One Night in New York

I thought the ocassion of being on another --albeit brief-- roadtrip would be a good excuse to return to this blog.

Astoria, NY turns out to be friendly and social and active, but also laid back like Brooklyn is. I'd been here once before to stay for one night on a very last-minute plan. This trip is a more amenable motive: to visit a friend from study abroad who recently relocated from San Franscisco. We were supposed to be joined by other mutual friends from our program/school, but unfortunately, they were called away by other plans and weren't able to make it. Still, being here is a reminder of simplicity at its finest: just chilling out on a Saturday night, Hampshire style, and catching up at the same time. I should add that my friend's place is extraordinary -- free housing provided in exchange for work. Five of them volunteers for this work program (a "city-year" esque gig) live on the top floor of a former Catholic convent which once housed nuns. From the outside it's all imposing and brick; the inside looks like the film set for a Peter Jackson or Alfred Hitchcock psychological horror movie.

I decided to save money getting here by taking the bus down from the Pioneer Valley, and also because there was only one train going southbound on a Saturday instead of the usual 4-6 that run. For a little while it seemed like it was going to be "best laid plans go awry" when I stayed two hours longer than originally planned and then Keith and I had to drive/travel fast over to catch the bus in Northampton due to other pressures that arose -- but the connections were made. The Springfield bus terminal always creeps me out and today was no exception to that, with an added strange coda when the bus drove in the lowest of an imposing series of triple-ramps for I-91 south and then through a storage yard (?) to actually get on the interstate. And since it was a bus, there were a series of random characters on and off it. First, in Northampton, an elegantly dressed woman took the liberty of offering me a free cigarette as I stood outside about to make a cellphone call, and giving no indication that I was actually a smoker (I'm not.) Then, in Springfield, a woman boarded the bus with a bizzare talking baby doll in her hands, which she kept telling to "be quiet" -- seeming to momentarily forget that she had a doll, not a real child, and then she turned it off. Later, after New Haven, several girls had lengthy cellphone conversations on the bus, oblivious to the fact that every word they said could be heard by an audience of 55. Finally, in Manhattan itself, the bus stalled in Saturday night traffic snaking down towards the Port Authority, and two people who were sitting near me switched seats into someone's spot who'd stepped up to go to the bathroom, and then they quickly, and sheepishly, realized they needed to return back to their rightful spots.

I went right to the subway stop at Port Authority to find a long line for the one automated-vendor accepting bills. The guy two people in front of me couldn't figure out how to buy a single ticket, and I wondered why the woman behind him and in front of me was thinking that you had to do that with a metro card. I soon understood when she produced $80 in cash from her pocket to buy a card for a month's worth of travel right there on the spot. Meanwhile I settled for the "bargain" 6 fares for the price of 5 @ $10 and found the N train heading north to Astoria. Manhattan glistened in the clear sky as the train huffed and jerked along the elevated tracks, and I look forward to experiencing some holiday spirit tomorrow.

Impressions

By the time this trip concludes sometime next week, I will have traveled 7, 615 miles.

Off to catch the final show of The Empress tonight. I'm impressed with everyone's growth in this show and the continuing daring originality of Hampshire theatre work that has been in full display.

The Return to New England

I endured a 15 hour train ride from Ohio to the Berkshires yesterday in order to return to my home state, disembarking in Pittsfield, MA (of all places...) some eight hours behind schedule thanks to the Amtrak train that kept pulling over for freight and then going at frustratingly slow speeds before pulling over again and so on. It probably would have been more interesting if it hadn't been raining the entire day across OH, PA and the northern cities of New York State. The train pulled into Pittsfield a little bit after 7pm in the rain.

The transportation center had already closed for the night as one other man and I got off the amtrak train. I didn't want to hang out with him after he said that he'd been on the trains since Provo, Utah, and had come to the Berkshires to find God. I thought they did that just fine in Utah. So instead I decided to walk along one of the main streets in Pittsfield to see if I could find a coffee shop, since it was only 7:30pm. Fat chance. There were lights along the road, but they were all tied to stores that already had closed for the day and 1-2 upscale restaraunts that weren't ideal places to wait for potentially up to two hours. Eventually (quickly) I ended up at a Brooks Pharmacy to buy a card and get cash back a minute before it closed at 8pm. The girl behind the counter called me a cab to take me over to my cousin's school in a different part of town. I stood outside in the light rain with my baggage and awaited the taxi's arrival.

They said it would take 15 minutes but it was there in five. Oddly, the driver even stopped the ride mid-way so that I could get smaller bill change, since he didn't want to make large change for me. But he carried on anyway and $11 later I was dropped off at Miss Hall's School, right back into the uppercrust world of New England boarding schools. I rang the bell with my bags and a prickly-looking older woman said, "How can I help you?". I said "I'm Nellie's cousin." She said in a disbelieving tone, "How should I know that?" I replied, "Well...her father is my mother's brother..." and she said "That would make you her cousin. Let me see if I can find her." A few minutes later Nellie appeared and all was righted; within the hour we made it back to the house in the continuing rain.

I didn't realize how exhausted I was after the travel yesterday, and slept soundly through to nearly noon today. It was refreshing to get a full sense of the continuing fall season by gazing at the Connecticut hills after lunch. The afternoon took us into New York state just over the border to Millbrook, driving by my mom and aunt's old college campus, which, sadly, is now a creepy-looking (but mysterious, not foreboding) complex of old buildings that have fallen into disrepair and await eventual development renewal. But when that actually will happen is anyone's guess, since the college closed in 1978 and the buildings are still there looking exactly the same, but neglected. Sad.

Am moving on again tomorrow back to Hampshire. The Empress, The Crazy Pitches, friends, nostalgia, video editing and a taste of the Amherst fall are all awaiting there.

Cleveland Calmness at Case

Aside from being a little too wired these past couple of days (three computers at my friend's house to access, and now at Case Western's library where there are even more computers) this has been a nice "bridge" day and a half of laid back time to rest up, and also see a little bit of Cleveland itself.

Case Western has lived up to its geeky reputation with a lot of technology students roaming around campus. I was more interested (and pleased) going into their theatre building and seeing photos of my four friends from BADA who are recent Case theatre graduates all over the lobby area. Their recent production slate is impressive and my friends seem to have gotten theirselves in the middle of all of them (just like I did for myself at Hampshire...) from Look Back In Anger to The Philadephia Story to The Pillowman and more. Unfortunately, those friends who I think are still in the area have been hard to reach, but if we don't make connections now, there will probably be another time. Not sure what the rest of the day will bring ... maybe a movie, maybe more exploring of Cleveland, we'll see.

the Road Life goes on by continuing to Cleveland

I have continued eastward on my own this evening after a restful and also busy few days in Ann Arbor.
Will be staying with a close friend from home for two days and then getting up early Tuesday morning to take a train to visit relatives in northwest Connecticut, and then continuing back to Hampshire on Wednesday.

Ann Arbor was winterily sunny today when we took an early morning trip down to a farmstand that seemed like an exact combination of Atkins Farm in Amherst and Goodale Orchards from home; we picked a shopping bag's worth of apples in their orchard and also treated ourselves to an impressive variety of fresh cider donuts. The apples tasted deliciously fresh back at the house and may have been made into a pie later in the day!

Unfortunately, getting out of Ann Arbor turned out to be the most difficult travel connection of my entire trip thus far. I was all set to take the 4:10pm bus heading east to Detroit and then make a connection there for a different bus heading east to Cleveland. 4:10 passed and one bus came by bound for Chicago (westbound) which appeared to be normal. Time started to pass in the sketchy bus station and I didn't really notice, until suddenly it was 5pm. Then the bus clerk just happened to find out that our intended bus had broken down in Kalamazoo and was running three and a half hours late, which would have meant that I'd arrive in Cleveland at 12:30am. This was not acceptable to me and the other customers, and the clerk begrudingly agreed to call a local cab company who specializes in covering Greyhound's ass to drive us as a group to Detroit, for an extra $15 per person. It was the only option so we all said "sure". A few minutes later, the guy pulled up in a sketchy older minivan and loaded us in. He said in a grizzly tone, "I hope you all don't mind going fast on the highway, cause that's the only way we're going to make it in time."
And so I found myself buckled in to this van heading east on I-94 at speeds between 80 and 90 MPH towards Detroit. Luckily, I don't get carsick often, and the speed limit in Michigan hovers around 70 on most of the highways. However, the constantly blaring radar detector and sense of racing against time did get to me as I sat there with my cellphone cupped in my hand, focused intently on getting to Detroit in time for the bus.
Amazingly, the official bus waited and we did get there in time, buzzing out of town on I-75 southbound in the most appealing time of day (light-wise) to see the depressed urban modernity of the Detroit skyline fade with the sunset. The bus crossed the state line and the landscape shifted into the mystery of the dark Ohio Turnpike, before the familiarity of being among friends once again in a new place, one step closer to eventually going home to MA.

Arrival at Ann Arbor

We're here and it's snowing quite a bit!
But I like the town, too. It has a lot to offer with a college town vivacity twice the size of Northampton and Amherst, and just as much character.

Chicago

...is much more hospitable than I was expecting it to be. The windy city has lived up to its name in a good sense, and we got to make the most of the town last night by going out after a long day of driving. Later today we're on to Ann Arbor!

dispatch from: Lincoln, Nebraska

This town defines sketchiness, with wide streets that give way too much room for cars and a sense of desparation among some of the locals we have seen here, to get out of their lives and on to something more.

We've stopped here for the night on day 3 of the cross country roadtrip. The first night was in Ontario, Oregon, the second on familiar turf for me at Shambhala Mountain Center, in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. The sights in between have been unforgettable, of course, with many moon-like landscapes near the mountain highways gradually giving way to flatter great plains of the midwest. It's been enough to give some sense of the people and the community beyond, and I feel inspired that so much of this country is indeed remaining undeveloped, but also a sense of concern and loneliness for seeing so much isolated landscape: what do those people who are here do with themselves, and do they dream of a better life elsewhere like the one on the east coast that I will eventually return to in MA? I've been taking plenty of pictures and video footage to capture those moments to last.

Tomorrow will take us to Chicago for a small-scale Hampshire reunion and seeing the city, followed by Ann Arbor, Michigan on the next day. On the road to new (eastward) horizons.

The last day in Portland

Closing up shop today...
heading on the road tomorrow.

Am continuing to enjoy being in this city and soaking up the west coast spirit. Though it will be a new adventure to begin the journey east, and see what the heart of America is all about.

Portland time

It's been gratifying to take a few days and just be low-key especially after the intensity of this past week. I have appreciated the art of being a local in this city and not being a tourist. Spending time with friends here has also been enjoyable throughout. I also have already had one reunion with some Buddhist friends from the past, with another possibly coming up later this week, and it's always nice to be able to draw on those connections wherever I am.
I saw Portland's notorious rain for the first time this evening; it's been mostly sunny with some clouds thus far since arriving Monday night. This neighborhood of the city (Belmont) is also particularly bohemian and liveable.

Scenes from the Road - in reverse chronological order

Dusk on the southern Puget Sound
Seattle skyline and glimpse of waterfront
was this Thik Nhat Hanh on the Space Needle???
Seattle skyline from the Space Needle
Arrival in Seattle
Portland area from the air
Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge
Hairpin Turns in Marin County
Point Reyes National Seashore
A midnight snack in SF
Dusk falls on the city by the bay
Interstate 280 near San Francisco was one of the most beautiful highways I have ever been on
Central Californian Coast
Playing in the surf

