I've seen complaints about 'November' bandied about lately – a sort of automatic disparagement, comments made that assume we all hate this month. Although I don't enjoy winter weather, I always thought of November as a somehow noble (ennobled, ennobling?), rather dignified, austere kind of month; there is a seriousness about it, a definite quality that makes it one of the few winter months in no doubt about its own nature.

November is, perhaps, the only winter month that doesn't cover itself up with the illusion of being about something else. On the council of the winter months, it is the one whose decisions are always clear, whose definitions of good and bad always predictable. (Unlike December, wearing clothes too bright and too loud for its coloring, or listless, indecisive January; or even February, with its still-born illusions of renewal.)

November is different here than where I grew up: although it only comes at the end of the month, Thanksgiving, the beginning of the rather overwhelming, familial, convivial American holiday season, transforms the whole month in the US. (I can't remember whether Canada has a Thanksgiving of some kind – don't they hold one a week earlier, a week later? – ah, the Wikipedia tells me theirs is in mid-October, which must entirely change its nature.)

Although a snowy winter is practically unknown here, even in the northern corner of England, the days do, of course, radically shorten – I have a widget on my computer that details exactly how short they get, and we are now down to a day about eight hours and fifteen minutes long. At its shortest it will go down to about seven hours, at which point the day will feel vanishingly strange to those of us who didn't grow up here. (So I guess I should call this: to drive the dark winter away.)

***

Today was another wasted day; after the strange ups and downs of the past week, I'm in what feels like more normal health, but was so exhausted on Thursday that I collapsed early that evening into bed, and Friday was largely spent sleeping.

I'd answered a few e-mails, staving off administrative messes, and tried to do some birthday planning – my fiftieth is soon, and I share the time of year with friends who are reaching forty and forty-five respectively; so it is being labeled our one-hundred-thirty-fifth, and it would be rather silly to let it pass without some celebration. (Especially because, when you're single and far from extensive family/friend connections, it is dangerous not to plan ahead for some sort of marking of birthdays and holidays – the day can come and go almost without a ripple, only leaving in its wake a rather edgy awareness of how lonely, how unimportant, one has become. A good reason to be straight, married, and part of a large family, I suppose.)

I also tried to arrange some sort of winter trip – the agency linked to the university advertised seriously cheap flights to North America, including Washington and New York, where my family lives; of course it turned out that the advertisement had taken nearly a week to reach me, and anything affordable was already long gone. But it impelled me back to the Easyjet and Ryanair sites to try and find some place warm to go in January – Palermo looks most plausible, but we'll see. (It's frustrating to try to really get warm in winter, in Europe – you have to go a real distance, generally out of the range of the cheap flights – even southern Italy and Spain are only somewhat less cold than here, as proved by last year's Xmas trip to Rome.)

But most of the day was spent here, on the sofa, fairly groggy, and frankly increasingly smelly. My main vow was a shower, and one that included some sort of scalp oil treatment; it didn't happen, and I ate again, and slept again, and then it was late at night. But there's an advantage to living alone – even though you don't have anyone else keeping you alert ('Were you going to work on that article today?', 'Don't you think you should get up?'), you can do pretty much what you please in the middle of the night.

At around 4 am, I woke up; by about 5 am, I had pushed myself out onto the floor, threw the blanket in the washing machine (no spin, that would be too obnoxiously noisy for the neighbors), and shaved. Rich, oily cream in my hair: I love the way salts and oils have come back into style, it gives an antique, almost raw strength to bathing – it is the difference between pouring some smooth, opalescent compound, full of poly-thises and methyl-thats, from a plastic bottle, as opposed to the richness of spices, of handfuls of salt in the bath, of heavy oils on the skin.

The work, the hammering away at the body, at my surroundings, pulls me back in the metaphorical calendar of my body's own year: after all, being fifty should represent, not November, but let's say October at the most, red leaves and pumpkins and fresh days. In any case, I am lucky in my genetic makeup: perhaps one reason I fret so much about going to the gym, about losing weight, is (aside from simply being a gay man, of course) the intuitive knowledge that, with more work, I could move the calendar of my body back to mid-September, or even that first week of September, just after the sun starts to drop: not an unpleasant time of year.

It is now nearly 7 am: that sunrise is less than an hour away – I'll sleep again and wake later, hopefully cleansed as powerfully as in some sort of Vedic ritual, as though I'd dedicated myself to the gods who would help me finish the writing that I need to do, rich with oils, heavy with incense.

