"You can see a beautiful day from the morning"

Marblehead, MA

The summer

2008

2012

It was the summer of "Call Me Maybe," a song that I didn't know but seemed to like anyway.  There were downsides, of course, like the drug-related triple-execution that took place in a car parked a few blocks away from our home, but the evenings were so long and sweet that we could often stroll through the neighborhood after dinner, taking note of the flowers that had been duct-taped to a tree in memoriam of the three murdered drug dealers.  As the days multiplied the flowers began to wilt and droop in the remembered heat.

I would leave work on Fridays at 1 and then head to Lincoln Center to watch movies and eat popcorn in the solitary dark.  In the afternoons at work I would take a break to walk down to Chipotle to buy a Coke Zero, a concession to time and metabolism that I told myself I enjoyed.  Each day we waited for our nanny to give birth to her baby, but she usually didn't and so life continued normally. 

One Saturday I had to work for much of the day, and when I was finally released into the weekend I went to Five Guys to eat a burger and drink a real Coke and read a New Yorker article about the President's early years.  As a college student he had been no less self-serious than any of the rest of us.  Later we all went to the playground, where Alice enjoys dangling from any horizontal bar she can find, holding her feet in front of her.  Sometimes she and I hang simultaneously from the bars, myself well aware of the embarrassing effort required to maintain the position.

We all went to a Thai restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, testing fate by actually dining at a restaurant rather than scurrying home with our meals cooling and congealing in their styrofoam.  The menu featured text in Thai and grainy photos of Thai markets.  Looking at it, smelling brief pockets of aromas from other people's entrees, brought me close to the memory of what it had actually been like in Thailand, those four years ago.  I was on the verge of remembering something real about it -- the sweat, the confusion, the happy blind confidence, the age -- but it disappeared before I could grasp it.

No time for reflection.  On the way home we stopped at Columbia so that Alice could clamber among the steps and the fountains, resolutely independent and insistent that we keep our distance.  As the day dissolved around us we returned home.  When we walked by their street I thought of the men who had been murdered there weeks earlier; the street where their ghosts remained, where their ghastly car was long, long gone.  

San Diego Diary

Tuesday - On the first night in the hotel I ordered fish tacos in my room and drank the champagne L had waiting for me for Valentine's Day.  I watched "Teen Mom," immediately mystified by how television works on the West Coast.  Some things are shown at the same time as back east....others are not.  Throughout the trip I felt like the east coast was pinging all these news items and alerts to California -- important information about politics, the economy, stocks, Europe -- and it all seemed to lose its importance and meaning by the time it reached the west coast.  Who really cares?  You wake up early in California, the northeast corridor is already getting ready for lunch, and none of it really seems to matter.  Who the hell watches MSNBC in California?

Wednesday - After the conference ended for the day we drove out to La Jolla.  We were in a Suburban-style vehicle with seating for eight.  Rihanna ("We Found Love") was blasting in the speakers and I loved it.  Our driver was a little surly and wore an odd suit.  At one point we were struggling to do something -- unlatch a seatbelt, open a container -- and someone jokingly said, "How many master's degrees does it take to [complete this task]?"  Later, after we had gotten out, the driver said to us, "I have two master's degrees," and explained how he had been a successful businessman in his home country.  I felt bad that he had totally misread us.

We had dinner in La Jolla at a fancy and wonderful restaurant.  The most sophisticated meal I've had in a long time, including a couple of these rosemary-based cocktails:

"Sea Dew Collins"

Afterwards we walked down to where the road curved down by the surf.  It was pitch black and we couldn't see anything, just the roar of the waves, the artless barking of the sea lions, and the great black emptiness of the water.  I thought a lot about the only other time I've been to La Jolla -- on my first trip out west, in the spring break of 2001 (almost eleven years ago now) -- I was with a couple people I loved dearly then, one of whom is still my friend, the other lost to time -- but that was the first trip where I really traveled, saw the Pacific, drove hundreds of new miles.  That trip was a real lodestar for me and it was good to return here under completely different circumstances.

As we piled into the car to return home I said, "I need some Rihanna right now!  Give me some RiRi!"  And sure enough, at that moment the song I wanted to hear ("...In a Hopeless Place") came oomphing through the speakers. 

Night in La Jolla

Thursday - Dinner in Old Town San Diego, at Cafe Coyote (or Coyote Cafe).  We walked by the oldest brick structure in southern California, a regal building that had a large weeping tree of some kind on its property.  I moseyed around the sidewalks and felt completely disoriented.  I thought I was in New Orleans or something, but no... The randomness of this trip and my presence in southern California never really abated.

Friday - After the conference ended at noon on Friday I wasn't sure what to do with myself.  I wandered around the beautiful spacious suburban sprawl and investigated their version of a Chipotle.  It was full of men in their 30s and 40s in business casual attire.  Many people were sitting outside on the little plaza.  The interior was so spacious that I actually took up a whole booth by myself, just me and my food and my copy of The Atlantic with Barack Obama on it.  I felt like a real East Coast elitist asshole.  The food was great -- the steak tasted different, the guacamole was smoother, the chips were better.  Huh. 

I spent more time walking around the hotel area, doing work when I could, and then returned to sit by the pool for a while.  A new conference was launching in those final hours and I felt awkward remaining there.  Our time had passed.  At the airport I realized that I had waited in the same terminal a few years earlier with colleagues from the law firm, and I again thought about how much had changed since then.

Does California only exist as a fantasy, a mirror, a landmark on the horizon to notch the passing of time?  It sure seems that way. 

Blueberry festival 2011

We spent this past weekend in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to visit James and attend the Blueberry Festival.  I knew Alice would get a kick out of it and sure enough she did -- she was very enamored with the animals at the petting zoo (the ducklings, the fuzzy things I presume were chickens, the goats, the cows, the pigs) and she enjoyed watching a wood turner craft little wooden tops on a lathe.  She also enjoyed the man who played old coal country songs on his guitars, songs that struck a sweet, poignant note to me -- I appreciate these dashes of northeastern Pennsylvania culture.  Other highlights included the inevitable bossy woman who told us how we should be raising Alice -- "Put a hat on her!  She needs a hat!" -- as well as the woman who intercepted Alice when she was walking around and took her by the hand until we popped up to retrieve our child from this well-meaning but completely unnecessary mini-abduction.

It was nice to see our girl trundling through the grass and eating bits of blueberry pie a la mode.  She loved watching the horses as they trotted around the dirt area behind the barn; with all of the animals, she would creep closer and closer, an arm outstretched towards them, until the beast made any kind of quick motion -- some sniff or snort -- and then Alice would startle and shuffle backwards to the safety of her parents.  Until it was time to investigate once again.

Thank you James for the photos...

CruiseLand

Going on a cruise around the western and southern coasts of Spain entails two trips.  On the one hand, you go to Spain.  On the other, you go on a cruise ship.  I naively expected the cruise to be somewhat Spanish – paella at dinner, sangria in the afternoon – but the cruise ship is a culture unto itself: English-speaking, abundant and plush, non-threatening, as boisterous as a seven-day wedding reception.  It’s CruiseLand!

CruiseLand is mostly populated by old Europeans, mainly English – round, burnt-pink people, shuffling along the corridors, moving with a grim determination to the buffet spreads.  They wake up early to begin baking on deck chairs under the unadulterated Mediterranean sun, or they gather in long queues to collect their baked beans at breakfast.  On formal nights they emerge from their cabins in tuxedos and gowns – tuxedos and gowns!  Packed away on a cruise ship! – to eat the delicious three-course meal in the dining hall and then settle in for more drinks around the boat.  The ideal cruise ship would not have any stairs; there would merely be ramps sloping downwards, from the upper decks with the swimming pools and nightclubs and unused jogging track, all the way to a series of troughs and buffet lines and bars.  The old English sunbirds could roll or shuffle or zoom along in their motorized carts (plenty of those onboard), smiling broadly and saying “excuse us, pet,” as they tumble on down to feed.

L and I quickly realized that we occupied a demographic black hole on this ship: early thirties, americanos, with a baby.  In addition to the elderly European crowd, there were a number of sloshed twenty-somethings – friendly, game United Kingdom kids who could always be relied on to volunteer for the ship beauty pageant or sexiest man contest or nightly karaoke (I myself performed a 1990s N’Sync hit at karaoke one night and received a warm reception from the Irish lasses).  These cool young kids seemed to be drunk much of the time, and were having fun in their flamboyantly obnoxious way.  How we envied them!  There were other young families on the boat, but being European, they had weird customs we could not adopt.  At midnight they could be found in the bars, their stroller parked beside them, their bonny wee tot sleeping peacefully inside.  There’s nothing like being in a bar on a cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, surrounded by old Europeans in wheelchairs and young Europeans in strollers, listening to an outer-borough piano man bang away at “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”  Viva Espana!

The hallmark of CruiseLand was aggressive hospitality and good cheer.  I distinctly remember crossing an empty atrium at seven in the morning, not a soul to be found, while “La Bamba” blasted gaily through the speakers.  At meals, attendants and waiters would approach us bearing gifts of strawberries and napkin animals for Alice.  People would pat her, tickle her, hug her, pick her up, with barely a glance at us.  It took a day or two to become acclimated to this life: the endless food, the available drinks, the towels, the dinners, the tuxedos, the karaoke, the internet by the minute, the champagne bar, the spa, the lack of care or context.  The small grace of falling to sleep each night listening to the waves breaking off the hull of the ship. 

Seven days in CruiseLand wasn’t enough time.  Not even close.

Dateline: Clearwater

I'm in Clearwater Beach, Florida, for a few days to attend a conference.  The privilege of sleeping in a big pristine bed, uninterrupted by the cries of an anguished or surly ten month-old child, can't be overstated.  But it's definitely a little lonely here.  Today after 10 hours of conference activities I went for a walk on the beach -- jean cuffs rolled up, name tag discreetly folded over -- to watch the setting sun dissolve into the gulf.  It was beautiful, and also melancholy.  It reminded me of the solitude of my first year in New York, before L had arrived, when the city was the perfect place to languish in your loneliness. 

