Stacey was all smiles as she rolled up to grab us, with Lucy, her dog, rustling about in the back seat. Freshly fed from the diner we loaded up and set off down Route 23 toward Delta, Ohio where Todd's sister, Shelly lived. Stace had taken Saturday off as well in anticipation of the trip, and set up to have one more day off on the return end of the trip to recoup at her house. As far as we were concerned we had until Monday night to get there, Tuesday morning at the latest.
I was most excited about the beginning part of this trek. It turned out that Route 23 that we were leaving out of Hillsdale on went straight into Oneonta, NY, the town in which I was born in. It seemed incredibly fitting on this backtracking through my past that the last brief stop over on the way west would be in the town I spent my first year alive. It put a nice bow, as Todd would say, on the way I had rolled back in time by the way I had ended up doing all my re-visiting; from Bill and Laura in DC who were post-college friends, to New York and those SVA years stomping grounds, on up to Mass where my developing years were spent from 1 until 18.
Stacey refused to drive on interstates citing the beauty it neglects, and we were 100% in agreement with her. Navigating 23 we passed through some tragically beautiful towns, like Hudson, NY with their boarded up 1920's era buildings, and crossing over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River to a mountainside restaurant off the Catskills boasting a five state view on a clear day. Not long after dark we came upon the town sign entering Oneonta. Literally as we were passing the sign my Mom called.
It was perfect timing. Since we'd moved away from that town when I was only 16 months old my knowledge of its layout was limited. We often visited over the following few years, so I knew it somewhat, but even that came to a close by the time I was about 8. I hadn't been back since then. Everything, once we navigated our way to downtown, still held an abstract familiarity that conjured up long dormant memories from that time.
Mom guided us to our first stop, Fox Hospital. The big claim to fame there was that Paul Reubens was born there, aka Pee Wee Herman. I sputtered that one out to Todd and Stacey along with the notion that I hadn't stood in that parking lot in, most likely, 33 years, a month, and ten days. Being raised Christian Scientists, I doubt I would have returned before then. It was also the same parking lot that my pregnant mother sat in the car at 11:30pm on the night of the 19th while my Dad tried soothing her with hymns because she insisted on not going in the hospital until midnight so they didn't get charged for two days. I was born around 4am on the 20th, which she remembers because not long afterward she watched the sun rise. Awww.
From there we drove down Main St. passing through the old buildings that still stood. It reminded me of the town in Its A Wonderful Life, with George Bailey running around after Mr. Potter. I wanted to see the first house I lived in, but had no clue as to where it was. I was hoping something would stand out to me and jog my memory, but we got to the other side with no luck. Todd and Stacey needed a grocery store, so while they went in to one by the highway I called my Mom back and finally got a good chat in with her along with directions to the old house. After about forty-five minutes we were back in the car trying it again, this time with success.
Driving up Chestnut St. we passed my old church that looked like it was probably exactly the same, but looked completely different. Passed the old theatre I saw Adventures in Babysitting at, and on up by Hartwick College where my parents went to college and met. Soon we were turning down this tiny little side lane looking at the first house I ever lived in. The beginning of my 34 dwellings in life. I got a picture of that, and one of the street sign, then made our way out of town.
Not long after leaving town we happened across another really funky experience. Off the side of the road was a fully functioning drive through theatre playing the new Star Trek. All of us got all excited, and Stacey declared she'd never even seen a drive through before, much less been to one. That sealed it, we U-turned about and pulled in for the show. Everything was dark, and no one came up to us as we entered so we couldn't figure out if we were supposed to pay or not. After some half assed looking about, we were easily convinced that they were no longer charging so we found a spot to park at and dialed into the audio for the show. We'd only missed about fifteen minutes as well, so we had lucked out completely for a really cool treat.
Once the show was done it was about 1am. We'd never really figured out what the camping arrangement was going to be, but we had always figured that Todd and I would likely be much more awake than Stacey since she'd have woken up earlier in theory, so we'd planned that one of us would take over driving while she slept for a bit. I slid into driver mode and Stace conked out in the back. It was dark anyway as well, so we figured we'd cover some ground on the interstate to give us more back road dilly dallying time Sunday.
What ended up happening was that I drove about an hour and a half to Elmira, NY on the Interstate then turned off again to make for some nice back country scenery through Pennsylvania the next day. It was about 3am by the time we got into Penn down that nice back road we'd spotted on the map and I pulled in to a fishing pull off figuring that would be a nice suitable place to sleep. Stacey had woken up by then, and I wasn't tired by any stretch, so as we started pulling out packs to make up a little camp we all slowly concluded that we didn't really want to stop driving then. The sunrise wasn't too far ahead of us and that would be sort of nice to see, and there was a park a little ways further down the road the might be nice to camp out at.
We all piled back in and I kept on driving. Todd and Stacey rotated spots, so now she sat up front keeping me company and Todd sacked out in the back with Lucy. It was nice to get some one on one time with Stace. As we drove over the rolling hills, and pastures started opening up under the dawning sky, we had more time to really catch up on what each other were like these days contrasting them to the days we knew each other before. After a couple hours we were treated to a beautiful sunrise emerging between the Poconos behind us.
Allegheny State Park was the park we'd been eyeballing before as a place to stay at. A little after 7am we reached that area and Todd began rousing for coffee from the back seat. Pulling into a gas station on the eastern edge of the park we oriented ourselves and found out a bit about the camping costs and arrangements within its boundaries, then loaded up on snacks and coffee before heading in. We ended up landing ourselves by a lake for breakfast by quarter to 8. Stacey had wisely brought some cantaloupe which she split with us while Lucy sprinted from one patch of grass to the next sniffing everything.
Stacey took over driving from there again and I took my turn in the back nodding off against the window. I don't know that I ever fully fell asleep, but it was one of those hazy half lidded gazes over the passing scenery out the window as we sped to the Ohio border. Right on the border was a church we pulled into and took an hour spreading ourselves out on its front lawn. I was awake after that as we made our way toward Cleveland.
The church brought about another Chinese Firedrill as I switched to the front seat, Todd took over driving, and Stacey returned to the back. She really wanted to see Lake Eerie, or the ocean as she called it, so we made our way slightly north to Ashtabula and spent some time exploring the town and beach there. Cleveland followed, and on to the Toledo area which was our ultimate destination.
Delta is one of those towns with probably less than ten streets in it, and only one main one, about 20 miles west of Toledo. As previously mentioned this was where Todd's new found sister, Shelly, lived, whom we'd be staying with, but I had a few destinations of my own for the area. My good friend Ang back in Denver grew up east of Toledo in a town called Curtis that I still can't find on a map, and to my shock another friend, Loreli, who I've mentioned a few times here, also grew up by Toledo. She had called as well when we were going through Oneonta asking about where I was and what I was doing and it turns out she's not only from the Toledo area as well, but from right there in that minute little town of Delta. Strange odds on that one.
This Ohio/Michigan trip, however, I viewed as Todd's end of the "life" tour we were doing. Mine obviously being the East Coast that he'd just endured, I figured I'd ride along for his end and if it worked out to see either of those spots for Ang and Loreli I would arrange it then. Either way, a lot showed up on our horizon as we finished our trek west and passed into the land of Toledo that evening. I had found my way back into the driver's seat by the time we pulled into Shelly's driveway around 6:30pm.
It was interesting to witness the first physical meeting of a brother and sister. Todd handed me his camera telling me to act as photographer for the event, something I really don't want the responsibility for, and so with subtle fanfare they met and had their first hug. I snapped a picture of that and one of them together then quickly gave the camera back to Todd, keenly aware that he snaps of far more pictures than I tend to, and that I as long as I held both cameras I was subject to accusation of missing a good moment. Not for me.
Stacey and I had a good parting hug as well. She had decided not to stay the night, but to trek back to upstate New York where she'd found a retreat she wanted a whole day at. This would allow her to have a leisurely return on her own as well, rather than being pressed into highways from a time crunch. With another hug goodbye she drove off her and Lucy, and Todd and I were welcomed into his sister, Shelly's, house.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
5/30- The Great Left Turn
Amy and Corrin were long off to work at school by the time we awoke that morning. The house was freezing, but they had left us coffee and a fridge full of things to cook. We had only coffee, as is our way, but we thought about cooking it for a bit. The decision not to cook came from the fact that Stacey was soon to be arriving to drive us out for a day at Bash Bish Falls together. This was to be our big left turn west that we kept talking about. It did, however, mean that we wouldn't be taking Alex up on his offer to train as street performers in Boston that day. I made sure to give him a call the day before to let him know, and it turned out it was actually Monday we were supposed to go anyway. Ah well.
After a bit of futzing about Stacey showed up around 11:30. I had one pit stop to make, that I thought would take maybe ten minutes, which was to cancel my cell plan with Verizon and switch to a prepaid arrangement. The aggravation in that was that I would have to pay the $100 contract breaking fee, which I really didn't like the idea of mostly because I think signing a two year contract is absolute bullshit for attaining a phone. In the end, however, it would save me about $300. For all those who wish to call me, the switch to that plan leaves me with a Saturday phone day. On Saturday's I'll turn my phone on and get all the voicemails sent to me, and I'll be able to make all my calls that day and talk as long as I want until midnight. The rest of the week the phone will be off.
This switch took about an hour and a half rather than the ten minutes I was hoping for. In the meantime, Stacey took care of some of her phoning business then sat with Todd in the car the rest of the time. As they sat there whiling away the minutes an novel idea struck her. She had apparently taken a few days off next week connected with her weekend, but hadn't really come up with what she was going to do with them. She knew she was due for a road trip but was uncertain as to where to go. We were looking to make our way out to Michigan for Todd's family reunioning end of this trip, so she connected the dots and decided she wanted to road trip with us out there. This altered everything in a heavenly way.
Once finished at Verizon we flew down the back road of route 57 to Bash Bish Falls working this idea of getting to Michigan in a week around in our heads. The adventure sounded great, and on top of it she wouldn't be leaving until that Saturday which allotted us the rest of the week to fuck around in the woods. It was precisely what we needed.
Bash Bish is a park tucked away in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts on its border to Connecticut and New York. We took our time getting out there in true Stacey travel fashion, stopping in at the Granville General Store to get some local cheese and just to look around as we go. Once at the falls we hopped over rocks, experimented with underwater pictures, and just relaxed. Because of our lackadaisical delay Stacey had but an hour or so there before having to turn back, but this was done with the promise to return in four days for our road trip to the Midwest.
After she left, Todd and I dove into the forest. The park is relatively far removed from any towns nearby for those hobbling around on foot with big packs. It was only a few miles from the little town of Copake Falls, or Hillsdale, NY nearby, but for us we were in the wilds at last. Crossing over the creek by a fallen tree we made our way into seclusion where we decided we would practice our camp craft.
For three nights we stayed tucked away literally seeing no other people until we emerged again on Friday. Most mornings we'd hear kids playing down the stream, but other than that nothing. To add to our wilds, however, it did rain on and off the entire time we were out there. For me it was nice though. After the first night of unanticipated wetness we decided to build ourselves a lean to from the tarps. Todd had already constructed a fire pit in our site, which we used nightly despite the rain, so this tarp home added to the sense of semi-permanence for our stay. The stability, seclusion, and roughness to the setting was perfect for us to detox from people. All the events that had just unfolded over the past month were given time to simply settle in my consciousness in preparation for me to truly process them over the next few weeks.
I filled the days with wandering off on hikes on my own, or messing about with the camp, often just sitting and talking with Todd as well. By Friday, however, we felt ready to uproot again and move a little further west before Stacey came. We packed up slowly and meandered down the little winding road to a campsite on the New York side of the park. There we looked over the general store, talked with the cute ranger girls there to find out about park fees for camping, and sat at the picnic tables for a while munching on peanut butter and tortillas reading the wise words scrawled across the wood. Todd also got himself a pack of cigarettes after a few days of not smoking. The intriguing part I thought about that was that he said he wasn't craving them, he just wanted them.
A little before sunset we pushed past the park and got on to the north/south running road of route 22 heading to Hillsdale. A few miles down there we ducked into the woods and nested in with another lean-to for the night. These constructions had suddenly become quite important because that first rainy night in the woods left Todd discovering his new Minimalist bivy was simply water resistant and not water proof. The resistance had not held up that first night, and for all of this time he was dealing with a damp sleeping bag which the lean-to prevented from becoming a soaked sleeping bag.
Saturday we made our way up the road a little further to a farm stand. As we were passing it it was almost a whim as we looked at each other in agreement that we could use some grapes or fruit of some sort to breakfast on. We got well more than we bargained for and made some new additions to the great people we've been meeting on this trip.
Sauntering in hoping for coffee and grapes we ended up talking with the owner of the place, Tony. He's an old vet who's nestled in now to this little stretch of land and runs the family farme stand. He seemed intrigued by our packs and after getting into some conversation with us invited us to sit on his patio out front. We got some coffee and a bag of cherries and took him up on it while he roamed about doing his chores.
Not long after sitting down his son, Keith, wandered over to say hi. We got to talking with him for quite a while about our travels, his interests in history, and general family history of the place, but most keenly we got into our strange brand of politics as well. It always intrigues me the number of people one runs across who will talk about their preparations for societies crumbling. Its always been a fascinating subject for me since I was a kid, and of course people don't generally talk seriously about it, but there is always this shy hinting when like minds get around each other that they are ready. Paranoid and crazy, perhaps, but its an interesting notion, and I for one see it more as a period of rebuilding rather than destruction.
While we were there Keith would come and go as customers came and went, but he kept coming back picking up on the last thread we'd leave off on. At one point he came back with a couple of gatorade bottles for us to have, then as we were leaving his mom gave us a box of lemon cookies. It was just a great meeting, and to feel that generosity again and have the common bond of interest and inspiring conversation was good for our reemergence back to people after Bash Bish.
We made our way further up the road from there and soon enough we were in Hillsdale proper. Our first stop was the library were we stopped in to do some email checking and updating. Todd got a bit more time than I did as I was nominated to walk down to the nearest pay phone and upload our Pocketmail posts. The nearest pay phone turned out to be almost a mile down the road, so I had just time enough to check an email or two before the library closed at 4.
From there we hit up our old standby, a diner. Cheap good food, bottomless cups of coffee, and almost guaranteed to have a good feel with good people. We weren't disappointed as we sat talking a bit with the folks there and watching their kids play. Around 6 we crossed the street and hung out in a park for the last hour before Stacey was expected to arrive. It was a Saturday, so it was the first of my new "phone days". I turned it on and made some calls out to get in touch with people, but mostly reached voicemails. I did, however, reach my sister who I talked to most of that hour we waited. By 7pm we found out Stacey was right down the road and we'd soon be in her car traveling west.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
After a bit of futzing about Stacey showed up around 11:30. I had one pit stop to make, that I thought would take maybe ten minutes, which was to cancel my cell plan with Verizon and switch to a prepaid arrangement. The aggravation in that was that I would have to pay the $100 contract breaking fee, which I really didn't like the idea of mostly because I think signing a two year contract is absolute bullshit for attaining a phone. In the end, however, it would save me about $300. For all those who wish to call me, the switch to that plan leaves me with a Saturday phone day. On Saturday's I'll turn my phone on and get all the voicemails sent to me, and I'll be able to make all my calls that day and talk as long as I want until midnight. The rest of the week the phone will be off.
This switch took about an hour and a half rather than the ten minutes I was hoping for. In the meantime, Stacey took care of some of her phoning business then sat with Todd in the car the rest of the time. As they sat there whiling away the minutes an novel idea struck her. She had apparently taken a few days off next week connected with her weekend, but hadn't really come up with what she was going to do with them. She knew she was due for a road trip but was uncertain as to where to go. We were looking to make our way out to Michigan for Todd's family reunioning end of this trip, so she connected the dots and decided she wanted to road trip with us out there. This altered everything in a heavenly way.
Once finished at Verizon we flew down the back road of route 57 to Bash Bish Falls working this idea of getting to Michigan in a week around in our heads. The adventure sounded great, and on top of it she wouldn't be leaving until that Saturday which allotted us the rest of the week to fuck around in the woods. It was precisely what we needed.
Bash Bish is a park tucked away in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts on its border to Connecticut and New York. We took our time getting out there in true Stacey travel fashion, stopping in at the Granville General Store to get some local cheese and just to look around as we go. Once at the falls we hopped over rocks, experimented with underwater pictures, and just relaxed. Because of our lackadaisical delay Stacey had but an hour or so there before having to turn back, but this was done with the promise to return in four days for our road trip to the Midwest.
