April 14, 2013

Saturday was a blaze of light. I went with a man who turned out to be a former student to see a property in Candler. All the things it had going against it as a homesite were irrelevant to my pursuit of a bit of bare forest, but I guess that I won’t be buying it. The price is right, there are magnificent ferns, but something is wrong with the feel of it. A neighboring developer had dropped great trees across the road to prevent ATV’s. The fact that there IS a neighboring developer is bad enough. Passed Jesse Israel on the way home, and couldn’t resist multiple purchases: a variety of tomatoes, zucchini and straight-neck squash, bee-balm, golden poppies, lupine, whole beds of purple alyssum to help cover the plumbing scars. Planted long and, for a while, tirelessly. One of those days when no damage can be done, no exhaustion felt. Pulled sweet gum and cherry saplings out of the ground with my hands.

The first close inspection of the rebuilt wall reveals shoddiness even beyond what I expected. What gets into people’s heads? Did I mentioned they absconded with my garden trowels?

After the monumental gardening I had some wine and passed out until it was time to see Spring Awakening at UNCA. It was a good effort, and better than I had been led to expect by some involved in the production. Some good performances. The play itself is so weak that I think back on the praise it received on Broadway and wonder what that could have meant. Even with a production ten times better, the play is still without a single original, startling, or very engaging idea. The most interesting part is when the boys are reciting Virgil, if that can be imagined. It’s daring theater for those terrified of daring theater. Almost every directorial mistake that can be made was made, and the choreography was weirdly random, un-associated movement meant to cover up, I suppose, the thinness of the songs. Left into a beautiful night with the moon, risen late and already low in the west, a rim of snow, holy, a little crooked with respect to the horizon.