A Year Gone

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Fuck - for starters.

Not till we arrived in New Hampshire on Wednesday morning, did we realize how much of a temporary existence we have lived for an entire year. Kelsie felt it immediately, and by the time I sat down that evening in the Public Garden to eat Nino's Pizza with Thomas the Viking (self-proclaimed), I verbally said "it feels as though I have not be gone a fuckin' day".

Grief is a weird and complicated matter.

We had lunch with Jeff and Stacey Barker just after arriving at ENC. We filled them in on our ideas, aspirations, and realities in regards to community and columbus. They immediately had creative ideas to directly connect us with ENC, and that is fantastic.

We met with Jack the janitor (not self-proclaimed), and it was good to see that he was the same. Cris Popa was there, as well as many others that we had not seen or heard from in a year. We felt cared for and cared about, and I hope we conveyed that to them as well.

Kelsie shed a few tears when we first drove by the Wollaston Bay - our windows were down, and we could smell the New England salt water - and that was real heavy, and beautiful.

Then we drove into Boston to pick up Thomas the Viking at Kenmore Square, where Sox fans were walking to Fenway to see a game and yell bad things about the Yankees (even though they were playing the Orioles). We parked at a meter away across from the Boston Vet Center. we had an hour or so to kill, so we went in to visit. Sheryl, Sal, and Tom all sat with us for over an hour. We had almost forgotten how defined each of them is by their culture. Tom - big Irish teddy bear. Sal - right outta the North End. Sheryl - Jewish, blunt, and honest. It felt good to be with people who believe in something, and whose spirit, personality, and life further that belief. Tom was genuinely encouraged by our commitment and encouraged us to continue. He said "that's beautiful". I can't tell you how much that means to us.

So we finally picked up Thomas the Viking and drove out to Newton to his apartment, to see his family. His little girl reminded us of Magnolia, and we wished the kids could have been there to play with them. Thomas the Viking and I picked up some fancy beers, put them in the fridge and went into town to have some pizza at the park. We had the same conversation about capitalism, socialism, and the kingdom of God, that we always seem to have. Familiar. So, it looks as though they are going to be moving back to Sweden in September. So to celebrate, we watched Bergman's "Winter's Light", which is the heaviest film about spirituality ever made, drank fancy beers, and ate swedish caviar (sp?) out of a tube, and had some other kind of pickled white fish from sweden out of a jar, that apparently is only eaten during special occasions. Eeeekkk. Sour. But, I sure appreciated it, and I sure love Thomas Bjurbo (Thomas the Viking). He still says "do it" better and more appropriately than I do. They invited us to their summer cottage in Sweden. It seems to me, that if I love any places in the world more than Boston, they will probably be in Europe.

Sigur Ros.

We slept at their apartment, and then headed out early (after some french press coffee) to meet Rae Cuffe at the "Egg and I" in Quincy. It was great to catch up with her, and to watch kelsie try to eat a bacon, egg, and cheese on a jumbo bagel, with a side of pancakes. After that, we drove out to Natick Organic Community Farm, to see Melissa, who we knew from Ten Thousand Villages in Cambridge. She teaches kids how to farm everyday. She lives at the farm as an intern. Before we found her, we were invited to eat lunch with them by Bonnie, who was cooking lunch. She told us to browse the farm, and to check out the new piglets, born this week. We did, and we saw little children browsing the free range chicken farm for eggs (like an easter egg hunt, but for real eggs). Canaan would love that. We checked out their huge compost, their rows of tomatoes, berries, etc. It was just so vibrant and alive and fucking organic. I ate lettuce and leaves for lunch that I had never seen before - so fresh and so lively. There must have been 12 or more of us sitting and eating together.

After that, we picked up a few necessary items for the wedding, and a few boston shirts for us and the kids - then headed up to new hampshire.

I speak tomorrow, at the wedding, but not really. I have chosen to read Wendell Berry's "A Jonquil for Mary Penn" to convey a picture of marriage and community, before technology and industrialization divorced them.

sounds lovely, to read a short story at a wedding.

do it.

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