February 12, 2024

Message from Rudy that he wants to do the ceiling tomorrow, which means I spend portions of the day moving furniture. Culled the indoor plants, leaving only two Christmas cactii, a tiny regular cactus that I bought from a girl at a café, Jason’s jade plant, and the kitchen philodendron. I’d ruined the rest by not turning them, and they grew into odd shapes, rootbound. Found one of Maud’s toys under the love seat. Annihilated. 

J and I drove down the mountain to the Peace Center to see The Girl from the North Country, a show built around the songs of Bob Dylan. Gloomy, ill-considered, ill-constructed, failing to enable any possible concern for any of the dreary characters. It had nothing to do with Dylan that I could see (except for being set in twilight Duluth), nor did it succeed at creating a narrative of its own. The Dylan songs were unrecognizable, except now and then you’d catch a familiar lyric out of the cold oatmeal of interpretation.  The girl at the bar asked me to describe it in one word, and I chose, “Unnecessary.” We left at intermission. You raise $10 million to do a show, and you do that? It is a wasteful and improvident world. 

My cleaning lady’s check rejected at Wells Fargo. Spent the morning fighting to get a “hard hold” removed from the account. Wells Fargo is a fan of sharp practice, and only the bother of changing banks keeps me from doing it.