The fog is lifting and I am feeling mournful. Perhaps it's the effect of the boat horns, those lonely calls through the mist, or perhaps it's merely August: the burnt grass, the weary foliage. I have not been writing much lately. Perhaps the distractions of the nation have undone me, and I should fight harder against them. Or perhaps I am in an August state of mind.

In any case, I am still reading--constantly, perpetually, obsessively, as I always have and likely always will. Presently I am finishing Muriel Spark's The Takeover, and copying out Coriolanus, and dipping into poetry collections by Nikky Finney and Maurice Manning. Something, at some point, will trigger me to write. I try to be patient.

Tomorrow the boy heads off for two weeks on the west coast. On Friday we buy a house. This morning I compose a note to you and wonder what I can say that will make you feel that reading it is worthwhile. I imagine spreading trivialities like margarine, as if they are facsimiles of a richer life. There are days when all art gives me the sensation of falsehood. There are days when I write simply by habit, because it's what my hands tell me to do.

Sorry for the late post this morning. It's been one of those days when everything seems to connive at slowness and distraction . . . sticky floors, no bread, no coffee, laundry piling up. It's amazing what happens when I vanish for less than 24 hours and leave two guys to rule the roost. It's also amazing how many groceries a 19-year-old can consume, after having just spent the summer canoeing 900 miles in the Canadian wilderness. Every day we are out of everything.

But do not think I am complaining. It is a joy to be in Boy Land again.

Our gig in Monson went well--though, thanks to the gale-force winds off the lake, I came very close to having more than one Marilyn Monroe/white dress moment. It's hard to hold down a skirt when both hands are busy with a violin.

Today I'm back to editing, and back to driving the boy around, and back to living with existential dread. The dread did lift a bit yesterday, when I looked out into that crowd of central Mainers, with their hats and their beers and their work boots, as they sang along to "The Weight." I had a flicker of hope.

Later this morning I'll be heading two and a half hours north for an afternoon band gig at the Lakeshore House in Monson. After the show I'll drive back to Portland. It will be a long hot day, and I'm tired just thinking about it.

Already, the air is heavy, and the day's heat is flexing behind the morning's mist. I am sick at heart from yesterday's news, but trying, as I imagine you are, to trudge along. I suppose spending an afternoon playing music is not the worst thing I could be doing.

The man who drove the car into the crowd at Charlottesville was born in the same year as my own younger son. For some reason this distresses me, though it is nothing but coincidence. Yet I can't stop imaging that man as a child. And someone fed that child the poisons that spurred him to hatred.

And who’s this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That’s tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers’ little boy! 

--from Wislawa Szymborska, "Hitler's First Photograph"

Last night a small rain fell in Portland, Maine.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Nazis marched by torchlight. At a golf club in New Jersey, an idiot played at destroying the world.

America, America. You break our hearts.

This morning, our Canadian traveler-boy returns home after an overnight bus ride from Toronto. I daresay he will look like Grizzly Adams when he gets off that bus--giant beard, big hair, tanned like a boot, and wild-eyed after a sleepless night.

Given his three months in the wilderness, he may not know that we're on the verge of nuclear war. And here all I thought I would have to do is to catch him up on baseball trades.

Well, anyway. Here we are. Every single thing we dreaded about a Trump presidency seems liable to come true. Will we saved by his stupidity or destroyed by his narcissism?

We went to visit the house yesterday so that Tom could take measurements of all of the rooms, doors, windows, and the like. In the meantime I wandered around the yard and ambled up and down the neighborhood streets. I have so much grunt work ahead of me: years' worth of weeds, a couple of horrible prickly bushes to delete, choices about badly placed perennials (do they stay or do they go?), and finally planning new beds, new walkways, new patio space, new soil, new plants. The job will take years.

But yesterday Tom scored some free high-quality decking, left over from a renovation project he's doing--enough to repair both the front and back stoops. And I have been researching city compost projects, home compost bins, rain barrels, and such things, plus reading garden book after garden book. Though I have gardened for most of my life, I've never had to start from scratch like this--not to mention that dealing with 40 acres is a different thing entirely from dealing with a city plot. As city yards go, we've got a fair amount of room, certainly more than some of the neighboring houses have. But no one has ever loved it before, and that's what I need to learn to do.

In other news, no one has started a nuclear war yet.

* * *

I am slowly--excruciatingly slowly--continuing with my Coriolanus copying project. Part of the issue is that my Shakespeare omnibus is too big for my copying stand, so I have to crane and contort just to see the pages I'm trying to transcribe. But already I recognize that the politics of the play are unpleasantly resonant with our present-day situation. Shakespeare had the all-seeing eye.

* * *

Brutus. Mark’d you his lip and eyes?

Sicinius.                                                Nay, but his taunts.

Bru. Being mov’d, he will not spare to gird the gods.

Sic. Bemock the modest moon.

Except for the existential terrors of Trump and North Korea, things are going reasonably well in my life. We got news from the bank that our loan has been cleared and that they are scheduling the closing for August 18. Both Tom and I were amazed at how smoothly this all went. We had the hardest time even getting pre-qualified during our first attempt at home buying last fall. Yet this time we sailed through without any bank trouble at all. It's puzzling, but we're not complaining.

A lunchtime we are meeting at the house so that Tom can measure everything for building-permit purposes, and I am going to wander around the yard and consider landscaping issues. By next weekend, I could be making flowerbeds.

On the other hand, we may be immersed in nuclear winter, and all will be moot.