Friedrich at the falls

Shelburne, that is. On Route 2 west from Boston, we veered off course down to clusters of houses & flowers. We climbed on the sublime--ancient glaciers, perfect circles of rock, waterfalls above, eddies at our toes. All the diners were closed, so we went home.

To flower

The page in front of me was patient. The clock muttered to itself but left me alone. Finally the last word, tired of being teased, settled into place. In my hands the manuscript turned to lead. I stepped outside and the world burst into a million gentians.

Coffeeshop, pt. 2

A week back and a week without the coffeeshop--this is how you can tell it's been a difficult week. Which way does the causality run? you may wonder. Either way there is a delight in evoking the surroundings in which I currently reside--a wonderful circularity of reality into representation, representation into immediate reality. Correspondence.

The man behind the counter, with a silvery shirt, is wearing light blue checks today. Typical. He knows my name. I don't know his, but in my mind I tend to call him Sean.

Embracing my heritage

That is, having a coffee at the Bourgeouis Pig over a game of Scrabble last January. Despite the marvelous opener of "uvula", I believe I came in second to last (last being I, who came to the table late but magnificently spelled out his three-letter name with his last three letters).

My own set has been lost, or stolen, if you will, by an absentminded acquaintance. Geologist friend A mailed it to me the summer before Oxford so that we could play Scrabble-by-Mail, a somewhat laborious interpretation that involved making a move, taking a photograph, and mailing the photograph to the other player. He was in New Zealand; I was in England; the game was battered among time zones, essays, mountain-climbings, and international posts before it was laid to rest by the aforementioned disappearance.

In some cultures the egg is symbolic of the soul

There was a period in my life when I would not eat eggs because of a vague feeling of shame associated with them. Not the shame a vegan would experience, or an informed consumer, or the recipient of a bad egg. Just a feeling: inappropriate, embarrassing, odd. An intervention and some searching questions made me come to the realization that it was the sound of the word that evoked those feelings.

My friends helped me, working slowly, to face the fear. We called them huevos for about a year.

Tonight we brought the salt outside the egg in a radical new dying technique. Alas, scant success.

City without rulers

A bizarre snowstorm yesterday confused city & citizens alike. The Sears Tower, stretching highest, was the first to feel its effects. I dangerously took this, one hand on the wheel, on the Eisenhower in the late afternoon. Moody, brooding, the sky gave us hail while driving to dinner at 9 and sleet while driving home at 4.

Amor de loca juventud

Drunk, he wrote on my mirror with merlot-colored lipstick. Below, where the picture ends, another picture is taped to my wall where I had done the same at E's apartment last summer: Elope with me, Miss Private, and we'll sail around the world...

I took this about a month ago. Tonight, my mirror, a different mirror in a different room, startles a little with its lacklustre reflections.