After a charming christmas filled with festivities and family in Dahlonega, Alan and I continued our tour of American cities, heading first to Baltimore and New York, then turning west towards Saint Louis, and finally south to the capital of Texas. The thing that continued to strike me was how infrequently we came into contact with people. How little our cities felt like cities compared to France's bustling metropolitan centers. The metro system in Baltimore was eerily deserted of people on the first day of 2010. The station was a large echoing concrete structure through which mostly empty trains rumbled every 15 minutes or so. Inside, we crossed a young black lady, heavily made up, two police
men, proudly sporting their pistols on their hips, and an obese white man half heartedly lounging in the ticket window who tried to dissuade us from walking through the North side of the city (you might see a poor person). We exited the station at the inner harbor, which resembled an empty disney land with bright colors and broad streets. We walked the few remaining blocks to our New Year's day brunch destination to find a much livelier scene--all the middle class of Baltimore was there, sipping oversized and over decorated bloody maries and making small talk with the enthusiastic waitstaff. I marveled at the contrast between this and the deserted streets. Everyone had driven in cars, large hunks of metal to keep you distant and safe from the city and your fellow citizens. The site of it made me want to gag. But we stayed on for the two hour wait anyway. And the fried green tomatoes were as promised, if a bit on the salty side.New York was cold. It was refreshing to see people out on the roads. The roads were loud with honking and street advertisements, but there was life here, and a mixture of social classes, races, and age groups. I threw a french dinner party for my friends there, complete with des tartes aux pommes for desert. We made a table out of packing cartons and listened to Serge Gainsbourg until the wee hours of the morning. Alan and I visited the Met and had lunch with various friends before hopping back on the china town bus to Baltimore and heading west. After driving 10 hours in fairly poor conditions, we arrived at the Indiana border, only to find that the state was closed. Big accident, stand still traffic. We bought a mauve colored hotel room and I took a bath and drank a beer at the same time. La decadence a l'americaine.
I was excited to see the Saint Louis arch that next morning. It had been a long time since I h
ad seen my good friends and I felt immediately at home in Dustin and Ryn's spacious apartment on Pershing. I chatted Dustin excitedly and then we all walked up to Meshugah's where I found everything as I had left it 2 years ago: Derick was loud at work on Newton and Cambridge, Charlie was speaking quietly to some regulars, and the barista asked me for a third time if I had ordered a double or a single shot. I sat at a corner table with Dustin and argued over whether there had been an ancient novel while Ryn read Pamela and Alan programed. That evening I went to Atomic Cowboy to see Firedog play and dance with Rebecca and Liz.I slept well that night, next to Alan in Dustin's living room. It brought me back to the days of the flophouse, and I got all teary-eyed. The next day I hung out with Mark, and we read Jung's Man and his Symbols out loud and dirty in a poorly lit café. He is going into the dream interpreting biz, and needed some knowledge. The next morning we got up early, packed my bike and blender into the mix, and headed south towards warmer climes. The drive was fairly uneventful save for a second car break-in scare in Oklahoma that turned out to be nothing more than a couple of food service dudes getting lit up on the clock. We were overly paranoid about out duck-taped window.
We got to Austin in an ice pocked car a bit after midnight on the 9th of January. The house was still awake and chatty, and I got to see Arthur! Since then, I have found a part-time gig at a nearby yoga studio and have started auditing classes. Genre and Politics in Antiquity, 19th Century French lit, Cold war Politics, and Aristotle's De Anima. The days are sunny and the cafés are many. Pas si mal que ça.