[The photograph, by Markus Puustinen, is called 'Last Snowfall'.]

He is just going to wake up

I've spoken elsewhere about Nachiketas (his story, my name, a poem) – whose name means 'he is just going to wake up.'

I always tend to concentrate on his name/story/meaning as that of the boy who makes friends with Death; it occurs to me tonight, as I reflect on how unawake I have been for most of my life, that the actual translation of his name may be even more important for me....

I've lived like a sleepwalker, especially since I was seventeen, since I was first disappointed/stymied, driven from what I thought was my path: and unfortunately, ever since, I've tend to use my abilities in only the laziest, most defeated, most pointless fashion – seeing more active, more productive people, I always have twinges of guilt and envy that I don't even try to keep up with them. Even at this point in my life, when I've decided that the only thing I do that really matters is writing, I don't even do that.

The reasons are obvious – as Dorothea Brande says, the 'creative' writer part of us is a child, who can't be driven to work in an adult way, and my writing is very (too much, in fact) rooted in that part of me – but those aren't very good reasons. I've been tired of being a sleepwalker for a long time, and I still want to, somehow, wake myself up... unfortunately, being so lazy, I want to have woken up, to have been habitually awake, active, productive, for the past thirty-odd years. It's too hard to just start now, to have a real life from this point....

The attraction of starting over, in a place where no one knows you. And where no one even expects anything of you: where you have no reputation....

White night

It never feels 'white' – though that's what they call it (what Dorothy Parker called it, anyway).

I hate, hate, hate, sleepless or fragmentary or uncomfortable nights – that misery, especially at 4:40 am when you get up to go to the bathroom, hoping that when you get back to bed everything will change and you will pass into some sort of peaceful sleep.

Which doesn't happen. And you get pulled back and forth between almost asleep and uncomfortably awake, you change from the bed to the living room couch, you draw the curtains, you open a window for fresh air, you close it again as it gets too cold. You discover an amazing array of ways to move the duvet, your feet outside, feet inside, pajamas pulled off, one side, then roll to the other, and the infinite variety of locations that a pillow can have, none of them quite right – a huge matrix of changes to the space, none of which seem to land you in a space that actually works.

I guess it's worse because so many hours take place, moment by moment by moment, along an incoherent, complex and constantly changing boundary between sleeping and waking – I could barely keep my eyes open at 11 pm last night, went to bed early (for me anyway, in northern winters anyway), but for nothing good – I couldn't really rest, couldn't really sleep, couldn't really wake up. It's like a tiger cage of the mind, I can't stand it.

And I wonder, always analyzing, what the heck is going on: why, for about three or four weeks now, does my right eyelid tremble and twitch as though I'm tired, at odd and unexpected times of day? Why have too many nights this week, this month, been characterized by rolling back and forth, uncomfortable and not quite asleep, waiting to rest? Am I under pressure, under stress – that wouldn't make much sense, I am pushing myself to write these articles, but not more than I often have under a deadline; and my 'external' stresses (classes, meetings, events) are really not very heavy at the moment. Why am I showing so many physical signs of, well, cracking?

I can't make sense of it, perhaps because I normally show more emotional evidence of stress than physical evidence – I actually pride myself on a certain toughness, that although I may whine a lot and indulge my taste for personal tragedy, I still launch myself into the daily ephemera that needs to be done, even when I'm not feeling well. But I don't know what to do with these tics and strange nights – they suggest that I'm doing something very, very wrong....

***

Incidentally, this blog has existed for about 193 days (counting by eye, so a number slightly subject to error) – I've made 153 posts, which is really awfully good for me – between five and six posts a week, nearly eighty per cent – practically a real, long-term, semi-commitment. As though I can finally settle down to something – okay, it's something ephemeral, fragmentary, unpublished – it's not the large operas I planned to write when I was twenty, nor the AIDS novel I hoped to survive to write when I was thirty. It's not even the academic books I've been pushing myself towards since I reached forty, nor the articles I have actually managed to write, am supposed to continue to write, am in fact required by profession and university pressure and government fiat to write.

But hey: it's words, it's out there – and best of all it exists, in the real (okay the virtual) world, beyond my imagination, outside of my head. Makes everything worth it, really....

variability grand piano

Does anyone else find the current trend in spam e-mails rather, well, peculiar?

The title of this entry was the subject heading for an e-mail I got today....

When did surrealism come back into our culture – and from such an unexpected angle? And what do spammers hope to achieve from such messages – this can hardly be a successful method of getting credit card numbers, selling Viagra, advertising porno websites, or getting people to buy cheesy stocks.

It seems strange – extremely strange, in fact. Perhaps the spammers are people who don't want to do any of the above – they want to, instead, orange their collective frogs, or refibrillate the dog-cabbage economy....

Journals

In seeking (I am, undoubtedly, what religionists would call a seeker, in many ways) some strategies to get me out of my slough, to get me writing these two articles which are both so overdue and on the verge of being too overdue to publish, I went to Anne LaMott's Bird by Bird, which is both the most neurotic of books on writing and, paradoxically, one of the most comforting. It led me somehow to look at old journals – I don't have many but, in fits and starts over the years, I have left myself a trail of breadcrumbs (which lead back to me, I suppose). I was also looking at the old journals in order to cheat! - to find something I'd once written that I could put into this blog, since I didn't feel like writing anything new (two aborted posts are still waiting to get written, or not as the case may be).

It was strange to look at the old journals – amazing, and frustrating. They form several broad groups – there are the early, oversized accounting books from 1975-80 (when I was, let's see, 18 to 24), which are insanely primitive from an emotional standpoint; they do however show a remarkable number of collisions with men, most of which I'd forgotten, and most of which I handled very, very badly indeed (hmm, not much surprise there). These oldest journals are by someone in such pain and confusion – it is lacerating, and frankly embarrassing, to even glance at their pages.

Actually, though, those aren't the oldest – the oldest is my charming, pretentious literary scrapbook from when I was about 14, which is both ridiculous and kind of wonderful – very clumsy, but aiming very high; such refined interests, but such a lack of awareness of the resonance of those interests – I wish I could support that kid somehow, as I wish the 1970s kid could see a good therapist, someone he could trust, who knew how to encourage a young gay person.

(The scrapbook shows a lot of my sisters – a watercolor by my eldest sister, some woodblock stamps by the younger – and, in many other ways, it shows a lot of their influence and love. Funny that I thought of my eldest sister, even then, as exclusively a book/language person – I really didn't notice how visually oriented she was, partly because I was kind of visually clueless, partly because my younger sister was always identified as the [visual] artist. Especially significant because when my eldest sister finally published a book, it was about color and light....)

Then such a burst of energy, of experience, in the journals from 1993-4, when I spent a year on scholarship in Europe – such great material, in such chaotic form – seeing my expectations transformed, my perceptions so expanded.

There is the year living in Australia with John, 2001-2. In that journal, the tone is strangely simplistic, obsessive, unhappy – repetitive – I really felt trapped by my circumstances in that year, the year I lost the Sydney job and so much money and (what seemed at the time like) all my hopes and dreams. I wish I'd been clearer in that journal about how wonderful John was, and what there was to love about our domestic life in that time – the pages yammer on and on, egotistical and miserable and angry and depressed. I hope he never looked in that journal – there's nothing but complaining, even about him.

What is really bizarre, and definitely unexpected, in all the journals, is the immense change in tone from 2002 on, from my arrival here in northern England. The writing suddenly grows up, becomes interesting (to me now, at least); the style, the attention span, the subtlety, all suddenly increase – a lot. The content is not so different from previous journals – dreams, boredom, frustration – loneliness (it is disturbing, by the way, how much acute loneliness shows up in the 1970s journals – pathological, really). But in 2002 the general level of awareness goes way, way up, and my own interest in what I have to say increases so much – the contrast is weirdly striking, the change in depth enormous.

Reasons for that change? More experience writing journals (it is soon after I started writing regularly, no matter whether I had something to say or not – a strategy learned from writer's books, which I'd started several months earlier in Adelaide). Then there's the whole shock of the Aussie debacle, which closed so many doors, it seemed permanently, but also kicked me into myself, into my own now more solitary but also less fragmented inner space, in a way that was clearly salutary.

