Wonder where our love is bound
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spatch met me at the airport with a tongue and chopped liver 50/50 from Mamaleh's which I ate in the car as we drove home down Route 1A. Have an inconsistent assortment of pictures taken over the last six days.
The most stressful note in my departure of Logan was the TSA's insistence that I take my mask off, however briefly. With those millimeter-wave scanners, I can't imagine they need to see my face to confirm my biometrics. Otherwise it seems I remembered all of the motions of checking the same black gym bag in which I have packed my clothes to travel for twenty-five years, tramping the distance of the concourse with my backpack over one shoulder, and curling up to read at the nearest window to the gate. I have more than forty-year-old memories of staring through similar windows, waiting for planes to arrive or depart.
"'If paper could speak, what a tale your card could tell when it gets to New Zealand!' The pillar box began to bob up and down in Eve's mind until it was an ark swimming on dark tropical seas. 'I saw a film once, I remember, about a bank note. They ought to make one about your letter. I should begin with the mail'—she thought of the taxi roof that she had seen that morning on her way to work, just visible at the rim of a gigantic crater—'then there would be the docks, the ships being loaded in spite of the fires, the submarines in the Bay, at last, after the fear and the stars, sunlight on the other side of the world.' Only nothing really would explain their experience; there would be a gulf between the bombed and the unraided."
I never got bored with aerial views of Boston when I was flying with any regularity and I have not gotten bored with them since.
I lost track of the flight path once it curved out past the Cape, but I kept watching the cloud shadows instead of reading Bryher and Leo Rosten.
I had no idea of the flight path by the time we were approaching our destination, but the sea looked even more like metal in the haze of the afternoon light.
I was lying on the couch in
selkie's office when I took this picture, having successfully and phonelessly navigated by Metro and bus from DCA. (Directions provided by darthrami.) I may or may not have eaten half a roast beef sandwich by this time. I had definitely been presented with even more books, of which I immediately began to read Le Guin's last poetry collection.
It really isn't Martin Buber's fault that I can't read his name without thinking of Schmekel's "FTM at the DMV." It's a very catchy song.
Almost as soon as he got home from school, my godchild showed off Jorts (Jr.), who was absolutely uninterested in an audience.
She was interested in getting out into the yard for a happily writhing dust bath like a fluff-bellied sparrow.
For Erev Yom Kippur, my godchild looked swell in my commandeered coat.
It is entirely C. S. Lewis' fault that even when I know that a lamppost has a normal reason for appearing against a line of late afternoon trees, it looks like a demarcation of the fantastic.
The gloves which I found in the juncture of two branches on the same walk no doubt had a similarly mundane explanation, but looked frankly like one of those spectacular slime molds.
As promised, photographic evidence of the deranged monk hoodie, taken by Selkie. When I showed the object itself to Rob this evening, he couldn't decide between accompanying it with Night on Bald Mountain or the Carmina Burana.
For my return trip, Selkie accompanied me as far as the airport. We sat on a hostile bench outside the security line at the terminal from which my flight was departing, which was of course not the terminal in which I needed to check my luggage. We both miss—we can't imagine who doesn't—the days when you could actually see someone onto their plane.
I am actually pretty sure I had never interacted with this airport before last week. About fourteen, fifteen years ago I was as likely to visit the D.C. metro area via BWI as Amtrak, which was geographically convenient at the time. I did not purchase anything from the Smithsonian store, but I thought seriously about the astronaut ice cream.
I have not yet finished the biography of Billy Haines which I read for most of the flight back, but it has given me several films to look out for and a portrait of queer 1920's Hollywood that seems overall credibly different from even the pre-Code era. The title is itself a shibboleth: I hadn't known that wisecracker was ever an in-group word for queer.
The smashed-out blinds in this picture come courtesy of Hestia, who may want a less obstructed view of Bird Theater or may just like the noise the plastic slats make when she claws them in half. She delicately sniffed my luggage all over before investigating my hands and face and very precisely licking my temple before trotting off to the kitchen to be fed.
It feels incredibly mid-century that I was able to turn miles on a credit card into round-trip tickets. I am very tired and have too much capitalism to get back to and the days run together and I had such a good time.
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*deranged monk hoodie*
You look too amused to properly haunt Jamesian antiquaries, but perhaps try it at the weekends.
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Thank you! I think you would love the Bryher: it's a sequence of snapshots of a tearoom and its community that serve as a composite microcosm of Blitz London without ever once veering toward the sententious or the precious; it's astringent, ironic, cumulatively touching and the language is spare and gorgeous. I quoted one of my favorite passages. Since this edition was republished by Schaffner Press, I am fairly confident it was brought back into print by one of Bryher's grandchildren. I wish they would do more of her novels. Visa for Avalon (1965) should be available as a public service.
