October 16, 2010

Music from the court of Charles V on the CD. Days of flawless, radiant blue sky. The hills are blinding in their variety of colors. It is the Lord’s own autumn.

Looking hard at a property on Pine Forest Road in Weaverville. It has the forest I need to transfigure, and the rest is, at least, adequate. The house looks like a Hobbit dwelling. I can live with that. It will look less Hobbity when the toys disappear from the yard and the zoomorphic windchimes from the eaves. I have one more day to think about it before I phone the bank and begin the process, or don’t.

The property has the further merit of being close to Reems Creek Nursery, where I stopped to buy–something–which turned out to be a holly tree. I actually bought the tree for the woods at Pine Forest, but I don’t own it yet, so I planted it in my own front yard. The planting was unusually laborious; I don’t think the tree will survive, for that reason, because it was so laborious. Things that will prosper usually have a lightheartedness, a kind of inevitability about them. I take it is a sign of probable failure when I have worked too hard.

Angels in America at NC Stage last night. MM’s Roy Cohn added something missing from every other interpretation of that part I’ve ever seen, including Pacino’s, and that is humanity. One might say MM the man is not capable of inhumanity, but one might say the actor found dimensions in the character which made him, at times, almost too complicated for the play, an evil too multi-valenced to be entirely hissed. Ethel Rosenberg came off as a bit of a harpy, foretelling the bitter death of one we did not entirely hate. The production had everything talent and skilled rehearsal could bring to it. It was, in that sense, flawless. It lacked dazzle, sparkle, surprise, but those come and go with the night and the spirits that rule the corners of the stage, and their descent cannot be prepared for any more than the angel’s.

Had to fight the receptionist to have before theater cocktails at Zambra’s. I asked to be seated, and she said that we had to have a reservation and that all the tables were taken. The fact was that NONE of the tables were taken. I asked to see the manager, and he seated us. It was 6, and she was keeping tables open for reservations at 7:30. Plus, she had too many tattoos, and I think sometimes that introduces impurities into the blood which block good sense. We had to dodge a fight between the (perfectly enormous) bouncer and a drunken patron to get into Scully’s afterward. A laborious night. Except everyone in Scully’s that evening was physically beautiful, so it was worth the labor.