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19 april 2002

stole my idea.

hometown number two

It's amazing what just a short trip out of town can do for you. I just returned from a little jaunt to Asheville, staying with Wendi, eating super-yummy food, and getting all sorts of good ideas; I'm feeling pretty darn good. The weather couldn't have been better, spring flowers were everywhere, and sidewalks were jammed with people of all ages.

I attended high school in the Asheville area, so returning to our beautiful mountains is extra-special. They are as much a part of me as Winston-Salem is, and have a magnetic quality that brings me back time and again. In my mind's eye, there are few things more beautiful than standing in view of the Seven Sisters' knobs on a clear day. (The Seven Sisters are seven perfectly-aligned mountaintops in Black Mountain, one behind the other until they reach the peak of the seventh.) There's Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe', with great coffee and even better stuff to read. There's Jerusalem Garden Cafe' and Salsa's, where you've been able to get real food before "ethnic" food became a chic buzzword.

Asheville is an odd little place. I've never been anyplace where the collision of New Age and Right Wing collides with such poetic force. All you need to do is take a look at the Citizen-Times' editorial section to see this illustrated. Among the people with whom I went to high school (like, 99 percent conservative republican), are a huge number of libertarian, socialist, wiccan, liberal, environmentally active, food co-opting, or highly artistic and entrepreneural people who make Asheville.

Fifteen short years ago, you didn't really go to downtown Asheville much. Lexington Avenue, which is now lined with shops from end to end, was where you didn't go. It was lined with prostitutes at night, and like the rest of downtown, poorly lit and empty of pedestrian traffic. There were a few restaurants and tourist shops here and there, but it was hardly the destination it is now.

These days, Asheville is a hub for artists of all kinds. It's the headquarters for Poetry Alive , and my writer friends from all over the country have stopped in to live for at least a few years. Given, it's not the easiest place to make a living, since something like 80 percent of the economy is service- and summer-based. But people's independence and creativity keeps them, and the rejuvenated town spirit, kicking.

Wendi, for example, has the coziest home you could wish for. It's not filled with a bunch of stuff from big-box retail stores, but things that she created, and art acquired from all over. In fact, as I type this, I'm dying some muslin in the washer to make a new summer bedspread. Thanks, of course, to the neato idea that she applied to her own curtains.

I've had an unexpectedly good couple of days. My mind is back where it belongs, and is racing with new ideas. That's my idea of a vacation. Happy weekend.