You look too amused to properly haunt Jamesian antiquaries, but perhaps try it at the weekends.
My luck might improve as we near Halloween.
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I am sorry about the sadness. It is not one of the handful of Bryher's novels in my local library system, but I've just requested three classical novels I've never read.
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How lovely to see these pictures and hear of these travels. I had the identical response to the slime mould gloves, so your photography was highly successful.
PS thanks for "FTM at the DMV"
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I hope you also love it! I know I have raved about Bryher to you before, but all of it still stands.
How lovely to see these pictures and hear of these travels. I had the identical response to the slime mould gloves, so your photography was highly successful.
Thank you!
PS thanks for "FTM at the DMV"
You're welcome! Schmekel were a four-part, self-described 100% trans, 100% Jewish schtick-rock band who produced one EP and two albums between 2010 and 2014 and I recommend everything of theirs you can find. I discovered them with "I'll Be Your Maccabee."
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I still resent not getting to sing that with my high school chorus. It had just happened the previous semester. There was still graffiti for it on the blackboard of the Latin II classroom when I started ninth grade.
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*hugs* I am pleased you made it safe home, and you will be pleased I am taking enough cephalexin to scorch a chipmunk (2000mg/day).
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The weather is in fact autumnally bright and cold as we speak and should stay that way, thank you. I feel I could also make a good job of sidling along the edges of shadowy frames of film like a practical effect.
I am pleased you made it safe home, and you will be pleased I am taking enough cephalexin to scorch a chipmunk (2000mg/day).
Mazel tov! Forget the chipmunk, I might not survive that much Keflex. How's your body responding?
*hugs*
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I’m never doing that again.
*hugs*
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He got compliments on it after the service let out! I feel like I need to find a centuries-old library to be seen indistinctly in the stacks of.
And that lamppost--chef's kiss. Same for the cracked coastline seen from the air: wonderful.
Thank you! I really do like planes. I don't like the security theater that will probably surround them in perpetuity whether it actually does anything to keep them from falling out of the sky or not.
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Glad you had a good time!
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I'm very impressed with it as a garment! It may also double as a bedroll.
Glad you had a good time!
Thank you! I really did.
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Thank you! I appreciate the unexpected love.
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Thank you! I am now in the inevitable after-stage of recovering from my vacation, but it was absolutely worth it.
I really liked looking at the aerial ones. They are beautiful!
I'm so glad! I love how cities and coasts look from the air.
(Also: ktty! XD)
Indeed! There is actually a second cat in the house, Mac, who is grey and white and green-eyed and clinically pretty, but none of my pictures of him really came out except for one where he's sleeping on top of the sofa and looks like he might pour off at any second.
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♥ *hugs*
There is actually a second cat in the house, Mac, who is grey and white and green-eyed and clinically pretty,
That does sound very pretty indeed!
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When you mentioned the hoodie in a previous entry, I thought of the 4X hoodie that my goddaughter gave to my partner I don't live with when they were smoking outside at Minicon late on a chilly night. She refused to take it back, so he took it home, and had it when I realized the apartment was too cold not to have a bathrobe. It is very capacious, but it is not so LONG. She is very tall (I'm not), so it hits her at about the right spot.
I'm so glad that you had this trip.
P.
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I'll have to find out if he's read it. He is actually musical.
She refused to take it back, so he took it home, and had it when I realized the apartment was too cold not to have a bathrobe. It is very capacious, but it is not so LONG. She is very tall (I'm not), so it hits her at about the right spot.
Nice! Much of the deranged monastic effect of this hoodie is definitely its length. (The rest is the fact that I should never be seen in a hoodie.)
I'm so glad that you had this trip.
Thank you.
*hugs*
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Yes, my oversized hoodie is not monastic, more deranged late autumn refusal to put on a real coat, I think.
*hugs*
P.
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Plus, they're a good influence on the kid.
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*hugs*
He is not a hard kid to love. I hope he knows it.
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P.
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He did blame some incident during my visit on Bob the Ghost.
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beams at everyone depicted
https://nuts.com/chocolatessweets/astronaut-ice-cream/sandwiches/pack.html
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*hugs*
I've never seen ice cream sandwiches that didn't come from a science museum! Thank you for the link!
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You are totally welcome! I have seen them sold three or four places but this is the least expensive.
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I thought the gloves were ballet slippers. In any case, it looks like there's a story there.
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Huzzah!
I thought the gloves were ballet slippers. In any case, it looks like there's a story there.
They were just up in a tree! They looked to me like gardening gloves, but there was no nearby garden.
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Thank you so much! As