We Live in the City Now

I just saw that one of my favorite bands, Death Cab for Cutie, is playing at a small venue in the city. Then I saw that it's on the same day as a wedding we're attending in Maine. And that got me to thinking...we really live in the city now. I mean, we've been here for more than six years, but it just occurred to me today that our schedules have finally adjusted to our new reality. In the past, our summer calendar was full of concerts -- most of my time off from my 9-5 job was scheduled for concert trips (and, later, low residency sessions for grad school).

It would be easy to see it as just a consequence of getting older: more friends getting married, fewer concerts we want to travel for. But I think it's more a happy circumstance of living in the city. We don't have to travel to see bands anymore. We don't even really have to plan ahead -- there's so much going on all the time, and we have friends in bands, and Philly is almost always a tour stop for our favorite bands. If we don't see somebody this year, maybe they'll be back on the next tour.

Plus, after decades of going to shows, the urgency has receded a little bit. I've seen almost every (living) band I've ever wanted to see, at least once, and although I want to see many of them again and again, I don't HAVE to. In fact, a lot of things have changed -- the music industry is completely different. The wealth of bands available makes it harder for me to focus and become a dedicated fan. Concert ticket prices are so ridiculous and cellphone-brandishing fans are so annoying that I tend to go see smaller bands now.

But I think in spite of all that, we'd still regularly be driving three or five hours to see live shows if we still lived in Maine. The biggest change is in the way Luke and I plan our lives. We schedule trips home and trips for weddings because we no longer live near our family and friends. That's kind of sad. However, we go to concerts whenever we feel like it, and my fourteen-year-old self couldn't have imagined anything better than that.

Culture Vulture

Lately I've had a seemingly-endless appetite for art in all forms. Performances, movies, books, visual art, everything. I've been taking it in, making connections in my head, and wishing I had more people to talk to about it, or a specific venue in which to discuss it. Lucas shares many of my preoccupations, but not all, and we don't always consume the same things. I've also been happy to have facebook, but that small space for updates is like the shallow end of a pool that should have many different depths. I've been thinking that if I were at this point twenty years ago, I would have made a pretty good arts reviewer, and I think I would have loved doing it. Now, though, the internet has changed the reviewing game. But I don't want to just bemoan the fact that if everyone is doing it, it doesn't seem to matter whether I add my voice as well. I believe that art and the ability to make art and comment on it should be available to everyone, even if that might make it harder (in some ways) for me to make a career in the arts.

I don't know if I really would make a good reviewer, anyway. I'm not really interested in being a critic -- I want to make things and celebrate other people who make things. I want to share my enthusiasms. So all this is to say: expect some new pieces over at http://sundaymorningreviews.blogspot.com/

At the Eye Hospital

Taped to the side of a letter tray on the receptionist’s desk is a copy of the Workman’s Prayer, printed in rainbow ink. It’s pretty, and I tell her so. You need it around here, she says. In the first exam room, the nurse checks my eyes with contacts in and then out. Then she asks me to follow her. I want to ask how far, but I don’t – I just try to follow closely enough to see where she’s going. She leaves me in a second waiting room, where I dig in my bag for my glasses. A woman in a bright orange dress and head wrap is walking up and down the hallway. When a nurse asks her if she needs help, she says no, she’s just afraid of heights, and we’re on the twelfth floor. I’m not afraid of heights, but when she says that, I look out the wide windows at the Old City rooftops, and I do feel a little light – not dizzy, but almost.

I’m called into another examining room, this one with low light. I close the door behind me, against the waiting room. The doctor takes my glasses and puts them somewhere. He checks my eyes with bright lights and then says he wants to dilate them. I lean my head back for drops, he wipes the excess off my cheeks with a tissue. I’ll be back when you’re dilated, he says, and then he goes, leaving the door open. I don’t know where my glasses are. I don’t know how long it will take for my eyes to dilate. I look down at my hands, pink earthworms. My red hair elastic like a gash on my wrist. In the lobby, the movement of a black ponytail swinging against blue scrubs. A blob of a foot bobs, moves up to scratch a leg. I hear people speaking Spanish and the pages of magazines turning. The doctor comes back and tells me I have tiny scratches on my corneas, common with contact wearers. He says if I had come into the emergency room, he would have put me on antibiotic eye drops, four times a day, and told me not to wear my contacts for a week. The head doctor comes in and confirms it -- no contacts until the antibiotics have run their course.

