Audrey's friends
Month: September 2003
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Campfire
It was raining in the Kancamangus, but we built a fire anyway. I was hunched over the firepit madly stuffing matches under the soggy kindling, when he walked over in his flannel shirt with an armful of firewood. Within a moment or two we had a bright blaze, as if fire could only be made by us together. We sat for a while and munched on s'mores, and then I settled by the light to listen to the drips fall from the dark trees and the crackle-snap of the embers, and he sat and read his book beside me. I thought only of the peace i knew being close to him there in the wet mountain night; when I am near him, I feel as if all is right with the world.
I have a running list in my mind of vague proofs and hopes and evidences which point to the source of my love, and he touches each of them. Sometimes I rationalize all the ways we complement one another, to add up the quirks of our personalities that bred us to fit and counterbalance the other, and those things we learned from our mistakes which we use to be good to one another and make things work. Sometimes it is a thing he does or a way he moves or stands or leans, a sudden familiarity in the color of his eyes or the lines on his face, the sound of his voice or the way he says my name; or on other days it is a common thing we share, something silly or trivial like a mutual love for burned marshmallows or a song on the radio. When i go to sleep I wonder about the future, and whether we will always be like this, or if I will lose him somehow....I have visions of little moments that might happen. Will we grow old together? And I daydream about standing at the edge of the pacific and holding his hand in mine, or the house we build together, or the name of a daughter who might ride on his shoulders at the park, or doing dishes together on another rainy evening years away. Mostly I feel like I know him intrinsically, and have somehow always loved him; and it feels like a miracle to me that he is here and I know him.
I was going to write about the woods and the mountains and the river near our camp, or the train we rode into the Notch in the valley and the color of the leaves, but sometimes a thing is more than the sum of its parts. For a long time that night I looked into the fire that we had made together, and realized just how deep my love is. And i thought it might be better to write that down.
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Concept
Today i got rained on. I slunk out of work at 4:30 and was mild-mannedly standing at the bus stop when i got drenched in a sudden downpour. I was a pretty sorry sight.
So now I am sitting here sharing my Toaster Strudel with Audrey, and we both have strudel-sticky on our chins. She suggests that i write about the recent scarcity of carrots reflecting the current economic state and the downfall of small agriculture, but I haven't the heart to tell her that the carrots actually come from Stop and Shop, and she is eating cold strudel as a result of me being a lazy bum. No matter, we both enjoy licking frosting off our whiskers*.
So this weekend I went to Mass MoCA with Bry. I feel that since I earned my art degree and suffered through four years of art school, all the while being tormented by the pretentious blathering of pompous idiots in the pursuit of some half assed "concept", I have a perfect right to be cynical, smirking, and even belligerent in the face of contemporary (bah!) art.
When I wander around in the Museum of Fine Arts, i avoid the painting galleries, and generally scoff at the modern sculptures. Unless, of course, they have buttons i can push, then it becomes much more interesting. I also like the ancient art collections, because most of the pots and carvings and doodads are not only lovely, but were once useful to someone. I suppose i just believe that art should be accessible to people (although it should not match your couch), and not exclusively set aside for snotty art majors and greedy bohemian-posers.
So despite my reservations, I was pretty pleased with my little sojurn to North Adams and the little nook of contemporary art we inspected. Some of it was damn goofy. Like stuffed rats, acompanied by empty cradles, being dragged around the floor by a pulley system. I refuse to strain my brain bothering to analyze the meaning of this. It goes in the same disdained category as sculptures made from teabags and tampons and gratuitous crotch-art. But there was a cool dragon boat you could stand in, a house full of magpies and glass vials, a PVC-pipe palace wrapped in flaming pink saran wrap, and a photo-montage plug-in city. However, I would like to add that i did not like the avocado they put in my lunch, because it tasted too artsy, like chewy spleens.
I suppose all this art-viewing must have gotten me riled up, because the next morning I daydreamed an idea to take with me to New Mexico. I want to build an earthship, one of those modular sustainable structures made from recycled materials, just outside of santa fe. It will be a restaurant, because unless you like beans and sub-par italian food, there is not much to nosh on in the desert. I will serve excellent organic, free-range, concientious dishes (i did not say i would EAT the hippie food), and call it Sustenance. The people will flock to my door and beg me for my cleverly labeled water. Bwahahaha.
Oh, and i drew something.
So yeah, me being artsy.
* my whiskers are invisible.
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