enigmatique

03:01 pm: beyond crazy cat lady
I had a completely self-indulgent weekend with dvds galore, a house to myself and a book about that grippingly-odd religion, the Mormons.
I watched Grey Gardens with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. Mental note to self upon completion of the movie: when there are raccoons living in your house you have gone far beyond crazy cat lady. I shall bear this in mind as I slide gracefully from youth into middle-age and beyond. Crazy cat lady I can accept, even enjoy and embrace the eccentricity. Beyond I do not care to go, for that way madness lies.

09:54 pm: Enter the White Coat
I remember living in Boston, walking to clubs, enjoying my white coat, making an entrance.
Today I returned with said white coat. And I can't say that I really made an entrance, for I am not used to even attempting an entrance these days. But I am wearing my white coat and remembering what it feels like to make a splash with a nice white coat. I like looking nice, walking down the street with my white coat and white suitcase and looking stylish in that indefinable way that people turn to see... vintage.
Excuse my self-indulgence... I enjoy turning heads.

09:20 am: urbanity
Last night as I am rolling home, cruising the last corner onto my block and feeling good about biking, I see a boy running from the corner store.  Hard to miss a kid (7?, 10?) who comes charging out and jumps the barrier before heading off down the street.  He lives two houses down from me and was obviously sent to the corner store.  I came to a sedate halt, waited for him to run past (so as not to hit him with my bike) and smiled as I unlocked my door.  I believe I live in an urban paradise where people bike and kids run to the store.  For now I will ignore the problems and enjoy that moment.

07:17 pm: one more time
For all my fans who try to re-create my life and therefore trace my every movement, know this: the middle ferry from the isle of North Haven does not meet a bus to Boston except on Sundays.  And the woman at the ticket booth will be mean to you.  Then the men who staff the ferry and the man in ticket booth will be nice, but first you must pass through the portal of the mean-lady-who-has-no-sympathy-for-the-mistaken-traveler. 
So, I rode the ferry twice today, arrived back on the island in a slightly less agitated state than I was in when I realized my mistake, found a friend of a friend who very kindly offered me a ride, went for a swim and felt so much better after swimming in quite warm ocean with pine trees all around and rocks from which to jump if you choose (I did not, but most every one else took advantage).  Nature soothes the tension created by society and schedules. 
And tomorrow, I try again to leave the island.  And I suppose that this time if I miss the bus, I shall just have to spend a long and lonely day in Rockland, waiting for the next one and wondering how I will ever make it to Philadelphia and my job on Monday. 

02:52 pm: 1 bike, 6 states, 170 plus miles
Disclaimer--all my mileage estimates are based on Google Maps "Walking" function and due to slight laziness and not wishing to plug in all the small towns through which I passed, there may be some inaccuracy.  I suspect, however, that most inaccuracy would be under rather than over-estimation.  Whew, that's a lot of cycling--and a lot of fun.  Now I just have to get back home to Philadelphia.  With the bike and myself in once piece. 
I am incredibly proud that I achieved my goal and made it all the way to Boston with my bike.  And further, I actually biked the entire way from New London CT to Providence RI and then on to Boston MA.  Whew.  And then I hung out in Boston for several days and did nothing but socialize and eat and drink.  Including at least one ice-cream cone that was quite literally the size of my head.  Yum.  Seeing friends was so rewarding.  I saw most everyone that I wanted to see and even brought together a few friends who despite proximity do not socialize too often. 
I can now add two more states to my total as I am in Maine and passed through New Hampshire, but I feel quite strongly that they do not count as I arrived here by bus and ferry, without my bike.  Maine is so beautiful and smells so nice.  Yesterday was sunny and I swam and hung out in a bathing suit and then my friend took me out sailing.  Today is misty, but I went for a walk / rock-hop along the beach and it was surprisingly warm.  I saw a huge sailboat out in the bay with four or more sails, difficult to count in the mist, but a very impressive sight as it sailed past. 
In my mind I am already planning next summer, which is probably not a good sign for the approaching year.  Perhaps I can find some balance in Philly and still dream of my two months off.  Perhaps next year can be 1 bike, 8 states, 1000 plus miles.  That would be an achievement.

10:00 pm: Rambling Over Tubular Flats
Post-trip sadness is inevitable, but then I remember how much fun I had in England and I am currently distracting myself with a trip up the East Coast.  I am fit, tan, blonde and feeling good-- I think it is the exercise, lack of drinking and lots of sleep.  Traveling alone and biking (or walking) a lot I fell into a routine of collapsing into bed exhausted around 9 or 10, occasionally lasting until 11, but usually giving in rapidly to the overwhelming desire to sleep.  And then enjoying the sleep tremendously.  It was, after all, a vacation and sleeping after a day of exercise, sunshine, wind or rain is sweet, very sweet. 