After she left, Todd and I dove into the forest. The park is relatively far removed from any towns nearby for those hobbling around on foot with big packs. It was only a few miles from the little town of Copake Falls, or Hillsdale, NY nearby, but for us we were in the wilds at last. Crossing over the creek by a fallen tree we made our way into seclusion where we decided we would practice our camp craft.
For three nights we stayed tucked away literally seeing no other people until we emerged again on Friday. Most mornings we'd hear kids playing down the stream, but other than that nothing. To add to our wilds, however, it did rain on and off the entire time we were out there. For me it was nice though. After the first night of unanticipated wetness we decided to build ourselves a lean to from the tarps. Todd had already constructed a fire pit in our site, which we used nightly despite the rain, so this tarp home added to the sense of semi-permanence for our stay. The stability, seclusion, and roughness to the setting was perfect for us to detox from people. All the events that had just unfolded over the past month were given time to simply settle in my consciousness in preparation for me to truly process them over the next few weeks.
I filled the days with wandering off on hikes on my own, or messing about with the camp, often just sitting and talking with Todd as well. By Friday, however, we felt ready to uproot again and move a little further west before Stacey came. We packed up slowly and meandered down the little winding road to a campsite on the New York side of the park. There we looked over the general store, talked with the cute ranger girls there to find out about park fees for camping, and sat at the picnic tables for a while munching on peanut butter and tortillas reading the wise words scrawled across the wood. Todd also got himself a pack of cigarettes after a few days of not smoking. The intriguing part I thought about that was that he said he wasn't craving them, he just wanted them.
A little before sunset we pushed past the park and got on to the north/south running road of route 22 heading to Hillsdale. A few miles down there we ducked into the woods and nested in with another lean-to for the night. These constructions had suddenly become quite important because that first rainy night in the woods left Todd discovering his new Minimalist bivy was simply water resistant and not water proof. The resistance had not held up that first night, and for all of this time he was dealing with a damp sleeping bag which the lean-to prevented from becoming a soaked sleeping bag.
Saturday we made our way up the road a little further to a farm stand. As we were passing it it was almost a whim as we looked at each other in agreement that we could use some grapes or fruit of some sort to breakfast on. We got well more than we bargained for and made some new additions to the great people we've been meeting on this trip.
Sauntering in hoping for coffee and grapes we ended up talking with the owner of the place, Tony. He's an old vet who's nestled in now to this little stretch of land and runs the family farme stand. He seemed intrigued by our packs and after getting into some conversation with us invited us to sit on his patio out front. We got some coffee and a bag of cherries and took him up on it while he roamed about doing his chores.
Not long after sitting down his son, Keith, wandered over to say hi. We got to talking with him for quite a while about our travels, his interests in history, and general family history of the place, but most keenly we got into our strange brand of politics as well. It always intrigues me the number of people one runs across who will talk about their preparations for societies crumbling. Its always been a fascinating subject for me since I was a kid, and of course people don't generally talk seriously about it, but there is always this shy hinting when like minds get around each other that they are ready. Paranoid and crazy, perhaps, but its an interesting notion, and I for one see it more as a period of rebuilding rather than destruction.
While we were there Keith would come and go as customers came and went, but he kept coming back picking up on the last thread we'd leave off on. At one point he came back with a couple of gatorade bottles for us to have, then as we were leaving his mom gave us a box of lemon cookies. It was just a great meeting, and to feel that generosity again and have the common bond of interest and inspiring conversation was good for our reemergence back to people after Bash Bish.
We made our way further up the road from there and soon enough we were in Hillsdale proper. Our first stop was the library were we stopped in to do some email checking and updating. Todd got a bit more time than I did as I was nominated to walk down to the nearest pay phone and upload our Pocketmail posts. The nearest pay phone turned out to be almost a mile down the road, so I had just time enough to check an email or two before the library closed at 4.
From there we hit up our old standby, a diner. Cheap good food, bottomless cups of coffee, and almost guaranteed to have a good feel with good people. We weren't disappointed as we sat talking a bit with the folks there and watching their kids play. Around 6 we crossed the street and hung out in a park for the last hour before Stacey was expected to arrive. It was a Saturday, so it was the first of my new "phone days". I turned it on and made some calls out to get in touch with people, but mostly reached voicemails. I did, however, reach my sister who I talked to most of that hour we waited. By 7pm we found out Stacey was right down the road and we'd soon be in her car traveling west.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
5/25- Last Day Spent With Family
My cousin Amy and her wife, Corrin, picked us up in the morning and whisked us away to what would be a day of family. There was a bit of a frustration lingering behind this event because I was hoping to be able to get to see my Dad in his element with big family around. The barbecue was at my aunt's house, his younger sister, with my cousins, their spouses, and Deniz, the sole great grandchild of my grandparents. Dad had called on Sunday to let me know he wouldn't be able to make it to the event because he and Barb had to pick her youngest, Dan, up from Boston at that time, but they could do dinner. Hence the day was split and a family reunion averted.
I go into all this because I find it a bit sad. My Dad has always loved his family, and has always made sure to make such events as these. He grew up among throngs of cousins, aunts, and uncles all picnicking and having big family meals together and all of that seems to have ended with the death of my Nana, his mother. The beginning of this distance seems to have started as far back as 1989 when my parents divorced and I went one way and my sister another. I definitely believe the divorce was a good idea, but the crack began there and seems to have widened to a chasm that my sister and I have been trying to close in the past few years. Its also been unmistakably noticeable to me that as this connection unspooled between my Dad and us kids his hair went suddenly white-gray in a matter of months. As his mother's health worsened and she faded away over her last years, as did his in tow. This is why I felt him coming to this simple barbecue was so essential for him, and why going to Boston for a pick-up seemed incredibly sad to me.
All of that said, the afternoon was quite enjoyable. My Auntie Sheeba, as I've always called her, and her husband, Frank, hosted at their house out on their back deck, pool and all with the barbecue smoking away. Frank's parents were there along with some of their friends and friends of my aunt's. Along with Amy and Corrin, my cousin Tim and his wife, Burcu, arrived a little later on with their son, Deniz, who as I previously said is the only member of the next generation from my grandparents. Although, Burcu is expecting in August/September so more are on the way.
When Tim arrived I was given a glimpse back to the old days of Sunday afternoon dinners at my Nana and Papa's through Todd of all people. I was pretty sure Tim wasn't aware of what I was up to, or at least that I was traveling with someone, so when he arrived and went around saying hello to everyone he came across Todd and I spotted a familiar look on his face of the instant acceptance of a random stranger present at a family dinner.
My grandparents were avid church going folks to the Christian Science church in Springfield. Every Sunday after, we'd all gather up over at their house in Longmeadow, right next to Dave's house, with my aunt, uncle, cousins, my family, and then various people from church. Invariably there would always be just one person who had no connection to anyone whatsoever, but my Nana would find out he had no where to go after church so she'd invite him along for our lunch. This was what I was reminded of as Tim went around hugging and shaking hands of all the people he knew there, and not batting an eye when he came across Todd. It looked to me that he took him as a random guy who'd been invited in for lunch in the tradition of my Nana. Made me smile.
The afternoon was lovely as we dabbled our feet in the pool and watched little Deniz tromp all over the deck. When it was time to go we piled back into Amy and Corrin's car with our packs and were off to get dropped at my Dad's now for the dinner end of things. He had asked us to come at 6pm and it was 5pm when we got to the area. As I've hinted before things at the home there have been strangely confusing for me as far as how welcome I was. Its perfectly possible that having Amy drop me off at the front door an hour early would have been fine and dandy but I just didn't feel comfortable with that given the strange vibe floating in the air there recently. I had them drop us down the block at the entrance to the woods so Todd and I could hang out there for an hour then make a more timely entrance.
I don't know that I've actually gone into what this strange vibe was. I have said it could all be in my head, and that distance and separation I was going on about in the beginning of this post could also be weighing hugely into my reception of this, but at risk of sounding completely spoiled, I've never received anything less than an open arm reception to coming to see my Dad until this visit. My sister had made an attempt to come at the same time and, though she was never told she couldn't say, it was clearly told that this was a bad time, despite her plans to stay with Amy and Corrin. All of this has become an unspoken knotted intangible mess, at least in the minds of my sister and I, due to this sudden unexpected lack of welcome. I've hesitated to write about it earlier because I don't want to create a mess that may not actually be there, but in light of how the majority of the people involved feel, there appears to be an unmistakable mess now that may or may not just be something as simple as communication failure and an insecure reception on our part. I just don't know.
Regardless, this is why Todd and I hung out in the woods for an hour before showing up at my Dad's. We even intended on camping out in those woods for the night, before I changed my mind and took up Amy's offer to put us up for the night. The one thing I did know was that I definitely did not feel comfortable staying at my Dad's whether an offer ended up being extended that night or not, and roughing it in some back woods seems to be my pissantish way of emphasizing this feeling of unwelcome and that is nothing short of childish on my end. One last bed, and a night with my cousins would be a healthier and more fitting conclusion to my visit "home". Leaving Mass from there would send me off with a sense of still having family, where leaving from the back woods behind my Dad's house would definitely have sent me off with an abandoned and slighted sense that I would have created distinctly and unfairly for myself.
The rest in the woods, however, was quite nice. Things were culminating in my head from all this undercurrent drama and it was exhausting me. To sit in a field leaning on my pack for an hour let me unwind myself and prepare for a good last visit with my Dad. As I've described before, these new visits since his stroke are emphasized in our unspoken words now, just being present next to each other, and I was anticipating a drawn out dinner of awkward silences but still was greatly looking forward to just feeling him being near. That was essentially what I got.
Barb's mother, Phyllis, was in town for the event. We went down the road to a little Italian pizza place off Boston Rd. where the six of us, Todd, Dan, Phyllis, Barb, Dad, and I sat down to eat. Dan mainly spent the dinner texting under the table. Phyllis and Barb had a strange vibe to them through the hour long meal. Todd sat quietly most of the time observing. I spent my time chattering away about whatever, mostly the trip, and anytime I trailed off an awkward silence arose. Dad, as Todd noticed quite astutely, ate and listened and struggled to converse but seemed to be trapped in his own head unable to get anything out. You could almost see the man of himself screaming and shouting "I'm here! I'm here!" against the windows of his eyes inside. His mind seems to be functioning perfectly and energetically with the only shut down of his processor to relate it outward.
As we left the restaurant all Dad could do was wrap his arm around me as we walked to the car, but it transferred everything he was aching to say but couldn't. When we got back to the house we were there only a few moments before Amy swung by to pick us up again. I gave him a long hard hug, then waved goodbye and was off.
Getting back to Amy's we were set up in the guest room and given access to the computers while they did their nightly routine before bed. After Todd did some internetting he retired for the night as well, and I sat at the desk clicking away at Facebook. I ended up running across an old acquaintance from high school who was the younger sister of my friend Eric from those days, Kerry. I'd Facebook befriended her just before leaving Denver, but didn't really have a chance to talk with her, but as it happened we ended up chatting well into one in the morning that night. I was fascinated to find out how closely in tune her mentality and spiritual exploration was to mine these days.
Finally, after a long, in depth, and catharticly exhausting day I retired to bed, excited about finally heading west the next day.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
I go into all this because I find it a bit sad. My Dad has always loved his family, and has always made sure to make such events as these. He grew up among throngs of cousins, aunts, and uncles all picnicking and having big family meals together and all of that seems to have ended with the death of my Nana, his mother. The beginning of this distance seems to have started as far back as 1989 when my parents divorced and I went one way and my sister another. I definitely believe the divorce was a good idea, but the crack began there and seems to have widened to a chasm that my sister and I have been trying to close in the past few years. Its also been unmistakably noticeable to me that as this connection unspooled between my Dad and us kids his hair went suddenly white-gray in a matter of months. As his mother's health worsened and she faded away over her last years, as did his in tow. This is why I felt him coming to this simple barbecue was so essential for him, and why going to Boston for a pick-up seemed incredibly sad to me.
All of that said, the afternoon was quite enjoyable. My Auntie Sheeba, as I've always called her, and her husband, Frank, hosted at their house out on their back deck, pool and all with the barbecue smoking away. Frank's parents were there along with some of their friends and friends of my aunt's. Along with Amy and Corrin, my cousin Tim and his wife, Burcu, arrived a little later on with their son, Deniz, who as I previously said is the only member of the next generation from my grandparents. Although, Burcu is expecting in August/September so more are on the way.
When Tim arrived I was given a glimpse back to the old days of Sunday afternoon dinners at my Nana and Papa's through Todd of all people. I was pretty sure Tim wasn't aware of what I was up to, or at least that I was traveling with someone, so when he arrived and went around saying hello to everyone he came across Todd and I spotted a familiar look on his face of the instant acceptance of a random stranger present at a family dinner.
My grandparents were avid church going folks to the Christian Science church in Springfield. Every Sunday after, we'd all gather up over at their house in Longmeadow, right next to Dave's house, with my aunt, uncle, cousins, my family, and then various people from church. Invariably there would always be just one person who had no connection to anyone whatsoever, but my Nana would find out he had no where to go after church so she'd invite him along for our lunch. This was what I was reminded of as Tim went around hugging and shaking hands of all the people he knew there, and not batting an eye when he came across Todd. It looked to me that he took him as a random guy who'd been invited in for lunch in the tradition of my Nana. Made me smile.
The afternoon was lovely as we dabbled our feet in the pool and watched little Deniz tromp all over the deck. When it was time to go we piled back into Amy and Corrin's car with our packs and were off to get dropped at my Dad's now for the dinner end of things. He had asked us to come at 6pm and it was 5pm when we got to the area. As I've hinted before things at the home there have been strangely confusing for me as far as how welcome I was. Its perfectly possible that having Amy drop me off at the front door an hour early would have been fine and dandy but I just didn't feel comfortable with that given the strange vibe floating in the air there recently. I had them drop us down the block at the entrance to the woods so Todd and I could hang out there for an hour then make a more timely entrance.
I don't know that I've actually gone into what this strange vibe was. I have said it could all be in my head, and that distance and separation I was going on about in the beginning of this post could also be weighing hugely into my reception of this, but at risk of sounding completely spoiled, I've never received anything less than an open arm reception to coming to see my Dad until this visit. My sister had made an attempt to come at the same time and, though she was never told she couldn't say, it was clearly told that this was a bad time, despite her plans to stay with Amy and Corrin. All of this has become an unspoken knotted intangible mess, at least in the minds of my sister and I, due to this sudden unexpected lack of welcome. I've hesitated to write about it earlier because I don't want to create a mess that may not actually be there, but in light of how the majority of the people involved feel, there appears to be an unmistakable mess now that may or may not just be something as simple as communication failure and an insecure reception on our part. I just don't know.
Regardless, this is why Todd and I hung out in the woods for an hour before showing up at my Dad's. We even intended on camping out in those woods for the night, before I changed my mind and took up Amy's offer to put us up for the night. The one thing I did know was that I definitely did not feel comfortable staying at my Dad's whether an offer ended up being extended that night or not, and roughing it in some back woods seems to be my pissantish way of emphasizing this feeling of unwelcome and that is nothing short of childish on my end. One last bed, and a night with my cousins would be a healthier and more fitting conclusion to my visit "home". Leaving Mass from there would send me off with a sense of still having family, where leaving from the back woods behind my Dad's house would definitely have sent me off with an abandoned and slighted sense that I would have created distinctly and unfairly for myself.
The rest in the woods, however, was quite nice. Things were culminating in my head from all this undercurrent drama and it was exhausting me. To sit in a field leaning on my pack for an hour let me unwind myself and prepare for a good last visit with my Dad. As I've described before, these new visits since his stroke are emphasized in our unspoken words now, just being present next to each other, and I was anticipating a drawn out dinner of awkward silences but still was greatly looking forward to just feeling him being near. That was essentially what I got.
Barb's mother, Phyllis, was in town for the event. We went down the road to a little Italian pizza place off Boston Rd. where the six of us, Todd, Dan, Phyllis, Barb, Dad, and I sat down to eat. Dan mainly spent the dinner texting under the table. Phyllis and Barb had a strange vibe to them through the hour long meal. Todd sat quietly most of the time observing. I spent my time chattering away about whatever, mostly the trip, and anytime I trailed off an awkward silence arose. Dad, as Todd noticed quite astutely, ate and listened and struggled to converse but seemed to be trapped in his own head unable to get anything out. You could almost see the man of himself screaming and shouting "I'm here! I'm here!" against the windows of his eyes inside. His mind seems to be functioning perfectly and energetically with the only shut down of his processor to relate it outward.
