Taken on the walk back from Central Square this afternoon, where I’m going again in a few minutes to meet Peter. I just wanted to pop in and say hello and share that with you — I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about the surprise I mentioned yesterday (I took Ross to see Aimee Mann at the Orpheum!), which rocked. And with any luck, to post lots of pictures of Pride.

Today I….

Found out:

Where my Metro Guy disappeared to.

I decided to conquer my ignorance, stop lamenting over the loss of my morning smile, and and just ask someone if they knew where he’d gone. I noticed that there was a man leaning his elbows over the Tram Trolley Tour pulpit-stand (looking a bit preacher-like), and he had a familiar air about him, so I took a chance and bet that he was one of the people whom I’d previously seen chatting with The Missing One.

Excuse me, do you work here?

No, I sell the paper. (Points warily at the stack of Heralds.)

Aha! A fellow newsman! Surely they had talked often, exchanged tricks of the trade and such.

Oh, ok. Um, do you happen to know what happened to the Metro dude — gesturing helpfully to the entrance of the T –the one who used to hand out papers here?

Oh, yeah! That guy! Yeah, he wasn’t selling enough papers, so they got rid of him.

My face falls. Possibly I look like someone who has just seen a baby trip headfirst down two steps (pooooor Asher). Also, I am confused. How can you not sell enough of a free paper?

Oh, no! That’s awful! You mean he lost his job?

No no no, he didn’t lose his job. He just wasn’t moving enough papers, so they transferred him. To South Station. (Here the Herald dude gets a little playful. He teases.) So, you know, you wanna find him, you can. You just gotta go to South Station! (He all but winks at me.)

Ok, now I have to convince the Herald dude that I’m not romantically interested in the Metro guy.
Ha ha ha! Hah, yeah. No, it was just so nice to see him every day smiling, you know? It brightened my morning to see him. Well, thanks for telling me! I turn hastily for the station.

Oh, no problem! You have a nice day. (Still grinning, like the next time he sees my Metro guy he’s gonna really enjoy telling him some chick was asking all about him. Heh — I hope he does!)

Anyway, I miss my dude and I’m pissed that they took him away from the people who loved him, but I suppose it’s ok that he’s in South Station instead. I just hope the suits appreciate what they’ve got.

Sighed over:

An exhibit at the Copley Library called Boston Ink, about the history of printing and publishing in Boston. Another lunchtime treat that made me grateful I work where I do — a gem of a collection, with all sorts of wonderful tiny oily looking bits of typesetting equipment and richly printed broadsides and gorgeous etchings and lithographs and waxing lyrical about fonts. I was quite delighted, and mean to go back next week with my camera to capture some pictures of things like the little red confession card with a space on it for writing down your sins and that says “Bring this with you to Sunday School.” Hee. I could use a pack of those.

Orchestrated:

A surprise for me and Ross tomorrow evening. I cannot tell you what it is, but it’s cool. I promise. I may be the best girlfriend ever, especially since I also

Did not lose:

My engagement ring, which I happened to wear to work today. Uh huh. I said did not. So just you be quiet.

Felt my stomach churn at:

My choir director’s totally unnecessary and mildly homophobic “anecdote” about a gay teacher he knew who used to call the boys honey and dear, which he pretended was germane to the conversation (about men singing women’s parts in songs, and vice versa), but was really just an ugly little display of his own prejudices — even though he claimed otherwise. Smarmy man.

Sang, despite this, quite well if I do say so myself:

Every note of Hertz Und Mund Und Tat Und Frickin’ Leben. It’s true. We actually did learn it. We actually do sound pretty good. We’re kind of an ok choir, surprisingly enough. I would invite you all to the concert next Sunday, except that you would also have to hear us sing the monstrosity that is The Brookline Song, a hideous celebration of the city’s “multicultural” charms, set to an old Russian folk tune complete with “lai lai lais.”

Smelled, heard, felt, then tasted:

The first storm of the summer — warm, heavy, and delicious. I stood in the rain listening to this and lipsyncing my heart out, and it was good.