Santa Monica State of Mind

Beverly Hills Scene and Mind-Set

A Journey from the Glitz to the Bay

I left Los Angeles at 7:30am this morning on an early train from Union Station in downtown LA. Was originally planning to leave at 9, but got there earlier than expected and Amtrak was flexible about letting me take an earlier ticket. It turned out to be a really special gift; the earlier train took the train route all the way to San Luis Obispo, CA instead of just to Santa Barbara and then along the freeways.
The scenery, at first, was irritatingly metropolitan. The commuters on the train were gradually weeded out through towns like Glendale, Burbank and Moorpark. After Moorpark, the train went through a short tunnel and seemed to emerge in a different world. Suddenly I was in a mini Mediterranean area going towards Santa Barbara, with wine fields extending from the tracks and then incredibly spectacular Pacific blue ocean on the other side. After Santa Barbara we had to wait a whole hour for the next stop on the train, appropriately called "Surf" (yes, it's really a town called Surf, and it is right by the ocean.) The weather seemed to not know what to do with itself as the train sped north by west. First it was sunny, and then there was thick omnious fog coming off the sea.
But then, the fog suddenly lifted and revealed an unparalleled seascape with bold cliffs and wide sandy beaches like a mini version of Big Sur farther north along the coast. At the exact same time, I was listening to Daft Punk on my IPod. A song came on that I had not heard before (called "Voyager") and the title, funky beat and adventurous electronics perfectly matched the feeling of the moment: adventure and spontaneous exploration on the absolute edge of the American coastline in the sunshine. So I kept playing the song on repeat for at least ten minutes as the scenery continued to be spectactularly dramatic. I even filmed some of it on my new video camera (and will definitely use the Daft Punk song to underscore it...!).
The woman sitting in front of me pointed out the alternate-launch site for the NASA space shuttles in a place called Lompoc, CA, located right next to the train tracks and in the middle of a working air force base. Of course there were no official signs pointing that out!
The coastal scenery shifted to inland wine country and mountains again by the time we reached San Luis Obispo. I found the transition to an Amtrak bus to be easy, and significantly nicer than its Greyhound counterpart, as I continued another six hours up the coast to SF.
It's wonderful to be back in the city by the bay that has captured my imagination since the first visit here six months ago. At the time I would have never anticipated that I'd have the chance to come back so soon, but am very grateful for the experience of being here again and plan to make the most of it, in the sun and in the city with a cool breeze on my back.

from the LA High Scene to the coast

So, this morning at 7:30am I arrived in Beverly Hills, seeking early morning substance through a latte and coffee cake at a Starbucks on Beverly Drive. Immediately after sitting down i felt the "high scrutiny" style over substance moods of the city start to seep in ... people walked in the door looking at everyone else, seeing how they were dressed, what they were doing, if they were with someone or not, etc, etc. I stayed there for an hour until I had enough of the shop, although interestingly, the coffee cake was half the price that it is in Boston. Continued to wander around the Beverly Hills shopping area, passing very chic stores that specalized in somewhat ridiculous things, such as a store devoted to bags ranging from purses to ornate knapsacks, and then other stores that had different types of rings. It does have a certain market...but it's obviously not for me. I was more amused by knowing that I'd been in Beverly MA just two days ago (Beverly Hills namesake) and that I was probably the only person in BH today who had been in Beverly for the past month, at least.

It was staggering to see the amount of flashy cars and how that reflected people's wealth...from ferraris to lamborginis to BMWs to rolls royces and everything else under the sun, but mostly things with high price tags.

Eventually I found a Jamba Juice and a small park on Rodeo Drive to do exercises in the sun. Was able to meet up with an old friend for lunch and I enjoyed the reunion. I went off to visit the Museum of Television and Radio afterwords, which offered a staggering range of television programs, radio advertisements, commercials and historical television to pick out of an old Macintosh computer and then watch on a video station in an adjacent room. Eventually I decided to watch:
taped footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing (novelty)
and then three retro-fabulous tv shows:
You Can't Do That On Television
Square One TV (finally seeing Mathnet in LA!!!)
and the "Star Wars" guest episode of the Muppet Show
all very silly, but nostalgic and fun ... until I suddenly wanted to get out in the sun again and out of Beverly Hills.

So that meant it was time to take the bus to Santa Monica! The beach, sun and sand were intoxicating in a very holistic way and very welcome after the smoggy start to the day. The ocean seems endless on the other side of the continent :) and backed by the mountains, it is simply majestical.
Spectacular. Amazing.
Unforgettable.

California Love

Have arrived in LA, after one of the best airplane flights I've ever taken. Something about the combination of perfect weather, having a window seat, being on a cheap flight and getting to chat with the rest of the passengers in my row (one of whom was a professional stage manager in NorCal!) made it memorable and fun for me. Saw a ton of landmarks across the country including a bird's eye view of my neighborhood as we left Boston, Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, a bird's eye view of Interstate 80 in Nebraska that Russ and I will be driving through in about two weeks, the Continnental Divide, the Utah desert, the northern reaches of the Grand Canyon, the southern area of the Hoover Dam, and metropolitan LA's mountainous borders.

Now am here in LA-Land for a day and a half, seeing friends and doing my best to get around the city without a car. We'll see if that's successful or not. It is off to a chilled out and good transitional start hanging around Whittier College with my cousin before shifting gears to Pasadena tonight and the gliteratti of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica tomorrow.

Significant Victory

I have a driver's license.