As we left the restaurant all Dad could do was wrap his arm around me as we walked to the car, but it transferred everything he was aching to say but couldn't. When we got back to the house we were there only a few moments before Amy swung by to pick us up again. I gave him a long hard hug, then waved goodbye and was off.
Getting back to Amy's we were set up in the guest room and given access to the computers while they did their nightly routine before bed. After Todd did some internetting he retired for the night as well, and I sat at the desk clicking away at Facebook. I ended up running across an old acquaintance from high school who was the younger sister of my friend Eric from those days, Kerry. I'd Facebook befriended her just before leaving Denver, but didn't really have a chance to talk with her, but as it happened we ended up chatting well into one in the morning that night. I was fascinated to find out how closely in tune her mentality and spiritual exploration was to mine these days.
Finally, after a long, in depth, and catharticly exhausting day I retired to bed, excited about finally heading west the next day.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
5/24- Food and Friends
Stacey was long gone by the time we woke up at 11am, but she had left her house open for us to use. Inside she'd made coffee for us and left an offering of plums and apples for breakfast along with a little note. We took advantage of the shower, drank our coffees, and just generally relaxed a bit for an hour or so before shuffling off into our day. At the head of her street was a Friendly's restaurant, so we decided to kick back there with some breakfast and more coffee.
I immediately liked our waitress, Kianna. She had an empty section that we were in, and virtually sat down with us as we joked through our morning haze brain. Over the next few hours there Todd and I brain stormed out a new sitcom called "The Christs'" and with Kianna's help cast out each of the characters of this Holy family drama. My favorite was Noah, the drunken neighborhood mechanic.
Once we'd had our fill of Friendly's we walked a little ways to the Chicopee River nearby. The agenda for the day was more dinners and barbecues. Gus was having a Memorial Day barbecue starting at 2pm, and Dave had arranged for me to have dinner with his family at his Mom's house which I was really looking forward to. Todd opted out of that, feeling a bit out of place for that sort of setting, and figured he could hang out with Gus on his own while I did that. It worked out quite nicely, actually.
After an hour or so at the river Dave called and picked us up at a CVS nearby. He dropped Todd and Gus' then took us to his Mom's. I was hoping the whole
family
would be there, but was quite satisfied with just hanging out eating on their porch with Dave, his Mom, sister Olivia, and her friend Allie. Olivia had been 2 when I left town so I'd never really known her. The only thing I really thought of when I thought of her was Dave's senior picture in which he's holding her in his arms looking all bad ass and sensitive on a beach. They apparently did a recreation of it fifteen years later that left a bit of a different tone.
Francesca was the only one of Dave's siblings, other than Evan, who I'd really sort of known and sadly she couldn't make the dinner. She was probably about 12 when I left town so she had always been the little one hanging around who we would, of course, pick on as the big teenage kids we were. It was great, however, to reconnect with Dave's Mom, Robin. She was always one of those really cool parents that was great to hang out with as a kid, and great to revisit as an adult. We spent the night telling stories, me of my travels and them of their various adventures in the past fifteen years. It turned out Allie also had a connection to me in that she claimed my Dad was one of her favorite teachers in middle school. She was a bit shocked to find out I was his son.
By the end of the night we turned to telling stories about Evan. It was amazing to me to see how well they all were handling his death. Olivia and Allie disappeared after a while and the conversation get well into what had happened, who he was and what the motivation behind it was. I was stunned to hear the level of preparation that Evan put into this final act that exuded nothing but care and concern for how it would affect his family and friends. Robin even showed me the note he left behind which oddly comforted me, as she said it had many others as well, in the way he described why he just didn't want to be around anymore. He was emphatic on saying it wasn't sadness, loneliness, or any of your other traditional cop out reasons; it read to me that really he was just here at the wrong time as odd as that may seem and he wanted to make sure no one was hurt or left blaming themselves by his departure.
We wrapped up the night and, after dropping Olivia and Allie off at some party, Dave swung by Gus' BBQ with me to hang out for a while. I found Todd, as usual, among about three people tucked away from the party questioning them about various legalities, as the other two were lawyers. I'd later hear about a dramatic discussion on morality, social responsibility, and the rest that had happened earlier. Once Dave left an hour later, Todd and I both retreated to the corners of the party and simply relaxed. Many things were taxing me subconsciously from this visit home on a whole, and guzzling beer dancing to bad 80s wasn't quite tickling my fancy.
Once the party did breakup, however, another political burst exploded inside. We all were relaxing post-clean up eyeballing the sleeping arrangements when somehow Obama came up. Voting, taxing, and "your duty as an American" ensued and soon one of the more idealistic lawyers were launching at Todd saying he had no right to complain since he hadn't voted, and wasn't actually a citizen because he didn't work, thus not paying taxes. Todd sprung up to a stand in full tirade stance, then caught himself seeing a dumb, over argued, argument coming out of that and simply walked out with Gus. I stayed long enough to calmly clear up a bit of his end of the argument, not really caring if she grasped the concepts of it or not, but more just to stick it in her craw, then I left too.
Good thing for our bivys and desire to return to the woods, because neither of us had any inclination to sleep anywhere near her raving slogans. We rolled out our beds and went down for the night.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
I immediately liked our waitress, Kianna. She had an empty section that we were in, and virtually sat down with us as we joked through our morning haze brain. Over the next few hours there Todd and I brain stormed out a new sitcom called "The Christs'" and with Kianna's help cast out each of the characters of this Holy family drama. My favorite was Noah, the drunken neighborhood mechanic.
Once we'd had our fill of Friendly's we walked a little ways to the Chicopee River nearby. The agenda for the day was more dinners and barbecues. Gus was having a Memorial Day barbecue starting at 2pm, and Dave had arranged for me to have dinner with his family at his Mom's house which I was really looking forward to. Todd opted out of that, feeling a bit out of place for that sort of setting, and figured he could hang out with Gus on his own while I did that. It worked out quite nicely, actually.
After an hour or so at the river Dave called and picked us up at a CVS nearby. He dropped Todd and Gus' then took us to his Mom's. I was hoping the whole
family
would be there, but was quite satisfied with just hanging out eating on their porch with Dave, his Mom, sister Olivia, and her friend Allie. Olivia had been 2 when I left town so I'd never really known her. The only thing I really thought of when I thought of her was Dave's senior picture in which he's holding her in his arms looking all bad ass and sensitive on a beach. They apparently did a recreation of it fifteen years later that left a bit of a different tone.Francesca was the only one of Dave's siblings, other than Evan, who I'd really sort of known and sadly she couldn't make the dinner. She was probably about 12 when I left town so she had always been the little one hanging around who we would, of course, pick on as the big teenage kids we were. It was great, however, to reconnect with Dave's Mom, Robin. She was always one of those really cool parents that was great to hang out with as a kid, and great to revisit as an adult. We spent the night telling stories, me of my travels and them of their various adventures in the past fifteen years. It turned out Allie also had a connection to me in that she claimed my Dad was one of her favorite teachers in middle school. She was a bit shocked to find out I was his son.
By the end of the night we turned to telling stories about Evan. It was amazing to me to see how well they all were handling his death. Olivia and Allie disappeared after a while and the conversation get well into what had happened, who he was and what the motivation behind it was. I was stunned to hear the level of preparation that Evan put into this final act that exuded nothing but care and concern for how it would affect his family and friends. Robin even showed me the note he left behind which oddly comforted me, as she said it had many others as well, in the way he described why he just didn't want to be around anymore. He was emphatic on saying it wasn't sadness, loneliness, or any of your other traditional cop out reasons; it read to me that really he was just here at the wrong time as odd as that may seem and he wanted to make sure no one was hurt or left blaming themselves by his departure.
We wrapped up the night and, after dropping Olivia and Allie off at some party, Dave swung by Gus' BBQ with me to hang out for a while. I found Todd, as usual, among about three people tucked away from the party questioning them about various legalities, as the other two were lawyers. I'd later hear about a dramatic discussion on morality, social responsibility, and the rest that had happened earlier. Once Dave left an hour later, Todd and I both retreated to the corners of the party and simply relaxed. Many things were taxing me subconsciously from this visit home on a whole, and guzzling beer dancing to bad 80s wasn't quite tickling my fancy.
Once the party did breakup, however, another political burst exploded inside. We all were relaxing post-clean up eyeballing the sleeping arrangements when somehow Obama came up. Voting, taxing, and "your duty as an American" ensued and soon one of the more idealistic lawyers were launching at Todd saying he had no right to complain since he hadn't voted, and wasn't actually a citizen because he didn't work, thus not paying taxes. Todd sprung up to a stand in full tirade stance, then caught himself seeing a dumb, over argued, argument coming out of that and simply walked out with Gus. I stayed long enough to calmly clear up a bit of his end of the argument, not really caring if she grasped the concepts of it or not, but more just to stick it in her craw, then I left too.
Good thing for our bivys and desire to return to the woods, because neither of us had any inclination to sleep anywhere near her raving slogans. We rolled out our beds and went down for the night.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
5/23- The Beginnings of a BBQ Weekend
The morning brought Gus needing to run out of the house again. He had a weekend with Aenea and we two slobs weren't going to hold him up on it. Piling back into his truck he gave us a lift to a park within long walking distance of Longmeadow and then was off. Todd was feeling excruciatingly hung over in that weighted down sort of way. I wasn't exactly spry, but I wouldn't say hung over either. The park was nice, so we decided to take advantage of some of its trees where we layed out for about two hours.
In this time I put some calls out to friends I hadn't seen yet. The night before Gus had given me the number of my ex-girlfriend, Stacey, who I hadn't seen since we broke up in '95. The ex-girlfriend tour would continue into Mass. I also called Dave about a barbeque he was having for Memorial Day weekend that night that I thought was going to be at his mother's house, which was in Longmeadow and the reason for us heading there. As it would turn out it was nearby where we were in Springfield, but he said he'd pick us up where ever we were just before hand. Never the less, these were the actions undertaken during our lay out in the park.
After a while we decided to get some coffee. Not far from where we were was an area called The X, which is where I had my first apartment back in the summer of '94. It had a nostalgic call to me, and I could remember there were some diners there to hang out in, so we made that our next destination. On our way, however, we would have a very random and strange interception.
While shuffling down the street I heard someone ahead of us call out "well, what're the chances of this?" In my drifting gaze upward to see who was talking I first passed over Todd's face which had a look of "who the fuck is this?" Looking at who the fuck it was I had a similar feeling until it belatedly dawned on me that I knew this guy, and I knew him quite well. It was Gus' old best friend from kindergarten who was also among my sister's crowd of friends back in her high school days, Jackie.
Jackie, however, was not top on my list of people I wanted to run into. The hazards of returning to your long distant home town dwelling. I'm not sure how much of this is my business to be putting on a website blog, but I'll just say currently Jackie is living in a relationship with Gus' ex-wife in Gus' old home that he was compelled to move out of just five months after buying it with her. Gus is now divorced and sees little Aenea as often as he can. Being a close friend of Gus' I wasn't quite sure where to go with this run in for a few reasons.
On one hand, Gus holds no grudge against Jackie and will simply say that he wishes them the best. On the other hand, he has no desire to associate with Jackie anymore. Suddenly Jackie rolls up on me all friendly-like chatting like old friends. I fell to Gus' lead of being oddly civil, its my general nature to do so anyway, but its hard when its your close friend, and not you, whose been slighted. The other side is that it is none of my business, and though I don't really want to associate with the guy either, I will talk with him at arm's length.
Todd was standing there to the side just observing all of this. He knew the story of what had happened, but didn't know who it was. For some reason I thought he was tuning into this being that guy, but as it later turned out he was just tuning into the strange vibe I was suddenly putting out to this guy who just appeared. On top of it Jackie offered us a ride anywhere we needed to go. I looked to Todd thinking, I don't want anything to do with him, but then found myself accepting it having him take us to an Ihop for coffee. The whole thing was just odd. The icing on the cake was that Jackie and Kate's new baby was in the car as well.
The ride over had me telling Jackie strange censored versions of what I was up to. Very short summaries of what I'd normally dive into at length about. Often I would turn it around to him asking how Kate is, how Aenea's doing with everything going on, and Emily, Kate's eldest daughter. When we got out in the Ihop parking lot he kept going on about how we should hang out, and that if I'm hear for a while I should call him. I thanked him for the ride and sent him away. Once inside I debriefed Todd on what that weirdness was all about.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Ihop eating breakfast, but mostly drinking coffee. We left about an hour or so before Dave was going to come and get us to go hang out on the beach of a pond behind the back lot. By 5pm, however, we were in the backyard of on of Dave's friend's house meeting an assortment of new people again.
It was a good evening munching burgers and eating hot dogs playing the occasional bocci ball. Here I also got to meet a kid I haven't seen since he was about 8, Dave's little brother Addison. Now he was a straight Beam drinking grissled 23 year old who had the family genius in him. I talked a bit with him as well as Tool, a kid who was among my wider circle of friends back in high school. Didn't recognize him one bit, but I had a great time catching up with him. It turns out he and Addison, and possibly Dave, are taking a trip to the Northwest around the time we hope to be getting there. It seems a gathering is forming.
Stacey had called back at some point in the day as well so I'd arranged to meet up with her at the BBQ. She showed up around 9 and after a wide armed "how've you been?" hug she spotted another friend of hers that she hadn't seen in almost just as long. Excusing herself, she sat down with her for a while catching up while I returned to my burger. Soon enough, though, we jumped into her car and found ourselves back at her adorable little house by the Wilbraham line.
It was a good night of catching up with each other. She was a bit like my visit with Marion where I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but different in the that Gus had been hanging out with her, so I had a bit more of an idea of what she'd be like now. It turns out she and I haven't lead lives too far apart in many ways. She too had spent the past years rambling around exploring the country. She'd lived a while in New Mexico as well which tied Todd nicely into the reacquainting. It had just been recent years that she decided to buy a house and nest, and the house was quite suitably nested and homey.
We sat out on her side deck where she had a pile of sticks and one of those New Mexican styled stoves. Her dog, Lucy, kept us company as we fed the fire and revisited ourselves. Todd and I then retreated to the backyard for a campout to wrap up the night.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
In this time I put some calls out to friends I hadn't seen yet. The night before Gus had given me the number of my ex-girlfriend, Stacey, who I hadn't seen since we broke up in '95. The ex-girlfriend tour would continue into Mass. I also called Dave about a barbeque he was having for Memorial Day weekend that night that I thought was going to be at his mother's house, which was in Longmeadow and the reason for us heading there. As it would turn out it was nearby where we were in Springfield, but he said he'd pick us up where ever we were just before hand. Never the less, these were the actions undertaken during our lay out in the park.
After a while we decided to get some coffee. Not far from where we were was an area called The X, which is where I had my first apartment back in the summer of '94. It had a nostalgic call to me, and I could remember there were some diners there to hang out in, so we made that our next destination. On our way, however, we would have a very random and strange interception.
While shuffling down the street I heard someone ahead of us call out "well, what're the chances of this?" In my drifting gaze upward to see who was talking I first passed over Todd's face which had a look of "who the fuck is this?" Looking at who the fuck it was I had a similar feeling until it belatedly dawned on me that I knew this guy, and I knew him quite well. It was Gus' old best friend from kindergarten who was also among my sister's crowd of friends back in her high school days, Jackie.
Jackie, however, was not top on my list of people I wanted to run into. The hazards of returning to your long distant home town dwelling. I'm not sure how much of this is my business to be putting on a website blog, but I'll just say currently Jackie is living in a relationship with Gus' ex-wife in Gus' old home that he was compelled to move out of just five months after buying it with her. Gus is now divorced and sees little Aenea as often as he can. Being a close friend of Gus' I wasn't quite sure where to go with this run in for a few reasons.
On one hand, Gus holds no grudge against Jackie and will simply say that he wishes them the best. On the other hand, he has no desire to associate with Jackie anymore. Suddenly Jackie rolls up on me all friendly-like chatting like old friends. I fell to Gus' lead of being oddly civil, its my general nature to do so anyway, but its hard when its your close friend, and not you, whose been slighted. The other side is that it is none of my business, and though I don't really want to associate with the guy either, I will talk with him at arm's length.
Todd was standing there to the side just observing all of this. He knew the story of what had happened, but didn't know who it was. For some reason I thought he was tuning into this being that guy, but as it later turned out he was just tuning into the strange vibe I was suddenly putting out to this guy who just appeared. On top of it Jackie offered us a ride anywhere we needed to go. I looked to Todd thinking, I don't want anything to do with him, but then found myself accepting it having him take us to an Ihop for coffee. The whole thing was just odd. The icing on the cake was that Jackie and Kate's new baby was in the car as well.
The ride over had me telling Jackie strange censored versions of what I was up to. Very short summaries of what I'd normally dive into at length about. Often I would turn it around to him asking how Kate is, how Aenea's doing with everything going on, and Emily, Kate's eldest daughter. When we got out in the Ihop parking lot he kept going on about how we should hang out, and that if I'm hear for a while I should call him. I thanked him for the ride and sent him away. Once inside I debriefed Todd on what that weirdness was all about.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Ihop eating breakfast, but mostly drinking coffee. We left about an hour or so before Dave was going to come and get us to go hang out on the beach of a pond behind the back lot. By 5pm, however, we were in the backyard of on of Dave's friend's house meeting an assortment of new people again.
It was a good evening munching burgers and eating hot dogs playing the occasional bocci ball. Here I also got to meet a kid I haven't seen since he was about 8, Dave's little brother Addison. Now he was a straight Beam drinking grissled 23 year old who had the family genius in him. I talked a bit with him as well as Tool, a kid who was among my wider circle of friends back in high school. Didn't recognize him one bit, but I had a great time catching up with him. It turns out he and Addison, and possibly Dave, are taking a trip to the Northwest around the time we hope to be getting there. It seems a gathering is forming.
Stacey had called back at some point in the day as well so I'd arranged to meet up with her at the BBQ. She showed up around 9 and after a wide armed "how've you been?" hug she spotted another friend of hers that she hadn't seen in almost just as long. Excusing herself, she sat down with her for a while catching up while I returned to my burger. Soon enough, though, we jumped into her car and found ourselves back at her adorable little house by the Wilbraham line.
It was a good night of catching up with each other. She was a bit like my visit with Marion where I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but different in the that Gus had been hanging out with her, so I had a bit more of an idea of what she'd be like now. It turns out she and I haven't lead lives too far apart in many ways. She too had spent the past years rambling around exploring the country. She'd lived a while in New Mexico as well which tied Todd nicely into the reacquainting. It had just been recent years that she decided to buy a house and nest, and the house was quite suitably nested and homey.
We sat out on her side deck where she had a pile of sticks and one of those New Mexican styled stoves. Her dog, Lucy, kept us company as we fed the fire and revisited ourselves. Todd and I then retreated to the backyard for a campout to wrap up the night.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
5/22- Todd's Return
Errands were on the agenda this day. At first I wasn't planning on accompanying Gus as he roved about town, but then I heard part of his day would take him down to Hartford where the closest REI is located. In general, when I looked at the details of his day, it looked like a good time for hanging out with him anyway.
First stop was to pick up his Mom to take her grocery shopping. Being an old friend of his I, of course, was quite pleased to be able to see his Mom again as well. I got to fill her in on my goings on as we picked out her items, and I was also able to pick up some more food for myself which was sorely needed. Once we dropped her back at home, we ran down to Hartford, picked up Gus' check and made our way to REI so I could trade in my Alpine bivy for the Aurora bivy that Todd took back to Santa Fe to trade away.
I should probably take this time to address what a bivy is, since both of us keeping getting questions on it. A bivy is essentially a waterproof shell for your sleeping bag. Its small and much lighter than hauling around a tent, but more importantly to my specific needs, its much more concealable when ducking into the roadside woods. My beef with the Alpine is that there is a wire that runs through the mouth of it to help keep its form or something, but it makes it horribly annoying to deal with when stuffing it away in my little compression pack. The Aurora is the same exact thing as the Alpine except that it has no wire making it a hair cheaper. Checking in now at REI I was bummed out to discover that they don't carry the Aurora.
I browsed about the store anyway with Gus and managed to find a nice hat, since I'd liked Todd's so much, and picked up a few other odds and ends. We then returned back to Mass to pick up Gus' daughter, Aenea. She was another I really didn't want to miss on my visit here, and was a main reason that I decided to tag along for the day.
Aenea I first met when she was two weeks old and still was very reminicent of Yoda. Since then, given my physical distance, I've adopted the role of Godfather to her and make sure to send her something every year for her birthday. Last year it was a bad ass set of goggles. Anyway, this vague "Godfather" role is important to me, despite that Gus keeps reminding me that I'm not her Godfather since she doesn't have one, and I like to make sure I check in with her as often as I can so I'm at least remembered in her life, and hopefully fondly.
We spent the rest of the afternoon milling about together. Gus ran his banking errands while I ran around with Aenea exploring pet shops and town monuments. I know I'll never live in the area, and that Gus will never live around me, especially with her, so my only hope of having any type of relationship with her is to try and carve out a memory niche in her of that fun family friend guy who used to play with me as a kid. Small dreams, but grand at the same time.
After getting some coffee, and razberry iced tea for Aenea, Gus dropped me off at train station to pick up Todd. The car was full of his DJ equipment so they drove off, and I awaited Todd to walk him back to Gus' a few miles away. The train pulled in a little while later, he sauntered out pack, hat, and all, and we caught up on each other's business as he reorchestrated his pack for forty five minutes.
It was good to have him back. Particularly with everything going on around town and the things I was processing, it was great to be able to have him back to bounce these thoughts off of. It was only a three or four mile walk to Gus' so we set off through the boarded up streets of the North End expounding on the details of what was happening. Amid this we were plunged headlong into a fascinating detour.
Walking along, deeply mulling over what was going on with my Dad and I, how it was to see my old friend Dave after his brother's recent death, and reconnecting with Gus again we were suddenly approached by a young circus lad, clad in red, peddling a unicycle. He was quite enthusiastic to see backpackers in the area, as that's a rarity, and wanted to hear our tale. As he was asking us all this I was trying to figure out if I was actually hearing a genuine Cockney accent coming out of his mouth, or if I was tired and he was slurring or something. Having spent 17 years of my life in the area the notion of some Eastender from London even finding, much less living in, my podunk industrial town was completely surreal to me. Sure enough, though, there he was, unicycle and all.
Popping off his cycle he walked with us to the crossroad we were looking for to continue on toward Gus' explaining to us that he and his family traveled the world doing circus acts. When we hit said crossroads he invited us back to his family's place around the corner for a beer or a joint. Neither one of us could fathom passing this opportunity up, being quite tuned in to the fact that this occured within an hour of remeeting up, so we promptly jumped on the offer.
This visit became a huge focus for the days to come as a mental bitch slapping upside the back of the head. Alex, the unicyclist, guided us to the arrangement of trailers set up in his sister's husbands drive before running off to grab us a few forties to kick back to. His Mum welcomed us in with hot plates of beef stew and we sat around with his Dad, girlfriend Amber, brother, and several others who roamed in and out to get a peek at what was going on. Stories started flying and Alex, on his return with the forties, looked at us expectantly with hopes of finally being the listener to grand tales, rather than the teller. Sorely I fear we failed him badly.
Here Todd and I were, roaming about the countryside feeling all bad ass that we've "escaped the constrictions of society", evaded the lock down of 9 to 5, and could brave the roadside wilds with such simplicity of backpack living, but we couldn't think of a single tale worthy of telling to Alex and his circus family. I made the dumbfounding attempt of trying to tell such grand favorites as the great Tennessee drug raid, being lost in the deserts of Wyoming, jumping over a rattle snake, climbing the Brooklyn Bridge in a drunken stupor. Suddenly I had the story telling power of the history teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Alex sat baited but unimpressed waiting for the good part to come as I concluded each telling. Then he would, in kind, spout out his own related tales of evading a drug raid in Spain by putting on a juggling act with some discovered hash after snatching it from the policeman's palm, or flying various planes across the country and trying not to fall asleep at the wheel because the hum of the engine brought him back to the calming childhood memories of sleeping to the same engine hum in their roving circus trailer.
All of this was just the beginning. After a bit I was getting the impression we were being interviewed to a greater purpose. He asked us often what our skills were, what did we do to survive. Sheepishly we said we didn't know, thus far we'd been living off savings from a tax return and hoping that my rent deposit comes back sometime soon. Do you hunt? No. Fish? Don't know how. Trap? Forage? Street shows? No. No. No. We haven't even practiced putting a functional shelter together yet... but we have grand notions of traveling the world. We were the Keystone Cops of thrifty adventurers and we were being shown exactly who we weren't.
Alex then proceeded to show us around their compound in the back. Not only had the guy been performing death defying feats since he was an infant, but he'd found someone to teach him how to fly any variety of machines, figured out how to get dirt bikes/motorcycles declared officially dead for the price of a few found tires and repair them to a state superceding their pristine days, and was hand making practical longbows from such items as trashed guitars and swiped snow measuring rulers. Where was the "interviewing" going? His higher plans were much grander than this self made achievements.
Somehow he had secured 24 military trucks out of Germany from the fall of the Soviet Union. He had procurred a whole list of other various items to put in these trucks for an eventual drive out of Europe and into Africa. Once in Africa he hoped to find a nice spot away from the politics and conflicts, essentially removed from everyone, to build his own village. Having now met the kid and everything he's taught himself to do and is capable of, I had no doubts that he's dead serious about the whole thing. What I think was our interview was to see if we'd be of any help.
By now we'd been hanging out drinking for about 2 hours or so and it was time to let them get to sleep and for us to get to Gus'. He had also gotten quite inspired to bring Todd and I to Boston on Tuesday to teach us how to be cowboy human statues and make money off the street that way, so we swapped numbers for that. Our assignment was to dig up some costumes for ourselves out of the Dollar store.
With the snap of a picture and some goodbyes we shoved off again continuing toward Gus', now with an extra pep in our step for being shown just how lame we actually are with the hope of it opening a road to us over coming our lameness. This inspired us to call Gus and take him up on an offer for a night of a 30 pack of beer so that we could geek out over this peek into a completely new world of living.
Thankfully Gus only picked up a 20 pack. This was Gus and Todd's long awaited meeting that I was looking forward to. I figured with both of their politics, penchant for philosophizing well into the night, and DJing backgrounds they would get along quite well. I was correct and by the end of that pack of what ever it was we were drinking they were nicely forging a new friendship, but we were also quite liquored by then.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
First stop was to pick up his Mom to take her grocery shopping. Being an old friend of his I, of course, was quite pleased to be able to see his Mom again as well. I got to fill her in on my goings on as we picked out her items, and I was also able to pick up some more food for myself which was sorely needed. Once we dropped her back at home, we ran down to Hartford, picked up Gus' check and made our way to REI so I could trade in my Alpine bivy for the Aurora bivy that Todd took back to Santa Fe to trade away.
I should probably take this time to address what a bivy is, since both of us keeping getting questions on it. A bivy is essentially a waterproof shell for your sleeping bag. Its small and much lighter than hauling around a tent, but more importantly to my specific needs, its much more concealable when ducking into the roadside woods. My beef with the Alpine is that there is a wire that runs through the mouth of it to help keep its form or something, but it makes it horribly annoying to deal with when stuffing it away in my little compression pack. The Aurora is the same exact thing as the Alpine except that it has no wire making it a hair cheaper. Checking in now at REI I was bummed out to discover that they don't carry the Aurora.
I browsed about the store anyway with Gus and managed to find a nice hat, since I'd liked Todd's so much, and picked up a few other odds and ends. We then returned back to Mass to pick up Gus' daughter, Aenea. She was another I really didn't want to miss on my visit here, and was a main reason that I decided to tag along for the day.
Aenea I first met when she was two weeks old and still was very reminicent of Yoda. Since then, given my physical distance, I've adopted the role of Godfather to her and make sure to send her something every year for her birthday. Last year it was a bad ass set of goggles. Anyway, this vague "Godfather" role is important to me, despite that Gus keeps reminding me that I'm not her Godfather since she doesn't have one, and I like to make sure I check in with her as often as I can so I'm at least remembered in her life, and hopefully fondly.
We spent the rest of the afternoon milling about together. Gus ran his banking errands while I ran around with Aenea exploring pet shops and town monuments. I know I'll never live in the area, and that Gus will never live around me, especially with her, so my only hope of having any type of relationship with her is to try and carve out a memory niche in her of that fun family friend guy who used to play with me as a kid. Small dreams, but grand at the same time.
After getting some coffee, and razberry iced tea for Aenea, Gus dropped me off at train station to pick up Todd. The car was full of his DJ equipment so they drove off, and I awaited Todd to walk him back to Gus' a few miles away. The train pulled in a little while later, he sauntered out pack, hat, and all, and we caught up on each other's business as he reorchestrated his pack for forty five minutes.
It was good to have him back. Particularly with everything going on around town and the things I was processing, it was great to be able to have him back to bounce these thoughts off of. It was only a three or four mile walk to Gus' so we set off through the boarded up streets of the North End expounding on the details of what was happening. Amid this we were plunged headlong into a fascinating detour.
Walking along, deeply mulling over what was going on with my Dad and I, how it was to see my old friend Dave after his brother's recent death, and reconnecting with Gus again we were suddenly approached by a young circus lad, clad in red, peddling a unicycle. He was quite enthusiastic to see backpackers in the area, as that's a rarity, and wanted to hear our tale. As he was asking us all this I was trying to figure out if I was actually hearing a genuine Cockney accent coming out of his mouth, or if I was tired and he was slurring or something. Having spent 17 years of my life in the area the notion of some Eastender from London even finding, much less living in, my podunk industrial town was completely surreal to me. Sure enough, though, there he was, unicycle and all.
Popping off his cycle he walked with us to the crossroad we were looking for to continue on toward Gus' explaining to us that he and his family traveled the world doing circus acts. When we hit said crossroads he invited us back to his family's place around the corner for a beer or a joint. Neither one of us could fathom passing this opportunity up, being quite tuned in to the fact that this occured within an hour of remeeting up, so we promptly jumped on the offer.
This visit became a huge focus for the days to come as a mental bitch slapping upside the back of the head. Alex, the unicyclist, guided us to the arrangement of trailers set up in his sister's husbands drive before running off to grab us a few forties to kick back to. His Mum welcomed us in with hot plates of beef stew and we sat around with his Dad, girlfriend Amber, brother, and several others who roamed in and out to get a peek at what was going on. Stories started flying and Alex, on his return with the forties, looked at us expectantly with hopes of finally being the listener to grand tales, rather than the teller. Sorely I fear we failed him badly.
Here Todd and I were, roaming about the countryside feeling all bad ass that we've "escaped the constrictions of society", evaded the lock down of 9 to 5, and could brave the roadside wilds with such simplicity of backpack living, but we couldn't think of a single tale worthy of telling to Alex and his circus family. I made the dumbfounding attempt of trying to tell such grand favorites as the great Tennessee drug raid, being lost in the deserts of Wyoming, jumping over a rattle snake, climbing the Brooklyn Bridge in a drunken stupor. Suddenly I had the story telling power of the history teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Alex sat baited but unimpressed waiting for the good part to come as I concluded each telling. Then he would, in kind, spout out his own related tales of evading a drug raid in Spain by putting on a juggling act with some discovered hash after snatching it from the policeman's palm, or flying various planes across the country and trying not to fall asleep at the wheel because the hum of the engine brought him back to the calming childhood memories of sleeping to the same engine hum in their roving circus trailer.
All of this was just the beginning. After a bit I was getting the impression we were being interviewed to a greater purpose. He asked us often what our skills were, what did we do to survive. Sheepishly we said we didn't know, thus far we'd been living off savings from a tax return and hoping that my rent deposit comes back sometime soon. Do you hunt? No. Fish? Don't know how. Trap? Forage? Street shows? No. No. No. We haven't even practiced putting a functional shelter together yet... but we have grand notions of traveling the world. We were the Keystone Cops of thrifty adventurers and we were being shown exactly who we weren't.
Alex then proceeded to show us around their compound in the back. Not only had the guy been performing death defying feats since he was an infant, but he'd found someone to teach him how to fly any variety of machines, figured out how to get dirt bikes/motorcycles declared officially dead for the price of a few found tires and repair them to a state superceding their pristine days, and was hand making practical longbows from such items as trashed guitars and swiped snow measuring rulers. Where was the "interviewing" going? His higher plans were much grander than this self made achievements.