No picture today. Shout out to one JLewey, who turns 25 tomorrow — wait, today! nine minutes ago! — and who will soon, oh so very soon, be someone who has passed the United States Medical Licensing Examination.

A couple of days ago I was browsing Flickr and came across some images that I enjoyed, but whose colors didn’t look as if they could be wholly natural. I left a comment asking the person who’d posted them how they’d been created, and they very kindly responded with an explanation. Since then I’ve been a Photoshop fool — I’ve been looking through my files for old photographs that I don’t think work very well in their original state (boring composition, dull colors, or something like that) and inverting the heck out of them. This results in pleasingly surreal effects.

Here’s one I especially enjoyed, of a dustpan full of swept-up chillies at our cooking school in Chiang Mai. I like it because of the almost neon glow around the pods, which make them look as radioactive as they taste.

I’ve performed this push-button magic on nine other pictures in the last two days, and I have to say that I’m having a grand old time. I don’t consider what I’m doing particularly artful (mostly I hit “Invert,” wait to see what happens, and either go “Ooh!” or “Urgh.”), but I don’t think that means it’s not some kind of art. I’m interested in process to a certain extent, but as with my writing, I tend to be more concerned with what winds up happening in the end. The product doesn’t have to be perfect, but if I don’t finish with a piece I’m interested in reading or looking at again, or in sharing with someone else, I usually don’t feel especially energized by the act. And if I finish with a piece that I think is kind of fun, it doesn’t matter whether it took me 30 seconds or three weeks — I feel productive.

Goodness, that was a pointless little insight into my meta-mind! Here are some more from the day:

– While walking home, I was listening to a To The Best of Our Knowledge segment about Henry James and what a mystery his interior life is to us, despite the fact that we have a lot of biographical knowledge about him. It made me think about how thoroughly unmysterious a subject I would be, for someone attempting to tease out my mental and emotional landscape. It’s all here for the taking, and will be as long as Google keeps caching webpages. And it’s not just the tedious details of the poor and unknown that get catalogued, either: Sarah’s been reading Neil Gaiman’s blog for years. I’m sure there are other famous writers and actors who journal, too. (anyone know more?) Where’s the enigma, people? Where are the unanswered questions left hanging in the air? What’s left to speculate about?Ok, there will always be secrets. I have a few. But I think my chances of being darkly inexplicable are pretty slim, considering the fact that I’m just dying to tell you everything I thought about today.

– Or didn’t think about. While making dinner (Risotto with chick-peas, sundried tomatoes, portabello mushrooms, and feta) this evening there was a thing on NPR about the catchily named modern ill “Nature Deficit Disorder.” In case you didn’t hear the program, here’s a summary: Some author thinks that urban and suburban kids aren’t getting the physical, spiritual, and emotional benefits of growing up surrounded by the natural world. They’re not experiencing what Kant called “the sublime,” that intense feeling of wonder and awe that can come from great art (look, a tie-in to my original subject!) or the magnificence of nature. Anyway, lots of people were calling in and making eloquent statements on the topic, and so I tried to come up with my own eloquent statement on the topic and its relationship to my childhood and my self-actualization as an adult, but I couldn’t think of anything. Sorry.

– And finally: Caffeinated Beer with Ginseng;
Why?

At the far end of the gigantic field behind my house is an electric box which for several weeks (ever since I first noticed it) I thought was decorated with paintings of pop stars and television icons — Brittany Spears, Eminem, Aliyah, that kind of thing. I never got close enough to really make out the faces, but it amused me that it was there and I enjoyed the fact that Cambridge apparently has nothing against residents completely covering their public utility boxes. It’s one of the things I love most about this town.

Anyway, today Ross and I were strolling back from Inman Square and I had my camera with me (for once!), so I made him take the long way around the field so I could take a picture. As we got closer, and I knelt down to compose the shot, it became clear that I’d made a mistake about the content of the art.

Written on the box, in squiggly gold script (probably the same kind of metallic pen that was all the rage when I was 10 years old and which one day exploded onto my blue pinafore in an awful nebula of embarrassment), is the explanation that the art is a tribute to Micheal (or possibly Michael) A. Cicarelli (1985-2004), an East Cambridge resident. The faces are not rock icons, but people who live in this neighborhood — my neighborhood. If I look carefully enough, maybe I’ll recognize some of them.

