Village Porch

 

March 16, 2023

Unsettled through the day. Drove to my favorite plant nurseries. Bought nothing. Was led by some impulse to Reynolds Mountain, where I stopped lunch at the Village Porch. Sat at the bar beside Alex, who manages the wine section at Trader Joe’s. Before COVID one favorite pastime was to go to a bar and strike up conversation with a stranger, and this got me back into the groove. Liked Alex instantly, and continued to even after discovering him to be a Trump apologist. He continued to like me even after I confessed to being an old-fashioned Leftist. We both lamented the forces that make Asheville unliveable but for the rich. He acknowledged Trump’s idiocies, but as though they were missteps of an otherwise cherished personality, like a favorite uncle for whose brutalities one must make excuses. I kept to myself the conviction that Trump is, all considered, the worst person in American history. Alex and I were gentle with each other’s clearly opposite convictions. He interpreted Kanye’s “I love Hitler” as a demonstration of Christian love for all people, however flawed. He wouldn’t call Jan 6th an Insurrection, but rather a Riot. Never got a clear distinction between those things. He insisted he’d seen video of ANTIFAs changing clothes and mixing in with the crowd, waving a false flag. He insisted he’d seen videos of the MAGA shaman– the guy in the Buffalo hat– being given a normal tour of the Capitol. It was interesting to see how each of us assumed the other had been Potempkined into believing a false narrative. There on the bar stool I could think of no way to prove, or even illustrate, the unlikeliness of such parity. But, I was happy in his presence. We punched each other in the chest as I departed.