Somehow he had secured 24 military trucks out of Germany from the fall of the Soviet Union. He had procurred a whole list of other various items to put in these trucks for an eventual drive out of Europe and into Africa. Once in Africa he hoped to find a nice spot away from the politics and conflicts, essentially removed from everyone, to build his own village. Having now met the kid and everything he's taught himself to do and is capable of, I had no doubts that he's dead serious about the whole thing. What I think was our interview was to see if we'd be of any help.
By now we'd been hanging out drinking for about 2 hours or so and it was time to let them get to sleep and for us to get to Gus'. He had also gotten quite inspired to bring Todd and I to Boston on Tuesday to teach us how to be cowboy human statues and make money off the street that way, so we swapped numbers for that. Our assignment was to dig up some costumes for ourselves out of the Dollar store.
With the snap of a picture and some goodbyes we shoved off again continuing toward Gus', now with an extra pep in our step for being shown just how lame we actually are with the hope of it opening a road to us over coming our lameness. This inspired us to call Gus and take him up on an offer for a night of a 30 pack of beer so that we could geek out over this peek into a completely new world of living.
Thankfully Gus only picked up a 20 pack. This was Gus and Todd's long awaited meeting that I was looking forward to. I figured with both of their politics, penchant for philosophizing well into the night, and DJing backgrounds they would get along quite well. I was correct and by the end of that pack of what ever it was we were drinking they were nicely forging a new friendship, but we were also quite liquored by then.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
5/21- A Wander Around Town
Gus had a life to continue in the morning, so we rose and fled the house in good time. On his way to work he dropped me off at the Springfield Library with no clue as to what would be going on that night. It was a nice day of quiet and taking my time in the way of getting those minutia things done that need be done from day to day. You'd think this sort of lifestyle would skirt the issues of chores, but alas they just take new form.
I was allotted an hour on the computer at the library which I used for writing out a post to try and keep myself caught up on here. That would prove to be a difficulty in the coming days. Following that I moseyed downtown to a place called City Jake's Cafe for lunch. This was a half nostalgia kick as I had never been there, but first heard about through my old roommate, Vid, back in '94. Finally I was taking the time to go down and eat there.
It was good food, cheap, and a nice place to just sit and write for a while. Breaking out my ole Route 66 mug I slurped bottomless coffee for another hour or two watching people and probing my thoughts through the new journal I got in Jersey. In my world, that's some good productivity for a day. When I left I figured I'd finally check in on Verizon to see what the damage was on leaving my contract to go to a prepaid service and save myself hundreds of dollars on bills I can't afford these days. First step was finding an outlet.
Dull as this task may be it lead to a nice walk. Using my years of expertise in trying to find out where things are in the towns of D&D fantasy worlds I swung by the nearest hotel for local information. The only store around was about 4 miles away on the other side of the river, so I spent the next hour or so heading to it on foot. Once in the store I did my business, looked over a few hats in a neighboring army/navy surplus store, then called my Dad.
The day before, while sitting around the table after mowing, he had told me Dan wanted me to go to his baseball game. I wasn't entirely sure what was happening for the day, but now being out at a stripmall with no calls coming in I could see I was clearly available to have another visit. It also dawned on me that going to a game with my Dad could be a perfect way to visit with him given the lessons of the previous day; that just time together where words aren't required was golden. Sitting next to him in the bleachers of a little league game sounded ideal suddenly, and I was surprised I hadn't seen it before.
The strip mall I was at is right next to I-91 which runs north, toward where the game was going to be. My Dad and his wife, Barb, are invariably late to everything so I felt this location was ideal for picking me up as well. I made a bit of a shady arrangement with them to pick me up off the shoulder of the highway on their way up to the game, and in the meantime I'd just linger around the area for a bit. This would save them the time lost in pulling off to get me, driving up and down the busy, traffic light laden street that is Riverdale Drive, and avoid them having to haphazardly navigate pulling a U-turn around the highly inconvenient median that runs down the center. This plan was likely born to fail.
Pulling off these finagally pick ups is something quite common to friends of mine, but illustrating the details to Barb and Dad was not so successful. It seemed everything was understood, however. I was plopped down under a big blue exit sign in a good pull off spot where I could just dart out and jump in the car with as slim a chance as possible of a trooper spotting it and hassling us for stopping on the highway to pick someone up. There is also a very distinct curve about half a mile up the road that's a perfect landmark for calling me to let me know when to stand up and show myself so they could get me. The call I got, however, was that they had passed two big blue signs with no sign of me at all and they were wondering where I was. They had passed me completely while I'd sat below the guardrail awaiting their call to pop up so the only alternative was to encourage them not to turn around and try again, tacking on 20 minutes likely, but to go on with out me. Another time. I called Gus after that and arranged to have him pick me up.
Reaching only Gus' voicemail I just started trekking toward his house. Refering to another hotel guy I got a map, located his address, and just started walking. A little while into it he called back, scooped me up, and on the way home we decided we wanted to brain out completely that night and a movie sounded good. Terminator: Salvation here we come.
Awful. I'm not sure how they managed to screw that movie up at every step, but it was among one of the more horribly done things I've seen in a while. Particularly dissappointing because I generally put a lot of faith into Christian Bale, and the previews made it look so damned good. I have little forgiveness for films that stay inconsistant with previous story layouts as well. It just bothers me endlessly. We returned home that night disappointed and tired and just passed out.
I was allotted an hour on the computer at the library which I used for writing out a post to try and keep myself caught up on here. That would prove to be a difficulty in the coming days. Following that I moseyed downtown to a place called City Jake's Cafe for lunch. This was a half nostalgia kick as I had never been there, but first heard about through my old roommate, Vid, back in '94. Finally I was taking the time to go down and eat there.
It was good food, cheap, and a nice place to just sit and write for a while. Breaking out my ole Route 66 mug I slurped bottomless coffee for another hour or two watching people and probing my thoughts through the new journal I got in Jersey. In my world, that's some good productivity for a day. When I left I figured I'd finally check in on Verizon to see what the damage was on leaving my contract to go to a prepaid service and save myself hundreds of dollars on bills I can't afford these days. First step was finding an outlet.
Dull as this task may be it lead to a nice walk. Using my years of expertise in trying to find out where things are in the towns of D&D fantasy worlds I swung by the nearest hotel for local information. The only store around was about 4 miles away on the other side of the river, so I spent the next hour or so heading to it on foot. Once in the store I did my business, looked over a few hats in a neighboring army/navy surplus store, then called my Dad.
The day before, while sitting around the table after mowing, he had told me Dan wanted me to go to his baseball game. I wasn't entirely sure what was happening for the day, but now being out at a stripmall with no calls coming in I could see I was clearly available to have another visit. It also dawned on me that going to a game with my Dad could be a perfect way to visit with him given the lessons of the previous day; that just time together where words aren't required was golden. Sitting next to him in the bleachers of a little league game sounded ideal suddenly, and I was surprised I hadn't seen it before.
The strip mall I was at is right next to I-91 which runs north, toward where the game was going to be. My Dad and his wife, Barb, are invariably late to everything so I felt this location was ideal for picking me up as well. I made a bit of a shady arrangement with them to pick me up off the shoulder of the highway on their way up to the game, and in the meantime I'd just linger around the area for a bit. This would save them the time lost in pulling off to get me, driving up and down the busy, traffic light laden street that is Riverdale Drive, and avoid them having to haphazardly navigate pulling a U-turn around the highly inconvenient median that runs down the center. This plan was likely born to fail.
Pulling off these finagally pick ups is something quite common to friends of mine, but illustrating the details to Barb and Dad was not so successful. It seemed everything was understood, however. I was plopped down under a big blue exit sign in a good pull off spot where I could just dart out and jump in the car with as slim a chance as possible of a trooper spotting it and hassling us for stopping on the highway to pick someone up. There is also a very distinct curve about half a mile up the road that's a perfect landmark for calling me to let me know when to stand up and show myself so they could get me. The call I got, however, was that they had passed two big blue signs with no sign of me at all and they were wondering where I was. They had passed me completely while I'd sat below the guardrail awaiting their call to pop up so the only alternative was to encourage them not to turn around and try again, tacking on 20 minutes likely, but to go on with out me. Another time. I called Gus after that and arranged to have him pick me up.
Reaching only Gus' voicemail I just started trekking toward his house. Refering to another hotel guy I got a map, located his address, and just started walking. A little while into it he called back, scooped me up, and on the way home we decided we wanted to brain out completely that night and a movie sounded good. Terminator: Salvation here we come.
Awful. I'm not sure how they managed to screw that movie up at every step, but it was among one of the more horribly done things I've seen in a while. Particularly dissappointing because I generally put a lot of faith into Christian Bale, and the previews made it look so damned good. I have little forgiveness for films that stay inconsistant with previous story layouts as well. It just bothers me endlessly. We returned home that night disappointed and tired and just passed out.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
5/20- Old Friends
I had talked with Gus to come pick me up for the evening while mowing. When I finished, and had showered, he was still 20 minutes away so Dad and I sat once again at the kitchen table. Dan was bounding around the house seeming a very healthy 14 year old who got a free day off from school. It was the same conversational struggle with Dad so I turned to Dan to questioning him about how he was feeling until Gus got there.
I can't remember how much I've said in here before about Gus but he is one of my greatest friends for the longest consistent period of time. We've had one really major stint of begrudgery, which really just gelled us closer in friendship, and other than that we've been reliable pillars of support for one another since I was 15, albeit mostly from afar. On this journey into The History of Mass I've been quite anxious to see him and get his take on things.
Around 3-ish Gus scooped me up with hellos to my Dad. I had actually met Gus through my sister's first date with him on my 15th birthday which lasted three years into a failed engagement, so my family knows him well too. It was back to happy old times again once we scooted off in his truck as if no time passed between us, as usual.
Gus is a DJ by night and had a gig going in Northampton. We putzed around his house for the rest of the afternoon giving him somewhat of a debriefing on what I'm up to along with the philosophizing that inherantly come with that, and he and I generally. By the time we were driving up to Northampton that night we had fallen back into listening to old favorites, screaming the lyrics to Bodycount all the way up I-91.
The rest of the night was Gus Djing and me hanging about for a bit sipping free beer. Dave came by around 11 as well for a decent visit to catch up on what happened with Evan and how he's doing these days in general. He seemed quite good considering all. Evan and he had been quite close and it turns out he'd killed himself back in March. It wasn't until later in the week that I found out why, but Dave seemed very at peace with it saying, "Evan decided long ago that he wasn't for this planet." Seemed reasonable.
As for Dave's life, he sounded like he was heading in a good direction to me. He sounded a little disheartened, with a good spirit about him, since he's fed up with his trivia man gig at bars, runs two bands, and is working on a graphic novel but holds no other jobs. To me that sounds like the perfect spot to blast forward with, especially since he's had a lot of statewide success with various bands.
This is always interesting to me. Dave kept telling me he was quite jealous of my adventures, and the spirit behind it. I see his music and adventures in putting together a graphic novel to be along the exact same lines of pursuing something that appears beyond grasp. It does come with a continuous feeling of self doubt and feeling like you're an idiot for even wasting the time to try, but the point of life is living it not maintaining it at dried out jobs unless that's getting you somewhere. Dave has always seemed to be one to follow his inspirations.
By 1am the bar was closing and Gus was wrapping up his equipment. We hauled it out with him then spent another hour spitting out old jokes to one another and comparing our opinions of all the movies and shows we've seen over the past decade and a half. I think we were just glowing in this brief reunion we were having of very old friends. For that night times were good.
5/20- A Visit With Dad
As Becky and I drove back to her place for the night I got a voicemail from Dad about seeing him the next day. It was a strange one, though, since he wanted me to bring him and Barb, his wife, lunch at her school and the bulk of the message was what they wanted and vague directions on how to get there. It was capped off at the end with, "maybe you could mow the lawn too". I'm pretty sure he didn't realize I was on foot, but at least I was going to see him.
Becky is a teacher at the high school down the road so after whipping up a quick breakfast for both of us I was soon stepping out of her car by 7:30. I wasn't quite sure how far, or exactly where, anything was from there, but I knew a road and direction so I set off down it. Lunch was to be at 11:30, so I had 4 hours to get my bearings, find the Subway for sandwiches and figure out which school they were at and how to get there. Somewhat daunting, but somewhat fun. Four miles later I found my first target.
The Subway was in a Pride station that I recognized having been to with Dad before. I'd figured out, through a few maps, where three elementary schools were in the area of which anyone of them could be hers. According to my Dad's directions though, it was a half mile from where I was, so I could walk to all three within an hour or so. I'd been before so I knew I'd recognize it on sight.
Being that it was about 9am then I figured I could spare a rest for coffee while I gathered the sandwiches. While resting at one of their tables I ended up talking with a guy next to me, Pat.
Pat actually struck up the conversation. He is an avid hiker himself, but had snapped his ankle a few months back retiring him from mobility for a good while. Also he turned out to be the owner of the Pride station along with six others in the area. He was a really neat guy, going on about great walks to take around New England, waxing on about the wealth of poets and writers from Thoreau to Dr. Seuss, and then we spent a great deal of time on the workings of putting good energy out there and how it always comes back in new forms. We chatted over coffee for a good two hours before I needed to go. Offhandedly he gave me his number offering to help out if I needed anything, along with his own blog that he keeps.
Armed with my three sandwiches strapped to the pack I made my way to the first suspect school around the corner. It was very definitely the wrong one. Turning around, I set off for the other two, which thankfully were down the same way. I got about half way to the first one on that road when I got another call from my Dad. He apparently had not gone into work with Barb that day because Dan, the youngest of my two step brothers, was sick. An inconvenient shift in plans, but what can you do?
From where I was my Dad was about ten miles away in the other direction. I turned right around heading back again running through my head any bus possibilities or maybe hitching there.
I called Todd, back in Santa Fe, to unload on him what was going on and to see if he could check the Springfield bus schedules online. He was under going his own strange phenomenon with an old high school person surfacing randomly. While talking to him I gave him Pat's website to check out and moments later Pat himself drove by honking and waving hello at me. It would still take for me to get back to the Pride station again, and head off from it once more before it dawned on me to call him.
I felt like a jackass. Here I am going on about following signs, spotting meaning in coincidences, and learning lessons from the heavens and I can't even figure out to call a guy I meet that morning, completely in tune with what I'm talking about and a few clubbings over the head to drive the point home. I'm one who really hesitates on asking for help, so the lesson there was clear. I was in trouble, I knew a random stranger who would be more than willing to help, my role was to just ask for it. So I did, and he swung right by and dropped me off ten minutes later. Problem solved, the heavens breathe a sigh of exasperated relief.
Thanking Pat probably to annoyance I grabbed my pack and met my Dad at the front door. He was looking in much better health than when I last saw him stranded on his bed back in December when his last stroke was. He still, however, was not the man he was anymore and it was hardest to see him know it. We sat and had lunch together over the next half hour catching up somewhat on what was going on with the both of us. The words were hard and slow though, and despite both of us desperately wanting to connect fully and run with our minds over these ideas we couldn't at all. I could tell how frustrated he was by this, and draining. We moved to the lawn mowing.
Mowing the lawn is an image I long hold in relation with my Dad and growing up. Moving away at 18 I haven't mowed a lawn, other than Musty's the other day, since then. My Dad has always been one to stay busy around the house with such chores, and has since he was a kid. This was what suddenly made this chore a heartfelt moment when he showed me the particulars of his old mower.
It was as if he were going over a picture album with me, passing his memories down to his son. He explained his tarping technique, where he likes to start and finish at, and an estimate on how long it would take. I picked a few things up off the yard and when I turned back to the mower he was trying to pull the cord, his bad arm resting againt the handle. I yelled over that I'd get it, but he responded saying he just wanted to see if he still could. When I got closer to him he was in tears, hunched over the mower. It was killing him most to feel unhelpful anymore, or worse, a burden.
My Nana, his mother, had been very much the same way in her late years and I was stunned to see it in so clearly. Pulling him off the mower I gave him a big, tight hug and after a moment asked him how long he'd been mowing lawns for. Since he was ten years old he half whispered back. In an attempt to reassure him I told him after fifty years of mowing lawns I think its high time you take rest and pass the torch on.
