Another fun day yesterday, starting with a tour of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. I saw the Old Kentucky Home, T's mom's boardinghouse and the inspiration for Dixieland in Look Homeward, Angel. It took half the tour for me to get over the fact that some arsonist assh*le threw something flammable (molotov cocktails in Asheville??) into the dining room and set the house on fire a few years ago. It burned the dining room to cinders and the room above and part of the roof.
I'd forgotten (if I ever knew it) that the subtitle of Look Homeward, Angel is "A Story of a Buried Life." Having a chance to be in the house he hated/disliked/resented? and seeing that he didn't even have his own room in that house (he was shuffled around as the boarders' needs dictated) really put that book in perspective. I felt really sorry for him feeling so rootless, and I felt his pain in one specific regard: he needed quiet in a loud world. Whoo. I feel you, brother. Could we turn everything down about 100 notches? Apparently, Wolfe's entire family were very gregarious and loud and he, being more quiet and introspective, often felt at odds with them. He was closest to his brother Ben, who died in the Influenza epidemic of 1918, devastating T and effectively severing any real connection with his family (and w/ Asheville). In LHA, the narrator mourns Ben's death so:
We can believe in the nothingness of life, we
can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death--but who can believe
in the nothingness of Ben? Like Apollo, who did his penance to the high god in
the sad house of King Admetus, he came, with broken feet, into the gray hovel
of his world. And he lived here a stranger, trying to recapture the music of
the lost world, trying to recall the great forgotten language, the lost faces,
the stone, the leaf, the door.
Well, heck. T died of tubercular meningitis and pneumonia just shy of his 38th birthday, and I can't help but wonder how his writing style would have changed as he'd gotten older. Would he have lost some of that bombastic verbosity? Because we'll never know, I'm voting 'yes.'
Then off for a stroll through the shops en route to my favorite destination: Malaprop's. But first, some drama outside the shoe shop: some folks in a black SUV had left a dog and a cat in their car for 2 hours as was reported to the Animal Control people who'd arrived on scene to rescue said pets. The windows were cracked, the car was in the sun, a crowd of angry onlookers was gathering. I had a nice chat w/ an older gentleman (such nice manners!) outside of the shoe shop as we watched the fire fighters come and go and the Animal Rescue folks pace around the car waiting for the guy who had a door unlocker thingie to unlock the door. He and I had a nice chat about Troy and Watervleit, NY, where he was born and went to school and where db and I have been many times to visit extended family. It was a pleasant way to pass the time. He was taking refuge from the shoe shopping frenzy inside the store, as I was.
Finally, the dog was out, not so traumatized and soon being doggish. The cat I couldn't see, though I am assuming Miss Kitty was none too pleased to have been manhandled. Just a guess. I caught a glimpse of her after the flurry of activity died down, and she was lounging in the pet carrier looking nonplussed. As soon as the pets were out of the car, the unsuspecting couple walked up. As if on cue, everyone commented on the Murphy's Lawness of the timing. The couple was met by the Animal Control officer and given a ticket, some directions, and what seemed to me from a distance a very professional rundown of the afternoon's events. They seemed surprised, concerned, sheepish, everything one would expect in non-criminal types. Lo, did the people in my midst grumble! Really, though, let's think about this. It's 86-degrees outside. Do we want to sit in a black car in the sun for 2 hours w/o the air conditioning cranked to 4? I didn't think so.
What could top this excitement? More art. More galleries. A nice walk and time to do it. I made my way to Malaprop's in a more leisurely manner than I've done anything in a long time, had a fresh-squeezed lemonade, and read their Winter newsletter. I love that bookstore. db and BH met me there a short while later, and we took off for more adventures. I went back for the mini-portrait I'd seen the day before (pix latre), Boo bought a seriously overpriced but massively sexy t-shirt at a cool shop where I chatted w/ the owner about what a lifesaver iPods are in retail stores now so the poor clerks aren't tortured w/ the same 3 records on continuous play. Oh, I've been there. P.S. French Kicks are a good addition to the mix.
We then made our way to ScreenDoor, a treasure hunter's haven of antiques, yard art, and wonderful miscellany. It's way more fun than it sounds, and I didn't surprise myself at all by choosing the one thing in the store not for sale (an iron stool; v. clean lines, classic). Typical. But this was mere prelude to our real evening plans: dinner at Tupelo Honey Cafe. Get thee to Tupelo Honey! db and I didn't have our camera w/ us, but BH took pix, and as soon as he has them up, I'll snag the pic of db's hamburger, which was simply beyond. Boo's fried green tomatoes and goat cheese grits appetizer was beauteous, too. More lemonade for me, and a tomato sandwich, because the Law of ae states that no tomato sandwich shall be turned away.
After a day in the sun, sated by art and great food, it was all we could do to roll ourselves home and flop onto our wonderful bed at the inn. And if I had more energy now, I'd go on and on about how comfortable the bed was and how difficult it was for us to get out of it, but I'm back at home in my own comfy digs and the pillow is calling my name. Now, if only the Dingo would scoot over enough for me to lie down.