Since my last post, things have gotten much better with Alice, thanks in part to some quality time we got to spend when L had to work late or early.  The baby and I had a lot of fun clapping, playing, reading, eating, etc.  She will now feed you a Cheerio or a morsel of some other food if you ask her, and reinforce the request by opening your mouth and aiming towards her food.  I think this is the first real sign of generosity or compassion we've seen from her, and it's encouraging.  She's also just a lot of fun right now, with her endearing wobbly movements, her vocalizations, and her overwhelming cuteness.  I'm glad I'm back in the fold.  (I would also note we went through a low point when she fell off the couch and landed on her forehead, then proceeded to flip over.  I was a wreck on wheels that night, and being on Concussion Watch for the next two days wasn't fun either, but fortunately she is fine and doesn't hold a grudge.)

Not sure what else I have to say about Florida.  I've been eating a lot of grouper and key lime pie.  The people are friendly, and nice, and slow, and they seem unafflicted by the neuroses and chronic impatience that characterizes me and everyone I know.  Like most other places I go, I look around at the white beaches, and the broad sky, and the sweet pace of life, and I ask myself, why not live here?  Why not live and be happy here?  It seems like it could work.

Two more days in Florida, then back home to my ladies.  And my birthday.  Not a bad week.

Dodge Caravan

We left Virginia around 3 p.m. yesterday, L behind the wheel of our rental Dodge Caravan, to return to New York after a weekend of visiting family with the baby. Due to traffic and the unyielding demands of an infant, it took us eight hours to get home. Because of tiresome rental car bureaucracies, L was the only one who could drive the car, so I spent a lot of time in the middle row, shushing A or rocking her car seat or holding a hand against her torso to remind her that human contact existed, even on the hellish eight-hour journey on which we had embarked.

At one point the baby started shrieking, so we pulled off at a random exit on 95 and wended our way down a couple more interstates until we found a place to park and get a soda. We ended up stopping for fifty minutes in some no-name town in Delaware, or maybe Maryland, or maybe Ohio, where there was nothing but strip malls, so the baby could eat and please stop screaming. The only fast food places were a Dunkin' Donuts and a Quizno's, which seemed like the result of some very bad zoning choices. We sat for almost an hour in the Quizno's parking lot, doors open, feeling the pleasant Delaware (or possibly Ohio) breeze brush up from the asphalt and waft through the minivan. I wondered where we were -- who lives here? In the Quizno's the woman ahead of me was wearing a t-shirt from a sociology club at a high school I had never heard of. When I was getting our drinks at the soda fountain, I overheard the teenage girl behind me explaining to her mother that "if you put too much ice in the cup, it fills the space the soda is in," or something equally weird. Where were we?

We spent another five hours on the road after that, listening to country radio and stuttering down the highway into a sea of constant taillights. The sun melted into the scrim of clouds and the temperatures dropped around us. We had to stop at another rest stop when the baby pooped with such volume and force that it eked out the side of her diaper and onto the car seat, and, on the front end, almost reached her belly button. When we realized this we were five miles from a rest stop, so I had to spend the interval patiently explaining to my daughter why she should sit quietly in her poopy diaper and car seat. "BE QUIET AND SIT IN THE POOP CHAIR," was my main argument. At that rest stop her pacifier dropped and bounced underneath the minivan. We sat there for a while, watching angry and frustrated people clamber out of their cars and into the Woodrow Wilson Service Area for some restorative Whoppers and Frappucinos.

Eventually we inched our way through New Jersey and alongside the cold glittering skyline of the city. The raucous lights of Tenth Avenue and Amsterdam seemed calm and welcoming after the long, long trip. Today the baby has been fussy and L and I have been exhausted. It will be good to be home for a little while.

Luxury, thy name is Trump

L and I had a very enjoyable long weekend at the Trump International in Miami. From the moment I opened the trunk of the cab at the Miami Airport, only to discover a tidy pair of men's briefs lying there, I knew this would be a special weekend. And it did not disappoint.

We never left the Trump compound. We hovered near the pool, splashing under its waterfalls and looking out to the ocean just beyond the deck. We ate at the Trump restaurants, unless we ordered room service, or unless I had a pina colada for my meal. I read a Richard Yates novel, "Young Hearts Crying," which was beautiful and inspiring. I read the Atlantic and the New Yorker. I kept my phone off for hours at a time. It was wonderful.


Take a look, then, at this photo, because it captures most of it. See the pink sky rolling slowly from the horizon. See the lifeguard cabana keeping vigil down by the sand. See the tips of the palm trees. See the bowl of tortilla chips. See the LBJ biography I'm starting to read. And see a pina colada, soaked in rum even up through the straw, decked out with a cherry and a thick wedge of pineapple. It was a delicious cherry.

"Key be to lock"

Last night at hip hop we were doing some hard, intricate stuff, to some new song built around that old Digable Planets couplet, "We be to rap what key be to lock." There were a lot of regulars there and there was a great energy in the room -- the air felt hot, electric. Some of our teacher's cool hip hop friends came in and joined the group, and that amped things up too. I saw them and I thought, hey I can do that. By the end of the night I was sweaty and my knees hurt from jumping and coming down just so, but it was fantastic. On my way out one of the teacher's friends stopped me to give me five (or do that urban handshake thing, you know) and was complimenting me and saying I was the one to watch. He turned to my teacher and then she said, "Oh, him? That's my man, I love him," all matter-of-factly, like it was as obvious as anything. "He goes in."

Tomorrow L and I are going to Miami for three days of sun-splashed leisure. It is a rare vacation in which none of our relatives are participating (except Little Man, of course). We're staying at a fabulous Donald Trump resort property just a little bit north of Miami, with a beach and several pools and plenty of restaurants. I don't know if we'll ever venture out of Mr. Trump's comforting, opulent arms to actually check out the city, but I think some beach-side R&R will be enough. We will read books, L will get tan, I will get tipsy. And I love the fact that we're staying at the Trump International. If there's not a solid gold bidet in our room, the concierge is going to hear about it.

State Update: Bethlehem, PA

L and I have spent the last two Saturday mornings taking a bus from Port Authority to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in order to go visit James. Bethlehem is the kind of snug little town where one might move in order to participate in the Witness Protection Program; James is there, however, for grad school classes at Lehigh, so the only logical thing to do was head over to Bethlehem to check it out.

It seems like the history of that town is symbolized by the great steel mills hunched over the river. They used to be the engine of the town's economy and culture, yet they now rest empty and disintegrating. Walking through the south side of town last week, we were struck by the vacant parking lots and the eerily quiet sidewalks; it seemed like the town had been built for people who were no longer there. All of the mills shared the same rusty color, the same uniform degree of decay. A few broken windows, a few tall weeds.

But if that's the past of this once-proud city, what, pray tell, it its future? The Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, baby! That bus we took from Port Authority brought us to the door of the casino. To reward us for riding the bus, casino personnel clambered aboard as soon as we pulled up and distributed plastic cards pre-loaded with $30 for use at the machines, a little gift card to encourage your gambling and ever so gently nudge you towards the slots. The casino itself appears to have been built in the husk of an old steel facility. The great central room is bright and vibrant and orange; there is an audible hum coming from the scores of computerized slot machines speckled across the floor, a single golden high note ringing constantly. It sounds like angels, it sounds like money, it sounds like action. To me this strange constant note was the most memorable part of all of it.

If only the patrons of this golden orange palace could match their surroundings. Most people we saw were at least two of the following: old, overweight, pushing walkers, and/or smoking constantly. It was somewhat grim.


When we arrived today we fled the casino immediately to experience the Blueberry Festival in town. This was delightful. We went to a petting zoo, but didn't touch any animals (including goats, sheep, pigs, and a calf, and a number of mangy birds). We ate barbecue. We walked through grassy lawns looking at crafts booths, like hand-woven baskets and homemade baby clothes and ipod cozies. We ate blueberry funnel cake. We saw a horse-powered carousel. We watched a pie-eating contest. We went on a tour of the plantation where the festival was held, and learned all about the Moravians, who, to my disappointment, were not an alien race who colonized parts of Pennsylvania and then interbred with the locals, but rather a group of Protestants who seem perfectly nice and reasonable.


We returned to the casino for a few rounds of gambling with our free $30, as well as dinner at Emeril's Chop House, the fancy Emeril Lagasse restaurant that is his only establishment in the entire northeast. We had a lovely time, although the restaurant seemed surprisingly sophisticated for being nestled in the desperate, smoky heart of a casino. We felt awkward in casual clothes and flip flops, and I was clenching my feet as we walked to minimize that thwacking sound, and holding my head high with the knowledge that I was indeed wearing my finest cargo shorts.

On the way back tonight I just listened to music and watched the darkened countryside slowly assemble itself into the city skyline. It was good to leave the city, even better to spend a few hours with James. Not bad for a Saturday.


P.S. This last picture was from last Saturday, thus the different clothes and the longer hair on me. Do you know how much that beautiful pitcher of beer cost? Maybe four bucks. I'm telling you, it's a great town.

Cold Spring

We had a monumental weekend. We spent Saturday in Cold Spring, New York, just an hour or so up the Metro North, riding rails that hugged the Hudson shoreline as the mountains emerged around us. The town itself was pretty and quaint. We walked from the train station a few blocks along Main Street, past an outfitters', a few cafes, an ice cream place, a couple of restaurants, and a B&B or two. People come to Cold Spring to hike Hudson Highlands State Park or kayak along the river; people also seem to bring their kids here. I particularly noticed how many families were toting babies of a different ethnicity, like we had stumbled into "Take Your Internationally-Adopted Kid to Cold Spring" Weekend without realizing it.

After getting situated at our place, the Pig Hill Inn, with its creaky, wide floorboards and charming European hostess, we set out for a sturdy two-hour hike in the Park. We had to walk along Fair Street to reach the trailhead, past a stately Catholic Church with American and Vatican flags fluttering and a Little League game enjoyed by a handful of relaxed parents sitting in folding chairs in the shade. We did a nice two-hour loop along several well-marked trails: Washburn (white blaze) to Undercliff (yellow) to Brook (red) to Cornish (blue), beginning with a steep ascent past an old quarry and gradually circling back down, almost to river level, past the ruins of the Cornish estate gaping at us through the trees and grass.
The views, once we reached them, were incredible. This is a different New York, this is Washington Irving country; a country where apples are grown and headless horsemen ride and where something strangely exotic yet elemental, something Dutch, still thrives. From the rocky heights we could take in an expansive view of the broadly sweeping river and the town laid out below. We could see the baseball field far down. The curves of the river looked swollen and rich, a fertile crescent. We could see the buildings of West Point and the foamy trails of boats as they chugged upriver. We were in New York, and we were in something greater.

