[continued from entry of December 29]
As hoped, within an hour I was ensconced in the flat of friends, G. and S., using my paltry charm on S. in an effort to get her to head down Mass. Ave. to a café (me hoping a shot of caffeine might perk up my tired bod, my system having been up since before the previous midnight, Cambridge time). We went. It worked. For a while anyway. Long enough for S. to make dinner, for G. to return from work, for us to shovel down the meal. After that is mostly a blur of fatigue, me falling out on the sofa in front of the T&V. (It's a comment on how comfortable and at home I feel with G.&S. that I would fall asleep like that, in the middle of their home life, instead of retiring to the guest room to poop out more discretely.)
Next morning: my bod, on European time, came bolt awake around three, I could feel that there was no chance in hell I'd be drifting back off to sleep. The flat's residents slept quietly, the world around me lay dark and silent, both indoors and outdoors.
The wee small hours:
Suddenly the thought of leaping into rental car and doing the three-hour drive north seemed like a good idea. A lot of things needed to be attended to during the short time I would be back in Montpelier -- the thought of driving before roads and highways got frantically busy, of arriving earlier rather than later leaving an entire day to work with, made so much sense that I found myself pulling on clothes, packing, leaving a note in the kitchen explaining my disappearance, stepping out into wee hour Cambridge, cold, crisp air filling my lungs.
Early morning New Hampshire, out in the middle of nowhere:
The drive passed in a smooth early morning blur of images -- empty urban streets, interstate highways spooling past. Pausing for bladder relief in the middle of nowhere, me the only source of sound/movement, the air soft with misting rain. Pulling off the interstate into Montpelier's compact downtown before rush hour.
And suddenly I found myself pulling up in front of the garage stall that shelters my old Subaru, found myself dragging body bag up narrow stairway (leaving snowprints on old, tattered carpet), found myself in the teeny flat I'd abandoned nine weeks earlier. Everything quiet, the local world not really up and cranking yet. Bed and living room furniture covered with sheets. Radiators shedding waves of heat to counter serious below-zero temperatures outside.
[continued in next entry]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Para Madrileños: hay que pasar por esta web, una obra de varios payasos que se trata de restaurantes en el centro de la capital. Tiene pocas entradas pero merece la pena leer las que hay. Una página web entretenida y poco respetuosa:
La contraguía para zampar en la Gran Vía
España, te amo.
rws 8:30 AM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment