Boston

What Do You Want? When Do You Want It?

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I’ve been trying to figure out why I go to protests. Do I think they’re going to change anything? Unseat a president? Stop a war? Change a law?

There were over four thousand of us packed together in a hollow of the city, Boston skyscrapers framing our tiny antics. The City Hall Plaza is an interesting place to be for its paradoxes — you are dwarfed by its architecture, a concrete upside-down pyramid that gets wider as you look up, like a broad-shouldered thug. It’s hideous, imposing, the kind of building that would house Big Brother. But it’s also in the middle of downtown, so that you are surrounded on all sides by other, taller buildings, which despite their superior height manage to lurk as City Hall’s toadies — and there is a feeling of empowerment inherent to placing yourself in the middle of anything.

Boston City Hall is The Boss. You have come here for The Final Fight.

The cynic in me says protests are nothing but a party for like-minded people. But in a space like that, when you all cry “equal rights, now” your voices bounce off all the surrounding glass reaching into the sky and meld into one, giant voice, and that’s you, you can feel it, shaking an entire city. (View the full album here.)

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Boston, On Writing

Leaving You

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The day I decided to quit the job I loved began like any other day. I got up, got dressed, brushed my teeth. On my way out the door, I struggled with tangled iPod headphones, tried to find a song I still liked. I don’t remember what I was wearing. It’s possible I looked amazing — but it seems unlikely, since a nose infection had spread to my left eye two weeks prior and I hadn’t been able to wear make-up without risking contaminating my entire goddamn face.

I got a bagel and a coffee on my way in, opened my laptop, and unplugged the router. As I sat there waiting for the wireless to reboot, I began thinking about my tax return.

“That is certainly a lot of money,” I thought slowly, eyes wandering into the ether. “You could pay off a somewhat noticeable portion of school loans with that money.”

Yeah. Way to go.

I raised my hand to poke at my irritated cornea, then decided better of it.

“Oh, also,” I reasoned, “you should really put some of it into savings. That account has maintained nothing but the minimum balance since you started working. You should be more responsible now, look into having at least some kind of safety net. What if something were to happen?”

Right, right. Good thinking.

“But heeeey, celebrate a little bit, too. Get yourself something a little crazy. Something you wouldn’t normally purchase, you know, for fun.”

The wireless router blinked blearily, a slow green awakening that seemed to say “fuck. You. Fuck fuck. You.”

“I know!” I thought inexplicably. “I could get my hair highlighted! I’ve always said that I hate highlights.”

Fuck. You. Fuck fuck. You.

“… Or I could spent three hundred dollars on that duvet cover! Wouldn’t that be nuts! And it’d really bring the room together.”

Fuck … fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckyoufuckyou.

Back in business. I noted the four full black lines with pleasure, each neatly stacked upon the other in a precise, growing triangle: a full wireless signal. It seemed so clean, so ripe with possibility, like the first day after doing laundry.

“Or!” I thought insanely, “you could put the money in savings, and leave this place!”

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Boston, Costa Rica, Dear Diary

Email to Dennis, Upon Our Return

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Greetings from … well, I wish I could still say Costa Rica, but last night we returned, significantly browner and peelier than a week before.

As a result of that trip, I am now a little bit more fond of monkeys, a little less fond of cats — which were feral and whining about it everywhere — and much more fond of paved, straight roads, which were stomach-lurchingly absent in our area. Also, I want a pony. (Whenever we wanted to go somewhere, we drove on dirt roads through green hills dappled with white oxen, grey-spotted horses and unicorns, apparently. It was always sunset, and there were always mountains in the background. I began to harbor fantasies of owning a ranch. It would have an wooden gate painted bright orange, and every morning I would enjoy a breakfast of Cream of Wheat with black coffee.)

(Step one: stop hating Cream of Wheat.)

(Step two: stop hating coffee black.)

How’s springtime in Kansas City? It’s kind of nice to be back home in Boston, even if it is a bit chilly and forecasted to rain for the next week. I like to think that I attained a level of zen in Costa Rica, because when a car tried to plow through me this morning in the middle of a crosswalk with a walk signal, my inclination to give him the middle finger was almost cavalier, dispassionate, like a friendly tip o’ the hat to his douchebaggery.

Sometimes I worry that I’ll become too accustomed to this city.

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