Maybe another reason was running out of testosterone and human growth hormone injections (given to me by my LA doctor, who thought it would cheer me up, which it did). There is a slightly hardened, heartless tone to some of the Adelaide journal, which suggests a change in body chemistry – although I would now want the strength, the sexuality, and certainly the weight loss that the testosterone and growth hormone brought me, I'll admit I don't know if I liked myself so much when I was undergoing that particular swerve in body/recreational chemistry. (The other day I saw the handsome Jason Statham in Crank, which I thought was a wonderful movie, in a perverse, demented, funny, testosterone-poisoned kind of way – whatever the New York Times thought of it, it was a great comment on male chemistry.)

Maybe, ultimately, this life I have now – four years of it – although I rebel, revile it, find it dull and limiting and exasperating – is very good for me. Being alone so much, having so much time and space for reflection – in this pleasant home, perhaps the best I've ever had; its competitors in San Francisco and Los Angeles were actually much more limiting, because too small – and even my tendency to waste too much time and attention on passive TV watching and Internet surfing is giving me space to reflect, in a way.

Or of course, maybe I just, finally, partly at least, managed to grow up....

Continued on next rock

Still rather fuzzy/weak/tingly/headachey today. Since I always want an explanation for how I feel, I'm a bit annoyed and stymied – my lab results two weeks ago were just about the best ever, I don't think I've caught anything in the way of current viruses from the students, and so on.

Of course, it is ages since I had anything even faintly resembling exercise... perhaps that's what I need to be thinking about.

In any case, I still need, somehow, to get work done on these two articles....

***

Here was a nice, sharp bit of writing –

In 1912, Arnold Schoenberg composed Pierrot lunaire, a musical setting of 'thrice seven' poems by the French poet Albert Giraud. The texts assemble a conventional symbolist environment, through which move characters from the commedia dell'arte engaged in vaguely ritual actions of indeterminate import but with overtones of hostility to the order and monuments of ordinary bourgeois culture. They are, in short, 'dated'.

– Donald Marshall, introduction to Melville's Philosophy Beside Itself (U. Minnesota, 1986; misspellings (2!) corrected).

Well, maybe it's not all that amazing – but musicians are so accustomed to treating Pierrot as a 'great' work that we rarely pay much attention to the poetry, or notice how much it represents the merely 'trendy' (and kitschy) work of the 1880s.

By the way, the title of this entry is from a Lafferty short story, a joke about ancient neolithic messages....

***

Slept a lot, woke, ate. Changed bedclothes, taking shower. Trying to reboot, as it were...

I do continue to wonder: any chance that all this illness is just avoidance? Ah well. Spurious' most recent post mentions his old mentor – someone he's spoken of before – writing an academic article in a single morning. I know the first drafts of some of my best articles were written literally overnight, but, well....

Idleisms (which became: Out of balance)

Butt In Chair: the great injunction for writers (okay, perhaps not as great as 'Done Is Good', as it's a bit less presentable in mixed company – whatever that means these days) from Susan M.

I am in my chair today, having moved myself and computer from the living room, where the increasingly beaten-up couch, television, and distractions of literary trivia live, into the middle room, where there is a clearly defined working desk and shelves of philosophy, cultural studies, semiotics. I, at least, feel less useless; and the distractions are, at least, more high-minded.

***

I don't understand why I always, on assembling a cup of tea, end up with a sticky smudge of honey on my fingers, or on the mug, on its handle somehow – it seems to come from nowhere, from some weird opening into something that should probably be called H-space. And I always notice at the point when my fingers are on the keyboard, on the trackpad, on some papers....

***

Bothered the past few days by the self-pity so heavily embedded in my AIDS writings, in this blog, and frankly in my personality. After reading bits of Stephen Mitchell's anthology The Enlightened Heart (I love Mitchell as a translator; this is his collection of spiritual prose), I kept thinking: yeah, well, my own real problem is that I'm so impressed by my own problems. Which, let's face it, aren't huge ones. When I think of the book I'm supposed to be writing – and, in fact, one of the two articles I'm supposed to be writing right now, before that book – the underlying message is one of how tragic my life has been; and that gets in the way of writing it – I know I can tug on heartstrings, but I feel rather cheap doing it. Well, I suppose there's no way past all this, other than being aware of it, and trying to grow out of it....

***

Yesterday (Friday) was a lost day: Wednesday had been okay, if faintly depressing (final marks settled on last year's postgraduates – and no matter what I did, I couldn't make the numbers come out with more than one Distinction – but apparently they were all pleased enough with their Merits, so that was probably just my problem); Thursday was hard-working but effective (taught two classes, and did them well – ah what an ego boost that is! – which will tell you a lot about me as a teacher, both what I do correctly and what's wrong with my teaching – as you can probably figure out, I tend to teach as a 'performer', which creates enthusiasm and also probably leaves the students feeling a little used, a little browbeaten, at times).

