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Saturday, May 19, 2007 [continued from previous entry] On the way out, we stopped before a video screen showing post-game commentary on NESN, watched a clip of the climax, my teeny brain still trying to absorb everything that had happened. Around us, happy people streamed out into afternoon sunlight, groups of males hooting, crowing, exchanging high-fives. Which got me thinking about the strangeness of how we identify with a team, how that identification breeds competition with other cities, hatred of other teams and other teams' fans. Couldn't think about it for long -- had to keep up with my friend, S., without getting run down or running down any of the hordes heading away from the park. Hiking back to the car along Comm. Ave., the afternoon still beautiful, front yards still exploding with the colors of blossoming flowers, bushes, trees. At some point, I realized we were walking in the middle of a small cluster of humans, all striding at the same speed. People in front of us, people in back of us, creating a strange, subtle, creeping sensation of being boxed in by, er, humans. Pulled S. to the side, waited for humans to pass, resumed forward movement, suddenly feeling free, liberated, and absurdly happy about it. Found car. Drove home. Hung around kitchen discussing food, washing dishes, preparing dinner -– a meal that turned out to be vegetables, vegetables, vegetables, with some grains and excellent baked chicken to offset the overindulgence in dead plants. (My hostesses' diet: far, far too healthy.) In theory, I have no problem with eating mountains of vegetables, especially when friends are making and serving me a meal. (Just the fact that someone else is feeding me automatically makes chow much more appealing.) The me of earlier years did, after all, spend a bunch of those years as a vegetarian. So why did I find the millet and chicken to be the tastiest part of the meal? Hmmmmm. I bored my sweet hostesses with a tour of an exhibit of photography I have showing elsewhere on the web. They retaliated with bunches of photos taken on a recent trip to Israel, pix comfirming my suspicion that Israel is a corner of the world worth a visit. I crashed, stumbled to bed, got up the following morning and hit the road for the return trip north. That return trip was to include a stop in New Hampshire for a visit with an old friend I hadn't seen since last autumn. A woman who lives with her husband and their daughter in an old house on a dirt road in a small town off I-89. There are two ways to get to their home once off the interstate, the first along a two-lane that gives out onto other, smaller roads (the longer route, used during the cold season), the second via a small road that begins by a house with a teeny replica of Fenway Park in the back yard then proceeds through woods and up to the top of a long hill (the faster, more direct route, though its last stretch is rough enough that the town will not plow it, closing it instead during the cold season). By May the more direct route is always open, I take it without a second thought. Prior to tise weekend, don't ask me why, I wondered in fleeting fashion if I should call D. and ask if that road was open and passable. Just in case. But other things came up, access had never been a problem in the past, I forgot about it. Until I was on it, approaching the final stretch, and saw the ROAD CLOSED sign still up, off to the side. My little car has all-wheel drive, I've always through any road regardless of the conditions (except once. several years back. in this town. when I pulled over to the side of a two-lane and discovered that accumulated leaves didn't hide a safe, solid shoulder but a gulley deep enough that the car's two right wheels sank into it. in this very town -- hmmmmmmm.....), I breezed blithely by that sign. And what I found up the road was a long stretch practically demolished by washouts from heavy spring rainstorms. Impressively deep, broad washouts in places, the kind nothing short of a tank could navigate. All this close enough to the top of the hill where the road becomes paved that I thought I might be able to manage it, and inched along for a while, picking my way through until it became 100% clear that I didn't have a snowball's chance in the freakin' Sahara of getting through the last 30 yards. [continued in next entry] España, te echo de menos. rws 3:47 PM [+]
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