Home Again

I returned from London last Thursday. I was there during the record breaking heat wave - a tepid ninety-something. Those wimps. Yesterday, the high here was 112.9 - at nearly 6 pm. Friends (who we love, very much, maybe forever despite any wrong doings or offenses they may commit) bought us two air conditioners. We paid, they drove and got them - they drove to Concord and Cupertino - a gazillion miles, in miserable heat - to get these air conditioners. When they pulled into the parking lot of the store in Concord they called to report that the temperature there was 129 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm becoming weather-obsessed. I've been sucked into the vortex of people who watch the weather channel. Okay. I'm not there yet. I still don't have a television - but I have a secret weather blog. There I write things like: It's hot. It's cold. It's raining. I write there more often then I write here. Maybe because the weather changes, noticeably, more often than I do.

One air conditioner is an 8,000 BTU - it cools, supposedly, up to 400 square feet (I think not!) We've put it in the window of my study to cool the 350 square foot back cottage. It barely cools down the one room there, so I keep the door shut. This room was our bedroom for over three years. It felt cozy and familiar to be living our lives out of the back cottage for the weekend. We'd brave the heat and go look at the front cottage from time to time - but mostly we shut the shades and read books, magazines, played suduko, watched DVDs on the computer. We had the three essential heat wave beverages, San Pelligrino Limonata, sparkling Calistoga, Corona. And I'd venture out to water the garden every few hours. Despite heroic efforts I couldn't stop the hydrangeas from drooping.

I had a lovely time in London. It's changed favorably since I went to school there in the '80s. It's more cosmopolitan and despite the global fascination for increased development of open space into concrete structures, I'd still say it's an improvement. I wouldn't live there. It's not my thing. But it was fun to visit - the night bus tour was loads of fun - and the food, hands down, has been the most dramatic and notable improvement over the past few decades. The London aquarium, however, proves to be among the worst of the world's tributes to aquatic life. I'd liken it to little more than a spot of spit in a mud puddle with a few fish tossed in. It's a pathetic little place and they'd do better to simply close it down than to tout, as a town, that they house an aquarium. What an embarrassment! It's a tragic little fish prison.

Traveling made me want to travel more, as opposed to the more traditional outcome where I'm left feeling like all I want to be is home among the Cookie Pie, familiar things, my mountains, summer. That's such a push-pull phenomenon with the Honey Bee. I hate to leave her behind, but it's really not practical for her to come along.

The City That Reads

Precious. Delightful. So nice this lovely public anonymity. This virtually exposing privacy. A place to broadcast to everyone and no one at all those little private nothings. Shhhhh… it’s a big secret.

Cassie leaves for Spain in a few days. Heading east for an adventure. She’ll suffer through the ticket line at the International counter, anxious and excited yet decidedly calm and wander slowly through the terminal to the gate. (She’ll be early, unlike me, who would be late and scurrying.) She’ll have a book for the airplane under her arm and she won’t be checking her luggage for her journey of three fortnights. Traveling light with her feet on the ground. She’ll wrestle with demons on the road of St. James under the milky way. Or perhaps she won’t. Perhaps she’ll just sit with her Gods and idols. More likely.

I, on the other hand, will head to Baltimore in the morning. The City that Reads. Baltimore - how desperate and tiresome. I’m certain the people of that fair city wouldn’t provide me warmest welcome with such a disparaging perch. But it comes down to a taxi, an airplane, a hotel and a little conglomeration of shops nestled against a harbor where tourists flock. Once, amidst dining on the pier after a day of disillusionment I discovered the waiter was a former acquaintance from San Francisco who had stolen my vacuum cleaner. How precious. You moved to Baltimore. The City that Reads.

The redeeming feature of the harbor is the aquarium. Among the finest I’ve had the pleasure to stroll. Towers of fish. But I wouldn’t take pleasure in swimming in circles day after day although I’d be lying if I said I that I didn’t do just that from time to time. I’m looking to spy my way out of those uninspired routines.