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The house had such a stupifying abundance of rooms that, every time I learned how to reach one of them, I would catalogue sights along the way, memorizing routes. It was like dropping bread crumbs. Each time I prayed for the ability to find the damn thing again.

Pass the picture of her mother in the yellow jacket. Proceed up the stairs dappled with carved chipmunk statuettes. Look for the giant silver harmonica in front of the fireplace. Enter gleaming lemon marble hallway. Sliding door, stove island with visible pilot lights, bio-lab variety hanging vent. Three stairs down, beige carpeted hallway, sliding door: bathroom.

“Do you know where Rachel’s bedroom is?” a passing boy sporting low-riding swimming trunks asked me.

“It’s at the top of the tower.”

“The tower?”

“Go up as many stairs as you possibly can.” Now was the time when I could have handed him some crumbs, said “make sure you pass the Renoir poster in the golden frame” or “at some point, the carpet changes color” but I’ve learned that these details are never really appreciated by the direction-seeking public. One woman’s crumbs is another man’s “why are you still talking.” He was already gone.

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I don’t know how to begin writing fiction, so … I’m not. I’m leaving the beginnings up to other authors, and branching off — from whatever I wind up underlining, dog-earring, generally wanting more of.

Currently reading: The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret.

They’ll play a Keith Jarrett disc and everyone will listen, they’ll play a record and nobody will feel sad. And the ones who are on their own won’t feel alone tonight, and nobody will ask “Milk or cream?” because by now they’ll all know one another.

In the dream you’re aware it’s a dream, but that only makes slumber all the sweeter.

In the dream you have never kissed or hurt anyone, and everyone you will ever love is in your backyard. They are pouring iced lemonade and handing it to you, smiling. The wind is in their hair, their teeth are gleaming white, and they are full of anecdotes from their travels. They are wearing their favorite t-shirts. They just discovered their favorite band. They want to tell you everything, and in the dream you are a wonderful listener. You hold each person’s hand as they speak to you. “Tell me more,” you say to them. “How high was the wall? Did you speak the language? Were the breads soft like cake, or tough, like tires?” You are unladen with the past, light on your feet, trusting, entirely lovable. You are eager to fall in love with each of them for who they are. You are focusing on their words instead of your own. They wink and laugh and the sound of the wind in the leaves is the most incredible thing.

You are listening and nodding and holding their beautiful hands, pale and olive covered in fine hair, convinced that from now on you will mean every word you say, that any goodbyes will be brief and to the point.

What happens when you take ten total friends/strangers and put them in a two-bedroom cabin in the middle of nowhere? Shit starts to get real, obviously.

Real eggy.

An afternoon swim with watermelon.

Maple cookie button with heart imprint!

See all pictures from all kinds of fancy cameras here.

We were lounging on the deck in our bathing suits, drinking shandies and dipping our feet into the lake, when the fellow who’d disappeared hallucinating into the woods returned to the cabin.

“Hey dude. How’s your trip going?”
“Pretty . . . good, I guess.”
“How long do you think you’ve been gone?”
“I don’t know . . . like, an hour?”

We tittered delightedly, taking joy in our superior knowledge of reality: the only thing to do when you’re tipsy on lemonade-diluted Magic Hats and your friend has been rediscovering God or whatever. “Dude you’ve been wandering around for like three hours.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.” He shrugged us off, letting his backpack shuffle down his shoulder and down to the deck floor. He stared for a moment into the water and then began rummaging through his things, looking pretty with it. We’d almost given up on him entirely as a source of entertainment, and had returned to our former conversation — until he yelped.

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I. Until fairly recently, I had a respectable monthly allowance of expendable income. The target of said expendable income had become, for better or worse, ritzy clothing retailers. Silk, modal, lace, one-hundred-dollar pairs of pants, elaborate bras, uncomfortable shoes: over the years, my wardrobe blossomed like an Anthropologie flower brooch.

These days I make just enough to get by, but I still wear my former life’s clothing. The other evening I found myself sailing on a bicycle down Spring Hill with green-black oil smudging my ankle bones, sweat dripping down my neck: wearing a dry-clean-only blouse. I had loved it five months ago for its color, just slightly off-white, like the inside of a Creamsicle.

II. When we were first outfitting our bicycles with the necessary accessories, I had gotten the mid-range kinda-okay lights, vowing that since bicycling after dark was dangerous and frightening I would only do it when circumstances absolutely required — but it was after midnight when we decided to go on our first bike adventure. We had ridden the mile or so to our friends’ apartment earlier in the evening, and as the night wore on someone suggested we hop on the Minuteman.

It was a cool summer evening, perfect for bike rides, and for back porches and home-brewed cider and surprise-we-own-a-canoe-now-honey anecdotes.

“You guys have never ridden at night?” Angie cried. “We should remedy that. Soon. Right now.”

We’d have to ride on Mass Ave to access the Minuteman’s entrance — an infinite, four to six-lane road that connects everything I know of Boston — and which I had also vowed I would never set bike upon. Mass Ave is terror and frustration, no u-turns allowed. Mass Ave is too important for your tiny legs. Mass Ave would kill you deliberately, slowly and painfully, if it meant getting there five minutes earlier. But I trusted Angie and Aaron’s biking sensibilities. Both of them are the kinds of bikers I’d like to be — which is to say, commuters, builders, repairers, and unrelenting law-abiders. 

Aaron donned a blinking vest and showed me how to adjust my helmet for ultimate brains protection. We slung our frames over our shoulders and carried the bicycles down to the streets.

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