We did not find the phantom ship.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch met me after my doctor's appointment so that we could visit the Petco near Lechmere and purchase one of the particular kinds of cat food that is best for Autolycus. We fortified ourselves with purchases of bagels and fudge at Boston Public Market (although I cannot recommend the cream cheese at Levend; I understand that it is farm-fresh and locally sourced, but a grainy texture and a taste so sour that I have to double-check with the seller to make sure it hasn't actually gone off are not what I look for in something that's supposed to go on top of a bagel and under some lox) and set out into the afternoon, which was finally starting to feel like October after yesterday's tropical fog. We had planned to walk straight over the locks of the Charles River Dam, but the sky was such a clear cloud-brushed blue and the water that silt-shot dragon-green that shifts under the sun that we took the North Washington Street Bridge instead for the pleasure of the view, its hundred-and-seventeen-year-old trusses and rivets making rusted parallelograms against the sky. There are still piers that run out from the dam under the swing span of the bridge, where the turntable has been frozen as long as either of us can remember. There were masts we didn't recognize rising out of the skyline on the other side of the river. We couldn't figure out what they belonged to: obviously not the rigging of the USS Constitution, the yachts at Constitution Marina were all too close and too small, and we thought the tall ships were all out of town. So we walked to the Charlestown Navy Yard in order to get a better look and got so distracted by the hollow granite amphitheater of Dry Dock 1 where the Constitution was recently relaunched after a two-year refit that we spent the next hour at the USS Constitution Museum. Rob made me a birthday present of the second edition of David Kruh's Always Something Doing: Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (1999). He also got some fine pictures of the WWII-era portal crane that stands on its iron tracks at the head of the USS Cassin Young: the battleship grey of its paint has flaked and rusted to lichen and tortoiseshell and some of the small glass panes in its cabin are missing, but its cables are all still taut; a plate on the front advertises it as the manufacture of American Hoist & Derrick. From the very end of Pier 1, looking northeast across the wharves, we could see the mysterious masts again with no better idea of what kind of ship lay under them. Nor did we ever figure out why a helicopter from the NYPD was circling the yard. Maybe it had something to do with the one-gun salute fired by the Constitution and the playing of "Taps," or perhaps that had to do with the flag we saw being folded as some people in military uniform and some people in civilian dress came down the gangway of the ship, or perhaps that was some unrelated ceremony: dusk, a memorial, I have no idea. We have all these civic rituals and I know so few of them. The sunset had left an ember-band on the horizon, the autumnal color of pumpkins and Bradbury leaves; later it faded apple-green and steel-violet. I love the bridges of this city, even the broken ones. The last of Millers River runs under I-93, reflecting like a canal between concrete pillars and the industrial dunes of Boston Sand and Gravel. The Zakim rumbles and sings with traffic, winking with green and red lights after dark. As we came back across the curving footbridge of North Point Park, the double drawbridge out of North Station blew its siren and tipped up, slowly and tectonically, to let a boat through.
Predictably, not only did the phantom ship elude us, but the Petco was out of the particular kind of cat food. The buses were terrible. We had to visit two different convenience stores for heavy cream. We arrived home hours later than planned, fed ravenous cats, made fettuccine alfredo and sausage for our ravenous selves, Rob passed out, I wrote this. I got salt and the sea and a new book. I have learned from Judith Mayne's Directed by Dorothy Arzner (1994) that Arzner and William Haines worked together on Craig's Wife (1936)—not as director and actor, but as director and production designer. On the poetry front, Katie Bickham's "The Ferryman" has been haunting me for a couple of days. Not everything is all right, but today was good.
Next time, the phantom ship.
spatch met me after my doctor's appointment so that we could visit the Petco near Lechmere and purchase one of the particular kinds of cat food that is best for Autolycus. We fortified ourselves with purchases of bagels and fudge at Boston Public Market (although I cannot recommend the cream cheese at Levend; I understand that it is farm-fresh and locally sourced, but a grainy texture and a taste so sour that I have to double-check with the seller to make sure it hasn't actually gone off are not what I look for in something that's supposed to go on top of a bagel and under some lox) and set out into the afternoon, which was finally starting to feel like October after yesterday's tropical fog. We had planned to walk straight over the locks of the Charles River Dam, but the sky was such a clear cloud-brushed blue and the water that silt-shot dragon-green that shifts under the sun that we took the North Washington Street Bridge instead for the pleasure of the view, its hundred-and-seventeen-year-old trusses and rivets making rusted parallelograms against the sky. There are still piers that run out from the dam under the swing span of the bridge, where the turntable has been frozen as long as either of us can remember. There were masts we didn't recognize rising out of the skyline on the other side of the river. We couldn't figure out what they belonged to: obviously not the rigging of the USS Constitution, the yachts at Constitution Marina were all too close and too small, and we thought the tall ships were all out of town. So we walked to the Charlestown Navy Yard in order to get a better look and got so distracted by the hollow granite amphitheater of Dry Dock 1 where the Constitution was recently relaunched after a two-year refit that we spent the next hour at the USS Constitution Museum. Rob made me a birthday present of the second edition of David Kruh's Always Something Doing: Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (1999). He also got some fine pictures of the WWII-era portal crane that stands on its iron tracks at the head of the USS Cassin Young: the battleship grey of its paint has flaked and rusted to lichen and tortoiseshell and some of the small glass panes in its cabin are missing, but its cables are all still taut; a plate on the front advertises it as the manufacture of American Hoist & Derrick. From the very end of Pier 1, looking northeast across the wharves, we could see the mysterious masts again with no better idea of what kind of ship lay under them. Nor did we ever figure out why a helicopter from the NYPD was circling the yard. Maybe it had something to do with the one-gun salute fired by the Constitution and the playing of "Taps," or perhaps that had to do with the flag we saw being folded as some people in military uniform and some people in civilian dress came down the gangway of the ship, or perhaps that was some unrelated ceremony: dusk, a memorial, I have no idea. We have all these civic rituals and I know so few of them. The sunset had left an ember-band on the horizon, the autumnal color of pumpkins and Bradbury leaves; later it faded apple-green and steel-violet. I love the bridges of this city, even the broken ones. The last of Millers River runs under I-93, reflecting like a canal between concrete pillars and the industrial dunes of Boston Sand and Gravel. The Zakim rumbles and sings with traffic, winking with green and red lights after dark. As we came back across the curving footbridge of North Point Park, the double drawbridge out of North Station blew its siren and tipped up, slowly and tectonically, to let a boat through.Predictably, not only did the phantom ship elude us, but the Petco was out of the particular kind of cat food. The buses were terrible. We had to visit two different convenience stores for heavy cream. We arrived home hours later than planned, fed ravenous cats, made fettuccine alfredo and sausage for our ravenous selves, Rob passed out, I wrote this. I got salt and the sea and a new book. I have learned from Judith Mayne's Directed by Dorothy Arzner (1994) that Arzner and William Haines worked together on Craig's Wife (1936)—not as director and actor, but as director and production designer. On the poetry front, Katie Bickham's "The Ferryman" has been haunting me for a couple of days. Not everything is all right, but today was good.
Next time, the phantom ship.
