The City is Dizzy (A Red Sox Retrospective)

On my way to class this morning, more strangers were smiling on the street than I’d ever seen before. In fact, look outside now, if you can, because it’s pretty much the only time you can get Bostonians to smile, and look happy, on their own sidewalks.

It occurred to me on Sunday night that when, in 2004, the Red Sox won the world series, I was also in the North End. I was slouched in a sort-of-friend’s couch, drinking whiskey straight out of a little tumbler and dozens of just-baked cookies. We thought it would be a good idea to bake cookies. I don’t know. And all I wanted to do was go home (my parents were arriving in the morning, I didn’t want to be hungover, I had class at some obscene hour, we weren’t even celebrating the Red Sox any more), but everyone else was stuck in some sort of quasi-intellectual roundabout conversation about The Alchemist and their own selves. I was bored by it all. And hungry.

So my first year here, they broke a curse. This year, my last in Boston, they’ve done it again. I fell asleep in my own quiet studio listening to beer bottles breaking and people shouting.

We watched the parade from a second-floor window. Then I made the mistake of going outside. I was only walking half a block, but it must have taken me two hours (possibly that’s an exaggeration…)

Strange people kept waving at me from the street. Chants of “Yankees Suck”. And what, I think, do the Yankees have to do with this? Well, nothing, really but they can’t very well chant, “Rockies Suck”, can they? That would be utterly unsportsmanlike.

I think every state trooper in Massachusetts is on Boylston Street. Except for the group that were in the bus behind the Duck Boats. I am seeking refuge in a café until the streets unclog (which they have just begun to do). I’m sounding very cynical, I suppose. It’s only that my mind this morning is full of practical things: how to get to class on time, when my new checks will arrive so I can pay my electricity bill, etc. But really, what I mean is, so the Red Sox, appropriately enough, frame my college years in Boston. There are worse things than to see a lot of eastcoasters smiling (for once).

Ms. Knightley Meets Ms. Vane...(But I'm Not Paying Attention)

Rather weirdly, the last 5 films I have watched feature Keira Knightley.

I didn't notice this until just yesterday, when I finished up the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean, and thought, "gee, I've seen an awful lot of her face lately..."

I wonder if this says something about me...am I just naturally drawn to the kind of film that features leggy, cheekboned, puff-lipped beauties? Probably. I'm certainly not drawn to the kind of film that makes you think too hard. I've discovered I don't have the patience to sit through movies, really. I get distracted and want to get up and come back later. Even in the fifteen minute long streaks that I can sit through, I have to be doing something. Eating, generally, though once I've run out of food, I go back to picking my fingers (eek). I've smuggled food and drink into movie theaters across the world (that sounds far more impressive than it is). I constantly need to lean over to my companion (provided I have one) and offer a running commentary, which I, of course, think is ceaselessly witty, but everyone else thinks is just annoying. Full stop.

So when I do indulge in a film, it's generally the kind that doesn't require you to pay it your fullest attention. I certainly enjoy the moviegoing experience, occasionally, and find that takeout and a DVD is often a blissful combination. All this having been said, ought I really be surprised that Keira Knightley is in every other movie I watch?

Probably not.

On another (slightly more literary) note, I've finally finished Gaudy Night. I took my time with it, because I have found that curling up on the pile of blankets on my floor with a cup of tea and a diverting novel is a great pleasure these days. Especially when an Autumn wind blows cold against the window, and the leaves come fluttering from the trees on my street. Now I can turn my attention back to one of the other 400 books I'm reading.

I'm beginning to see a theme here, and I'm not sure I like it. If attention spans were measured in something concrete, mine would be, I suspect, lilliputian.

Anatomy of a Dinner Party/Autumn Days

Have been flipping through photographs in my effort NOT to work on my thesis this weekend (goodness knows I have PLENTY of time………..right?). Came across a particularly delightful series taken by a friend…having put them together, no wonder it takes us three hours to cook a dinner and at least six to eat it. Consequently, no wonder we go through at least 10 bottles of wine. And on top of that…we hardly even all fit into the kitchen!

Makes me rather homesick, in a weird way. It’s very cold in my apartment; I would love to have lots of people and hot food on the table and wine being spilled. What I have at the moment is a pile of blankets on the floor and the hum of the refrigerator which will, I suspect, drive me BATTY by the end of this term.

Today was one of those AUTUMN DAYS: clear as anything, cold, crisp, leaves falling from trees. It was hard not to smile (stupidly, really) the entire day. I went for a long walk, ostensibly doing errands but really just finding excuses to a) not work on my thesis and b) stay outside. Couldn’t even bring myself to run because it would seem a shame to go quickly past such a day: I wanted to linger on streetcorners and squint up at the skyline. On such days, it is easy to be captivated by Boston’s charm. It’s a city that looks bleak and rundown through a rainy lens, but positively sparkles on a clear day.

Went to the vintage shop down the road (and found myself wondering, as I always do, how they can pay rent if they’re only open two days a week) where I toyed with the idea of buying myself a pair of 1950s vintage black pumps. They were ten dollars and fit like a GLOVE, but ultimately I told the woman I couldn’t justify such a purchase. But now I find myself wondering if they shall still be there next weekend, and if so, perhaps I can summon up some sort of justification.

Yes, it was THAT kind of day. Also grocery shopping day, which is always, in my view, a good day.

Minarets and Things

new musings on a several-month-old trip:

Every day the muezzin sing from minarets for men to come and pray; every day the song goes bouncing off walls that are a thousand years old and older. The minarets go on carrying song, even after we leave, after we go back to Oxford, where the bells of Magdalen College hum a different kind of tune. Melodic clockwork: the old water clock across from the Medersa Bou Inania ceased working years ago; but from every corner of Fés you can mark time by the flow of men to mosque.

More On Cups of Tea Etc.

My figurative cup of tea was better than I could have hoped. So good, in fact, that I forwent the second actual cup of tea, got my butt out of the house, and enjoyed the day (which was a really very fine one, though a bit warm—a warmth, in fact, that smacked confusingly of spring). Am feeling muchly restored.

Have also been informed that googling “creature of perpetual worrying” brings me (well, my blog, anyhow) to the top of the results. Appropriate, isn’t it?

It's a two-cups-of-tea-morning, 'cos I'm losing faith in things...

Two cups of figurative AND literal tea. I don’t know when this started, but it’s my cure-all. What is it, do you think? Is it as simple as the fact that it’s hot? I’m inclined to think it’s more the ritual of it: the motions, listening to the kettle bubble, splashing milk, dipping fingers into the cup to get the teabag, sitting down and smelling the liquid, sipping idly. Soothing, and wonderfully banal. So today I want at least two cups of tea, for stomach and soul, before I venture out into the world.

I’m feeling, you see, really, frightfully self-indulgent today. And in fact quite miserable. Not in an unfixable down-in-the-dumps kind of way so much as in an existential-crisis sort of way, which is better, because it stems, I know, from thinking too much, so if I know what’s good for me I’ll do things that keep me from thinking too much, like running and reading and the like. The only problem with reading is that every two pages or so I look up and apply what I’ve just read to my own life, with the result that I think doubly as hard as I would if I wasn’t reading (just imagine trying to apply Gaudy Night to your own ultra-modern life, and your head will boggle, I promise).

Have finished cup #1 now. So must go off to make #2. Sadly it’s a beautiful day outside, so I must go and enjoy it. If it was raining hard, or better yet, snowing (yes, stranger things have happened in Boston than snow in October, I’m sure), I could justify staying inside all day, steeling myself against the world, having, say, four or even five cups of tea, reading my entire book, and taking a long nap. As it is I think I shall have to put on dark glasses and face what looks, from my window, like a perfectly gorgeous fall day. Poor little me, eh?

Waiting

Something of a strange night. Worked for most of it. The Red Sox beat the Indians, pushing another game. England, regrettably, failed to secure the rugby world cup. In the midst of all this, a colleague dropped his bussing basket on the dance floor, threw his arms up, and danced. He danced and danced until other people started dancing too. I just smiled, a lot. And danced around the perimeter of the room grabbing people’s empty glasses from under their noses, twirling away, grab, twirl, grab, twirl.

I waited, tonight. (Tables). But I am also waiting. There’s an unreality to this particular time: I feel suspended. A friend the other night said it best, “it’s not real”, and though it is, it isn’t, because I’m pushing toward something truly good, a few months away, like the little creature in the book Watching who waits for his tree to sprout.

Hell, I’m tired. Spent a good hour in the middle of my shift reading Dorothy Sayers (and getting paid for it) but still feel as if I’ve been on my feet for eight hours, which, that scrap of reading time notwithstanding, I really have. Off to bed then. Off to bed.

"I got distracted by the possibility of a potato..."

It’s a strange day here. Hot, raining, raining, raining. The air is so thick with rain that it’s hard to breathe. Even when it stopped pouring for a few hours earlier I could feel the moisture gathering in my lungs. It’s a relief to step inside, where it’s dry, and cool, and the air feels fresh (ish).

Have discovered that the best thing to do when I start feeling really, deeply mopey is to get myself up off the floor (quite literally: this has become my favorite curl-up-and-read/feel-sorry-for-myself spot…a patch of rug near the wall where I’ve set up a few blankets), do some dishes, and cook myself some food. It’s a struggle, but it helps. I very nearly crawled straight upstairs to bed at about 8 PM, but something in me said: no, that’s not going to help, and you know, it wouldn’t have. Soup and asparagus, however, and all my spoons and forks drying in the rack, have cheered me greatly.

I love hearing the rain beating down outside. Especially when I can sit and read with a cup of tea. Which I shall be making forthwith.

Satellites & Surface Area

Between the two of us, we don’t have enough money for the bus. I find it funny that this could be: two people, smart, funny, good looking young people, each with a university degree (well, almost), neither of whom can manage to cough up one-pound-thirty. The relative poverty of youth, I think, for the millionth time this week. We are living partly on the high of our own happiness, partly on the kindnesses of those older than ourselves, and partly on the empathy of our friends, who suffer similarly at other times. They will always find a way to buy us a drink; and we, when we can, will always find a way to reciprocate. Of course, we are all also doing this partly on sheer luck.

A thrown-together dinner party: it was meant to be risotto, but we had so many potatoes that at the last minute, we figured it would be better to make gnocchi from scratch. We buy half a shoulder of lamb from the butcher, and some quail’s eggs on sale, and are delighted when our entire bag of vegetables costs under five pounds!

The guest list fluctuates—it is only finally settled an hour and a half before we are due to start cooking, and even then it is only because we wrangle a deal with A, who says he will only come to dinner if we have a drink with him first (a stressful day at work, he says). So we carry our groceries to the pub, and A buys us cider, first one pint, then another, but because I drink slower than the boys X worries he should head home and start cooking. He takes the food and goes off to catch a bus while A and I discuss the woes of writing our respective dissertations. And we are growing progressively more and more animated, exchanging ideas like tennis players volleying, and I have scarcely sipped my drink, when X comes toddling back. His tail is between his legs and his cheeks rosy from cold.
“No money for the bus," he remembers.

A hands him a few pounds for another pint: a wordless exchange. Are we drinking to forget? I forget to worry about this. X comes back outside with a cider and a folding map of Oxford pubs.
“Did you know,” he says, “that this style of folding was derived from origami? Now it’s how they fold satellites.”
He takes the two corners and pulls; the map unfolds, and the table is covered by a paper representation of a dozen wizened old drinking establishments. I point at the ones I’ve been to while X says,
“It’s about surface area. And it’s also far simpler for a robot to simply pull two corners, than to futz with folds.”
“All except three,” I say. “I’ve been to all the places here except three!”
X squeezes the accordion-like map shut again; then pulls, and unravels it again.
“How do they get satellites to twist and fold like that?” A wants to know.
“They’ve just got the right materials,” X says. Flexible, foldable, satellite materials.

