days 21-36: the day i met joe

I spent an hour outside of Shaws talking to Joe. Joe's this older Cantabrigian (white jacket, slacks, dirty Patriots hat) who waited under the overhang during the rainstorm. He was listening to this handheld radio and telling me stories about the end of days. He's upset with Obama. He says the country doesn't care who's in the White House, they're just looking out for their pocketbooks. The economy is the number one issue this election, he said. I agreed. The world is getting worse, he said. Look at that tornado in Springfield. Just wait until hurricane season. If something big started in the Atlantic and worked its way up to New England, that would just be it. He told me there was a massive hurricane in New England in 1938 (before they named hurricanes) that had Providence, RI under 20 feet of water. He told me I should have seen Hurricane Carol that hit Massachusetts in the 1950s. He advised that I read the papal prophecies of Malachi, not Malachi from the Bible, he said, but the Malachi who was the Bishop of Arman in the 5th century. 


We talked about Whitey Bulger and his arrest in California. That cocky bastard, Joe said, was going on about 'give me a public defender or give me that 80 grand you confiscated back inside my house.' He said the man was ruthless, just another sign of evil in the world. 


Joe told me how he worries about financial collapse, and how he's hoarding silver, waiting for the price to explode. He has over 4500 ounces of silver in his room. They shut off the lights, he said, but I'm sitting on all that silver. Isn't that ironic? he said, laughing.


Walking home later I decided I should talk to more strangers. If I'm serious about giving my writing a shot, I'd like to talk to more people. I'm not as interested in my own stories as I am in other people's lives. I felt kind of like Katy Grannan photographing this woman:

I don't remember the story of how they met, but I know the woman loved being photographed and still calls Katy constantly. If life's about making stories, art is about telling them.


I've been awful about posting, but here's a wrap up of the past few weeks.


I ate dinner with Betty and Nellie. Nellie's a filmmaker from BU who just made a documentary about pigeon racing: Young Bird Season. 


I went to Martha's Vineyard last weekend with some girlfriends. My favorite part was the ferry. I liked being out on the top of the boat, hair blowing in the wind. We went to a couple of beaches, saw the oldest carousel in America, looked at the town of painted houses, and walked open markets. My friend Aubrey has a house on the Vineyard. President Obama stayed right next door last summer and after our trip, I can see why. It was like vacationing in a pastoral wonderland. I kept having romanticized visions of the Hudson River School.

Not much other news. Quinn finally sent me pictures of some of the art he's been working on. It's so good. I'd post it here, but I don't want to steal his thunder. I'll link his tumblr when he gets back and updates his website. I sometimes joke with Quinn that he loves art more than he loves me. While I don't really believe that, the boy is an artist. If you had to lose your husband to a higher cause I guess I can't be bitter about beauty.


Last thoughts: I had an umbrella stolen at the Cambridge Public Library (pretty damn hateful). I've been reading a lot of poetry (particularly good are Matt Donovan's book Vellum and Kevin Prufer's book National Anthem). 





I decided to read all of the 2010 Whiting Award winners. I want to read Dear Blackbird by Jane Springer, but I can't find it anywhere. I am dreadfully impatient with books. I once had a book shipped from Australia because I couldn't wait for it to come out in the states. (If there is one irrational, un-budget-friendly thing that I do, it's that I buy books.)


A couple of weeks ago I saw an early screening of Emma Robert's new movie The Art of Getting By. I liked it. My one complaint (other than the kids being 'NY-too-cool') was that the girl (Emma Roberts as Sally) wasn't interesting. Was 2 hours too short a time to develop both characters? Are women only interesting relative to what males are doing to them/feeling about them? Overall, still worth seeing. In my favorite scene the boy lays immobile for hours and listens to Leonard Cohen's Winter Lady. That about sums up adolescence.