Sunday, July 13, 2008

Live free or die... In a fire!

My sincerest apologies for the lack of updates, folks. This blog is my baby, but I've been treating it with the type of neglect found commonly in overweight white women with greasy hair who shop at Fashion Bug and try to rent movies at Blockbuster with their EBT(food stamps...) card. My bad. I have a good excuse at least! I have been out of state!

I've always wanted to use that excuse and actually mean it. I guess New Hampshire, our (meaning Massachusetts) friendly northern neighbor, isn't the most exotic location one could think up but let me tell you, it was the bee's god damned knees. It's an entirely different world and yet only two or so hours away. I was shocked by it all.

People spoke to other people in genuine and amicable tones. They waved from their cars and held doors. I had a conversation with a complete stranger at Walmart (where I've seen more people in those wheel chair thingies than I ever have before...) that lasted a good 5 minutes, and not even the awkward kind of "Who is this dude and why is he talking to me" type of things.

I guess it could have been the latter since I started the conversation. At any rate, I was thoroughly impressed with the grand scope of everything involved. Stars man... fucking stars! When can I go out and look at the stars out here in this shit hole city? Never! But out there? The blanket of the heavens. Orien loosened up his belt to let the Big Dipper out and Leo watched the whole damn thing.

I never claimed to know anything about astrology...

A fire every night, enjoyed upon stumps with imported beer and good friends. What more could someone ask for? Complete and utter contentment with life. When you're surrounded by woods, water, and darkness, you've either just escaped some madman's cabin and you're running for your life or you're in New Hampshire. Watch out for madmen too though, I'm sure they're out there. Which brings me to the point of my excursion I'm sure everyone I know is sick of hearing.

True dark. Ever experienced it? I'm not talking about shutting all the lights off in your house and putting sheets over your windows, I mean absolute darkness in nature. I went off for a stroll in the wee hours of the night. Along the highway, it occurred to me that I was engulfed by the eldritch darkness. I embraced it like a small child; meaning of course I was cool with it for ten or so minutes then got uncomfortable. But for the few minutes I plowed through that ebony abyss (*) I was so taken aback by it all. I shut my iPod off and just listened to the deafening silence around me. Then I heard something that sounded like it could have been Bears or yetis so I went back to the light.

Lakes, Walmart, cheap beer, legal fireworks. I think the only thing New Hampshire doesn't have is diversity. It's like a giant homage to Happy Days before they brought in 'Sticks' the black drummer, with whom the Fonz was good friends with, to illustrate that segregation could sit on it of course.

Not wanting to pine too much for that country living, I'll wrap this up. The harsh reality that I will soon be crammed into a train car making my way further into the cold urban terrain of Boston into the slightly less cold and more Kosher semi-urban terrain of Brookline is both sobering and sad. Until we meet again New Hampshire, you silly little thing.


(*)I wasn't sure if this line was included in Dr.Phil's autobiography or not, but it's damn close to his account of fisting Oprah. Just covering my ass here guys...