We are now running very late. We send A to get wine and throw the lamb in the oven, and dance round the yellow-walled kitchen washing dishes and cracking quail’s eggs and dropping vegetable stalks on the floor and sniping at each other until I spill egg all over myself and run upstairs in a huff, and X follows me and folds me in his arms and whispers “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you,” but it is not till twenty minutes and seven outfits later that I am able to come back downstairs and feel at all composed.

We drink the fancy bottle of wine at dinner. For as long as I have known X, it has been there, on the counter, a yellowed French label.
“I’m saving it for a special occasion,” he always told me. “It’s really nice stuff.”
But tonight he leans over to me and says,
“I don’t know why I made it out to be as big as I did. It’s not that nice. It’s not so special. I was thinking, on the way over here, that we should drink it.”
I protest. I do not know what significance—if any—it may hold, but I feel this is a rash decision.

I protest, and he protests to my protests, until we’re tongue-tied and twisted. “Honestly,” he insists. We’ve moved through seven bottles already, so we throw caution to the wind, and open the fancy wine, the wine for a special occasion. I think: well, it is a special occasion, isn’t it? Of sorts?

In the morning every space in the kitchen is covered with the detritus of a lovely meal. There was scarcely room for six of us at the table; I find myself thinking, “we need more surface area”. I picture our lives being unfolded by robots, grasping at the corners, pulling gently, and what they would see this morning, I suppose, would be colored by nice wine and quail’s eggs, and a whole lot of a happiness that has nothing whatsoever to do with money in a bank.

Why Does Politics Taste so Bad?

Here I am in class, and we’re discussing a hypothetical: Clinton had a lesbian love affair at Wellesley, you’re on an opposing team, what do you do? Leak it? Sit on it? Post it anonymously on a blog?

Quote: “Why not sit on it and wait until it can really strike a fatal blow?”

Why on earth is the election of a powerful world leader occasion to “strike a fatal blow”?

We talk in circles about how to get it out to the press anonymously, because no one wants to be seen as homophobic. Well then, don’t use it! Or perhaps I’m too strong a proponent of honesty, but I’d like to see someone slip it in the papers and have Clinton say, “oh, yeah, that’s right, I did have girlfriend once. It didn’t work out.” I’ve completely lost track of why on earth this is a relevant topic for discussion. When did the foibles of people’s private lives—and we all have them—become the basis of our decision to elect them?

I feel a bit like I’m drinking liquor from the bottle: it burns. It makes my head spin. It tastes awful.

The Importance of a Good Pair of Boots Should not be Underestimated

Perhaps I ought clarify the photograph below: artistic compost. A representation, in very many ways, of my earnest but foible-filled attempts at living ethically.

Have had a day full of sloe-picking, dog-walking, mushroom-examination, village-pub-going, beautiful-autumn-day-watching gloriousness. It’s quite possible that one of the things that would make me happiest in life would be to be out here—where I seem to be both deeply happy and fabulously productive and inspired—with a pair of good solid rubber boots and a huge ratty old jumper, and to go for long aimless walks through the countryside with good company.

Beetroots Revisited: In Which a Bit of Guilt Visits The Author One Lovely Oxford October

How to reconcile the giving up of the vegetable deliveries? I am sitting at the kitchen table cradling a cup of tea, and thinking, we simply can’t afford it. Between going hungry and going unethical, we have, being human, chosen of course the latter: not because we are by nature unethical beings, but because we are by nature a species who competes, who strives for survival, and who, when needs must, compromises.
Here’s what happened. It is happy news: S and A are engaged! We’re excited for them; they glow, they invite us to the wedding, they move in together. And, though I’ve never known the house at a time when S lived there full-time, day-and-night, now her clothing is gone from the bedroom, her books pulled from the shelves, and a faint emptiness steals through the spaces that crave, but at present lack, inhabitance. She continues to rent her old study—“the midden”, it’s called, for the literary chaos on desks and chairs, the smell of old books, the sound of papers fluttering, crumpling, lovingly abandoned to a life of running free through a jungle of very academic words—but X hasn’t seen her in weeks, he says.

Then, on an October afternoon that toys with becoming cold, despite the fiery red and orange colours blazing in the trees, S sends word that she’s transferred the vegetable order we shared with her from her old address to her new one. That’s it: the transition is complete. No more little cardboard boxes on the doorstep every Tuesday.

We will not put in an order of our own. X is covering all the rent until I can move in come January; and though he smiles at me as readily as always, the burden weighs heavily. Sitting cross-legged upon our messy little bed, framed on each side with an old wood chair piled high with books, I say tentatively:
“Well, perhaps we can just wait and then—reinstate the tradition when I’m back for good.”
I can feel his relief: perhaps he expected me to adhere to my morals more fiercely (perhaps even I expected to do so).
“Yeah yeah,” he says. “It’s just—at the moment—too much.”

Too much: I know what he means. Too much food. Too much cost. Too much bother. I don’t think either of us is one to bend easily, but what can you do when it all gets to be too much?
What, indeed. Do you try to make it up in other ways? Do you assuage your gently nagging guilt by assuring yourself that, come springtime, when you’ve saved up enough, you’ll rejoin the ranks of the worthy, you’ll redouble your efforts! Do you content yourself to know that for many long, meaningful months, you were good?

I’m a perpetual, insistent, insolent worrier, it’s true. When X says, “It’s just too much” in that resigned voice, shoulders slightly hunched from trying to scrape up rent, my mind, in its worrying little way, goes immediately to the things I’d written months previous. “I’m such a hypocrite,” I fluster, flush-cheeked, brows furrowed. Have I lost, I fret, my right to write about this?

Good intentions, after all, cannot alone suffice. They are, yes, a crucial baby-step. They are the foundation for everything else: like a writer’s credibility. No self-respecting author could rely solely upon his honest reputation (he must also have message, mastery of prose, an audience, a dream)—but without that foundation of ethos, everything he does subsequently is meaningless.

So, I think again, what can we do? And it stops being about easing the guilt, at a certain point, and starts again being about the problem at hand. I remember presently that not having Abel & Cole drop off our groceries each week is not actually the end of the world. It’s hardly even a hiccup. We can still eat well: in a way that nourishes us, and the planet, and the local producers. It won’t be in a neat package, tied with shoestring, for a few months. True. But so?

So we’ll have to work a bit harder to make it to the covered market before closing time. We’ll have to read labels more closely. We’ll have to do our own research to discover what products are local, what fruits and vegetables are in season, which ones are grown organically and not packaged in a thousand layers of plastic. Perhaps—people have done this for centuries, after all—we shall even start tend to our garden with more seriousness, and more regularity.

Midweek, and our kitchen is bare. We have no bread for toast, and no coffee, because neither of those things was delivered on Tuesday. All that remains of last week’s box is a collection of unwashed potatoes and a bowl full of little lovely apples. I chew my lower lip hungrily. X and I are both developing a slight but annoying cold; fall is in full swing, and though the sun shines brightly this fine morning, our window is shut tight against the autumnal chill. We emerge to a street that smells wonderfully of chimney smoke and changing leaves and pumpkin pie; the light is gentle, and warm, and hazy. We can hear snippets of people’s conversations as we step down the street, and the hum of music from houses. Someone has been sick on the narrow sidewalk; I have to jump to avoid stepping in the remnant of last night’s revelry. X and I wear thick jumpers and hold hands.

