lapsedmodernist | Aug. 20th, 2005

Although it does not in any way affect my recent epiphany that I need a vehicle, other people's cars and MBTA have enabled my urban nomadism lately.

The hours in this week were so full that they must have been well-oiled with the time-equivalent of that balm kvarturin I was talking on the beach about, from the old Russian science fiction story about a man who uses this balm that stretches space inside a room but not outside inside his communal apartment share until it becomes a huge, scary, neverending existential space where he gets lost, hopelessly trying to find his way back to the lightbulb that is casting uneven shadows onto the shapeless walls, while from the outside it looks like a normal room of a disenfranchised Soviet Citizen. Yes, like that, but a lot better.

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Tuesday: Communist nostalgia pub, existential/sexual jokes about grandmas and tram cars, topless cartwheels on Memorial Drive late at night
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Wednesday: Mount Auburn Cemetary, winding up the tower, rolling down the grassy hill, my date with an Angel, a "way Abu Ghraib statue," James F. Gay AND
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Russian Store #1, Russian Store #2, Aphrodite's Left Breast, William Buroughs in Russian {ew}, earrings out of redcurrant berries, crashing a community cookout at a playground, admiring poodles, refusing Krispy Kremes, my fascination with a Raphaelite girl. I kept looking at her in a way that, I imagine, one day, when she is, like, 12 and remembering this day, will make her wonder if I wasn't her real mother. Swings. Bubbles. Girls on swings. Girls in bubbles. AND
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Overwhelmed at SuperStore 88, Thai, Korena, Vietnamese, Chinese food, I have Very Spicy properly done Korean Ramen bowl, the sort I haven't had since Mato Bento around the corner from the anthro department closed last year. AND
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Swampscott beaches in the Dark AM, where we were apparently mistaken for a suicide cult by the local young adults. beach, one of our companions digging A HOLE THE ENTIRE TIME, like a visual equivalent of background music. I kept rapping Eminem's "Cleaning Out My Closets" under my breath b/c it was TOTALLY LIKE THAT with the silent cathartic digging and the shirtless and short blonde crewcut you KNOW what I'm talkin' about from the video, yeah?
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On Thursday, lunch with Mz. Aud at the Buddhist Cultural Center, delicate sweet soup and ginger tea and perfectly fried tofu, followed up with burnt caramel ice-cream on Harvard Square. I picked up more TZ film at the Ferranti-Dege, along with some Kodak to try out the cross-processing and the man fixed the lens on my camera for free because [my] boots are cool! (and that seems to be the consensus, either that, or all of a sudden EVERYONE wants to sleep with me). Then a visit to Mz. Aud's amazing office, perfect timing to catch the bus back to Lynn, only to return to Cambridge for some Pale Ale at Bukowski's (verdict: Boston hipsters seem more diluted and user-friendly than the Thermonuclear Hyperbolic Hipsters that populate the Brooklyn Hipster GZ circa Bedford and 7th)
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Finally, last night, Gogol Bordello, the most energetic show I have ever had the pleasure of attending, but note to self, wear yr steel-toed Docs not yr suede knee-highs if there is going to be moshing.

BONUS:
Alchemy in the kitchen, where cheap store-brand vodka is being turned into Gold through

theophile's Midas touch. The elixir lives in the Britta filter and I keep almost adding it to tea, as coolant. Huzzah!

Tomorrow the compass is set to North-North-East, I will be back in about a week.

I leave you with pictures