It's Better in the Mountains

I arrived in Asheville on Sunday after a painless flight spent mostly sleeping. The night before the flight was a jumble of business, running around buying bottles for samples, packing, racking a batch of muscadine wine from the plastic bucket in my kitchen to its fancy secondary, a Carlo Rossi jug, piling organic fruit into my freezer so the fruit flies don't get it. At ten o'clock, as I made myself some angel hair pasta with peppers and eggplant, my friend Biddle called and asked if I wanted to have a walk-on role in a burlesque show. I did, so at eleven o'clock, with my luggage only half packed and my kitchen still not fruit-fly proof, I put on my best used-car salesman costume and made my way down to The Playground to walk on during the Belmont Burlesque and hand the MC divorce papers. Then I watched the rest of the show, went back home, finished packing, and slept for two hours before heading off to the airport. I boarded the plane, put my head against the window, and fell sound asleep.

I woke in Charlotte, caught a puddle-jumper over to Asheville, and was met at the airport by Sam and his boy, Nate. They drove me into town for some brunch at the Frog Bar, formerly the New French Bar, with folks in town for my friend Tracy's wedding. As Sam and I found parking in town, we drove past the Frog Bar, and there was everyone--Tracy, his bride Julie, Lauren and Jeremy, Terry; my old college friends--sitting outside drinking bloody Marys and beers as they had on Sunday mornings years ago. It was strange. I might have been staring at a memory.

It's strange to me how much has stayed the same as it once was. I'm sitting in Gold Hill right now, which was the coffee shop where I spent the entire summer after I graduated college. I sat in the same seat everyday, writing plays and chatting with my friend Kim, my friend Sam the jazz musician. The name of the cafe has changed. It's the Everday Gourmet, now, but they still serve the same coffee and I'm still there in the same seat, the same age, writing in my notebook. I'm incognito at the moment, wearing a beard, and I bet my name is different, but it's still basically me there. My replacement. Someone to fill the space I left. A great deal of the town is like this. Names have changed to protect the innocent--The World Coffee Cafe for Old Europe, The Frog Bar for the New French Bar--but even under new management, they're still basically the same places they always were.

Still, not to sound like I'm not enjoying my time here. On the contrary, there's a certain beauty to it all. There's a joy in coming back and reconnecting that I haven't experienced in other homecomings. Although Asheville hasn't changed so much, I have, and in returning, I have the opportunity to change who I am to this city. To fill a new space.