My grandmother sent me money for contacts as an eighth-grade graduation present. The day I got the check was one of the happiest of my life. I had already worn glasses for six years by then. The day I got my glasses had been a happy day, too; my mom took me to Dunkin Donuts after, and we sat at the counter to eat. I kept twirling on my stool to see out the big front windows. Everything was suddenly crisp and new. Either I'd never known or had forgotten that all the world could be so detailed. But my joy at having glasses diminished as I got older. I was clumsy and awkward, always getting hit in the face with some kind of ball. By the end of junior high I had started dreaming about paddling our canoe out into the middle of the lake, where the water was 90 feet deep, dropping my glasses and letting them sink away forever. When I called my grandmother to thank her for the money, I was so excited and chirpy that she didn't recognize my voice. I had to put my mom on the phone to explain.

Now, as I leave the dark examining room, my glasses slide down my nose, and I have to keep pushing them up. I only ever wear them in the familiar environment of my apartment. I can't remember wearing glasses for a full day since I got my contacts. If I have to wear them for a week, I’ll need to adjust them somehow, get new stems. The glasses shop is only one floor down, so I decide to take the stairs. But when I get into the concrete stairwell, I realize that the door has locked behind me. The ninth-floor door is locked, too. I try not to panic as I go down the stairs, one floor and then another until I reach the roof level of the parking garage. I think about going out, but am afraid I’ll get stuck out there somehow, and the sun is baking hot, 100 degrees on the ground.

The stairwell feels hotter and hotter the farther I go down, and then finally I come out through an emergency door onto the street. The sunlight is so bright that I can hardly keep my eyes open. It’s like a recurring dream I have, when something fun is happening, like skating on the lake or talking to my parents on the porch of my their house, but it’s too bright to see. In the dream, I have to squint and shade my eyes with my hand, and still the light gets whiter and brighter.

On Walnut Street, I creep through sun and shadows, afraid of every streetlight, with no peripheral vision to see the cars turning left through the crosswalks. In the past few months I’ve missed the early days of living in the city, when I felt alert to everything. This is a new way of seeing, but everything is blurred, distorted, and I feel drugged. I blunder along toward la Colombe, on Rittenhouse, where I will meet my writing group. Ten blocks to go. My glasses slide down, I push them up. I should just go home, but I want to see my friends. I want to pretend I don’t know that every day could be like this.

Memorial Day Wedding/Camping Trip

Last weekend we went to Maine for Luke's cousin's wedding at Sugarloaf. We had a few complicating factors, like the long drive and the fact that I was sick. But we went, and we were both glad we did.

At 10 PM on Friday night, we left for Maine. We got as far as Balmville, NY, where we stayed in a cheap hotel ($55) for about six hours. It was a good spot -- not as far as we'd normally like to get, but not bad.

On Saturday we left the hotel at 7:30 AM. Luckily we didn't hit much traffic on the road, and we didn't have to stop much. Once we got into Maine, it was a pretty drive to Sugarloaf. The wedding was at 4. We changed our clothes in a gas station bathroom at about 3:20. I wasn't thrilled with the way I looked in my basic black dress, but I did wear a necklace that was in with my grandmother's costume jewelry -- sparkly cut glass beads. And I carried a black owl print Vera Bradley bag my friend Shannon had given me, so I looked kind of coordinated. I had to clean my earrings with hand sanitizer in the car, though, because the necklace was so bright that it showed how dirty the earrings were.

So, miraculously, traffic wasn't bad and the drive went smoothly, and we got to the wedding on time. It was in the chapel at the base of the mountain.



The bride's grandmother played the piano and her mother sang. The bride and groom wrote their own vows. My favorite moment was when the minister had the bride and groom turn and look at their families and then at the mountain behind us. With their eyes turned up toward the mountain, they looked hopeful and joyful and I had no doubt that they were perfect for each other.

(I also liked the bridesmaids' black dresses and hot pink high heels, and all the little details like the paper runner printed with the bride and groom's initials, and the packets of tissues in the pews.)

The bride and her family (and probably the groom and his family as well) had put a lot of time into planning this wedding, and as a result it was very well-organized. We went from the chapel to a room with tall tables and an open bar. I assume the wedding party went off to take pictures, but there was no awkwardness involved with that. They were whisked away, and we were entertained.

