Sleipner

April 7, 2009

Pulling on toasty turtlenecks against the winter cold. In the hour I had between class and rehearsal last night, I scurried around, trying to protect my flowers, many of them in full bloom and far too tall for a bucket or a basket, from the coming two nights of freeze. Wind came up and made the covering problematic, but I persisted, then turned my back so that I could be spared sight of ruin. I’ll try not to look at the garden until tomorrow morning, when seasonable weather returns. It’s difficult now to account for my emotions then. The frost emergency coincided with a very low point in my emotions, and the whole enterprise seemed hopeless and gray and tragic. . . to a degree mildly comic in the pale light of dawn, if not at all comic then.

After rehearsals we tried out the bar at the new Bohemian Hotel in Biltmore. The hotel is luxuriously appointed with taxidermy and animal sculpture and third rate (though charming) woodland oil landscapes, all of which comes together pleasingly, if with some expectable tang of rawness and newness. The help was handsome. The food was exquisite, and I had a grapefruity drink which led me into delighted excess. The Final Four had ended in Detroit, and driving home, DJ and I encountered a herd of half naked boys, the clothed parts in Carolina blue, running down the snowy street celebrating UNC’s victory. At first in the dark I saw but the many legs moving, and thought it was Sleipner, Odin’s eight-legged horse, or else some fabulous beast released into the unseasonable night.