April 3

The P.A. at Medstop on day 7 of my illness confirmed bronchitis with an x-ray, and prescribed cough suppressant but not antibiotics.

Home alone on bed with computer deepens separation from people and the world around.  For two days I immersed myself in the web fighting boredom, surfing among youtubes, movies, news broadcasts– legitimate and bogus.  World events—wars, political mayhem, elections—all brief thrills and chills—and then movies.  Looking for quality on Britbox, started watching Brideshead Revisited, 1980’s version of 1940’s novel about disenchanted aristocrats, every minute dripping with homosexual romanticism that left me cold. Switched to Downton Abbey-like feature about Oscar Wilde whose lingering shots of pederastic tongue kissing and cornholing soon became unbearable, finally reverting to a James Bond action epic which required closing eyes for several torture scenes but was otherwise diverting. The only escape from this decadent escapism came from working on two writing projects dedicated to Jan in recognition of our anniversary and regret for spoiling it with illness

April 4

The anniversary has come and gone. I gave Jan the card I made and the apology poem, she made us a special halibut dinner and continues to urge me to rest and stay away from cooking and cleanup.

Restarting work at the creek, interrupted by two weeks of Spring Break was scheduled for yesterday afternoon.  Five people came, Viri, Katy, Taylor, Juan and Adriana.  My long planned intention to fell the ugly willow near the bench and turn it into a bridge worked smoothly with their enthusiastic teamwork.

Anne Marie messaged me that she would be out journaling in the morning and I managed to intercept.  She called the curve of the creek where we’ve been working “a riffle.” I came back at 4:00 and slept.  Jan made another great dinner and sent me back to bed, but I could only sleep sitting in the chair with feet up.  I plugged in airpods and put on the Apple Classical Beethoven Adagios collection, which suspended me between dream and waking all night.

April 5

I’d been planning to attend the “Hands Off” anti-Trump demonstration today, but acquiesced to Jan’s urging not to go in my condition.  Upon returning from it, she conveyed the seriousness of the situation that’s still sinking in. We are in the midst of a fascist coup that may be impossible to reverse or resist, and counters to it will be unprecedentedly painful. Everyone will face terrifying moral choices to fight or capitulate.

This political crisis overtops concern even for health.  Salud Carbahal, our heroic Congressional representative, spoke at the rally suffering from the worst cold he’s ever had.  What must it mean, flying in from Washington where the battle is hottest and shuttling among his activated constituents in need of his presence.

April 10

Fewer coughing fits last night, after struggling to teach two PBHS classes at the creek. A fit of afternoon energy drove ambitious meal preparation of eggplant parmesan.  Woke feeling fresh in the morning and went to beach with dog, wondering whether my illness has finally reached a turning point, the antibodies triumphing over the aliens. But there I felt waves of fatigue along with phlegmy cough, suddenly shifting to feeling really old. The same young woman in a swimsuit I’ve seen there several mornings alone sitting on a towel, writing in a journal and reading the bible, had her head bowed on two fists supported by her knees, I assumed in intense prayer.

April 15

Made appointment for this afternoon at Medstop for renewal of cough medicine and follow-up.  Bronchitis symptoms seemed to be subsiding enough for me to return to the bedroom three nights ago, but flared again, so I’m back in exile.  Able to function pretty well during the day and feel driven to exert and accomplish, but then I pay price.  So yesterday I spent the whole day in this chair reading Stalking Shakespeare, a book George lent me at the dinner he and Marta invited us to on Sunday.  It features Stanley Wells prominently along with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in a strange but  engaging memoir about the author’s quest for the true Shakespeare portrait, a goal pursued for centuries by scholars and sleuths.   Also prominent is author’s process through various stages of mental and physical illness and recovery. It made me wistful for the “Shakespearean Encryptions” project I’d abandoned, since I’ve heard nothing more about it since January from Shormi, the editor who invited me to contribute a book chapter.  The abstract I submitted began with discussions of two Shakespeare portraits, Droeshut and Chandos, in order to fit the projected collection’s rubric of “Shakespeare Image.”

Writing this entry was just interrupted by an email from Shormi asking if I was going to treat the stage version of Upstart Crow as well as the TV series, implying that the project was still alive.

At dinner George said he’s not depressed any more since he’s deep into writing a novel: a story about encounters between Melville and Whitman that never happened but could have. The mention of Whitman made both Jan and me pop up with reference to Gary Schmidgall, a friend  and Whitman scholar who also writes on Shakespeare.  George knew and admired a couple of his books.

Two thirds of the way through the book, I wrote to George to express my enthusiasm for the book, and, after determining I’d never sent him the abstract, forwarded that.  He got right back with a message including this:

It really does jibe with your new project. Write that article!

Those sentences agitated me with regret for abandoning the project and not submitting it elsewhere, followed by reflection on my reluctance to offer anything for publication that’s not requested—was it pride or the opposite?

April 26, 2025

At my second return, the P.A. at Medstop prescribed Prednisone to treat the bronchitis, and within two days it was gone. Since then the Creek project has fully taken over, leading up to hosting a lively Mark’s 75^th Birthday party there, which included recruiting relatives to do some some heavy construction.

Next day, the City Biologist and the Creeklands ED asked for photographs of it for an upcoming presentation. It took awhile to come up with the requested “before, during and after” pictures accumulated over ten years.   I was glad to include pictures of Anne Marie’s nature journal entries I had just turned into signage.

