Today I walked over to the university arboretum and spread out a blanket by a big old North Carolina tree. It was in the 70s, and though it was unseasonably warm, I savored an afternoon of the slow pace of life down here that everyone talks about. I sat in the sun and read some back issues of the New Yorker, soaking up months of culture that I had missed when my reading list was solely based on urban planning. Yep, three of four classes are now done for the semester.
After a few hours of reading, I drove over to a local coffee shop where I sort-of avoided getting hit on by some 60-year-old dude who was wearing some kind of cyclist windbreaker unzipped so that his gray chest hair poked out of it. He made conversation with me about the beautiful looking fruit tarts:
Him: Are you going to have a tart?
Me: Nope. (Pause) Just coffee.
Him: Oh! Good discipline. I really have motivation not to eat one either.
Me: Uh, yeah.
Him: I just had two apples and a piece of cheese for lunch.
Me: (Silence)
After that, I came home and watched some old videos on YouTube. Josephine Baker, Russian Ballet from the 70s, the new exhibit of Kara Walker's art at the Whitney in New York. You can really find anything you want to see on there. I guess it goes to show that I can only complain to a degree about being culturally isolated down here. To the degree of a 2" x 3" online video of about 5 minutes in length on almost any cultural topic in the world.
Also, I went to the "Short Circuit Traveling Film Festival" last week. It was a series of short films made by filmmakers of the Southeast US and it was really fun. My favorite short was called "The Language of Limbs: A Documentary on the Agrifolk Art Movement." It was hilarious and clever and southern. You can view a portion of it here.
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