September 13, 2012

Theater last night. Stopped at 5 Walnut for a prosecco on the way. It’s the place where women meet their women friends for a girls’ night out. One woman walked in who was the exact image of Botticelli’s Venus, flowing hair and all. Nobody seemed to notice but me. I thought the man next to her was a goner, but he was the bartender’s boyfriend and never looked at her. To my left at the theater was Meron, from Ethiopia, whose English was so good I took her for a native. I kept firing questions about Ethiopia at her, when it was clear she was working pretty hard to be an American. “Meron,” it turns out, indicates a kind of sacred oil. I was trying to imagine what it was like to come from there to here, and be a theater major at Warren Wilson. The play, a one-man show about Buckminster Fuller was, somewhat against expectation, magnificent. I forget occasionally that though a theater piece is usually comic, or tragic, or at least dramatic, sometimes it can be merely enlightening. What was the difference between the show and a lecture? Maybe nothing but pretty lights; still, one loves a skillful lecture.

In three hours I’m again at the mercy of United Airlines. Learn to expect the worst, so anything short of the worst will feel like a reprieve.