He went back into the house for a bit after that and I started mowing the lawn. After ten or twenty minutes he dragged a lawn chair out and sat reading while I mowed for the next two hours. It was among one of the most bonding things we've done together for probably 15, maybe even 20, years.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
5/19- A Day of Childhood Revisited
I awoke to my cell phone ringing somewhere in my sleeping bag. My old friend Gus was calling me back from the night before to see what was up, where I was staying, and when we were going to get together. Talking with him briefly we made some plans on getting together either that night, but if not definitely by the next night. I sat up in my bivy after that leaning on my pack in the thickets of my old woods and took in the morning. It was a calm awakening.
They are buried in the cemetery of the white church that is the center of Longmeadow. I made my way to their grave, picking some flowers for them along the way. As I sat there I hadn't intended to stay long, honestly. I figured I'd pop in and pay tribute, then meander down into town. I sat there for an hour.
This area that I was in was the recesses of my mind would call "the more advanced dingle". Dingle is also a word I should explain. For whatever reason, the woods in my town are almost never referred to by the townspeople as woods, but as a dingle. It wasn't until 7th grade science class when we were learning names of things like tundras, savannahs, and rainforests that I waited and waited to hear what the separation in terms a dingle was from a forest. It turns out no other town in America, that I know of including those immediately surrounding mine, call woods dingles. I wouldn't figure the answer to that riddle out until last January while traveling around Ireland. Apparently its an Irish word that, I think loosely put, means woods or forest. Anyway, it was bothering me saying woods when what I really wanted to write was dingle. So there you go.
After an hour or so of enjoying the sun on me and packing up I made my way back out of the tangled mess of vines and prickers to a puddled up dirt road. As I said above, this area was the more advanced area, meaning that I didn't really get to this end of the dingle by the Connecticut 
River until I was a bit older. The reason being that its cut off from my neighborhood area by I-91 and is closer to where the town dump was located. It gives the impression to an 11 year old that its more "out in the world" than my familiar tromping grounds. This tunnel regained a huge amount of significance that morning when I scrambled down over the rocks through the bramble to pass through it once again.
River until I was a bit older. The reason being that its cut off from my neighborhood area by I-91 and is closer to where the town dump was located. It gives the impression to an 11 year old that its more "out in the world" than my familiar tromping grounds. This tunnel regained a huge amount of significance that morning when I scrambled down over the rocks through the bramble to pass through it once again.Staring it in the face I suddenly found myself sunk deeply into an obvious metaphor loaded with meaning and somewhat of a ritualistic transformative sense knowing I had to pass through it, with great difficulty due to my pack strapped to my back and the stream that passed through its center as it always had. I had to surpass this obstacle, that daunted me so in the first discoveries of it as a kid going the other way to the "outer world", to get back into my childhood tromping grounds and up into the streets of the neighborhood and town I grew up in and abandoned. The first time I made that trip through the tunnel was also with my Dad, who has become a huge part of this revisit home and healing of old memories.
I grabbed a staff to support myself and clung myself to the walls as I'd done so many times before years ago. It was much more challenging as an adult with 60lbs of weight strapped to me, probably the same amount of weight that I was when I first started climbing around through there. The trick to this passage is to fit your feet on the lip of tar that rises just above the water line and stablize yourself by using the bolts in the wall as hand holds. When I was younger, once my friends and I thoroughly had conquered this challenge we used to run up and down the walls hopping the three foot wide stream in the middle all the while which we termed "wacky wall 
walking". Clever. At 33 my hands aren't nearly as small as they were to grab those bolts, and the pack kept catching on the wall to swing out a bit, which would then loosen my foot hold at the bottom. I loved every minute of this.
walking". Clever. At 33 my hands aren't nearly as small as they were to grab those bolts, and the pack kept catching on the wall to swing out a bit, which would then loosen my foot hold at the bottom. I loved every minute of this.The tunnel is about ten feet in diameter and passes under that dirt road, a double set of train tracks, and I-91 which is a three lane highway on both sides, so its a fairly long way. Emerging at the other end I was plunged deep into my true home. After 15, maybe even 17 or 18 years of being away from this terrain I still knew it intimately. Following the path that runs along the creek, I ducked in and out of the pricker patches, around low hanging vines that have hung low there for years, and found myself at a hook in the stream where there used to be a firepit. In its spot the morning sun was shining down like a druidic sanctuary for those who were weened by these trees. I spent a good two hours or so there just soaking in the energy from those memories.
I had breakfast in that spot as well, reorganized some things, dumped out my water from the park restroom in Stamford and pumped my reserves with these waters. As cheesey as it sounds, it was truly a holy morning for me in that sense of really finding my old severed roots again. Wandering about I found the ruins of some old forts and took some pictures of favorite spots. Feeling energized I climbed the hill out to my neighborhood and walked up the street I used to experiment with go-carting on.
Being in this mode I, of course, couldn't pass up getting a picture of the house I grew up in. This house is obviously loaded with memories and meaning for me despite that I moved out of it way back when I was 13 with my Dad. This was the physical moment that my immediate family was fully broken and began to shatter ourselves across the country as far as Hawaii. I took a few pictures of the place and ended up running into the owner, Debbie. We got to talking and I told her I had grown up here and hoped I didn't creep her out as a dirty guy in a backpack snapping pictures of her home of 14 years. Instead of creeping her out, she invited me in for a tour.
It turned out she had met my sister years earlier when she first moved in who had shown up in a similar way and also been given a tour. From the moment I entered the kitchen in the back I was struck by how absolutely tiny the place was. I had sort of expected that, but my kitchen in my apartment Denver was bigger than the one I sat in eating Cheerios for the first decade or so of my life. Each room, successively, had the same affect on me; it was like touring a colonial home but for my personal history.
As we walked through I told her stories of different places, explained bumps and bangs in the 
walls that I had put there, and confessed that I was the evil demon who had loaded my entire bedroom door with stickers as my sticker collection. I had wanted to keep that door when my Dad and I moved out, but alas it wasn't to be. Instead, poor Debbie was stuck sanding it off with great pains some 7 years after I left. The neatest thing, however, was that we had written on the walls in places and they had kept it. Not only had they kept it but their kids had added to them giving the house a sort of child recorded history to it. The first being my friend Tim's sister, Susan, who my parents had bought the house from in '77 writing "Susan Wenz was here". Which I followed up with "Chris Dyson was here". My sister up in her room had marked her closet with "Wendie's room until 1/9/91", and Debbie's daughter had followed in the same vain dating March of last year.
walls that I had put there, and confessed that I was the evil demon who had loaded my entire bedroom door with stickers as my sticker collection. I had wanted to keep that door when my Dad and I moved out, but alas it wasn't to be. Instead, poor Debbie was stuck sanding it off with great pains some 7 years after I left. The neatest thing, however, was that we had written on the walls in places and they had kept it. Not only had they kept it but their kids had added to them giving the house a sort of child recorded history to it. The first being my friend Tim's sister, Susan, who my parents had bought the house from in '77 writing "Susan Wenz was here". Which I followed up with "Chris Dyson was here". My sister up in her room had marked her closet with "Wendie's room until 1/9/91", and Debbie's daughter had followed in the same vain dating March of last year.Thanking them as I left I gave them some of these website cards telling them a bit about my travels. From there I wandered down the main road in town, Longmeadow St., to my old library. I was there for the rest of the afternoon catching up on posts and Facebooking friends here to get together. By 6:30 I was ready to go, and had arranged meeting up with my friend Dave, who I'd known since I was 4 or 5, and a former roommate of mine, another Dave, but then we called him Vid. I was to meet them down at a bar the first Dave was working at on Main St. in Springfield, but first I felt the need to go around the corner and put a visit in with my grandparents, Nana and Papa.
They are buried in the cemetery of the white church that is the center of Longmeadow. I made my way to their grave, picking some flowers for them along the way. As I sat there I hadn't intended to stay long, honestly. I figured I'd pop in and pay tribute, then meander down into town. I sat there for an hour.The sun was beginning to wane in the sky as sat and looked at their stone. I looked over the odd placement of their names being that my Dad's little sister, Peggy, who died at 9 in the '60s was in the center. Above her was Papa and below her was Nana. It wasn't by birth order or death order, and in the end I figured it must have just been convenient placement on the stone for who died when, Peggy naturally being centered then filling in the space. Then it dawned on me that all the space on it had been filled which set a disturbing reality into my head. The question just emerged; "if not here, then I wonder where Dad will go?" It brought home an issue I've thought much about but I don't think I've really hit that level of reality that he may die within the next few years.
This sank deep into me and hit a core. My intentions of travel are to go far and wide this time, hopefully South America, Africa, Asia perhaps. If I take all of that time to do that will he be here when I get back? Is this the last time I'll really be in this hometown again? How do I approach this visit with him this time with that possible reality? I called my sister.
We talked it out for a good long while. When she answered the phone she had asked if she could call me back later since she was in the middle of something, but I blurted out what I was thinking and we talked about it at length for a good half hour or so, really probing what this reality might mean for us and our relationship with him. I can't do it justice in words, but the experience was sobering and intense, but when I got off the phone with her I felt ready to leave the grave site and go meet up with some old friends.
I wandered downtown, getting in touch with another friend Becky. She swung by and picked me up taking me to the bar we hung out at. It was a brief visit with Dave when I got there since he was working, and Vid never showed up, but that gave me the time to get a good chat in with Becky that evening. We turned in early, however, since she had to work at 7:30am the next day and soon I was conked out on her couch.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
5/18- Going Home
Waking up in the bivy again was quite sublime. I will say that I did miss it.
I got up around 7am or so which I was a bit surprised at. I had thought with all these days of sleeping on beds and lazying around I'd likely sleep in until 10 or 11. Either way, I took my time getting up and out of it, then took my time some more getting my things together and heading out for breakfast.
The park was so beautiful stretching out as a peninsula I figured I'd go to the peak and eat some oatmeal out there. I did exactly that, and once I got out there to a nice bench I thought I recognized the name on the plaque as a relative in my genealogy charts. It had been Joseph Selleck's cemetary that had been donated, and though I know Selleck is a family name that was in this area, I don't think that guy is direct to me.
After my meal it was a bit cold so I headed back toward the city with the aim of figuring out what was going on with the trains. Todd and I had talked the night before about his ticket switching and we went back and forth a few times then as well, finally settling on leaving the damn thing alone. Amtrak was only a mile away, if that, and I was applying that lesson of forgetting about being the intrepid adventurer and just get to Springfield.
Some checking around gave me funky prices in scheduling. To take Amtrak from Stamford to Springfield was $56. To take Amtrak from New Haven to Springfield was $18, but only if you left at 10:30am. The other train was at 1pm and was $31. To take Metro-North from Stamford to New Haven was $6.25, but got in at 10:51am. I opted for the Metro-North option hoping that Amtrak would run 20 minutes late. It did perplex me though that I could get to Springfield for $24.25 rather than $56, and why there was a $38 difference between stations that are 60 miles apart. Which ever.
When I got into New Haven it turned out Amtrak was not late, but $31 plus the $6.25 was still a hell of a lot cheaper than $56. I then asked if there were any other trains leaving that day for $18 and it turned out there would be one at 7:22pm. Happy with that, I left figuring I had a day to explore New Haven.
At a map at the station I located the town library and made my way there, getting there about 11:20am. It didn't open until noon and I'd remembered from that map a cemetery a little distant, but not too far from the library. I started making my way to there thinking it'd be neat to look up dead relatives there for my genealogy, but after a block I changed my mind realizing I have no notes and the library computers will likely fill up. I went back and wrote out some postcards instead as I waited.
I was correct to consider waiting. By the time noon came the lonely steps that had one other guy on it when I started waiting were filled with people who funneled in at the opening of the doors. I did manage to secure myself a computer, though, for two hours where I sat and typed out a post of the weekend at Mama's. When that time ran out I wondered upstairs and found a really interesting book on Socrates by Plato. It was a collection of his dialogues which I sat for the next three or four hours pouring over.
It was just about 6pm when I decided my eyeballs hurt and I needed to leave. The train would be leaving in just under an hour and a half so I figured I should return and secure my ticket there and maybe get something to eat. It turned out that train was scheduled to be half an hour late. Either way, I got the ticket using my sisters gift certificate, then picked myself up a bagel and coffee. I sat and wrote in between making calls to Loreli for her birthday and my Mom to say hi.
The ride up was lazy as well, but welcome. I made a few more calls and got through to my friend Maria out in Denver. She told me she was working on a dilemma at the moment and that I had called at the perfect time to help her work it out a bit. Hopefully my advice was helpful, but I don't think its any surprise to anyone reading this that I told her to follow what her gut tells her and just prepare as best you can for whatever obstacles that path looks like it will have.
Getting into Springfield was an eerie event. Since leaving home after high school back in '94 I've been back to live once, and that was the following year for the summer. I had taken a year off between high school and college and, through a strange series of events, ended up living out in Hawaii for five months. I really didn't like it there, due to the depression I was in, so my return home was over anticipated and my stay felt like dropping back into a ghost town. I've never felt at home here since that '94 departure, which is why since then I've always claimed New York as home.
My relationship with my Dad I've also talked a bit about here, but it really has come to bear now when I stepped off that train. I won't get into the strange events going on right now, but the Cliff Notes are that I'm not going to be staying at his house while I'm here in Mass, and will likely only be getting a brief visit in with him despite his recent health problems. I don't know enough of the rest of the story to really say any more than that at the moment, and I've often been wrong on my assumptions I've drawn in the past.
Stepping off that train, into this dark, old city lit by dangling street lights and neon signs in bars only to illuminate the boards in so many of the 1900's era buildings downtown, it was fully impressed upon me that I was stepping into a dark end of my past. On the train up I had also been doing some writing about what seemed to be the feeling in me about going to Springfield was and it rang loudly as closure. What that will end up meaning, if anything, remains to be seen.
I had friends in the area who I could have called as well, not to mention other family like my cousins and aunt, but the impression that I was there on my own really sank in knowing that no one knew I was there, and know one would be there to pick me up or bring me to their house. I also had a strong compulsion to sleep out in the woods I'd grown up in that night. I needed time to myself to process a lot of these things, and being in those woods, I knew, would feel like coming back to the home I grew up in. I called my friend Gus, who is the oldest of my close friends and the one I've been most anxious to see while up here.
I threw on my pack and headed down the empty main street of Springfield, filled only with the bug eyed headlights staring past as I made my way back to my woods. On the way I stopped in at a place I would go occasionally in high school, Antonio's Grinders, to get some food in me. I was starving as well, which was probably what was getting at my mood a bit. I chatted with the lady behind the counter a bit, then, after I ate, I crossed under the highway and made my way to the train tracks. The tracks would lead me down to my woods, so I followed those down in the dark, found my bearings at my old spots I knew, and dashed into the woods.
I got up around 7am or so which I was a bit surprised at. I had thought with all these days of sleeping on beds and lazying around I'd likely sleep in until 10 or 11. Either way, I took my time getting up and out of it, then took my time some more getting my things together and heading out for breakfast.
The park was so beautiful stretching out as a peninsula I figured I'd go to the peak and eat some oatmeal out there. I did exactly that, and once I got out there to a nice bench I thought I recognized the name on the plaque as a relative in my genealogy charts. It had been Joseph Selleck's cemetary that had been donated, and though I know Selleck is a family name that was in this area, I don't think that guy is direct to me.
After my meal it was a bit cold so I headed back toward the city with the aim of figuring out what was going on with the trains. Todd and I had talked the night before about his ticket switching and we went back and forth a few times then as well, finally settling on leaving the damn thing alone. Amtrak was only a mile away, if that, and I was applying that lesson of forgetting about being the intrepid adventurer and just get to Springfield.
Some checking around gave me funky prices in scheduling. To take Amtrak from Stamford to Springfield was $56. To take Amtrak from New Haven to Springfield was $18, but only if you left at 10:30am. The other train was at 1pm and was $31. To take Metro-North from Stamford to New Haven was $6.25, but got in at 10:51am. I opted for the Metro-North option hoping that Amtrak would run 20 minutes late. It did perplex me though that I could get to Springfield for $24.25 rather than $56, and why there was a $38 difference between stations that are 60 miles apart. Which ever.
When I got into New Haven it turned out Amtrak was not late, but $31 plus the $6.25 was still a hell of a lot cheaper than $56. I then asked if there were any other trains leaving that day for $18 and it turned out there would be one at 7:22pm. Happy with that, I left figuring I had a day to explore New Haven.
At a map at the station I located the town library and made my way there, getting there about 11:20am. It didn't open until noon and I'd remembered from that map a cemetery a little distant, but not too far from the library. I started making my way to there thinking it'd be neat to look up dead relatives there for my genealogy, but after a block I changed my mind realizing I have no notes and the library computers will likely fill up. I went back and wrote out some postcards instead as I waited.
