Bixi was a Hunter

Buy the Rest

I was in Europe for a week, and for the first time in a long time, I almost cried in the airport flying home. I have dozens of pages in various journals – I write about it every time – about how much I actually hate international travel, weaned on it though I was; how poorly I handle, say, road signs in different fonts (let alone languages), foreign food packaging, the foreign highway roadside. But this time, for some reason that probably included the fact that the duties, each day, were limited to walking six to eight miles and making lunch along the way, I was able, in large measure, to delight in where I was, and also able, in some non-negligable measure, to escape the questions that insist themselves daily in my ears. Should I go to law school? How will I get some power? Everyone else is getting ahead; when will I? And how on earth will I survive the hours?

Now I’m back in front of my iBook; it’s getting light enough outside for a run. The voices are at it again, and they’re not only in my head. Someone who puts power over love is in charge and telling me the rules. Foucault? No silly, someone else! Life repeats itself, I go on holiday, and when I come home, everything glows with slightly more benevolence and detachment than before.

New York – midatlantic as it is – feels rewardingly like Baltimore does after a summer trip in Europe. Hot, thick with humidity, the smell of asphalt rising off the street, trees wilted and leaning. I came home last night to an on-the-street run-in with a neighbor and a dinner in the window table at Applewood – a worthy successor to a four-course prix fixe (St. Pierre – that’s a fish – in hollandaise sauce!) at the Hotel du Mont Collon that capped off our week in the Alps. The trip was glorious. And I’m glad to be back.

The Bus Brings Me Home

In Gmail – in G life – it is very easy to find the most recent substantive correspondence you’ve had with a friend who lives far away.  And, I have discovered, this keeps me more honest than I would otherwise be.  Really?  I felt that way in October of 2006?  That’s not the story I’ve been telling for the past two years. 

Vicky and I did two four thousand footers this weekend, camping in Tuckerman Ravine and climbing the summits of Washington and Monroe, two of the excellent Southern Presidential Range, by day.  Late Sunday night, I took the bus back to New York from Boston.  I expected it to be miserable but instead I set my iPod to the H songs and took a great deal of pleasure at squinting at Motherless Brooklyn until we reached Manhattan.  At that point, the bus surged into being as a marvelous creature before whom all advancing armies fall.  All of 5th Avenue seemed to be on silent, frozen parade just for us; each light we approached would turn green, the bus would gather itself up and charge through the intersection and another tableau of fancy shop models, or quiet, hulking museum, or opulent apartment interior, would come into view. I couldn’t drink enough in; it was like I had never seen Manhattan before.  The streets were almost entirely empty, but the buildings were aglow.

There is no Citgo station at the Citgo sign, in Boston.  I hadn’t known that.  Now my willingness to defend the sign diminishes somewhat.