Now I am tackling the east coast.  Today I biked from Philadelphia to Princeton, New Jersey and then hopped the train into New York and cycled to Brooklyn.  My favorite part was the small bridge into Trenton which had a pedestrian walkway and wonderful views.  It looked very small-town-USA.  The people, however, looked decidedly unhappy and when I cycled around Trenton a little (looking for a park or a bench for lunch) I could see that Trenton is probably not a very happy place to live.  I am most impressed with myself; I biked in three states, I biked on the scary, scary streets of New York City and I still had time to visit a state park which included a Quaker Meeting House (this was closer to Princeton and this is where I should have eaten lunch, but of course I did not know that it was down the road).  I am also quite proud that despite maps that lack a lot of detail, I found bikeable roads and a good bridge and over all a pleasant route.  There are no back lanes, but there are smaller roads with substantial shoulders and even a marked bike-Pennsylvania route that delivered you to the pedestrian-friendly bridge. 

All of this despite incredible heat and two quite impressive flat tires-- I had to pick a chunk of glass out of my tire on each occasion and I could hear the pop and sizzle of the flat.  The first flat, I pulled off the road into a driveway to fix and as I sat there, sweating profusely with bike parts spread around, a van came down the drive.  Trying desperately to keep my hold on the inner-tube because I had just found the actual puncture, I kicked all my stuff to one side and looked up to ask if they could get past.  To my surprise, a guy had just gotten out of the van and was asking if I need help with my tire.  I know that he meant well, but I already had the wheel off the bike, the tire off the wheel, the punctured tube in one hand and a repair kit in the other.  I wondered what part of this picture said "lady in distress" to him.  I had thought that I was giving my best impression of a prepared and competent bike owner / rider.  He seemed surprised when I said no thank you and did they have enough room to drive past? 

This was on a road north of Philadelphia.  My other flat was in Brooklyn, near my friend's house and I was going to just walk on until I realized that the tire had come off the wheel by itself and I was now wheeling my bike on the metal rim of the rear wheel.  Very bad for the bike, very bad.  So I paused in a convenient corner park with a bench and stopped avoiding the problem and fixed my flat.  Then I walked on and found that the bike shop near my friends house was still open, so I stopped in for a couple of extra tubes-- judging by today this trip is going to be all about flat tires, which will balance out England where I did not have a single one despite tires that were ancient and ready to split.  And I found the bike shop had some of the worst customer service I have seen, which is really making a statement when it comes to bike shops.  The guy not only did not offer any help with the door, he actually continued texting after I had entered and stated my need.  Really, if it too much trouble and I am interrupting your social life, just let me know and I will buy my tubes somewhere else. 

07:12 pm: my british tan
Ahh, working on my British tan (ie freckles, lots and lots of freckles) in Manchester.  My cousin's household has a small backyard and multiple bikes.  I have biked on the wrong side of the road (only really annoying one guy thus far), seen cows and sheep and horses, found the Curry Mile, given the wrong money and had my accent mis-understood.  Ahhh, life is good.
Currently cooking lentil soup and waiting to have dinner.  My cousin is making nettle beer.  And has fire engine red hair.  I love it.

09:10 am: the best insult ever
Back in highschool I found bizarre insults amusing for very long periods of time.  Monty-Python being one of my main suppliers, leading me still to be able to quote large portions of Holy Grail in my late twenties to my great surprise when I last saw the film.  Also to my great surprise the film holds up well--I saw it on the big screen and it was still side-achingly funny.  Yay smart-dumb humour.

But that aside, I have found a most wonderful insult that I simply must share.  I am not sure that I will be quoting it in general conversation, but I know that if my friend T***** was still in Philly he would first give me the "your crazy" look and then hit the floor. 
Was that too much intro?

From Mule Bone, A Comedy of Negro Life by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston
Lindsay: You sho done tole whut God love now. (glaring across the aisle) Ain't got enough gumption to bell a buzzard.

There are many more gems in the script, but this is my favorite.  Apparently the play (unfinished or rather mostly finished and unpolished) has never been produced as the authors had a major falling out and half the book is accounts of this, letters and speculation.  Take two very smart, artistic people with strong personalities and throw in money, emotions, the stresses of life and the combination proved explosive.