Thursday evening I went to the health food store, and unfortunately responded too easily to marketing; I bought slippery elm bark (not the pills which, as V– has said, never do anything, but the stuff itself, powdered). Drank it in a mug before bed. Was a wreck Friday – despite the generalizations made on the box about how good it is for the digestion etc. etc., it is clearly meant for people who have constipation – which is, frankly, never a problem in my life. Running back and forth to the bathroom, tired and with body systems racing out of control, on a day when I'd vowed to sit and write....

So today is what yesterday should have been, plus some time to (continue to) recover. We'll see....

***

Unfortunately, the tea, and especially the hot chocolate (no sugar, but chili included) has probably been a bit much – now my gut (my short, and admittedly partly euphemistic, term for my whole digestive system, which I experience as sort of a large, intermittent problem right in the middle of my body, and so want a short, easy term for, a term that feels immediate but not repulsive) is suddenly jumping around again, overstimulated... sigh. I wish the whole gastro thing would just function, do its damned job, and stay calm. Of course, lately, with the new meds, things do seem better – but how much better?

Rain on the window, but the sun still reflecting off the clouds: pleasant, relaxing. Opening the window for a few minutes (just a few, since it's cold) would be good....

***

I know that a lot of other academics, scholars, writers, book people, also worry about not writing enough, or find steady, productive writing difficult to do; and that many of them regard parts of their bookish activities with skepticism or dismay (the tendency to read trivia, or to read unconsciously, etc.).

But I wonder about those who conceal such worry: K–, for instance, in his big Amsterdam apartment, with his desperate egotistical attempts to make himself look important, even when he encounters an old, more successful colleague – what worries, what despair, is all that pompous self-aggrandizement covering up? And does he realize how ridiculous he sounds, endlessly funneling all conversations back into His Achievements? – we all take him less seriously, not more, after hearing him maunder on and on about his own current projects and Their Significance.

(Of course, confronting K– with his old colleagues was my fault, and perhaps something he would have avoided if given a choice – one small way that I've changed the world, especially the world of those composers who were important in Darmstadt in the 1960s, has been in taking them to see each other again. I've reknit several relationships, dragging men in their sixties across one or another European town to talk with their old lovers, their old rivals, their old friends, and probably their old enemies – always with my Californian ingenuousness, my non-European assumption that they will be glad to see their pasts face to face... which I'm sure isn't often true; but I'm also sure that, always, even when the discomfort was palpable, those confrontations were good things – at least better than no confrontation, better than hiding and ignoring and pretending.)

***

Waves of unhealthy energy, again, up and down: the overstimulation of the chocolate, the rather druggy passions of a body out of balance, tingling feet and hot neck and panting breath. Hot or cold, energetic or sleepy, all rather fluid, out of balance: but less hopeless in this room than in the other one – although lying down to sleep is not so easy here, at least I feel a bit ill, a bit fuzzy, in a room where the signs are all of thinking, not of wasting time.

But perhaps I'm a bit too ill: I think I need to really lie down, probably on the bed – should have had some form of breakfast I suppose; but now even that seems too difficult....

***

Late afternoon: boy, I made myself ill somehow – could it really just be that chocolate on an empty stomach? (Admittedly after a day of an upset gastro system.) Still rather trembly, in bed; haven't eaten, when I get up to find something to eat I'm too shaky to stay there.

***

... okay sitting in chair again; the day is fading, sky now dark gray rather than light. Still trembly, but heated up yesterday's rice dish to eat something (there wasn't much left though). Talk about self-pity, and self-reflexivity: how annoying. And how odd – although it does all help somehow that I made myself ill in this room, rather than the other one: although I didn't have the couch to collapse on when I wasn't able to do anything else, it seems that at least I tried – and the day isn't really over yet....

***

A brief evening return to the casual 'idle-isms', and even the honey theme, I started with... I, and my stomach and palate, were comforted by some 'mandorlata' and 'nocciolata' (almond and hazelnut creamed with honey, bought at an Italian deli in York last week) on wafers. Pleasant, lovely, heartening stuff....