Analytically

Why is it always a challenge to write about myself analytically? Like this question in a job application: PLEASE PROVIDE A STATEMENT OF YOUR PERSONAL QUALITIES AND EXPERIENCE THAT YOU BELIEVE ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR SUITABILITY FOR THIS POST.
... I kept putting the answer off, but now I don't really have time to, as the form is due tomorrow. I feel like I am writing a term paper again.

I finally got myself and KC (my cat) into the same picture frame tonight:

Back in Beverly

and glad to be here.

test

Vineyard Vitality

MV was spectacular, as always. .

Martha's Vineyard keeps calling me home

Heading down to MV today for the weekend to see family, friends and the beach. Should be a welcome change from the home monotony and a good way to get my mind off wanting to be there with you all in Amherst.

We must always return to the sea....

The Coast Starlight

March 20-21, 2006
from the journal archives

1) Midnight -- March 20 2006 -- somewhere past the Bay Area

Riding the train in the dark Northern California night is giving everything an air of intense, foreboding mystery. I wish I had the speed or energy to write down the words as soon as they dropped into my head. From the moment I got to the station (in Emeryville, CA) I felt like I'd entered an intense ambient groove and vividly painted dreamscape where the darks compliment and outnumber the lights. SF was everything that I wanted it to be and was begging for a return visit, so I hope that a return could be arranged for some time. (and it will be at the end of this month!)

2) later -- early the next morning
The train is passing through a snowy landscape thick with fir trees and I thought we were in Oregon already until we went right by an onramp for I-5 that still had CA destination points, and are now passing cars that still have CA license plates. We've also been officially declared to be running three hours late and have had to pull over for several freight trains, including one where I counted 66 cars were attached to the frame of the carriage. This all feels like worlds away from home and even from SF, which is why I was surprised to have it still be in CA with all the snow. There's something appealing, yet mysterious about traveling by train here in the northwest. To me it feels like entering a foriegn landscape only special visitors can enter, with the implicit understanding that you won't disturb it...

3) 11:30am 3/21/06
Have made it into Oregon at this point and the scenery has become spectacularly dramatic, with snow-covered mountains backing a large lake. The train is still running three hours behind schedule (and eventually it would arrive in Portland five hours late) and people are starting to grumble a bit about the length of time. Colin was right to warn me, but I am glad to have gone on north this way anyway, rather than a plane flight or a monotonous highway bus drive.

4) 1:45pm
Quite a bit of snow has fallen here in the southern OR woodlands and the train just made it's second stop of the state in a place called Chemault, FOUR hours later than scheduled. We are going through the most snow I have seen all winter; there must be between 1-2 feet of whiteness sitting alongside the tracks. I think we might be past the "freight train gets the right of way" part of the trip, and would enjoy seeing some more varied landscapes beyond just the woods.

5) 5:00pm
Am feeling a bit claustraphobic since I've been on the train much longer than I was originally anticipating to be. However, we just passed Eugene, and Portland is next. So we're in more metropolitan areas, relatively speaking. We passed the southbound Coast Starlight which was just pulling into Eugene as this train was leaving. The train staff is getting way too excited about the dinner reservation part of the trip and having people come to the dining car in stages to have their food; it's very silly. I'm relieved that Portland is just an hour or so from here.

From the travel archives

A fun, and interesting part of being at home is getting to look through my old journals which date as far back (though not consistently) to 1996. I thought it would be interesting to post some of my written observations on past trips, and will publish them here, with a corresponding photograph.

It occurs to me that several of you might be interested in this event

http://shambhalaboston.org/program_viewer.asp?program_id=925

Khandro Rinpoche in Boston

Mom's principle Tibetan teacher Khandro Rinpoche will return to Boston for the 9/11 anniversary, giving a talk on compassion in times of war. I'm looking forward to hearing her and would love to see some of you all there in Brookline Monday. Open to anyone, just preregister.

Home Again

With the rain gently falling outside, it's the type of weather that makes me want to sit around a warm fireplace and drink cider while munching on apple pie. That might be a little too soon for this fall weather, but it's definitely bringing those "ideal" sensations to mind.

It's been welcome to just take things easy -- for a few days -- through movies, exercise and rest. Everyone needs a little decompression, right?

The last night in Amherst

I'm the only one left in the house and am thinking, confidently, nervously and contently, about the future. Some stuff is up in the air with some stability in pockets. I'm ready for the changes but again, I don't want to forget about the importance of staying connected to the friends and life here.