Off to travel so, so soon.  I can hardly believe it.  I will get to see my family, bike around and I hope have fun too.

08:44 pm: shoulda' woulda' coulda'
I should be outside, chillin' with booze, cigarettes and something naughty.  I am inside, my parents are watching TV.  I know nobody in this damned city and now it is summer and Philly is sitting on its porch, mocking me. 
Soon it will be so hot that the asphalt will appear to melt, eggs might fry on the cars and even standing will be too much effort.  Summer in the city, where the grass is scorched and the girls are wilted. 

03:37 pm: this goes out to 42 calvin...
I have almost (so close that I can see the result, but so much work left that I sigh) finished what my mother has taken to calling my green quilt.  Green being the phrase of the day, week, month, year, etc.  I want it noted, however, that I was raised green and have been green since before green was green.  Just as I have been sewing and knitting since that was one more extension of my nerdy, introverted personality and long before it became hipster-cool.
But I digress, back to my green quilt, which is actually a mixture of browns, reds and oranges with an avocado green backing.  The top is Marimekko, an unused upholstery fabric that I acquired from a friend and which dates from 1965.  The inside is an old quilt of mine which was rapidly biting the dust and a layer of polatec to add extra warmpth.  So, a mixture of new and recycled materials, but it rescued the old quilt and the fabulous Marimekko fabric. 
And it is pretty-- the colors are dark but a warm dark, so it looks comfy and inviting.  I still have to bind off the edge, but then I will be finished my first quilt.  I took it off the frame today (which badly needed to happen as the frame took up most of the floor of my bedroom) and cut it free of the excess fabric, revealing the scalloped edges.  I can see the potential.

08:50 pm: a new york night?
I have been to the big metropolis, ridden several subways and one bus, drunk lots of coffee and remembered that I have friends and this is why life is worth living.  I have neat and wonderful friends who own cute and fuzzy cats who sit on your lap and purr.  A lot.  In fact, looking back, this was really a tour of New York and Brooklyn apartments and their feline inhabitants. 
I love visiting NYC.  I love that I drank too much and danced so much that my legs hurt for a couple of days.  I love that I met a man claiming to be a fashion designer (to pick up girls??) and wearing gold super-man bling.  I love that I had a chance to wear my mother's dress from the sixties and my favorite going-out white wool coat.  I love that I always feel I can buy anything at all on Canal Street, including things I am much too young and innocent to know about. 
I love dancing and feeling so good... inhibitions were low and endorphins were high... a fantastic combination that left a smile plastered across my face.  I will hold this piece of myself in my heart as I keep building my life in Philadelphia. 

08:06 am: let it snow...
I know, all of Boston must be totally over snow and winter and cold and everything thus associated by now, but I just wanted to shout out that it is snowing in Philly and this makes my wonderful, dirty city look new-born and beautiful. I will even enjoy the walk to the bus. And the wait for the bus. And the always-a-little-too-long ride on the bus. All because it is snowing and, perhaps a little, because I have fallen in love with a new author.

September 5--
Blobby-globby days again... that awful jackass feeling that I suppose is inextricable from being a writer... The work does not go well. Would like to be with a company of friends laughing and clowning and drinking--two brave scotches and talk my head off.  But I am alone.  Very.  Tonight.  Seven o'clock.  Spice, scotch and me...

September 16--
...I sit at this desk for hours and sharpen pencils and smoke cigarettes and switch from play to play--Sidney, Toussaint, Les Blancs, and-- nothing happens.  I begin to think more and more of doing something else with my life while I am still young.  I mean almost anything-- driving an ambulance in Angola or running a ski lodge in upstate N.Y.-- instead of this endless struggle.  I expcet the theatre would kill me...

Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black

01:40 pm: the unexamined life
is not worth living, but for now it is totally worth enduring and other such not-quite-depressing thoughts have been sifting through my brain recently.
I can not say that I am happy, nor can I admit true depression. I am existing. I am well fed. I have a darling cat. I read a lot. I often bike to work and that makes me happy. I am not passionate about anything right now. Work is fine, but it progresses and is just a job. Perhaps my long-time love-affair with theatre is finally biting the dust and perhaps this is not such a bad thing. I suspect that this will be the lover who lingers for quite some time to come, until perhaps I wake one day and realize that I really am going through the motions purely for the money.
I miss passion and drama. I miss gossip. I miss music.
I miss myself being more positive, because mostly all I can think of right now is what I lack.