That night we had dinner at a B&B by the river, sitting on the porch eating filet mignon as bored local kids rode bikes by the water. Back in the room, L fell asleep at 9:30 in her cute dinner dress and I sat in the chair, reading Tobias Wolff stories and the current Atlantic. In the morning, after breakfast, we got back on the train and chugged back home to the city, leaving behind the mountains and the clear watery air to dive back underground, where what you see beyond the windows of your train is not a mountainside dressed in old lively trees, but an inky blackness that reminds you of nothing so much as an absence of anything. Yet somehow it felt like enough.

The good ship Vodka Tonic

In addition to what I was thinking about the other night, I wanted to remember some of the great things from this weekend. I saw my first manatees. I ate about a pound of shrimp along with a beautiful cold river of Coronas. More key lime pie than recommended, and so much grouper (which is a kind of fish) that when my sister telephoned and asked for me, my grandfather said, "Ol' Grouper's still asleep!" because my nickname now is Grouper.

Also, when we started discussing boat names, here is what three of us came up with: My grandfather would name his boat Vodka Tonic; I would name my boat The Rusty L; and L would name her boat Leaky M.

Time

"Old age is hell," my grandmother said. There were ghosts with us this weekend in Florida. We talked about my Aunt Evvy, who recently passed away, and another close relative of my grandparents who underwent an unexpected heart operation this week.

"No one's ever beaten it, so what can you do," my grandfather said. They talked about losing people you love and have lived with for decades, how it feels to be at an age when your close family members and friends are succumbing to their years. How it feels to live inside an old body, when certain words or names are just beyond the tip of the tongue and when each trip on the stairs demands a firm grip on the barrister. L and I would jog up the stairs into the condo: "you're just showin off," she would say.

And they said, "you'll get there one day," and for a moment I couldn't wait to be elderly, to understand. And then I thought of what must happen to reach that point: the children to be born, the careers to rise and fall, the mistakes and the wounds and the triumphs and the thousands of moments I would not dare give up. How many evenings of late-summer light, how many Christmases, how many kisses and tears and cheap or genuine or inexplicable laughs. I felt ashamed for wishing to skip so far ahead. And I felt chastened by the lack of any kind of guarantee of making it to that far place down the road. How lucky to walk these steps with them, and to have a good woman beside me as we peer down our own path, unknowable and unseen.

I feel really complicated right now, like I don't know if my heart is bursting or breaking.

Stan and Jeannine

When we were home this weekend for Christmas, I started cleaning out my bedroom closet in anticipation of my parents' move to Austin sometime in 2009. This is a daunting task, but I started by going through all of the stuff I accumulated from the summer I spent in Madrid, the summer of 2000, between my second and third years of college.

Even though I know I'm the sentimental type, I was unprepared for the onslaught of emotion and memory and feeling that came rushing back. That summer has taken on a huge significance in my mind; that was the summer I learned to love cities and urban life, and the things I did in those short weeks set in motion patterns and ideas and behaviors and habits that basically guide my life today. It was the beginning of the modern era.

I began that trip basically in a state of abject terror, afraid of being alone in a foreign country and so far from home for so long. I felt that the trip would surely end with rival gangs of chain-smoking gypsy pickpockets arguing over who got to keep my fillings as a trophy. By the end of the summer I was ready to come home, but I was tan, feeling like someone new, and flush with confidence after spending eight weeks with the best kind of temporary friends. The people I met and loved were completely separate from my normal life in Virginia; they entered my life so rapidly, and just as quickly, they were gone. There were two in particular:

My roommate, Stan, originally from Arkansas, was a year behind me at Yale. He and I would spend evenings at the Plaza Mayor, sipping sangria and watching the crowds go by. Once someone called us "the Southern intellectuals." He told me how he used to sit on his front porch in Arkansas and watch fireflies. He was into photography and literature, and he was artistic and mercurial, disappearing for days or weeks at a time without a word to anyone. Once I hadn't seen him in Madrid for several days, then unexpectedly ran into him at the Guggenheim in Bilbao -- we spoke briefly and then he disappeared again. At one point in the summer I bought a John Irving paperback to read, and later lent it to him; years later, opening the book, I found a handwritten paragraph on the front page describing a particular rainy afternoon, written in the overwrought, maddeningly sincere prose of the ivy league sophomore. He was urbane and sophisticated, younger than me but cooler and savvier all the same.

The third piece of the puzzle was Jeannine, also a year younger than me and a student at Yale. Her dad owned a strip mall in Wisconsin. She was a girl straight out of Botticelli, curly hair, light blonde, with beautiful light blue eyes. She was the kind who didn't realize, at that age, what a knockout she was. I remember the feeling when she would pull me by both hands out to dance, the smile on her face, the expectancy. The three of us, Stan, Jeannine, and I, were inseparable for those weeks. Before the trip I had read The Sun Also Rises, and was shocked to see the three of us assume the roles of the principals in that book, as if Hemingway himself had foretold our trip and how we would interact with each other.

There were the predictable love triangles and jealousies, all in a foreshortened time frame, which only gave them more heat and intensity. By the end of the summer Stan had mostly disappeared and Jeannine and I had a tearful goodbye. I think Jeannine and I sent a few emails back and forth, but I never heard from Stan. During that entire summer, I meticulously kept a journal noting what happened, and I tried to be as scrupulously honest as I could, including maybe 85% of what really happened (the remaining 15%, of course, I can still remember vividly today). Even though that summer was eight years ago, I have never reread that journal -- the idea of revisiting those distant times, when everything meant so much and my ideas of the world were changing so rapidly, is still too much to bear.

That's what I was thinking about over the weekend, as I methodically threw away blank postcards, ticket stubs, brochures, museum prints and class notes. The photos are safely tucked away, and the journal remains unopened. Stan and Jeannine, I hope you're out there.

Weekend in Myrtle Beach

This weekend we went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to celebrate my sister's graduation from college. I knew it would be a good trip when the man in front of us in the security line at LaGuardia was Don King. He traveled with a posse of about four other men, one of whom forgot a duffel bag on the far side of the metal detectors after he himself had passed through. Had I been Don King, I would have fired that man immediately.

Apparently Don King is more charitable than me, because after we made it through, he sauntered into the terminal, grinning broadly and holding a small American flag in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other. "Hey, everybody, it's me, Don King, and I hope you're having a great time tonight here in Terminal B," was the message he was sending.

Myrtle Beach once again delighted us with its flat expanses of freeway, seasonally brown grass, and strip clubs galore: The Penthouse Club, The Bunny Ranch, Bottoms Up, Derriere's, the venerable Crazy Horse, and the grossly and opaquely named Inserection. We spent the bulk of our time moving my sister from her old undergraduate apartment to her new apartment in a new town-square development that had L and I drooling with envy. Kelsey now lives above an Ann Taylor, with a movie theater, Barnes & Noble, and Starbucks a block away. She can actually walk to her grocery store, Piggly Wiggly. It's just like how we live in the Village, except in the Village the buildings are taller, and in Myrtle Beach, people all go to church on Sundays before they head to The Bunny Ranch.

Saturday morning's graduation ceremony was very interesting. By "interesting" I mean "vaguely unconstitutional," since we opened and closed with a prayer, which you don't often find at public school events. But since we were in South Carolina I wasn't going to say anything. L did not share my polite demurral, however, when one speaker told the graduates that they should thank their "fathers and grandfathers" for all of their help and support over the years, and then instructed the "fathers and grandfathers" to stand for a round of applause. L went apopletic, spluttering that this was ridiculous and imploring my mom to stand up too. Hooray for fathers and grandfathers!

It was that kind of weekend. We had a very nice time with the whole family, and enjoyed a bunch of delicious South Carolina meals (and one rotten one). The usual sadness of saying goodbye was tempered by the fact that we'll see everyone in a week and a half for Christmas. The important thing, though, is that my sis graduated from college and that we were all there to celebrate it and let her know how proud we all are. And the fact that she's making her home in the kind of classy town where the government insists that Derriere's is the only full-nudity establishment within city limits -- well, that's all the better.

Camera

During our trip to Asia I eventually got sick of taking self-portraits of us, where I hold the camera out in front and aim it backwards, and then, thanks to a miracle of perspective and proportion, a nice picture comes out. We would be standing in front of any kind of vista or open window or body of water, and L would thrust the camera towards me and say, "here, take one of your pictures." Gradually I became self-conscious doing it, especially when there were other English-speaking people around, because I feared that it made us look weird and untrusting. Sometimes people would stand nearby sort of expectantly, ready to engage in the tacit tourist pact where someone asks you to take their picture, with a subtext of "...and please don't run away with my camera," and then you actually do it and give it back. Being the antisocial misanthropes we are, we rejected this whole thing and just did it ourselves. Because otherwise we would have spent the whole trip apologizing extravagantly for interrupting other tourists from their sightseeing, and then discreetly wiping the camera down with Purel after those dirty Europeans returned it to us.

Also, here you can see that L and I basically have the same glasses, since we got the his 'n' hers versions. Stateside we are careful to avoid wearing them at the same time, since we've already started dressing in a dangerously similar fashion ("Hey, you're wearing Gap jeans, Reef brand flips, and a North Face fleece over a t-shirt? Me too!" "Ha ha! How white does it get!"). But eventually we realized that of all the reasons the local Asian people would be laughing at us, identical eyewear is probably not at the top of the list.

Finally, I like this photo because I feel like it tells a nice story as you read it left to right: first you see a pretty mountain backdrop, then you see L looking all cute and happy to be there, and then your eye keeps moving to find me apparently asleep and completely disinterested -- I think it's kind of funny.

