Bostonia

This is an odd grab-bag of a post, as is probably fitting of any kind of reckoning with my time in Boston. But now that I'm settled into Florence (tucked into a beautiful li'l attic flat that'll be my home for most of the month, stocked up from two excellent markets a block or so away, and one long, "wait what's over HERE" walk under my belt) I figured it'd be good to have a round-up of some stripe or another, before moving on to whatever the summer's going to be in this space. (Prediction: insufferable and inarticulate??)

Anyway, after the jump: Boston!

Famed Bostonian GEORGE WASHINGTON! While taking this photo, I was making some dumb joke about "who could THAT be," thinking it was obviously Paul Revere. This should teach us to never assume I know anything about anything (except for purposes of employment as an educator ok shh everybody go back to bed)

Obligatory video, though this is very much "my last weeks in Boston" more than it is "a representation of the city in its full glory," which is also why it has some bits of Indiana in it. Hey get your own blog why don't you.

As I've said before, I'm really glad I had one more year in Boston. It would have been easy to walk away, to do that "erase the past and ignore life's complications" thing that can make life simpler. But you know, life ain't no kind of life unless you wrassle with the whole whale, and this year was really great at reaffirming that choice.

Copley Square/library on Marathon weekend! Was this the first year I was here during the marathon? HINT: IT DEFFO WAS, I HAVE BEEN A FELLOW WITH BIG PLANS THAT INVOLVE NOT BEING AROUND WHEN THAT HAPPENS

Because of course my earlier time in Boston was colored, for good and for ill, by a lot of things that aren't Boston. After my first semester, which I spent pretty actively taking advantage of a new city (visiting the world-class BSO, enjoying the Museum of Fine Arts for the first time, walking the Freedom Trail, all o' that) I spent a lot of the next three years with one foot out of the water, between a long-distance relationship, early-marriage nesting, a pretty narrow social life, divorce reckoning and recovering, and the stress of grad school. It's uhhhh a lot. So in some ways this year felt like my first full year hanging with the city on its/my own terms, and that was just grand.

Davis Square after a torrential downpour. Yes: my addiction to photographing blue skies is undiminished!

I already blabbed about JP; for the rest of the city, what I'll say is that it is, as my friend Josh put it recently, a "lovely town" - lovely in a way that New York isn't, between its picturesque river and scattered green spaces, and a town in... well, a bunch of ways. It's small, for one - you can walk from my apartment in JP all the way through downtown up to Medford in just a few hours, clearing most of the immediate metro area in just about the same time it would take you to walk Chicago's north side. It's also got a town's sense of folklore - people who know people, stories going back generations, all that. This cuts both ways: it's charming beyond belief in a lot of ways, but this is also why the city seems to have repeatedly shrugged and said "I dunno, the cows used to walk that way in the 1790s, you wanna build a road different?"

Another historical oddity is The Long-Legged Baseballman Playing With Kids At Fenway, here about to catch a strike from the Extremely Young Baseballchild. Fun fact that made me fall in love with this man: he carries a grabber, which he used to THROW AWAY LITTER THAT PEOPLE WERE DROPPING. There are some things that I love more than life itself.

I used to say that Boston was an inverse Chicago: the latter is an amazing world-class city surrounded by hours of... a lot of bland nothingness, to reductively generalize, and the former is a kinda crummy city surrounded by an overload of amazingness. That's still sort of true! One of my favorite things about Boston is its proximity to Portland (aka "the happy place"), but it's just flat magical that you can drive 2-3 hours from Boston and be in mountains, at the ocean, almost to New York, in the forest, wherever. New England is pretty stunning, and someday I want to take the kind of trip I always wanted to take from Boston but never could, camping and driving and small-town-poking-arounding across the whole shebang.

The ducks of Boston Common! Apparently they are dressed up for all major occasions/holidays?? I THINK THAT IS A NICE THING?

In any case, the city is, indeed, charming, and if you're lucky enough to have the cash to live near where you work or play, I can see why you'd fall in love with it. Its transit system is too broken for me to ever really love it, but this year really connected me with people that made it a place I'm going to miss. Starting to date again (which always helps keep exploring), making new friends outside my department and school, logging some meaningful time with old friends, and getting to host visitors, along with the relief that comes with settling into dissertation land after you've detoxed from comps/orals/prospectus all aligned to help me find new favorites, and to lace the city through with some grand memories atop all the hard and ugly ones. This, I think, is the best reason not to walk away or quit in a moment like I had last year (as I had assumed I would!) - the long horizon starts to balance the scales, joy nibbles in around the edges, and soon your many lives are cohabitating, the good with the bad, all teaching you how complex and irreducible all things are, and reminding you of hope and possibility.

Some incredibly friendly confines you got here, fellas.

So much, then, for that. More posts to come on whatever strikes my fancy on this next transitional chapter (errr all chapters are transitional I guess?), but not for a minute or two. First, it's time to take a much-desired break from technology, three days straight with only my Nook and a downloaded google map of Florence to keep me company. I am prepared for much joy and rejuvenation to come from this, so get ready for some seriously zen posts next week*!!!

IT, AS THE FELLOW SAYS, ME (Red-soxing on a whim in the waning days!)

* probably mostly talking about smelly airports and amazing grocery stores, this site will stop at NOTHING to bring you all the Important Information.

Strictly speaking this dog is not a public feature of Boston, but it IS one of the best photos I anticipate taking in 2017, so enjoy it while you can? THIS DOG AND HER BROTHER ALFIE ARE CRAZY BUT THEY LOVE ME AND I THEM SO I'M ALL ON BOARD FOR IT. K GOODNIGHT.