I was correct to consider waiting. By the time noon came the lonely steps that had one other guy on it when I started waiting were filled with people who funneled in at the opening of the doors. I did manage to secure myself a computer, though, for two hours where I sat and typed out a post of the weekend at Mama's. When that time ran out I wondered upstairs and found a really interesting book on Socrates by Plato. It was a collection of his dialogues which I sat for the next three or four hours pouring over.
It was just about 6pm when I decided my eyeballs hurt and I needed to leave. The train would be leaving in just under an hour and a half so I figured I should return and secure my ticket there and maybe get something to eat. It turned out that train was scheduled to be half an hour late. Either way, I got the ticket using my sisters gift certificate, then picked myself up a bagel and coffee. I sat and wrote in between making calls to Loreli for her birthday and my Mom to say hi.
The ride up was lazy as well, but welcome. I made a few more calls and got through to my friend Maria out in Denver. She told me she was working on a dilemma at the moment and that I had called at the perfect time to help her work it out a bit. Hopefully my advice was helpful, but I don't think its any surprise to anyone reading this that I told her to follow what her gut tells her and just prepare as best you can for whatever obstacles that path looks like it will have.
Getting into Springfield was an eerie event. Since leaving home after high school back in '94 I've been back to live once, and that was the following year for the summer. I had taken a year off between high school and college and, through a strange series of events, ended up living out in Hawaii for five months. I really didn't like it there, due to the depression I was in, so my return home was over anticipated and my stay felt like dropping back into a ghost town. I've never felt at home here since that '94 departure, which is why since then I've always claimed New York as home.
My relationship with my Dad I've also talked a bit about here, but it really has come to bear now when I stepped off that train. I won't get into the strange events going on right now, but the Cliff Notes are that I'm not going to be staying at his house while I'm here in Mass, and will likely only be getting a brief visit in with him despite his recent health problems. I don't know enough of the rest of the story to really say any more than that at the moment, and I've often been wrong on my assumptions I've drawn in the past.
Stepping off that train, into this dark, old city lit by dangling street lights and neon signs in bars only to illuminate the boards in so many of the 1900's era buildings downtown, it was fully impressed upon me that I was stepping into a dark end of my past. On the train up I had also been doing some writing about what seemed to be the feeling in me about going to Springfield was and it rang loudly as closure. What that will end up meaning, if anything, remains to be seen.
I had friends in the area who I could have called as well, not to mention other family like my cousins and aunt, but the impression that I was there on my own really sank in knowing that no one knew I was there, and know one would be there to pick me up or bring me to their house. I also had a strong compulsion to sleep out in the woods I'd grown up in that night. I needed time to myself to process a lot of these things, and being in those woods, I knew, would feel like coming back to the home I grew up in. I called my friend Gus, who is the oldest of my close friends and the one I've been most anxious to see while up here.
I threw on my pack and headed down the empty main street of Springfield, filled only with the bug eyed headlights staring past as I made my way back to my woods. On the way I stopped in at a place I would go occasionally in high school, Antonio's Grinders, to get some food in me. I was starving as well, which was probably what was getting at my mood a bit. I chatted with the lady behind the counter a bit, then, after I ate, I crossed under the highway and made my way to the train tracks. The tracks would lead me down to my woods, so I followed those down in the dark, found my bearings at my old spots I knew, and dashed into the woods.
5/17- Last Visits of the City
The next morning I was hung over but focused on going to see Maddy for a good visit and still not over run my get together with Lica. I said my goodbyes to Ingrid and made my way to Red Hook where Maddy's boyfriend, Ben, lives. I'd never met Ben before and I liked him immediately. The building he had was pretty snazzy in its gutted state and chickens wandering about in the backyard. He was a laid back guy who seemed like someone who gets a lot done, but at his own pace.
Maddy was lovely as ever to see as well. She is an old friend from the first days of SVA and we've undergone an odd, but always close, friendship since then; she is very much like a sister to me. When I got there I was almost immediately given a coffee. Maddy has been drinking coffee since she was two, so what I was given was, as expected, the sort of coffee that rips your eyes out. It was heaven.
I was a bit bummed that I was going to have only an hour with them, since Lica and I had arranged to meet at Columbus Circle. As usual though, what ever time I had with Maddy seemed good enough. We all laid about chatting casually about our goings on and then when I had to go, I had to go, and they waved me off goodbyes. It was refreshingly homey.
Now I was to meet Lica. This was a meeting I couldn't for the life of me understand why I was so drawn to do it, but I was really compelled. Lica and I knew each other only vaguely through sharing the same aquaintances and occasionally being on set together. Hence the strangeness of the draw; I wasn't at all sure what to expect out of this visit, but I knew it would be an important connection.
We had arranged to meet up at a Starbucks at Columbus Circle. I'm not much of a Starbucks fan, but my boycott of them is waning and in the hurried conversation we had to get together and having no idea about that area I didn't see the point in changing places. She found me standing inside as she walked up and we met at the entrance. Almost immediately neither one of us really wanted to be there so we headed around the block for a diner or some place to eat. It turned out she knew of a place to get a great burger that she wanted to treat me to so we headed for that. I was expecting some little Brooklyn style diner remake that they do in that area of town. We walked into one of the swankier places I've been. Ivy climbing the walls, golden elevators to the second floor where we sat in muted elegance and class enjoying what was a very fine cheeseburger.
Immediately we set to talking and got into both our urges to travel. She had sent me an email back when I got in touch with her on Facebook that she'd had the travel bug when she was younger and still felt it in her, but was settled down now. I had figured that to mean she didn't do much adventuring these days and wallowed away at work. Instead, she probably gets out and goes camping more regularly then I do. Definitely more than when I'm staying put. She also has two stepkids that she's trying to turn on to camping, swimming, rafting, etc. It turned out that my gut had once again been right and that we had a ton of things to say to one another.
Once the burgers were long gone we still sat drinking coffees and going on about problems of the world that we saw. We didn't talk so much about the general gripes of this and that, but more hit on the overall things that we see of the fears in people against things that they don't bother to confront and therefore never see if they're even there. I was really surprised to look down and find out that three hours had gone by, and now was worried that I'd be messing up plans with my friend Elissa in Connecticut.
Elissa is a friend of mine from high school back in Longmeadow, Mass. She was another Facebook find to discover that she lives down in Greenwich now. The plan for that day had been to take a commuter train up to Greenwich after meeting with Lica and meet up with her and her family. After Lica and I spent the afternoon talking it was now suddenly 6:30pm on a Sunday. Greenwich being a notoriously well to do area I was now worried that I might be too late for a visit with her. What surprised me then was that Lica, with out me mentioning any of this, then offered to give me a ride up there.
I took her up on the offer. One, because I was having a really great time visiting with her; and two, I figured it would get me there quicker without having to hastle Elissa with picking me up at the train station. I gave her a quick call as we were heading out of the restaurant and it turned out all those plans were for naught. Elissa's daughter had caught a nasty fever and it would be a really bad time to have guests, but that she'd love to drive up to Mass and see me there in the next week or so.
I relayed this to Lica, but she was still up for a drive to Connecticut. I figured what the hell, so we clammored in her car and were off down the highways continuing our chat where we'd left off. She took me all the way to Stamford, just above Greenwich. We pulled into a park on the coast we found and wandered about scouting places to for me to tuck in at. Finding a perfect little nest for me in an old discarded iron works in the trees I walked her back to the car.
It was really an amazing visit catching up with her. Not only did she treat me to lunch and give me a ride, but she had put together a care package of Thera-Flu and hand warmers with two books she thought I'd like. She then hopped in the car and drove off again, and I meandered back to make my home in the iron works thicket for the night. It was good to be camping again.
Maddy was lovely as ever to see as well. She is an old friend from the first days of SVA and we've undergone an odd, but always close, friendship since then; she is very much like a sister to me. When I got there I was almost immediately given a coffee. Maddy has been drinking coffee since she was two, so what I was given was, as expected, the sort of coffee that rips your eyes out. It was heaven.
I was a bit bummed that I was going to have only an hour with them, since Lica and I had arranged to meet at Columbus Circle. As usual though, what ever time I had with Maddy seemed good enough. We all laid about chatting casually about our goings on and then when I had to go, I had to go, and they waved me off goodbyes. It was refreshingly homey.
Now I was to meet Lica. This was a meeting I couldn't for the life of me understand why I was so drawn to do it, but I was really compelled. Lica and I knew each other only vaguely through sharing the same aquaintances and occasionally being on set together. Hence the strangeness of the draw; I wasn't at all sure what to expect out of this visit, but I knew it would be an important connection.
We had arranged to meet up at a Starbucks at Columbus Circle. I'm not much of a Starbucks fan, but my boycott of them is waning and in the hurried conversation we had to get together and having no idea about that area I didn't see the point in changing places. She found me standing inside as she walked up and we met at the entrance. Almost immediately neither one of us really wanted to be there so we headed around the block for a diner or some place to eat. It turned out she knew of a place to get a great burger that she wanted to treat me to so we headed for that. I was expecting some little Brooklyn style diner remake that they do in that area of town. We walked into one of the swankier places I've been. Ivy climbing the walls, golden elevators to the second floor where we sat in muted elegance and class enjoying what was a very fine cheeseburger.
Immediately we set to talking and got into both our urges to travel. She had sent me an email back when I got in touch with her on Facebook that she'd had the travel bug when she was younger and still felt it in her, but was settled down now. I had figured that to mean she didn't do much adventuring these days and wallowed away at work. Instead, she probably gets out and goes camping more regularly then I do. Definitely more than when I'm staying put. She also has two stepkids that she's trying to turn on to camping, swimming, rafting, etc. It turned out that my gut had once again been right and that we had a ton of things to say to one another.
Once the burgers were long gone we still sat drinking coffees and going on about problems of the world that we saw. We didn't talk so much about the general gripes of this and that, but more hit on the overall things that we see of the fears in people against things that they don't bother to confront and therefore never see if they're even there. I was really surprised to look down and find out that three hours had gone by, and now was worried that I'd be messing up plans with my friend Elissa in Connecticut.
Elissa is a friend of mine from high school back in Longmeadow, Mass. She was another Facebook find to discover that she lives down in Greenwich now. The plan for that day had been to take a commuter train up to Greenwich after meeting with Lica and meet up with her and her family. After Lica and I spent the afternoon talking it was now suddenly 6:30pm on a Sunday. Greenwich being a notoriously well to do area I was now worried that I might be too late for a visit with her. What surprised me then was that Lica, with out me mentioning any of this, then offered to give me a ride up there.
I took her up on the offer. One, because I was having a really great time visiting with her; and two, I figured it would get me there quicker without having to hastle Elissa with picking me up at the train station. I gave her a quick call as we were heading out of the restaurant and it turned out all those plans were for naught. Elissa's daughter had caught a nasty fever and it would be a really bad time to have guests, but that she'd love to drive up to Mass and see me there in the next week or so.
I relayed this to Lica, but she was still up for a drive to Connecticut. I figured what the hell, so we clammored in her car and were off down the highways continuing our chat where we'd left off. She took me all the way to Stamford, just above Greenwich. We pulled into a park on the coast we found and wandered about scouting places to for me to tuck in at. Finding a perfect little nest for me in an old discarded iron works in the trees I walked her back to the car.
It was really an amazing visit catching up with her. Not only did she treat me to lunch and give me a ride, but she had put together a care package of Thera-Flu and hand warmers with two books she thought I'd like. She then hopped in the car and drove off again, and I meandered back to make my home in the iron works thicket for the night. It was good to be camping again.
5/16- An Ex-Girlfriend Tour of New York
The first order of business in getting back to the city again was something I should have done immediately with Todd, but, alas, didn't get to it for whatever reason. I went straight to Pick-A-Bagel on 3rd Ave. by SVA to get myself an everything bagel toasted and laden with cream cheese. These are the treats we need to survive in the world these days.
Having accomplished that I made my way back down to Local again, Craig's coffee shop on Sullivan in SoHo, and plopped myself down for a coffee. My old friend and former co-worker Mike D. was working so we spent a bit catching up on what was going on. I also ran across a few old regulars from our old job around the corner at Auggies. One of which, Hat Lady Linda, I spent a good long time talking with about her regular sojourns to Kenya. She told me to look her up if I got there and people would know who she was.
Soon enough it was about 1pm and I was off to meet Marion in Queens. I was very uncertain as to how this was going to go. She was another Facebook discovery, and the few emails we had between one another were nice enough, but our last conversation we had together entailed her chucking a hat in my direction following me breaking up with her. Granted this was as far back as the winter of 1996, but none-the-less nothing had been said, seen, nor heard between us since. The meeting was a very pleasant surprise.
We met over lunch at a funky gallery in Long Island City built out of an old school called PS1. It was one of her favorite places to go due to not only the contemporary art inside, but a bit of nostalgia since she had grown up there in Queens. Talking was easy right from the get go and in place of the half hour, maybe an hour, lunch that I had anticipated we sat wrapped in conversation for about four hours. This was okay though since the next friend I was going to see canceled dinner on me for health reasons and it turned out I just wasn't going to see him this trip.
What was hilariously intriguing to me was what it was she and I ended up talking about for four hours. The obvious start, once over the brief small talking, was getting into why I broke up with her and all the things surrounding that. She eventually confessed that she had been annoyed with me for some time from that, and I think there were still vague ghosts of it when we were first greeting each other that day. Sort of a feeling out if I'd matured into a major jackass or somehow become an okay person after a bit more than a decade. I then also liked exploring the idea of what the actual reason was for me dumping her way back when. The general concensus was that we were 18 and 20 and that we do stupid things then. The undertones, that were understood, was that I was still obsessed with my old friend Allyson from high school and that would erode any attempt at a relationship until I got myself over it. This would take another 4 years after Marion to fully achieve and would lend insight to some of my sexual activities throughout college.
This breakup talk was not the hilarious part to me though. What was hilarious was that when breaking up with her, in my mind, I was thinking there was no way we would ever be compatible. What we talked about mostly was her love for travel, her photography which she does for a living now in any capacity she can, and her stubbornness to grunt through and learn things simply to one up someone else. I was just really surprised at how similar we were and had a great time comparing notes on her travels and adventures to mine.
We parted ways around 5:30 or 6 and I made my way up to Harlem where another ex-girfriend/friend of mine lives, Ana. Ana and I have long made up to be friends since our breakup back in 2002, though she does like to evoke the lingering anamosities of it at times simply to make her points with me. This is a prime reason why I've always said exes make great friends. You've already gone through the adoring phase and the discontent phase, so they are much more likely to tell you squarely what they think. Despite my stubborness, I do really like hearing these things so I value the friends that speak with such cander in high regard.
It was a good night just hanging out that night with her in her apartment. She had a lot of things going on socially and work wise, so most of the night was spent talking about that. Friday morning was another early one as she had to get to work.
I went right back to Local again where I picked up another coffee and sat on the bench outside talking to Roger, who I'd run into the day before, and my old friend Joe, who was my boss at Auggies. It was a nice lazy morning as people came and went and I caught up on the goings on in their lives, and they in mine. After a few hours I felt like I should get a move on to do something, so I wandered back uptown to Union Square. Todd called somewhere along the way, so I talked with him about his stay in Santa Fe for about an hour. Afterward I dove into Barnes & Noble where I spent the next three hours reading various things.
I needed to use the internet in hopes of updating, but also getting in touch with people so I left the book store and hopped another train. I had a bit of a weird experience there. It could either be one that I completely made up in my head, or something that was a study in following signs.
On the train I was intending to get off at 42nd St. and go to the smaller library across the street from the big New York Public Library. I had been reading about the Mayans and the 2012 calendar predictions in Barnes & Noble, so that was likely what put me in the mindset. Across from me on the train this guy's forearm was a few feet from my face and had a tatoo of something Mayan looking on it. I tried to get a picture, but it came out blurry. Anyway, I got an impulse to follow him out when he got off at 34th St. so I did.
Once out on the 34th St. station he headed south and I turned north, not really thinking about anything. I walked quickly north following this subtle pull that had dragged me off the train and when I got up on the streets I headed east toward 5th Ave. where the library would be. In my head I was getting this feeling like I was going to run into my friend Lica who I'd been trying to get in touch with. When I hit 5th Ave., however, I started to turn up north on it but it felt wrong, so I crossed the street and kept heading east to Madison where I turned north.