The little shop on Magdalen Road reminds me of going into someone’s overstocked pantry: fruits and vegetables, crisps, chocolate bars, a hundred varieties of sodas and juices stacked in no particular order in the refrigerator; milk, cream, cheese, butter; jams and peanut butter and marmite. Everything is slightly dusty; the chaos is warm, and inviting. We gather up our goods: the cheapest, simplest goods we can get. Plain sliced white bread (a half loaf so it doesn’t go off before we have the chance to finish it), milk for our tea, butter for our toast, tawny marmalade, orange juice.

Back at home, we make toast, cup our hands round our tea to keep warm, open the back door to let the smell of fall in. I do my best not to feel guilty about our illicit feast: bread that was baked far from Oxfordshire, juice from Florida, milk that isn’t organic. I spy the all-natural washing up soap by the sink and am briefly cheered; but that gnawing, itching, tingling worry…
Then, in the midst of my third cup of tea (trying to will away my headache and soothe my slightly scratchy throat), I remember something my parents used to tell me: everything in moderation. So today, I think, we woke up, we felt slightly rotten, though happy, and we were very, very hungry, and we went down to the little corner shop and bought some inorganic foodstuffs. Well, so what. We are not to be defined by our missteps. We mean well. We, for the most part, do well. The relative poverty of our youth makes it harder—but there are millions far worse off than us. For now, we’ve put rent before organic vegetable deliveries. But, I’m very happy to say, we’re also keeping our values very much in mind.



(thesis entry?)

I Am Not A Skinny-Jean Girl

I discovered this yesterday, when, about twelve years after the fad hit the streets, I finally, finally, finally broke down and bought a pair. I took them home, put them on, and was surveying myself proudly in front of the mirror when I began to notice that, actually, I wasn't sure I liked what I saw. I turned round and round, craning to see how they hugged my bum, stood model-like and tried to pretend that I looked like Kate Moss. Then my love, bless him, came out into the hallway. "Nice skinny jeans," he said, not sarcastic but mildly surprised. "My brothers," he then added, "would be very jealous."

I considered this. I decided that perhaps, after all, I didn't particularly hope to inspire jealousy in the minds of a pair of lovely, infinitely stylish 16 year old boys. If I kept the pants, I would be lying to myself every time I put them on.

So I took them back to the store, where they can now be found hanging on a rack with lots of other fashionable trousers, waiting for a bolder girl than I to take them home, and exchanged them for a very nice pair of good-old-fashioned-bootcut-jeans. When I came home this time, legs encased in dark denim, I was greeted with great bemusement. "I just decided they're more me," I said, to justify myself and my shopping-bulimia moment. Thankfully, he agreed. "You look," he added, "very nice."

So it's back to jeans with flares for me. My foray into the world of tapered trousers was disastrous, a bit. But also very illuminating.

(am writing this in the QI bookshop, as an aside. facing the shelves with "eaten", "drunk", and "misfits", AKA elegant bottles of red wine. the world is as it should be, and despite the fact that I may or may not be coming down with a mild but irritating cold, I am very, very, very happy.)

A Bit of Grump

I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO CLASS. What I want, in fact, is to curl up in bed, in my current getup (leggings, very large hooded sweatshirt), with some tea, and read an entire book, and maybe have a nap in there somewhere. I don't know why I want this--it's a nice day outside, I got plenty of sleep last night, besides feeling a little headachy and drowsy, I'm fine--but I do, and it irks me that I will not be spending my afternoon like this.

That is all.

Tenessee Summer Part I

It was hot in a way the little girls had never known before. The heat stifled. It didn’t make any of them want to bare their legs and leap into a swimming pool. It made them want to find somewhere cool and shady to sit, and curl up, and sleep until winter came. What a relief some clear air to breathe would be, the girl called Em thought. Even the trees, arms heavy and drooping with thick green leaves, sweated. All the girls had patterns of swollen red dots up and down their skinny arms; “chiggers”, someone had said, their first night in Tennessee. Em had never heard of chiggers, but she didn’t like the name, and she didn’t like the idea of bugs so small she couldn’t see them crawling around in her sleeping bag, either. Bug spray was useless here; it was too hot for long sleeves. There was nothing to do but fall asleep knowing you were being feasted upon; and to wake feeling itchy, and filthy, and restless already.

The little girl called Liv had legs so long the models in Em’s mom’s lingerie catalogs would be jealous; except that they were bony legs, all knobby knees and soft blonde fuzz. Her hips jutted out like two things made purely of bone beneath her floral-print leggings—was there really skin under there? Em wondered. But she knew there was, because the girls went each day to the showers, and stripped naked to stand beneath the cool water.

None of the girls could stand to be in the showers for too long. The walls were covered in a patina of pale green slime, in hue not unlike the Spanish moss that covered the oak trees at home, but not so nice as moss, not so soft and innocent. The floors were unspeakable. The girl called Lindy burst into tears the first time she looked down, though no one could tell because of all the water that was already splashed across her face. Thick black slugs, looking sated, full to bursting, and immobile, lined the stalls. Spiders went scurrying to safety at the first touch of water; stains that none of the girls could identify marred the concrete. Nobody dared look up, for fear to see some horrible forest creature lurking; and after a cursory glance to be sure no slugs would be crushed, none of the girls spent much time looking at their feet, either.

The fourth girl, Hetty, was also the meanest. If she missed home, she didn’t show it. Em thought the chiggers must not bother her, for she snuggled up so soundly in her sleeping bag at night. Em could not sleep so well, thinking of all the creatures, sweat running down her forehead, hearing the buzz of crickets outside and feeling the chunks of dirt deep down in her blanket with the tips of her toes. One night there was a cockroach, the size, Em thought, of a mouse. It landed squarely upon Em’s shoulder as she was bending to get a fresh t-shirt out of her bag; she went to brush it off, and saw how big it was, how fierce, gleaming black, and screamed with fright. This set off all the other girls screaming, too. They chased the cockroach around the cabin, none of them sure what to do if it was ever caught.

Soon, mercifully, it was hard to tell if they were yelling with laughter or terror, and Liv cornered it and dropped her towel upon it, and then brave little Lindy was the only one who could get close enough to the heap to dispose of the cockroach. Em slept even more poorly after that; her mother had told her not to peer to closely in the dark, because that’s when cockroaches come crawling out.

Quick Addendum

Perhaps I need a more inspiring setting. Somewhere with whitecaps and blustery ridges. Or, at least, with a handsome, overgrown garden out back, where the slugs work their way through the mint plant, where we can sit on the bench and gaze through the treetops at a summer (or autumn, or winter, or spring) moon while leaves from the plum tree drop into our wine glasses, and a sunny lounge, shelves overstuffed with books, looking out onto the street, where people cycle past, whistling.

I like the North End; but it’s not inspiring in that way. It’s the sort of place I’d probably want to live if I had a 9-5 job and a few friends nearby to grab a quick cocktail before Grey’s Anatomy. But I am/have none of those things. Give me my garden. Give me my rainy streets, and my slugs, and my little beautiful bowls of compost scattered about the kitchen, and my piles and piles of books, and I shall write you a story.

But now when I step outside all I see are the skinny North End girls walking their dogs; the old Italian ladies arguing in their floral-print housecoats; men hosing down the sidewalk in front of their restaurants, boys in pants that don’t fit with cell phones plastered to their faces. I smell pizza, and cannolis. It’s a pleasant enough atmosphere, and of all the places I’ve lived in Boston I really do like it best here; but it’s not the same. It doesn’t do for me what I think I need my home to do. And I can breath a sigh of relief when I come inside and fix a cup of tea and curl up in my chair, but the relief is only temporary. My stories are stifled here. There’s no room for story when everyone keeps time to the beat of the 9-5 woman’s heels, and makes sure to be home in time for Monday football (of the American variety). There’s only room for daydreaming.

