North Carolina: Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye

So I am stranded in the south because the north is getting a lot of snow. It's plantation houses and biscuits here and I am staying at a renovated mansion that could be the setting of Kara Walker's nightmares. Or certain people's dream weddings. I spend days in the luxury and wallowness of a southern belle of a hundred years. They have prints of natives and ducks all over the walls. The silverware is quite exquisite.

Today, I ventured out into the world, and spent the better half of my time at a cafe working on my translations. I thought of Aschenbach. I contemplated on certain aspects of walking, picking up things and opening doors. A phenomenology, if you will. I bought a secondhand skirt from a very pretty boy, something out of a sad American road movie. He asked me the name of the author I gave a talk on. Then, responding to nature's call I entered a chinese. I bought fried rice, which in the hotel room turned out to be a good American portion that could feed a family of four. Walking down to my plantation residence I saw two dark SUV's, they had words painted with whitewash on them. Duke Fuck UNC. Duke > UNC, beautifully and academically economical. There were tents set up in the middle of the oxonianity of Duke, under the rain yesterday, people waiting to get tickets for the basketball game. I bought a Carolina t-shirt to commemorate the game, my groundedness and the phenomenology of the cafe (there was a guy with an Exeter College hoodie sitting behind me). Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye.