autumn in vermont

On a Saturday over a month ago, I got on a bus to visit a few Bardians in Burlington, VT. Hannah picked me up from the station and we headed towards her and Will's apartment. It is; Mustard yellow walls in the hallways and a vegetable plot a couple blocks away. 

In the evening, the three of us went out to eat at American Flatbread: line stretched out and we stood with our beers at the bar, hungrily picking out the pizzas. We didn't hit the town after that: instead we came back to their apartment, and fixed our gazes on the shenanigans of Wallace and Gormit before settling into sleep.

The next morning we rummaged for wakefulness and the deep pockets of our consciousness and, still looking for it, walked over to Nunyans for breakfast. It was chillier in Vermont: that was one of the very nice things about the visit. After having spent the rest of the unusually warm autumn in Massachusetts, it was as if I had gone forward a bit in time to real autumn. Autumn with cool air and pretty rustling leaves. It was as if I had been watching a movie with the audio delayed and it finally lined up: day of the year and temperature of the air. 

Later in the day I met with Elyse, who had driven down from home for a while to see me, and I was so glad she had. We spent time by the lake, sitting in the grass as a girl played guitar and boys rolled by on long-boards. After a bit we were joined by Hannah and Will and then Adrienne as well at Muddy Water, a cafe I had gone to during my last visit as well, which meant that we had five of us from the same year in a mini college reunion. Sipping coffee and cocoa and mulled cider, surrounded by plants mounted on the walls. Elyse had to leave after that, and Adrienne Hannah and I went off to do some thrift shopping. Halloween was around the corner so the shops had brought out all the costume-wear, and students milled around looking for wigs and foam swords. In one shop I reaped a winsome silk skirt from the 80's.

We headed back towards the apartment, ordered some food from Tiny Thai, and the four of us scooted together on the bed and a bottle of wine, watching Monty Python skits and Black Adder. 

I don't remember exactly what was said but it was very funny

at the Ethan Allan homestead

The next morning Hannah ate rustic bread and drank tea. They we drove out a few miles for a walk on the lovely grounds of the Ethan Allan homestead. They house a program there which is very Vermont: giving little plots of land to recent immigrants to farm. We saw a few people leaving, on top of one girls a head an impressive bundle of harvested vegetables, on her feet only flipflops even as the temperature promised to dip below freezing that night. A sizable portion of the immigrant community there came from a farming background I guess: the fields are doing well, and some of the plants I did not recognize. After walking around the field we followed a path down to the water, where we looked for signs of beaver activity walked through a small parcel of preserved swamp with a wood plank bridge floating on it We picked up leaves from the ground, looking for the ones to encapsulate October in Vermont. The weather promised first frost that night, so we went to the vegetable plot and harvested everything that was left:  salad  greens, unripe tomatoes, hot peppers and a few small radishes. 

After the harvest, Hannah and I met Adrienne at some fancy tea place, sitting on an elevated platform with a low table surrounded by meditation pillows. Small nibbles and a shared pot kept warm over a candle flame. Eventually Hannah had to go so Adrienne and I meandered through shops and alley ways. We walked past a an art studio and some more familiar places from my last visit, into her large house with many any people and porch that looks over the neighbors chicken coop. 

That night dinner was three of us: Hannah and Will and I, surrounded by those yellow walls, a feast which included their home-grown salad. Then I set off into the night to meet with Luisa, whom I hadn't seen in so long but time collapsed and we were soon back were we had been, drinking a gin-drink out of a tea cup at the bar where her boyfriend works - our time in NYC didn't seem so far away. 

Tuesday was my last day. I partially woke up with Hannah and Will, to say a sleepy goodbye before clumsily collapsing back into a slumber. When I did wake up, I took my time: I drank some black tea and ate the fantastic plum cake Hannah had whipped up the day before. 

After her shift had ended, Adrienne met me at a very small coffee shop aptly called The Tight Squeeze, where we chatted with the barista and shop co-owner for a bit about the monster that lives in lake Champlain. 

Adrienne walked me to the bus stop, and back I came.

Stock

A late Saturday afternoon - a hot mug of tea on my left, a vinyl of Shubert filling the room (99 cents well spent). I have some stock simmering on the stove and laundry being done in the basement. While it seems like this part of my day should have come a few hours ago, I am contentedly writing on the couch facing the (non functional but still pleasing) fire place.

I get way too much into cooking for my own good, but to the right: quick pickles I made this morning. I had grated too many carrots (on a food processor) for borscht I made earlier this week, added in a tomato and the pickling brew. Now I wait.

Below: collected all the vegetable scrapes I had made this week for a vegetable stock. Forgotten scallion and beet stalks: it'll be different every time. I don't eat meat and don't like buying stock or flavoring cubes so this is satisfying.

Dream: I was a passenger on a small plane, ten rows forty passengers plus the pilot and one or two crew members. We were dropping in altitude and I suddenly realized we were landing in a snowy mountain, in an area that looked like a not well kept ski trail. There were a couple of cars trying to drive down too, one we simply and passed over and the next fell off of the trail. A van did a full flip off the side into the woods. The stewardess was announcing to the pilot each time the stair-like trail made a dramatic dip "and DESCEND". Then there was a small red flag and sharp 90 degree turn to the left to a trail that went up slightly. Which we made, butt was terrifying because if we had not we would be dead. I think in the end we landed safely.

Under the Ocean

This was supposed to have posted a few weeks ago! anyway:

My dreams are rarely anything but nightmares, but I hadn't had any in so long. And even though they are often terrifying, it still feels like such an integral part of me that when I stopped dreaming as much for a while, I was pretty saddened by it. Dreaming the dreams I do makes me feel like my brain is always doing this wild creative work. When they dimmed, part of me felt like it meant my mind had dimmed.

Anyway, I'm happy to present to you my two most recent dreams, back to back:
One: Once I started my Yom Kippur fast and had fallen to sleep, I clung to the sharp edge where the beach met the cliff. I braced myself as a 200 or 300 foot tall wave crashed against the cliff. It kept pushing and pushing but I did not suffer it's impact. What I did have to do was wait. Wait for all the rushing water to stop going towards the cliff and start and to pull away. It was cold. I had a pocket of air I had somehow trapped in a crevasse of the cliff with my arm but the oxygen was thinning. I did not know how much longer I had to wait. And I knew that when the time came, I would have to hold on with all that was in me so I wouldn't get pealed into the deep sea. I was feeling weaker and hoped the air would last, and that I would be able to hold on; so trapped and so terrified of what was to come.  (I don't remember waking up but it was before the water pulled away, possibly I had run out of air)

Two: I remember waking up from a dream, but I wasn't sure it was a dream. I thought maybe it is reality. But I also thought: it was crazy, how could I believe it? Scared, unable to tell what was real from what wasn't as Matt brought my to the ER and I thought that my sanity had gone, that I was in the midst of a psychotic break.