I like my Laundromat, though. It smells good, and I can sit crosslegged at the table in the center of the room and wait for my clothes to be spun and cleaned and watch everyone else moving around me. I liked that it smelled like Fall today. The air had that feeling. It’s something so subtle—like a texture, something you both see and feel. I know it’s silly to say, but you can just feel the cold creeping in, coming up over the curve of the earth. You breath, and there are little diamonds of winter, sharp and cool, in the air that was—just yesterday, you think!—warm and hazy.

On the Power of a New Pair of Shoes, & Various Artistic Impulses, Among Other Things

I am quite excited that my fancy SLR camera has, thanks to a little battery purchase at CVS, been brought back to life! Now I can be the geeky girl that not only carries a thick notebook, ten pens, four or five books, and several changes of clothes in her handbag, but also an enormous, hulking black camera! Am looking forward to getting back at all the tourists who have glowered at me (or made rude comments to my retreating back) for unwittingly stepping into their perfect picture of the entire family, including great-great-grandparents and several unborn fetuses, standing in front of the Statehouse, by kneeling in the center of the sidewalk for an artsy shot of, I don’t know, say, some paint peeling off an old fence, thus blocking the progress of said family as they meander (and by “meander”, I mean compete with the snail and the tortoise for the ‘it will take me six hours to cross the street’ award) towards Fanueil Hall.

When we were in Fés (in the good old days of the digital camera—lost, I’m afraid, inexplicably somewhere between the King’s Arms and Hurst St., or, quite possibly, in the house itself—stranger things have happened) I used to stop every five seconds to take what I thought would be an amazing picture of that really cool thing! (Perhaps, in retrospect, my camera was confiscated until I could learn to control my artistic urges) We called it having “tourist eyes” and came back to Oxford with that same breathless way of seeing things. So I’m equipped again for such adventures of the lens.

I had one of those “I just rolled out of bed and my hair’s sticking straight up—oh great, there’s someone I know!” moments today in the grocery store. Went to pick up supplies for dinner, etc. and ran into an old friend of mine from several years back. We were close for about a month, until she, and then more gradually I, moved on. I didn’t realize quite how disheveled I looked until I got home, but my hair was falling out of its rubber band, my t-shirt was four sizes too big (and stank slightly of stale sweat, I’m afraid to say), I wore no makeup. Luckily, however, I bought a very cool pair of Keds on Saturday, and I felt fantastic. Thought I was the hottest damn thing walking those aisles, I swear. And if this girl happened to glance foot-ward, I’m sure she’d have agreed.

Am feeling fantastically uninspired about my thesis. I just tried to fiddle with a story and ended up making it both worse and shorter; and I’ve lost the impetus to start a new one. Perhaps my trip to Oxford next week will, by making me incredibly happy, also serve to rekindle my creative impulses? If not, guess at least I’ve got my camera…

Have been slogging my way through Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I don’t mean to say “slogging” as if the book is bad—it’s not—but it’s awfully slow (shades of the tourist family, perhaps?). I’ve been reading up on the employment of narrative and story-structure in political messages (by the way, Kingsolver’s message is political. It can’t not be; there’s no way to separate “my family and I are moving to a farm in the south to grow all our own food so that we can reduce the oil-fueled mileage our sustenance has to travel” from “oh yeah, there’s a huge energy/environmental crisis happening in the world”, and Kingsolver doesn’t try to).

She’s following some of the things that people like Lakoff and Gardner suggest quite well; so the scholar part of me is impressed, but the reader part of me begs for more dialogue. That’s all. I suck up (and, more miraculously, since I suck up a ton of words all the time, remember) the bits where she talks to her kids, or her husband, or their neighbor who’s selling rhubarbs at the farmer’s market. I gloss over half the rest of it. Lesson for my own work—not that it’s doing much, at present, except festering in the folder called “thesis” on my desktop.

Another cup of tea and then to bed for me, I think, where I shall ignore Kingsolver in favor of a good old-fashioned murder mystery. In the end, story always wins over politics, for me…