06:25 pm: simple pleasures
Feeling good right now.  A nice night last night of human-contact-with-people-my-own-age.  Very exciting--experimental jazz, a skanky bar and staying up too late, back to feeling like myself again.  And today I met my mother for a hair-cut followed by holiday light show and miso soup (with coffee, does the one balance the other?).  Yummy, yummy miso soup and a pretty, pretty haircut, what more could a girl want?

06:51 pm: and other t-shirt slogans
kick me, i'm liberal
i "heart" the liberal elite

01:05 pm: nyc fly-by
I think that I could grow to appreciate my proximity to the Big City.  One slightly-too-lengthy ride on Septa and one cheep china-towny bus ride and one subway ride that I always find new and ingenious ways to mess up and there I am in hipster Brooklyn.  Quite a bit closer than Boston, to the point that I was able to cruise out of work Friday night at 5 and arrive fashionably late (9?) to the early-evening party.  In fact I was just in time to join the champagne toast to the happy couple.  I was even dressed fairly NYC and I dug out my inevitable pair of heels and braved the streets of Brooklyn in them, just to be able to arrive looking like NYC and not the provinces. 

I too went to the chocolate show (with emsariel) and ate many samples of chocolatey goodness and developed a taste for even-better chocolate.  It was all really, fantastically good and I started tasting the differences... ahh, truely good chocolate, there's an incipient addiction...

And somewhere in there I managed to find a costuming book or two at the Strand, so I am off to study skirt patterns, tailoring and British fashion.  I only wish that I could have afforded the haut-couture book full of close-up photos too... but I am a little between-times financially as my current job is not actually paying me until next pay cycle, ie the end of the month.  The pay check will be fat (or is it phat in philly?) when it finally lands in the bank account, but until then, I have been working full-time now for a month and not seen a dime, nor will I see one for three weeks or so.  Welcome to working for a university, it feels like somewhat of a scam right now.

05:41 pm: whee, i'm on roller skates
I am very possibly crashing into adulthood at twenty-nine.  Yes, folks, this theatre-loving, theatre-working girl has landed a full-time (ten months out of twelve) job with benefits.  You heard me, benefits--medical, dental, paid vacation, a union and classes.  I just have to pass the drug test and physical that I went to today... who knew, a drug test for a theatrical job.  Now I have seen and done everything, I can just settle down into old age and library privileges in the grand city of Philadelphia. 

But seriously, while I do not think that I am really going to grow up, I may just need to concentrate on work for a little while and living chez mes parents might not be so bad in these recent economic times.  Did I tell you the one about the unemployed costumer who spent a couple of weeks at home, re-covering chairs and watching the economy tank?  Ha, its _so_ funny.  I became obsessed with Henry James and the women who surrounded his life.  Stress affects the brain in such strange ways.

Still waiting for the job to start and everything to settle down here in Philadelphia and then I can decide on the stay-at-home vrs renting... but saving some money might be a nice perk at least in the short term.  Anybody who wants to swing by and visit our Quaker style, simple-living, cat-filled household is more than welcome. 

10:32 am: agghhh, disney once again

08:25 am: mainely eating
Maine, I think, is good for the soul.  Or rather, I hope that Maine is good for my soul.  I could grow to love farming vicariously, as this means picking and eating lots of organic vegetables, seeing the chickens and greeting sheep up close and personal.  No actual work, mind you, just eating well, friendly hanging out, sailing, waking up a little too early to the chickens bantering.  Fires on the beach, too much beer, a little swim in brisk water.  Rocks galore, very little reading thus far, but always good intentions...

02:26 pm: must love cats
Back in Philly, lovely day out, not too hot, not too cold.  And I am probably starting to suffer from aloneness... not loneliness mind you, for I can keep myself amused reading and doing projects, but the more time I spend alone, the easier it becomes to avoid going out.  Does that sound bad, should I be worried about the isolation? 
Unfortunately I do not know anybody in Philly right now, save one good friend who has switched coasts with me for a belated honeymoon and one other good friend who has currently disappeared from all friendly radar. 
So, I am practicing for my old age, living with three demanding cats, reading lots of books, eating home-grown tomatoes, drinking too much tea and coffee and sitting in the backyard.  I have located the farmers markets near me, am planning to join the co-op soon, have found the closest bike store, gotten a library card and generally settled into Philadelphia.  Unfortunately none of these activities leads to friends or even much social interaction, so I need to work on that... tomorrow.
Meantime, the cats do not answer back and when they do, I will know that it is time to run away.  I think that I am also still in recovery from a summer of socializing with friendly strangers out in California, living in a dorm, working and going out with the same folks.