We all hung out and ate appetizers (bacon-wrapped scallops and shrimp with cocktail sauce) and picked up our table assignments. There were more than 200 guests. After an hour or so, we were led into another room (I think it was Sugarloaf's Widowmaker Lounge, and if not, it was the room next door), which was decorated beautifully. Each table had a different black and white picture of the bride and groom. Everything was black and white, with a few dashes of hot pink. We sat down and the wedding party was announced. Then the bride and groom made the rounds at the tables while salads and delicious bread were served. Between the salads and the main course was a slideshow of pictures of the bride and groom throughout their lives, and then together.

After dinner, our attention was directed to the bride and groom cutting the cake (which the bride's aunt made -- it tasted like a chocolate-covered cherry). And then the dancing started, and it was good dancing. The bride eventually changed into a shorter wedding dress with very high-heeled hot pink shoes. The groom got up and said he'd had enough "liquid courage" to sing -- the story was that their first date was to a Chinese restaurant with a karaoke bar, and the song he'd sung that night was "Jack and Diane". We were ready for a cringey performance, but the groom actually had a great voice. That was my favorite moment of the reception.

(I also appreciated the candy buffet, with buckets and plastic shovels for the M&Ms.)

I think everyone had a great time -- the dancing really didn't stop. Best songs: "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, "Sexy Back", "Poker Face" (I'm on a Lady Gaga kick lately, and we only heard "Telephone" once in the car), and three Michael Jackson songs (but I was somewhat disappointed that Morgan didn't remember the whole "Thriller" dance). Best dance move: Spike's "ice auger" with Luke setting traps behind him. I dread the dancing pictures that will inevitably be posted on facebook, but I don't regret having a great time.

The open bar didn't close until 10 PM, and we all stayed until about midnight. Some of the family members had rooms at the hotel on the mountain, but we had decided to stay at a campground with Luke's dad and stepmom and his brother and his brother's girlfriend, and her parents.

I changed in the car on the way to the campground -- I was ready to be in comfy clothes again. I had made it through the wedding and reception, but I really wasn't feeling good. My nose and throat were clogged. Travis and Kayla let us crash in their tent while they slept in Kayla's parents' RV that night.

* * *

The next morning, Luke and his dad and Travis got up early to go fishing. I woke up feeling absolutely horrible -- there was so much pollen, all the cars were dusted yellow. I took some Sudafed and went back to sleep for a few hours, and I woke up feeling a little better. Luke's sister Kelly and her boyfriend Bill came over and hung out with us all day. It was great to spend some time with them.

Camping was what it should be -- eating a lot of bacon and sausage and hamburgers and fruit salad and a ham that Kayla's mom slow-cooked on the grill all day. Drinking some wine and some kind of slushy drink. Knitting -- I had started a ribbed hat in the car with a ball of red merino wool, and I worked on that on and off all weekend.

The campground, Cathedral Pines, is beautiful. I loved the way the tops of the tall pines waved in the breeze. It was car camping, and the place was fully booked for Memorial Day weekend, but the other people didn't seem obtrusive. The whole place had a nice, friendly atmosphere.

Here's the Green Monster under the pines:


In the afternoon we drove to a nearby mountain to see a row of windmills that had recently been built there. It was spooky to stand under one of the windmills. When you look up at it, it looks like it's falling toward you -- some trick of the eye. You can see the shadow of the blades moving over the trees behind it, and hear the whirring along with the wind.



It was a nice, relaxed day that went too quickly. After dinner, we walked down to the water, where there was a view of the mountains. Kelly instructed us on the best way to make s'mores (hint: it's a two-person job), and then she and Bill had to head home.

Later that night we drove to a salt shed and saw a moose, which was good, because seeing a moose was high on my list of things to do this weekend. It got down on its front knees like a camel to drink from a puddle. We watched for a while, then checked a couple of other places, but that was the only moose we saw, so we went back to the campsite. We hated to end the day, but everyone was tired.

* * *

The next morning we had more bacon and sausage and pancakes. Luke and I walked back over to the waterfront to take some pictures.



I would recommend the campground to anyone -- we discovered rec rooms for adults and kids (I thought it was funny that the bookshelves are divided into Ladies' and Men's), and there are canoes and paddleboats to rent, as well as free showers and flushable toilets. I could comfortably spend a week or even a month there.

Luke and I got on the road around 11, but quickly detoured -- I really wanted to walk around at Sugarloaf in the daytime. I like inactive ski lifts the same way I like inactive fair rides -- there's something kind of cool and spooky about them that I can't quite pinpoint.



Our next stop was in Farmington. There's a hippie store there called Liquid Sunshine that I've always loved. I first went there in college when I visited friends who went to UMaine Farmington, and then always tried to stop on my way down Route 2 to Goddard. I bought a skirt and a string of beads and bells and a couple of purple "creativity" candles that smell good, whether they promote creativity or not. We also got some good Dunkin (it's always better in New England) and looked for fiddleheads at the local market. We had to try three more places, but we finally managed to get a couple of pounds of fiddleheads at a Hannaford store. We also bought Humpty Dumpty BBQ chips and a twelve-pack of Gritty's beer.

A friend had told us about a place called Roy's that had good hamburgers and batting cages. We stopped there for lunch, and I had a lobster roll on a toasted hamburger bun. The food was cheap and the place reminded us of Jordan's Snack Bar (a very good thing). Luke went through a couple of rounds of pitches in the batting cage.

By then we were really pushing it for time, and we had to get in the car and make some progress. Our last stop was at the New Hampshire liquor store, where we stocked up on almost a case of wine. It's always fun to go there. I could smell the ocean from the parking lot, and Luke kept insisting that he smelled smoke. Later we heard that there were wildfires burning in Canada.

The drive home was long, of course, but we were lucky not to run into too much traffic. We couldn't find the Flyers game on the radio, but we did listen to an interesting Mets/Padres blowout. I like the Mets announcers.

We could smell jasmine as we crossed the state line into Pennsylvania. I never noticed that before, but we could definitely smell it, dark and mysterious in the warm woods.

As we pulled into our street at 2AM, "Jack and Diane" was playing. A fitting end to a good weekend.

A Leaky Boat

It's a rough night here at the Treeboat. I got a couple of "heads up" text messages from L while I was at the Story Slam: maintenance had needed to go into our apartment to fix a water leak affecting our downstairs neighbors. I heard water dripping earlier in the day, but only half-investigated -- everything seemed fine in my office, where I thought I heard the drip.

So I expected to come home to a torn-apart apt., because there's no way you can get to the utility section without wading through a bunch of stuff on the floor of my office. Luckily, there was no sign that maintenance people had come in, just a note on the door saying they needed us to call them and not lock the deadbolt. I quickly figured out that the water was dripping into the utility closet from the air conditioner, so I put a mixing bowl under it and worked on cleaning up my office for when they inevitably come in tomorrow. I have way too much stuff in that office, and lately, in spite of my organizing efforts (mostly done in short spurts after watching episodes of Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC), it's not looking too good.

LukeGyver came home and fixed the leaking problem (temporarily) with a paperclip. But I'm guessing we should keep the AC off until tomorrow, and here's where part of the trouble lies: I've had a cold all week, but it seemed like it might partly be allergies, because the chest congestion originally appeared when I was rooting around in the back of the closet under the stairs, stirring up a lot of dust. I started to lose my voice yesterday, but the cold has mostly been mild and only slightly annoying. Until tonight. I went to bed at about 12:30 and woke up at 2, feeling terrible. I think the cold is intensified by plant/pollen allergies from having all the upstairs windows open. So I was coughing and miserable.

To get away from the open windows, and keep from bothering L too much with the coughing, I came downstairs to sleep on the loveseat. Well, one problem with that is that the downstairs neighbor apparently has a really loud friend over. They're starting to settle down now, at 2:45, but they were really yelling back and forth to each other earlier. Another problem is that it's a loveseat, not a couch, and certainly not as comfortable as a bed.

Hopefully I'll be able to get to sleep soon, because now it looks like tomorrow will involve maintenance people coming into the apt., something we go out of our way to avoid. This is complicated by many things: the sickness; the fact that next week is the last week of classes, so I have a bunch of work to do; and the fact that we're going to Maine tomorrow.

Couldn't Resist it Twice...

Fitler Square is a park I usually walk through on my way to work. Today I was surprised to see that their Spring Festival had started, and there were white tents filled with flea market stuff all around and through the park.

Well, I managed not to buy anything on my first walk through (even though I saw a plastic Ewok I remember wanting in 1985).

But on the way back, I thought it would be okay to look because I didn't have much cash on me. Here's what I got before I went to the ATM:

Booth one
The Sailor's Return, A Christmas Letter by A.M. Hopkins. It doesn't have a date, but I'd say maybe 1915-1925. $2

The Tale of the Enchanted Bunnies, illustrated by Ruth Sawyer. First edition, 1923. $5
You're Entertaining: A Handbook on Party-Giving for the Young Hostess. 1963, $1

A painted nesting Easter egg, old-looking but I'm not sure how old. $2

Book Booth
Three books for two dollars each:
Betty Crocker's Good and Easy Cookbook, 1971 (spiral-bound)
Betty Crocker's Do-Ahead Cookbook, 1972 (spiral-bound)
Skipping Christmas, by John Grisham (I hope it will be a guilty pleasure at Christmas, and not just annoy me by being terrible. The hardcover is in great shape.)

Fitler Square benefit booth
This is where I was getting a little shopaholic-y, but I picked up a cross-stitched Christmas scene, very subtle and pretty in two blues, for fifty cents. I'm into collecting people's handmade knitting or stitching or quilting lately, as long as it's not too tacky.

Booth with friendly old couple
This was my undoing. First, there was a shoebox full of Viewmaster stuff. The guy went down from $55 to $40, and I know it's worth a lot more than that, if you want to bother to sell the pieces (or get a friend to, which I plan to do). Four Viewmasters, two of which are very old (1940s, I think) and in original boxes, plus a big stack of reels. I'm mostly interested in the landscape Viewmasters, so I will go through and pick out the ones I want (maybe keeping one of the Viewmasters, although we have a few at my parents' house) and get our friend Alex to sell the rest on Ebay. I bought a few reels for $3 each at the Chicken Barn last summer, so I think it should be pretty easy to make my money back on the things I don't want.

Small vintage suitcase! This is actually what hooked me. The tag says it sailed on Parthia, Cunard Line. It's brown with a red handle and red and white stripe, and the inside is a little water-damaged but mostly very good. There's a piece of the cruise ship sticker on the front that says Liverpool. It's awesome, and was only $15. The antique shops charge way more than that for pieces that are in worse shape.

I went to the Thriftway on South Street to get some money from the ATM. Meanwhile, I was thinking about one more thing from the friendly old people's booth: a small, square leather photo album with pictures from the 1880s. I have pictures taken by my great-grandparents from around the same era, but I was caught by these pictures -- young people who all look like they're having a blast at the shore (much like my great-grandparents did). "I think they were having a good summer," the woman said, slightly wistfully, and we agreed that the album was beautiful, with an etching of a woman's face in profile and army green ties on one side. It had been marked down from 40 to 30, and she said $25 was her rock bottom because that's what she had paid for it. She had enjoyed it and was ready to pass it on, and was pleased that I would appreciate it.

So, although I really don't need any more vintage photos -- my family's collection is a lot to handle on its own -- we put it into an inside pocket of the suitcase and I lugged the whole bunch home.

I wasn't planning to spend that much money, but I can justify it. I hardly ever buy stuff anymore, and none of it will take up much room in the apt. It was a fun afternoon.

Story Slam

Once a month, Painted Bride Quarterly hosts a written story slam at the Pen and Pencil Club. I always participate, but I'm never sure what to do with the pieces I write. They're so specific to that place and time, and though each might have been pretty good for the moment, they reveal themselves to be much rougher in the light of the next day. Some might be seeds for more polished pieces, but others will never be seen again unless I can use them in the venue of my Pictures of Lilies blog.

The story slam (which isn't really called a story slam -- that's just the best way to describe it) has specific rules. First a poet reads (this was not always the case, but is an experiment that's working well) for ten minutes. The audience pays attention to words and phrases in the poet's work, and then audience members call out these words and phrases when asked to do so. These become the prompts for writing. The first round prompt consists of a noun, verb, and adjective. The second round uses a theme. The third uses a line. Usually we're allowed five minutes to write (sometimes a little more), and then we can choose to get up and read our work. The audience votes/judges with applause, and winners get books, t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. The best thing I've won was a CD of Richard Marx's album Repeat Offender. To see my Story Slam writing, go to:
http://picturesoflilies.blogspot.com/