All the while I was now scanning over the crowds passing me seeing if Lica, or Stephanie, were heading home in them. Stephanie, because she was a bit of my link to Lica and logically it made sense because I was thinking she worked in that area. Anyway, I found neither of them, all I found was me heading up Madison Ave. now trying to turn down a few streets to get back on 5th and go to the library but feeling like I was making a wrong turn every time, so I'd turn back on Madison again. Finally I think it was 38th St. or so when it felt right to turn back on toward 5th. I got about half way down the block when I was drawn to a crappy little internet place where it was $1 for 15 minutes. I really didn't want to pay for internet with my money levels and being around the corner from the library, but I did it anyway figuring its just a buck and I've been following this weird impulse this far.
I paid the guy and sat at my computer. I honestly now had no idea what I was doing there, and had given up the idea of somehow randomly running into Lica. Instead I went on Facebook, figuring I'd check in and see if she had left me an email, which she hadn't. Instead, Marion had sent me a picture of her feet in Romania that she'd told me she'd send and on old friend Derek was online. I wrote Marion back with enough time to say hello to Derek on the chat thing. I walked out of there 15 minutes later now with Derek's number and a vague haze of a plan to try to get together before I left the city. Maybe that's what it was all about, I don't know. Like I said, it could have very well have been all in my head, or maybe all of that will mean something in a bit. The odd part was that when I went around the corner to use the internet at the library for a bit longer the library was closed, and had been for about forty five minutes by then.
Ana had also called in the midst of that wander. She was on her way home from work and seeing if I was looking to head back up right away, or did she have time to go do something for a bit. Since I was on this odd quest I told her to go do what she needed to do and I'd meet her in a bit, so when I called her back she was on the Upper West Side having a lazy post-work hot dog. I grabbed the train up that way and soon we were hanging out next to the Hudson enjoying the sunset over Jersey while we lay in the grass.
That night we went grocery shopping and experimented with making lentils and rice for dinner. Ana is on par with cooking as to where I'm at. We're both sort of blindly feeling our way around and teaching ourselves how to do it. Our methods, however, differ from her being a recipe sort of girl and me just a playful experimenter by taste sort of guy. After some chopping and boiling of various things we compiled our meal, which looked nothing like it was supposed to, and settled in for the night to watch Reds. The meal was delicious, as was the movie, though Ana passed out and the last disk skipped so I couldn't get to the end.
Saturday morning I was supposed to head down to Red Hook to see my friend Maddy. We'd made the arrangements Thursday and I think I had misinterpretted the timing on the visit. Ana and I slept in a bit that morning and when we got up we did everything in our power to try and see the skipping part of Reds. For a 2 and a half hour movie, when all you're missing is the last 20 minutes it becomes a critical issue to see it. We failed. Not only did we fail, but I called Maddy while making the attempt only to find out where she was in Brooklyn was about an hour and a half from where I was in Harlem. I got this information over voicemail so I said my good byes to Ana and gave Maddy a call on my way out to see if meeting would still work. We pushed it to Sunday.
Instead I went back to midtown to use that library I was denied the day before. As soon as I walked in the door I was hailed by a librarian to write a letter to Mayor Bloomberg so that he wouldn't cut back the budgets of their particular branch. Libraries have become sacred grounds to me in my travels, so I felt duty-bound to write my piece for them. I spent about half an hour cranking out a letter for all the libraries in America and the budget cuts they will undoubtedly suffer. The main focus of this paper was to detail the importance of library's as a resource and education in general over immediate industry investments. If there's $750 billion for washed up corporations there should be twice that for education. I'm quite positive no one will ever read that letter, but its there if they do.
I then sat on the internet for an hour checking emails and such, followed by sitting at a table for a bit writing postcards to various people. On my way outI talked to Ingrid, as she was on her way back from Boston, and arranged to hang out with her that night. That arrangement left me about an hour or so downtown to figure out if I could get my Nashika film developed. I had meant to do that earlier but had completely forgotten about it. My worry now was that places wouldn't be open on Sunday to be able to pick it up, if they even did 24 hour developement with this type of film.
I ended up calling Marion for the locations of the places she'd recommended which resulted in another good long chat with her. Its nice to know I've made a new friend in her. I think we talked for about half and hour.
I caught another train down to the Village to swing by Maddy's bar to just say a hello in case we missed each other Sunday as well. Its one of those places of casual swank, so backpackers and lingering old friends are probably not so welcome. I managed to find it amid the wandering tourists and popped in for a quick kiss on the cheek and a promise to get together the next day. The strange part was, right before going in my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was Lica. We made a quick plan to get together for coffee at 3pm the next day, which I was then able to quickly clear with Maddy for our previous plans. From there it was time to meet up with Ingrid.
High tailing it to the Upper West Side I made it to her apartment where I dropped off my pack for the night. It was nice to see her again on my own this time. Not that Todd impeded on our visit last time, on the contrary, but it is a different visit when its just the two of you again. We didn't linger long at her place regardless, though. She had plans to meet up with Perri for dinner which I joined them for, after which we were right back at 1020.
The dinner with the two of them was really nice. Mostly they talked, but I expected that, and I like to listen and throw in when it feels right. The bar, however, was different. We were meeting up with Ingrid's old friend Dave and his sister Danielle. I'd known Dave before when we were dating and really like the guy. His sister I had also apparently met on my swing through NYC in '07 before heading to England, but I was really drunk that time. Ingrid and Dave had a lot of catching up to do, and I found myself sitting off to the side most of the night.
What had been fun about the week before was that it was a constant rotation of different friends of Ingrid, all the while conversation was flowing and shifting around. This time I found myself sitting back most of the time since the four of them knew each other all quite well. I think I probably put myself on the outside and just ended up drinking. I ended up going against my recent decision to avoid hard liquor and, though I was still mindful of bourbon, I switched to drinking gin and tonics by the end of the night. My other theory on the night is that I think the urge to get a move on again was pressing on me as well. I'd over stayed my own welcome in the city and it was time to go. Overall, though, I am really glad that I got to see Ingrid one more time before leaving.
Having accomplished that I made my way back down to Local again, Craig's coffee shop on Sullivan in SoHo, and plopped myself down for a coffee. My old friend and former co-worker Mike D. was working so we spent a bit catching up on what was going on. I also ran across a few old regulars from our old job around the corner at Auggies. One of which, Hat Lady Linda, I spent a good long time talking with about her regular sojourns to Kenya. She told me to look her up if I got there and people would know who she was.
Soon enough it was about 1pm and I was off to meet Marion in Queens. I was very uncertain as to how this was going to go. She was another Facebook discovery, and the few emails we had between one another were nice enough, but our last conversation we had together entailed her chucking a hat in my direction following me breaking up with her. Granted this was as far back as the winter of 1996, but none-the-less nothing had been said, seen, nor heard between us since. The meeting was a very pleasant surprise.
We met over lunch at a funky gallery in Long Island City built out of an old school called PS1. It was one of her favorite places to go due to not only the contemporary art inside, but a bit of nostalgia since she had grown up there in Queens. Talking was easy right from the get go and in place of the half hour, maybe an hour, lunch that I had anticipated we sat wrapped in conversation for about four hours. This was okay though since the next friend I was going to see canceled dinner on me for health reasons and it turned out I just wasn't going to see him this trip.
What was hilariously intriguing to me was what it was she and I ended up talking about for four hours. The obvious start, once over the brief small talking, was getting into why I broke up with her and all the things surrounding that. She eventually confessed that she had been annoyed with me for some time from that, and I think there were still vague ghosts of it when we were first greeting each other that day. Sort of a feeling out if I'd matured into a major jackass or somehow become an okay person after a bit more than a decade. I then also liked exploring the idea of what the actual reason was for me dumping her way back when. The general concensus was that we were 18 and 20 and that we do stupid things then. The undertones, that were understood, was that I was still obsessed with my old friend Allyson from high school and that would erode any attempt at a relationship until I got myself over it. This would take another 4 years after Marion to fully achieve and would lend insight to some of my sexual activities throughout college.
This breakup talk was not the hilarious part to me though. What was hilarious was that when breaking up with her, in my mind, I was thinking there was no way we would ever be compatible. What we talked about mostly was her love for travel, her photography which she does for a living now in any capacity she can, and her stubbornness to grunt through and learn things simply to one up someone else. I was just really surprised at how similar we were and had a great time comparing notes on her travels and adventures to mine.
We parted ways around 5:30 or 6 and I made my way up to Harlem where another ex-girfriend/friend of mine lives, Ana. Ana and I have long made up to be friends since our breakup back in 2002, though she does like to evoke the lingering anamosities of it at times simply to make her points with me. This is a prime reason why I've always said exes make great friends. You've already gone through the adoring phase and the discontent phase, so they are much more likely to tell you squarely what they think. Despite my stubborness, I do really like hearing these things so I value the friends that speak with such cander in high regard.
It was a good night just hanging out that night with her in her apartment. She had a lot of things going on socially and work wise, so most of the night was spent talking about that. Friday morning was another early one as she had to get to work.
I went right back to Local again where I picked up another coffee and sat on the bench outside talking to Roger, who I'd run into the day before, and my old friend Joe, who was my boss at Auggies. It was a nice lazy morning as people came and went and I caught up on the goings on in their lives, and they in mine. After a few hours I felt like I should get a move on to do something, so I wandered back uptown to Union Square. Todd called somewhere along the way, so I talked with him about his stay in Santa Fe for about an hour. Afterward I dove into Barnes & Noble where I spent the next three hours reading various things.
I needed to use the internet in hopes of updating, but also getting in touch with people so I left the book store and hopped another train. I had a bit of a weird experience there. It could either be one that I completely made up in my head, or something that was a study in following signs.
On the train I was intending to get off at 42nd St. and go to the smaller library across the street from the big New York Public Library. I had been reading about the Mayans and the 2012 calendar predictions in Barnes & Noble, so that was likely what put me in the mindset. Across from me on the train this guy's forearm was a few feet from my face and had a tatoo of something Mayan looking on it. I tried to get a picture, but it came out blurry. Anyway, I got an impulse to follow him out when he got off at 34th St. so I did.
Once out on the 34th St. station he headed south and I turned north, not really thinking about anything. I walked quickly north following this subtle pull that had dragged me off the train and when I got up on the streets I headed east toward 5th Ave. where the library would be. In my head I was getting this feeling like I was going to run into my friend Lica who I'd been trying to get in touch with. When I hit 5th Ave., however, I started to turn up north on it but it felt wrong, so I crossed the street and kept heading east to Madison where I turned north.
All the while I was now scanning over the crowds passing me seeing if Lica, or Stephanie, were heading home in them. Stephanie, because she was a bit of my link to Lica and logically it made sense because I was thinking she worked in that area. Anyway, I found neither of them, all I found was me heading up Madison Ave. now trying to turn down a few streets to get back on 5th and go to the library but feeling like I was making a wrong turn every time, so I'd turn back on Madison again. Finally I think it was 38th St. or so when it felt right to turn back on toward 5th. I got about half way down the block when I was drawn to a crappy little internet place where it was $1 for 15 minutes. I really didn't want to pay for internet with my money levels and being around the corner from the library, but I did it anyway figuring its just a buck and I've been following this weird impulse this far.
I paid the guy and sat at my computer. I honestly now had no idea what I was doing there, and had given up the idea of somehow randomly running into Lica. Instead I went on Facebook, figuring I'd check in and see if she had left me an email, which she hadn't. Instead, Marion had sent me a picture of her feet in Romania that she'd told me she'd send and on old friend Derek was online. I wrote Marion back with enough time to say hello to Derek on the chat thing. I walked out of there 15 minutes later now with Derek's number and a vague haze of a plan to try to get together before I left the city. Maybe that's what it was all about, I don't know. Like I said, it could have very well have been all in my head, or maybe all of that will mean something in a bit. The odd part was that when I went around the corner to use the internet at the library for a bit longer the library was closed, and had been for about forty five minutes by then.
Ana had also called in the midst of that wander. She was on her way home from work and seeing if I was looking to head back up right away, or did she have time to go do something for a bit. Since I was on this odd quest I told her to go do what she needed to do and I'd meet her in a bit, so when I called her back she was on the Upper West Side having a lazy post-work hot dog. I grabbed the train up that way and soon we were hanging out next to the Hudson enjoying the sunset over Jersey while we lay in the grass.
That night we went grocery shopping and experimented with making lentils and rice for dinner. Ana is on par with cooking as to where I'm at. We're both sort of blindly feeling our way around and teaching ourselves how to do it. Our methods, however, differ from her being a recipe sort of girl and me just a playful experimenter by taste sort of guy. After some chopping and boiling of various things we compiled our meal, which looked nothing like it was supposed to, and settled in for the night to watch Reds. The meal was delicious, as was the movie, though Ana passed out and the last disk skipped so I couldn't get to the end.
Saturday morning I was supposed to head down to Red Hook to see my friend Maddy. We'd made the arrangements Thursday and I think I had misinterpretted the timing on the visit. Ana and I slept in a bit that morning and when we got up we did everything in our power to try and see the skipping part of Reds. For a 2 and a half hour movie, when all you're missing is the last 20 minutes it becomes a critical issue to see it. We failed. Not only did we fail, but I called Maddy while making the attempt only to find out where she was in Brooklyn was about an hour and a half from where I was in Harlem. I got this information over voicemail so I said my good byes to Ana and gave Maddy a call on my way out to see if meeting would still work. We pushed it to Sunday.
Instead I went back to midtown to use that library I was denied the day before. As soon as I walked in the door I was hailed by a librarian to write a letter to Mayor Bloomberg so that he wouldn't cut back the budgets of their particular branch. Libraries have become sacred grounds to me in my travels, so I felt duty-bound to write my piece for them. I spent about half an hour cranking out a letter for all the libraries in America and the budget cuts they will undoubtedly suffer. The main focus of this paper was to detail the importance of library's as a resource and education in general over immediate industry investments. If there's $750 billion for washed up corporations there should be twice that for education. I'm quite positive no one will ever read that letter, but its there if they do.
I then sat on the internet for an hour checking emails and such, followed by sitting at a table for a bit writing postcards to various people. On my way outI talked to Ingrid, as she was on her way back from Boston, and arranged to hang out with her that night. That arrangement left me about an hour or so downtown to figure out if I could get my Nashika film developed. I had meant to do that earlier but had completely forgotten about it. My worry now was that places wouldn't be open on Sunday to be able to pick it up, if they even did 24 hour developement with this type of film.
I ended up calling Marion for the locations of the places she'd recommended which resulted in another good long chat with her. Its nice to know I've made a new friend in her. I think we talked for about half and hour.
I caught another train down to the Village to swing by Maddy's bar to just say a hello in case we missed each other Sunday as well. Its one of those places of casual swank, so backpackers and lingering old friends are probably not so welcome. I managed to find it amid the wandering tourists and popped in for a quick kiss on the cheek and a promise to get together the next day. The strange part was, right before going in my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was Lica. We made a quick plan to get together for coffee at 3pm the next day, which I was then able to quickly clear with Maddy for our previous plans. From there it was time to meet up with Ingrid.
High tailing it to the Upper West Side I made it to her apartment where I dropped off my pack for the night. It was nice to see her again on my own this time. Not that Todd impeded on our visit last time, on the contrary, but it is a different visit when its just the two of you again. We didn't linger long at her place regardless, though. She had plans to meet up with Perri for dinner which I joined them for, after which we were right back at 1020.
The dinner with the two of them was really nice. Mostly they talked, but I expected that, and I like to listen and throw in when it feels right. The bar, however, was different. We were meeting up with Ingrid's old friend Dave and his sister Danielle. I'd known Dave before when we were dating and really like the guy. His sister I had also apparently met on my swing through NYC in '07 before heading to England, but I was really drunk that time. Ingrid and Dave had a lot of catching up to do, and I found myself sitting off to the side most of the night.
What had been fun about the week before was that it was a constant rotation of different friends of Ingrid, all the while conversation was flowing and shifting around. This time I found myself sitting back most of the time since the four of them knew each other all quite well. I think I probably put myself on the outside and just ended up drinking. I ended up going against my recent decision to avoid hard liquor and, though I was still mindful of bourbon, I switched to drinking gin and tonics by the end of the night. My other theory on the night is that I think the urge to get a move on again was pressing on me as well. I'd over stayed my own welcome in the city and it was time to go. Overall, though, I am really glad that I got to see Ingrid one more time before leaving.
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