Valentine's Day

Yesterday Matt and I went to the ICA: he wanted to take me out for Valentin's day, even though I don't care about it but it was nice to go, which I guess is the point. We saw the short animated films nominated for the Oscar, of which we both will highly recommend: Negative Space (Max Porter and Ru Kawahata). He wanted to see some of the museum as well, but we just ate and went home on account of a headache. Planning on returning this Thursday.

Thinking back on past Valentin's day's: one year Kostya got me roses, which I accepted and felt like I was doing him a favor by not being cruel and turning down. So long ago. One year I went with a roommate to eat cheese and drink beer at Aeronaut. I want to go there again; the roommate and I no longer talk. When Matt and I started dating, February rolled up fast so we ran away to Canada, where it was too cold for all the little red hearts. Last year we did go out: Wednesday night I think. I got drunk though, I didn't like myself that night. This year I got got him small things over weeks: vinyl of an artist we will be seeing this summer (hear), we made palmiers (taste), a scented candle (smell), poems (feel), flowers (see). About half way through he said "are these gifts for me, or is this an art project?" "both - and you are my muse"

A couple days ago I finished reading Cities I've Never Lived In by Sara Majka. I'm going to send it to Luisa, I think she'll like it.

Tonight Matt and I spent an hour reading old pieces we had written, leaving us pensive. I am falling asleep now. good night.

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.

Fenway Garden

Yesterday I went to small photo exhibit which had the work of my high school photo teacher. I quickly reverted to how awkward I was back then; felt odd in my body and stilted in conversation. Almost funny.

Now I'm home and making dinner. Most of today I walked Boston with Anna: the Christian Church of Science was a strange place to stop on our way to the MFA's exhibit on The Summer of Love (hyper-saturated posters and black and white photos from San Francisco)

self portrait in pot of rice

The best part of the day though, by far, was going by this expansive garden called The Fenway Garden Society. Hundreds of plots, each curated in a different way: some lovingly cultivated flowers, others have very pragmatic vegetable plots, still others have little fountains and arched veins over benches, some with Asian influences with lily-pads and bamboo, others European down to little bird baths (and a very striking bird dancing around the edge) and even spruce and other trees. And it's sizable, so you can walk up and down the rows and feel lost in the little worlds: passed a man reading a book, Labrador by his side, an older couple watering their garden and a young woman watering hers across the path, one garden on the edge audibly buzzing from bees attracted to spearmint.

lemon

I have so many things to write about/which is sometimes a problem because I really like doing things in chronological order!

anyway, today I went to the liquor store and bought Everclear. The cashier just said "everclear...nice" and I said "it's getting cut, not planning to kill myself" "that's good" she said, nodding her head.

in a few weeks ill have some limoncello. anybody know what to do with ten rindless lemons?

Geysir, Gullfoss and a Hydroelectric Dam

I was genuinely hoping that WOW air would refund us some of the money we lost getting a last minute room in Reykjavik and getting toiletries. Our plan was to start driving the first day and camp out but since our tent was still in US along with our toothbrushes and most everything else, we had to find a place to sleep. Unfortunately, as of now, nothing. We e-mailed them multiple times to get only initial responses, and called only to be told to wait even longer than we already have. *UGH*

also the second Yucca plant is now also gone for the worse. Help?

We slept that night at Captain Reykjavik, took sulfer-scented showers and headed over to the Sandholt bakery. The museum ticket we had bought yesterday lasted for 24hrs and allowed entry to 3 museums, so we headed to the sculpture museum. It's in an artists house and though it was at that time simply filled with his work, there where three small things I liked about it.
1) the dome upstairs had the strangest acoustics. It felt like I was walking ahead of myself, the way of the echo of Matt's shoes lined up exactly with when I was about to step. Like the opposite of a thunderclap being delayed after lightening strikes, or an auditory version of the rubber hand illusion. 

2) The artist had created the building, it's white and stark . He said he wanted to make it like the stark land around him, that Icelandic architecture is often made of wood even though there are no trees, and that this is not the way it is supposed to be; that architecture is supposed to expand off of the landscape. It made me pay more attention to the buildings for the rest of the trip. 

3) There was a sculpture garden outside with little windy paths and thickets of trees, and I always find those types of nooks warm and inviting. Not very expansive, but still nice. 

We walked around a golf course before heading to get groceries (always great in a new place: the aisles are wider, and the carts are four-wheel drive), sushi for lunch, propane and our luggage.


From Reykjavik we started on the Golden Circle and the Southwest of Iceland. First stop was Þingvellir. Two things attract people to it. Firstly it's a rift between tectonic plates, though that comes across more clearly in ariel shots. Secondly it is by Alþing, the location of the first parliament in the world, which isn't really much to look at. We walked to Öxarárfoss (foss is always waterfall) in the area. Iceland has so many gorgeous waterfalls, and we started ranking them as we carved our way around the coast: this one consistently stayed in last place. In sum, mostly a tourist destination with a pool in which a bunch of women where drowned. 

After that we tried to find our first natural-hot-water. Our guide book had mentioned a municipal geothermal pool. We came to the Laugarvatn, consisting of two residential streets intercepting. The village pool was closed: we wandered around the building and saw the pool, which looked like a standard swimming pool but did not smell of chlorine. All the lights were off in the building and a family was just leaving. It felt like we were snooping around a YMCA. There was a place we could have paid 40$ but that seemed a bit much so after finding the YMCA bathroom, we moved on. 

Next stop was Geysir: the gyser after which all other geysers are named. It was freezing outside but we did not have to wait long for it to spout. The water is blue in the pit, and before it gets ready to spray it gets sucked in a bit. Ten minutes in between expulsions builds up appropriate suspense. The one that was spouting was actually not THE Great Geysir but Strokkur, which is younger and erupts more frequently but with less intensity. The pictures I took turned out fairly terribly, so here's one of me with the snarky entrance sign too. 

And then we went to Gullfoss. Foss is waterfall, remember? Gull is gold - gold waterfall. As, again, with the wind so cold we were spared the thicket of tourists that should have followed us everywhere on this trip, but also we did not have the light that perhaps contributed to the waterfall's name. Gullfoss is really large, and I while I did take pictures they don't capture how small we felt standing next to it. We spent some time in existential trepidation staring at the water crashing down.

One of the places my father had really talked up in Iceland was this meeting of two rivers in the Fjallbank Nature Reserve, specifically the Landmannalauger area. Even the handy guidebook highlighted the hot streams in the area, along with some hiking through gorgeous rhyolite peaks. The specific area my parents had enjoyed there was a cold river that met a hot river, and a lot of cool people where hanging out there: bikers, hikers and such, and the water was perfect for relaxing in. So we headed towards there, into the highlands where civilization became even sparser.

We drove for a while. At some point late we stopped at an old stone Skaftholtsréttir (sheep fold) no longer in use. It used to sort the sheep in the south but now they use a more modern one closer to the capital. It was 11pm. I was too tired to even get out of the car but Matt was intrigued by the random-maze we found and stopped to explore and figure out what it is. There was nobody else there. Even though there was an official plaque it isn't marked on any maps. Long-day induced magic. We kept driving.

We came up on a hydroelectric dam. It was menacing but the road forward was roped off. We set up our tent for the first time, the wind blowing, no trees to protect us. I had been thinking this whole time that park meant trees but it was now that it dawned on me that this word mapping did not apply in this strange land. We set up our tent; it was cold and the sun had set but it was still light out even at 1am. Just as we entered the tent for the night, it began to snow.