May 25, 2014

Eventful Saturday. Much writing in the morning on different projects. I was on my way to the studio but decided to stop at the Tobacco Barn, where I bought the four chairs I was looking for– and found at Village Antiques for $2500.– for $235. Also bought three beautiful old mirrors with thick pained frames. Fat-ass tourists from New York had taken the loading zone parking (without, of course, loading) so the lady at the sales desk told me to park in the little space clearly marked “No Parking” right across from the door. I did so. No sooner was I there than an Asheville cop cruised by and shouted through his window at me.

Cop: You can’t park there. You can’t be there. How long are you going to be there?
Me: OK, I’m going. I’ll just load up and then–
Cop: Didn’t I tell you to move it now?
Me: The lady told me expressly to park here. The loading spaces are full–
Cop: We get complaints all the time. You can’t park there–
Me: I’m completely off the street–
Cop: You can’t be there. People are all the time complaining–
Me: OK. Give me five minutes–
Cop: no–
Me: –and I’ll be out of he way–
Cop: you gotta move right now--

Cop kept yelling at me and I kept saying “uh huh, uh huh, yes sir,” making trips back and forth between my cart and the truck until I was all loaded up. The cop’s last words were, “You’d better be gone when I went back.” I thought I might sit there for a while so I was NOT gone when he got back, but the sun was hot, and I drove off. It would be nice to have an encounter with the police that did not end in, at the least, eye-rolling.

Bad smell from the basement. I went down to find a dead mouse (not the source of all that) and then realized that either the cats have been using the cedar chips Stewart spread as a second toilet, or the mess from his dogs is just coming to ripeness. I thought it might be something worse.

Built Lawrence a fence on his south for shade.

Shoulder a little better this morning. You can feel the tendon (or whatever it is. Sinew?) Unsticking from the place where’s it’s hung up and moving across the bone back into place.

Thinking about a presentation a girl (she wants to be a boy, so I don’t really know how to introduce this) did in my Tolkien class. She decided to present on the Botany of Middle Earth, saying that it was appropriate because she was an environmental science major. In the presentation she identified the great crabapple tree on the quad as a cherry, and introduced a potted fig as a red maple tree. I decided to say nothing at the time, but it has boiled up since from time to time. What to say to a student who undermines her right to general truths by being wrong in specifics? Students in general hate to be held responsible for facts. “Isn’t it OK just to get the general drift of things? Why do I have to memorize everything?” The answers are: NO, and You Don’t Have to Memorize; you just have to remember. Actors memorize. It is not too much to ask the rest of us to remember.

Tumult of birds at the break of day.