Travel journal

This was when we were in Koh Tao, Thailand. We stayed in a little bungalow perched on top of a pile of large rocks. All we could see from our rickety bamboo balcony was the open sea, occasionally cut by a water taxi making its way around the island. There was a small oil lamp near the door and I spent a good amount of time trying to light the wick, but it never took. Instead we sat under the yellow bulb and watched the night settle in around us.

In this photo I was writing in my travel journal, which has come to be an essential part of any trip. Before I got this volume I would write what we did in the margins of guidebooks or scraps of paper, trying to remember the names of restaurants and tour guides, and the results were always cryptic and useless later on. Once I got smart and got a journal, I started writing more and taping in small relics of the trip: ticket stubs, postcards, etc. This particular volume accompanied me to Italy, Spain, California, Montana, Hawaii, and ended its career in Asia. I read something by Italo Calvino in college about how the cities we visit both ask us questions and answer our questions. So I always find myself wondering what a particular place is asking of me, and answering for me. (New York asked me everything.)

Anyways, so that's my travel journal, and here's a photo L took of me slumping over to write in it. In the photo you can see the oil lamp to my left, along with a thick copy of Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again." To my back is the wine-dark sea. The first chapter of the Wolfe book had me energized and feeling young and literate and alive, but unfortunately it went downhill from there. But for that brief moment it was spectacular.

Back home from Asia

It's hard to figure out where to begin to talk about our trip to Asia. I can't believe we were there; I can't believe it's over. After three and a half weeks the region lost none of the exoticism or mystery or romance that drew us there in the first place. We were only able to scratch the surface -- there was never enough time in any place we visited, not to mention the innumerable places we missed this time around.

Yet what we did encounter was tantalizing. The natural beauty was stunning, whether it was the view from Kho Tao, where our bungalow was perched on top of a pile of rocks, offering a view of nothing but the sun sinking into the calm uninterrupted sea; the islands of Halong Bay in Vietnam, where narrow mini-mountains jutted upwards from the green waters; the view from the peak of Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina, where the clouds were rushing up towards us and it felt as though we had reached the very end of the earth. The culture of the region: the calmness and sanctity exuded by the Buddhas we saw in temples throughout, whether made of wood or stone or gold or jade; the imposing temples of Angkor Wat, which possessed a grandeur and sheer power that seems to have only increased with time; the narrative of the Vietnam War we encountered at the Hanoi Hilton, where the story of those tragic years is quite different from the typical American version.

The element that nagged at me, though, was the ambivalence I often felt about our presence as tourists. Parents would teach their kids to rush up to Westerners, offering bottles of water or necklaces or pieces of embroidery, hammering us with questions: "Where are you from? What's your name? Will you buy from me now? Or when you come back buy from me later?" We grew a little less compassionate, with an uncomfortably thick skin, to learn to ignore their entreaties and keep going. In Angkor Wat indigenous villagers sell food, t-shirts, and water to visitors. As you approach the bank of vendors, women and their kids start rushing to you, keening for you to patronize their particular little shop -- I found I couldn't bear to decide who to buy from; I would look down and let L guide us to one in particular. How do you decide who gets your measly few bucks, for a couple of waters and some fried rice?

Cambodia was particularly striking. We stayed for a few days in Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat, the country's biggest tourist attraction. I found the people of Cambodia to be the friendliest of everyone we encountered, yet as got acclimated to the rhythms of the town, the legacy of war and genocide that haunted this country became unavoidable and distinctly personal. Land mine victims would be playing music near a shop, or amputees would offer books for sale from a cart; mothers wheeled babies with horrible birth defects in strollers and the handicapped asked for alms in the shadows of the temples. We ended up buying more trinkets than we expected, just to put some money back into the community there.

Oftentimes I was very aware that we were extremely typical tourists: doing the same activities as everybody else, seeking the same photo opps and statuettes and restrooms, asking the same questions and wheeling our wagon through the well-worn tracks of others. Seeing how these towns had adapted themselves to the pleasure and comfort of Westerners seemed like some kind of international gentrification, and at times I felt guilty for participating in it. But if Westerners are going to come marching through town in our North Faces and Timberlands, shouldn't the locals be better off for it? I wrestled with this stuff a lot.

Throughout Cambodia, and especially among the temple ruins, kids would sell western books about their nation's history, deeply discounted and wrapped in plastic. After talking to a few kids who could say basic greetings in ten languages, I bought a memoir about the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s ("First They Killed My Father," by Loung Ung). On the plane home I finally unwrapped the book to start reading it, and found that it was not the typical American book it appeared to be; the text inside had all been xeroxed from some other copy, and even the cover and bindings were made of regular flimsy paper, rather than the sturdy material I expected. The book is perfectly readable and useful, but it's a little more fragile than I thought.

It was a lovely trip by all standards: I saw some amazing things, I learned a lot about a place I had never really considered before, and I got to slip out of the daily trials of life to enjoy a few exotic weeks alone with my wife. There were a lot of brilliant and strange moments along the way, episodes that merit their own short stories, which maybe I'll try to write in the next few weeks. In the meantime, though, I still feel as though my mind is back there still, and I'm still wrestling with the things I saw and learned, trying to figure out what exactly our journey meant. It's not an easy question.

Let's go exploring

Tomorrow morning we're flying to London, and then we fly to Singapore, and then we fly to an island in Thailand whose name I can never remember. We have the suitcases we need, and the thousands of pages of reading material, and all sorts of hygiene products in handy travel sizes. We have identification documents and flesh-colored wallets to wear around our necks to deter wily thieves. We have a new camera. We have bold plans and a lot of time. We have each other.

I've never taken a vacation for this long before. Hopefully the experiences of this trip will scrub my brain of the lingering stress of that charming little test I took last week. I'm excited to get away, but obviously L and I will be hustling our way into every internet cafe we can find to check on how the Olympians and the Democrats are doing with their respective moments in the sun. Nobody screw it up, please.

I've got some serious travel anxiety at the moment, but I'm trying to appreciate the pure excitement and unknown possibilities before us. Our trip is an unwritten book. And I love books! What could be better?

More to come in September.

Remainders

Time for another installment of the series, "Things I wanted to write about, but the moment passed." Thanks to my immersion in bar exam preparation, I have basically abandoned emailing, seeing, or really even talking to anyone who (a) I'm not married to, (b) doesn't already have their own keys to the apartment, or (c) doesn't go to the gym or my local Chipotle. With that in mind, here's my email to the world:

1. Last weekend L and I had our best New York City Independence Day, ever. We began with a question: What's more American than Staten Island? Obviously, the answer is "nothing," and that's why we booked passage on the renowned Staten Island ferry to go see the S.I. Yankees play the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. Seriously, minor league baseball is the way to do it. It felt great to escape Manhattan, and although Mahoning Valley was not well-represented in the stadium, Staten Island certainly was. Strong accents, husky people. It's a good thing they have their own island.

The best part is that the stadium was shrewdly designed so that the outfield opens up to the water, with a great view of lower Manhattan, the coast of Jersey, and the statue of liberty. Consequently we had great views of several fireworks displays, as well as a show at the stadium itself, where the fireworks shot above center field as the PA system piped in patriotic tunes like Lee Greenwood's elementary-school era classic, "God Bless the USA."

2. On Sunday I took a practice bar exam: 200 multiple choice questions divided into two three-hour blocks. We took it at the Javits center, where nearly a thousand people (I believe) sat in a room that was like a parking garage, but with fewer frills. I managed a seat in the second row, and as I would return from the bathroom I would look at this literal sea of eager beaver bar applicants and kind of laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Needless to say, the exam did not go as well.

3. Musically, I'm still in a very intensive R. Kelly phase right now. I'm at the point in my knowledge and understanding of "Hair Braider" where I cue up the song, google the lyrics, balance the computer on top of the TV so I can read the words standing up, and then sing the hell out of it, especially the part where R. notes, "My hair braider so hot, I call her my booty shop."

4. Also on the musical front, I finally figured out how to stream my favorite Washington radio station from their website. I feel like I have uncovered a secret passageway back to my core. DC radio is a lot better than New York radio, if you ask me. The DJs are a lot less crude and they are very attuned to DC's musical culture (namely, gogo, and a bizarre tendency to play Maxwell's modern classic "This Woman's Worth" multiple times a day, still). I feel like they resist some of the lockstep programming decisions that forced us all to hear songs like "Apologize" eighteen times in one hour on eight different stations for a year and a half. The link to the site, which, like most radio station sites, is comically bad and stuffed with visual crap and nearly impossible to navigate, is to the right.

5. On the white music front, I've been listening a lot to the new Coldplay album and I'm really liking it. I need to hear it some more to get a full sense of its textures and everything, but it's a marked change from their old stuff (nice work, Brian Eno) but it feels like a very natural progression. They are definitely pushing themselves and moving in a new direction, which I appreciate, especially since a lot of recent music seems like it's just trying to copy previously successful formulas (I'm looking at you, Mariah Carey).

6. Also, at Chipotle the nice lady recently took a look at my credit card when I was paying the other day and now knows my name. This is great, except now other employees know my name too, and I feel uncomfortable. Today some woman was giving me crap for ordering something innocuous like corn ("Whoa! Something new today, huh? Changing it up! Watch out!"), and it made me feel like an idiot. My tip for people in the restaurant industry is to consider that there is a fine line between making regular patrons feel appreciated, and making them feel like giant losers for eating at the same place every day. Today that line was crossed.

7. This afternoon we got our shots and prescriptions for our Asia trip. My shoulders are still sore from where they gave me vaccinations for polio, Hepatitis A, typhoid, and TB. We also have prescriptions for anti-malarial pills and something to help us out when we inevitably get sick from the food. Like most other people, nothing gets me more fired up to travel than the thought of Hepatitis!

8. Also, finally, the bar exam is kicking my ass. They told us things would intensify in July, and they have. But I cut my studies short tonight because I am exhausted and needed a breather. This morning after the gym I came home and puked up water into the toilet before my shower -- that is the sign of a tired person who is not managing his fluids, let alone his mastery of the law. So tonight I'm taking it easy, and then tomorrow we're back at it. The slow boil is heating up -- next Wednesday, once our formal preparation program ends, we're basically in a sprint for the next ten days or so before the exam. And then the exam. And then it's done. Like Diddy says, time and time again: "this too shall pass."