January 22, 2016

Pandora seems to have selected ragas for me for this white-and-black morning.
   
Considerable snow wafted and piled by considerable wind. It is very beautiful outside. I watched it from my bed, gently descending past the street lamps. I went barefoot to the trash can, and am now fully, fully awake. As an adult I have feared the snow and the cold– feared the cold almost morbidly. I would like to get back to a former impulse of delight.
   
Went to the Magnetic last night to see what will likely be the only evening of the Asheville Fringe not snowed out. Alex was working concessions. He handed me a play he wanted me to read, “because I won’t be seeing you tomorrow.” It was the first I knew classes had been cancelled the night before, which seldom happens, but which gave a mood of ease to the night. The feature was J's Mother Tongue. I have thought in the past his work was flashes of mightiness diluted by passages of smart-alecky-ness, but those proportions have changed utterly. Mother Tongue was overwhelmingly brilliant, and the parts which were not brilliant were miscalculations of a brilliant talent. He was not well served by one of his actors, but the rest of that, too, was exemplary. A, for instance, is one of Asheville five best actors (the number is arbitrary) and goes from strength to strength. I remember when he was so handsome you’d sit down and gape when he walked into a room. Sometimes I think “If I could only sit so-and-so down and talk out the problems of his play,” but I couldn’t do this with Julian. Our imaginations stake out claims on very different parts of the world.  I don’t understand what he’s up to. But I do understand when he has speared the White Whale.
   
A day fully my own ahead of me. Praying that the power stays on. The cats look out the window. I opened the door and Maud put one paw onto the snow, whirled and retreated back into the house. Maybe I’ll build a house for the wildcats in the mountains, that they too can retreat and curl up on a scarlet rug.