Friday, July 22, 2016

Asheville Reportage


It's been a fairly busy few days here. That picture above was taken the first day we were here, August getting loved on by both grandparents at the same time. He is such a joyful boy. He adores his Boppy.




Yesterday Jessie and Boppy and August and I walked downtown for some shopping and sight-seeing. I bought things for grandchildren. 
Yeah, weird. I know. 
Here's August eating and reading Pat The Bunny, that classic book of fun and action.


The child ate hummus and falafel until I thought he'd burst. 
While we were there, I went to use the ladies' room. Two ladies came in behind me and one chose to use the men's room instead of waiting like a sheep. I wondered if, since I was in North Carolina, I was required by law to call the police to report this bathroom irregularity. 
I didn't. No one seemed to care. 
Haha!

Asheville is just such a different world. I love it and yet, it sort of drives me crazy. There are SO few people of color that I see. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. It's so hipster and crazy-cool and one takes no more note of a six-and-a-half foot tall woman wearing boots, short-shorts, earrings the size of mini-coopers and a half-shaved head talking to another woman about using bone broth for their babies than one does of...well, anyone else. 
Bone broth. It's a thing, y'all. 

In a way, it all reminds me of the hippie days but with a lot more disposable income. Last night we went over to the house where Jessie and Vergil and August are staying for the summer to share supper. It's a big old rambling house with approximately the same sort of decorations and food and mamas and babies and chaos and cooking and garden and guitars that was going on forty years ago. 
There are more bikes, however, also nose rings. We hippies hadn't really discovered either nose rings or tattoos. This generation has taken care of that and if I had a nose I liked I'd get a nose ring. I love those things! 

Here's August climbing the steps.


He's getting good at that. That boy is all over the place. I got to help his mama give him his bath in his little tub in the big tub in the high-ceilinged bathroom upstairs. He loved it and I am here to say that he has the cutest little butt in the whole world. After he was rendered squeaky clean and happy, his mother rubbed delicious smelling lotion on him and tried to settle him down with a little massage but he wasn't having it. He wanted to crawl off the bed and explore his room-world so she got him dressed for bed and then read him a book which he did actually sort of pay attention to and nursed him for a bit. Then his daddy came upstairs and got him to sleep. This is their ritual. 

The downstairs was filling up with people come to play music, including a woman from France who played the accordion, I think. She is doing a thing called WWOOF, which stands for World-Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms. 
The internet has definitely played a role in making it easier for like-minded people to find each other and to provide opportunities to travel and so forth, but as I recall, we sort of all figured that out without the internet in some inter-galactic hippie way. It's so interesting to observe all of this- the differences, the same-sames. 

After August got put to bed, I asked Mr. Moon to bring me home. I just wasn't up to dealing with so many people and was in a strange mood. Part of it, I think, was that I'd read an article about Bill Cosby in Vanity Fair before we went over and that whole deal is a huge trigger for me. The perfect TV daddy who had been drugging and raping woman for decades, living two such separate lives, getting away with it for years due to his power, his money, his reputation, his public persona. 
It makes me so ill in my gut and this whole Republican National Convention is having a similar effect and although we didn't watch it last night (I simply cannot), I'm still quite aware of what's going on and I'm scared shitless. It seems to color everything in my world right now. 

Anyway, the little family is here and we are going to go to breakfast so I need to end this. 
Jessie says they played Beatles and Bob Dylan songs after we left and I am sad I missed that. 
Hippies. Dang hippies. 
God, I love them. 

So. Off to new adventures. We might even go to some waterfalls, get in the water, which would be nice. I could use a holy cleansing.

I'll take more pictures today. 

I hope all of y'all are well. Let's hang together, folks, and try to remember that love is more powerful than hate which is a very hippie thing to say and I'm proud to say it. 

Maybe I'll get a tattoo. 

Love...Ms. Moon


8 comments:

  1. Love to see the photos! I got my first tattoo in 1970. Hippie. Ground breaker. Illegal. Etc. Sounds like a grand adventure Mary!

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  2. Despite all the shit going on, you sound good, and what better place to be than Asheville? Even out here in crunchy granola Los Angeles, I felt unmoored last night. I feel better looking at August, though.

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  3. I was a WWOOFer in the 1980s in England and Ireland, then it was called Working Weekends on Organic Farms and you got a quarterly newsletter with openings sent by post or you picked it up in the alternative bookshops/pubs. I learned to bake bread, make beer, milk and muck out goats, plus lots and lots of weeding and digging, almost killed myself chopping wood.

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  4. That August is precious. It sounds like a cool place that I would like - at least I would like shopping there! Try to take a break from the shit of the world. It's depressing and scary. You are with your lover little boy. Keep looking at him.

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  5. Good to hear someone say love is more powerful than hate. I know it's true but even more worth thinking about in worrying times. It is good to escape into the simple world and simple happinesses of babies.

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  6. I had a nose ring. My mother said 'AGH IT'S A DEFORMITY' when she saw it. I guess she was kind of right, because now I have a scar.

    If you get your nose pierced, get it done right.

    So, what would your tatoo be of?

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  7. Community is everything. Hold on to what's real and don't let that RNC insanity into your head. I haven't been watching as I'm on vacation with the fam. Even so we talk about it. Everyone's scared. But what's more immediate is the love.

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  8. Asheville really is its own world. It's a very unusual place. I once got verbally assaulted there for wearing a sweatshirt that said "Florida" on it. They apparently don't think much of some Floridians. I felt like saying, "Hey! I'm on YOUR side!"

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