Friday January 17 was the day appointed for the harvest, that is, the slaughter, of my favorite sheep of the flock.  Savannah, our wheelchair-bound student in Therapeutic Horticulture, gave her this name and I always preferred it, but she was officially known as Maple. I made no objection to the choice of sacrificial lamb, affirming the need to regard our animals as livestock rather than pets in order to maintain the semblance of an agricultural enterprise and to recoup a portion of the expense of breeding and feeding them. There was also the value of their hides for wool rugs and for me, otherwise a confirmed vegetarian, the opportunity to eat the most delicious meat I’d ever come across and share it with others on festive occasions.

Unlike the farm’s true pet sheep, Tucker, who was bottle fed from birth and raised as a 4H project by a young girl in Paso intending to sell her at the 2020 County Fair  but adopted out to us after the Fair was cancelled by COVID, Capri was never halter broken and like the others, only controllable when following Tucker, who would go wherever his shepherd or shepherdess led.

Whenever I approached Capri’s corral or pasture with a friendly greeting, she’d join the others in turning and walking away.  But if I came in, sat down on an upturned bucket and played my recorder for a few minutes, she’d shyly approach and then nose up to me for some closed-eye skritchy-scratchy followed by stroking on her cheeks and chin.

After a long morning chain-sawing for the trail at Prefumo Creek helped by four students at Pacific Beach High School getting Community Service Credit, I attended a workshop at the farm this afternoon.

https://www.universe.com/events/winter-crafting-skills-series-poetry-workshop-tickets-XZ0FNH

Caroline has been a part-time staff member for a couple of years—a reserved sylphlike presence who’s shown interest in dried flowers, sheep, tanning hides, and making teas.  I learned recently she was a birth doula, nanny for Shane’s baby, extensive traveller.

She wouldn’t take the offered payment from me.

The event resonated with my recent activity to prepare a script for a ten-minute performance of the start of Shakespeare’s Sheep Shearing Shindig in Act4 Scene 4 of The Winter’s Tale  that I’ll propose as part of the program for City Farm’s Sheep Shearing Shindig coming up in May.

Six others attended the two hour session, 5 women and a man, ages mid-twenties to mid-thirties. All gave evidence of commitment to introspection, journaling, reading and writing poetry, probably greater than mine.

Caroline let us know that she’d been to college and graduate school and wrote and published.

At the start, as we sat at tables under the Pergola, she served tea and fresh bread she’d baked and described the workshop’s format: she’d provide prompts, and time for us to write in response at different sites on the farm along with invitations to read poems we’d brought.

I’d printed out Wendell Berry’s, “The Man Born to Farming,” from his  Farming A Handbook  a collection which influenced our decision to move from New York City to an old homestead we bought at the end of the road in British Columbia in 1970, where Jan and I stayed for nine years.

The Man Born to Farming

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug.  He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing.  He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?

I was eager to read it to the group and to affirm the continuing truth of his prophetic  pastoral vision, manifested here at City Farm.

When Caroline asked each of us our connection to this place and what motivated our attendance at the workshop, I tried to keep it short, but my veteran involvement with the Farm and its link to my lifelong personal and professional literary engagements wouldn’t let me.

Caroline’s first prompt was to write without lifting your pen about last night’s sleep or a dream. It struck a note:

Sinking into the topper on my hard mattress, grateful for the fatigue and its support that floats me away, and when thoughts about the past day and the morrow crop up demanding attention, counting breaths passing in and out across the anapana spot—what’s left of my abandoned meditation practice—and knowing that by number eight I’ll be gone, and again after the midnight pee, greeting that trusty ritual, this time only up to four, grateful that this is all that’s left, no forcing or aspiration, but only an embrace of what’s not here and what is.

Next prompt involved walking to The Lookout—a location I’d selected and built up years ago, now rarely used except by shitting blackbirds– and to write inspired by its open view of land and sky.

Two mountain ranges surround us,
two watersheds converge in the creek
that fills and drains our life-rich home,
the brooks and springs marked indelible
by green explosions interlacing out and up.

The next prompt was to look at the sheep in the pen nearby and write of your connection.  I used up most of the brief time to get a sweatshirt from my car.  I observed only

Two flocks exchange stares.

Then we went to Plot 1, the immaculate regenerative vegetable garden, to look at a single plant  or creature

January peach blossom two months too early
to meet its welcoming Spring,
petals as pink, pistils and stamens
as swollen as if it had a fruitful life ahead
despite the canker that leaves last season’s
dessicated twigs and flowers on the branch.

Back at the Pergola, Caroline read a poem by her professor and mentor who died young. It started with “Write a question: Yes.”  Write a question was the prompt.

How Long Still?

Richard Stiehl in France I learned last night, died at 97.
Marilyn across the street last week at 93.
Rick in Lund at 75.
Beethoven 57, Shakespeare and Napoleon 52, Mozart 34.
Wendell Berry alive today at 90. I at 82.

Sheep and Schubert

Lambs born Mother’s Day 2014.  Franz Schubert born 1797

I was looking forward to the regular Sunday Creek Freak work party at the Restoration and Enhancement project.  In addition to the four steady College Corps Fellows–including Kennedy, whom I’d seen in a fine performance of a bizarre play at the Spanos theatre the night before, plus grandson Lucas–two new volunteers had signed up.

Late in the previous week the unfinished tasks of moving tree trunks into position together with Josh and his Skid Steer and starting the contracted maintenance program of weeding the plantings, along with testing the irrigation system, were completed.

Earlier in the week the first field trip along the creek project led by Creek Lands Conservation took place, involving 60 fifth graders bussed in for three hours.

I’d been anxiously working toward these outcomes for months.

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