Just so you don’t come away with the impression that we’re all community, charity, kindness and love in my neck of the woods, I should also share with you this picture of a sign on Cambridge Street.

It’s not that they do it. It’s that they put it on the sign.

There are moments when I wish I didn’t live in a big city all grown about with concrete and highway; times when my dreams are nothing but wild desert and cloudy mountain and sharp-smelling ocean, and I think how lovely it would be to walk barefoot down a rocky beach or take in a cliffscape or two before breakfast. There are times when I consider the fact that I’ve now seen seven autumns, seven winters, and seven springs in and around Boston, and that I’m coming up on my seventh summer here — and it occurs to me that it might be time to shake a little at those roots I never really thought I’d ever put down.

But then I have an afternoon like this afternoon and I remember why living here feels so good – and why, although things are starting to feel a bit more permanent than I’d like, part of that good feeling comes from being comfortably at home in this place. This particular place, whose brownstone, brick, copper, and peeling paint have come to look so familiar to me. Whose spaces I know well enough that they can be both surprising and reassuring at the same time.

Anyway, it was shaping up to be an ordinary Thursday-Oh-Why-Not-Friday, and then while we were all three tippety-typing away in our cubicle this morning Regina (bless her) transformed my day. She suddenly turned around in her chair and said, “Hey, did you know that they’ve started having their free summer concerts in Copley Square again?” Why no, I did not know! But how lovely that they have, for as it turns out I work in a building that sits but a few short blocks away from Copley Square, and today happened to be a truly gorgeous day, warm and warm-smelling and dappled. It also turned out that Hal and I had a lunch scheduled for this afternoon—

So off we went.

The chairs that had been set up around the small stage (which sat in the middle of a reflecting pool) were mostly filled with suits and high heels on their breaks, like us – but there was room right at the front, on the stone steps leading up from the water. We plunked ourselves down, and here, my dear dears, is what we saw in front of us:

The Parker Quartet — young, beautiful and wonderfully, joyously, in love with their jobs – were introduced by a salt-n-pepper bearded chappie from WCRB with one of those terribly mellifluous radio voices. Then they bent to their bows and proceeded to pour out Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven sonatas for us lucky lunchtime sods, each piece preceded by a thrillingly enthusiastic musical analysis from one of the four letting us know what to listen out for and assuring us each time that what we were about to hear was “a lot of fun to play!”

I can’t tell you how good, how warm and deeply pleasurable it was to hear them – and perhaps especially to see them – perform in the middle of the crowded city center, passers-by stopping to peer under the tent at the source of the sounds (or, totally abandoning their errands, to sprawl on the grass with their heads down, listening). The playing was lovely, sweet and pure and energetic. The players were lovelier still, leaning to curve their bodies about their instruments and away, expressions of great happiness and concentration dancing over their faces. They were all different to watch, too, four very different personalities letting themselves be known – serious, electric, funny, graceful. Hal, who had had a trying morning, was positively renewed by the experience. We took turns sighing blissful sighs and laughing with joy at the joy these four were transmitting. I wish you could have been there.

It felt like a gift of love from the city, just now warming up into its long-deserved summer, to me. Just as, walking under trees heavy with blossoms and scent, the perfume and colors of springtime had felt like a gift after the winter we’d been through together – my city and me.

*******

Today’s other picture is of the painting in the stairway at the Devotion School in Brookline where Jo and I go to sing. Every Wednesday I look at this picture, and I smile, and I think, “I need to bring my camera so I can take a picture of this!” And this Wednesday I did. For the full effect you need to be aware of the caption that appears under the image. The caption didn’t make it into the photograph, but I made it the title of the picture, so click on the thumbnail to read it. Please remember that, as the Devotion School runs from kindergarten to eighth grade, and as this particular painting has been there for at least two or three months, the artist responsible for the masterpiece was certainly no more than thirteen years of age, and possibly as young as nine or ten.

Enjoy: