Such was Shamali's assessment of her neighborhood. (She did add that she'd not been mugged and currently did not know anyone who had been.) She also told me I'd get asked for directions because I looked like I lived here. That part made me feel good.
Currently, I'm in an internet cafe on 40th, I think. I was only sort of paying attention to what cross street I was on as I was cutting back and forth on my way to the library. I'm still going to the library, but this is pretty nice, particularly since now I've got an actual city place to which I can return.
Yesterday finished up my New England stint. Saturday morning I drove from my grandfather's to Yellow Dog's parents' home in New Hampshire. The first thing his mother said to me was "You're more beautiful than I remembered!" And it just got better from there. We went hiking to a big rock and had wide conversations about families and relationships and memory. We drove around in his dad's convertible and looked at places Yellow Dog frequented as a youth. We saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at a historic local theatre. We had cocoa and tea at a aeroplane-themed coffee house where Yellow Dog's father hosts and open mike twice a month. I felt so comfortable that I kept thinking I'd see someone I knew or hear someone call my name.
In short, I loved them and got invited to come out for Christmas...accompanied by Yellow Dog, of course.
Sunday morning--following breakfast with Yellow Mom and Yellow Dad featuring conversation regarding German traditions and knitted prayer shawls--I drove back to Holden. My grandfather, step-grandmother, and a friend of theirs drove me to the train station (dude, my grandfather recently had catarac surgery in both eyes and was kind of a horror to ride with even before that) and waited with me for about 25 minutes until my train came even though they were supposed to meet someone for lunch.
My mother called me while I was on the train and told me that my step-grandmother thought I was terrific and that my grandfather thought I was too independent.
That's it for the family portion. I'll be tramping around here until Saturday. I get to stay in Shamali's apartment the entire time even though she's leaving for a wedding on Thursday. This, my friends, is a multitude of wonders. First off, I don't have to cart my stuff to a variety of couches and secondly, I get three whole days to pretend that I live in the cutest little apartment in Manhattan.
Now it's off to purchase a Metro card and then to the Whitney...and maybe a cemetery, for good measure.
Today's post brought to you by the Gale Free Library: no cemeteries out back, but apparently I won't be troubled by wind storms as I type. Gale Free is in Holden; I walked here from my grandparents' house. It is the library my mother would have eggheaded in as a shy youth elite. (In which she would have eggheaded...)
Last night I wandered through the Rutland cemetery; today I wandered through two in Holden. And now I want to talk about dead babies. In Taos, the graves of young children were heart-wrenching. Among the clocked-in-the-noggin' adult graves were tiny graves of children, often decorated with lambs or mobiles or--the most crushing--surrounded by wrought iron in the form of a crib. The child graves I saw today were either part of a family plot (we're talking graves dating from the 1680s to current) or tidy ones on their own. I most like the family plots, where one headstone serves the entire group. It makes it look like the entire family was taken down due to a rampant disease or Lizzy Borden...which, considering the dates, could be potentially true. Linking yesterday and today together, it seems that in the desert I think about the survivors of the deceased, those who wander through and place plastic flowers or medals of remembrance on the graves; in New England I think about the deceased themselves: in what manner they died and what they'd been eating beforehand.
Grove Cemetery was pretty big and each through street or path was named after a tree. I took a picture of the one called "Hemlock" and decided that everyone buried on that lane had been poisoned. Luckily, there's no one around to tell me I'm wrong...at least not until the witching hour.
In the words of the four-year-old leaving the Rutland Library: "People got dead in there."
I'm in the Rutland Public Library. There's a cemetery right out the window. This is not strange because I'm in Massachusetts, but is a little funny because I was planning to go snoot around one of the cemeteries in Holden after I finished up here.
In seeing all these cemeteries (all out of windows so far: train, car, libarary) I'm reminded that New England cemeteries look like The Dead Will Rise Tonight and Probably Bring Their Own Fog Machine. The cemeteries in New Mexcio just looked dead. Painfully so. Like from a gunshot wound or a chair to the side of the head. Dead.
In not dead news, I love New York City. It was gloriously sunny when I was there on Tuesday. I spent the day giddily wandering through Central Park (I had to restrain myself from sprinting in circles), assessing art in the Metropolitan, and picking up my train tickets at Penn Station. This meant that I walked about seven miles. Hooray for flat streets!
Yesterday involved riding the subway and then three trains: New Haven, Springfield, Worcester. I had a three-hour wait in Springfield where I quickly became non-plussed while walking through the streets with all my luggage.
So far my time with my grandfather and step-grandmother has been a mixture of pleasant and horrified. Pleasant as in finding out what all the relatives I never see are doing. Pleasant as in listening to them speak (grandfather=New England, step-grandmother=Dutch). Pleasant as in looking at pretty pretty woods. Not pleasant as in remembering how misogynistically awful my grandfather is. Not pleasant as in hearing more racist comments in the past 22 hours than I've heard in the past 22 months. Not pleasant as in having side conversations with my step-grandmother about how even though she hates living with my grandfather she figures she may as well stick it out now.
Tomorrow we're having dinner with my uncle's family, which includes two sons and a daughter (whose name is the same as mine: I have two cousins with my name plus a cousin who married a woman with my name) and his new wife (who has the same name as one of my aunts). This should be nice as there are many people and my uncle runs a daycare. Plenty to talk about, at least.
On to the graves!
I'm in the San Francisco airport utilizing technological marketing. So much for only being loosely available during this trip...
Right when I got off the plane, I saw a little girl holding her mother's hand and running and yelling in Spanish: "Rapid! Rapid! Rrrrrrrrrapeeeed!"
So now I don't care that my connecting flight has been delayed.
Tonight I'm staying in a hotel. And tomorrow night, too. I wanted to have a little secret Manhattan time prior to my New England adventures prior to my public Manhattan time. I can't wait to see what it feels like to be in a city everyone assumes you've already been to, what it feels like to be in a city it feels like I have already been to thanks to popular culture.
And I can't wait to be on the lookout for Claudia and Jamie Kincaid.
C: Ida, would you rather go to heaven or the dark place?
Me: Well...which do you think would be more fun?
C: The dark place. You get to run around and dress up like a devil.
LATER
Following a discussion regarding when it's okay to swear and when it is not, the same six-year-old writes "fuck" then "fucccccccc" then "fudddddddd" on his drawing paper. He is banished from marker use. He stares visciously ahead while I take his marker. He turns to me abruptly.
C: My snake is really mad right now.
He pulls a small stuffed snake from his pocket.
Me: Is it?
C: Yes. He is very, very mad.
Me: Do you have any special ways to calm down your snake?
C: No.
Me: Isn't it dangerous to have such an angry snake in your pocket?
C: He isn't mad at me.