Category Archives: Boston

“I’m no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.” ~ Kathy Acker

O great sea, how you call to me, with your beauty and danger and mystery. That a landlocked boy should feel such an affinity for a place and space that would always be out of his grasp is one of life’s conundrums, unsettled and unbalanced but no less beloved because of that. The call of the sea is a song I’ve had in my head since I first glimpsed its seaweed-strewn splendor as a child, and as the years go by I feel its pull evermore.

“There comes a time in a man’s life when he hears the call of the sea. “Hey, YOU!” are the sea’s exact words. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.” ~ Dave Barry

I’m not taking life advice from Dave Barry, so this spring and summer’s theme for our trips to Boston will be the sea – in particular the Seaport – which has grown in leaps and bounds like the arms of a starfish. Where one has gone missing, another sprouts up again. It was the backdrop for the Spring Stroll I took with Kira recently, and will form part of an upcoming anniversary visit to Boston, and later our annual BroSox Adventure. Life events have been founded upon flimsier ideas – and the sea is anything but flimsy. It will more likely be a matter of trying to tame the power and might of an idea that has the immensity of its reality surging behind it – a reality that has never been defeated. Our shores and beaches are but barely holding their own, and that delicate line between land and water is tenuously held. Let that be our only drama, and let us enjoy it. 

“There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is taking the busy turn that spring usually brings, and as I begin the daunting task of cleaning up the yard (and filling 50 lawn bags with the detritus and debris of winter) I pause to buy some time before diving into our first spring weekend in Boston. For now, enjoy these teaser shots – let them whet the appetite, and beckon more sun. The seaside adventures that Kira and I experienced a couple of weeks ago will be posted shortly… 

It will likely be our last Boston rendezvous before the official arrival of spring (cheers to that!) and as such an air of celebration and giddiness was in the atmosphere as I met up with Kira for a recent weekend in our beloved city. Peppered throughout this first part of the recap are quotes from Kira and bits of conversation that struck me as funny. You will likely be largely unamused, and to be fair you did kind of have to be there. No matter – it will crack me up writing them down again, so for my enjoyment, please indulge. 

The weekend began with my arrival at precisely 3 PM, so as to procure an available spot in one of the coveted visitor’s parking sections of a few nearby side streets. I found one quickly enough, then paused in the condo bedroom to take in the very best part of the day there, and to take this picture.

ME: Yes you are. Without the polka dots.

Catching up over dinner, we laughed and sunk back into the comfortable groove of a friendship going back well over two decades. Outside the wind whirled and scurried about in blustery charges against the brick, but within the condo all was glowing and warm as if Christmas had decided to come back for a quick second to see us through the remainder of winter. 

KIRA: That’s why we wear hats.

ME: You’ve never been afraid to look stupid in a hat.

The spell of hygge had been cast, and its emboldening enchantment worked its magic on our souls, healing and rebuilding what had been broken and bruised through the sheer act of surviving. Christmas lights still twinkled in the corners, and the scent of spicy candles lended another layer of warmth to the proceedings. 

We finished dinner, Kira had a spa shower, and we tried starting a movie but fell asleep before getting very far. Winter felt very distant at that moment, and the ills of the world felt miles away. One last quote from the next day, to give you a hint of what was still to come…

ME: Can you just fucking enjoy the moment?

KIRA: No, I can’t. I’m cold.

Some traditions get derailed just a year after you try to get them off the ground, such as the Friendsgiving dinner that Kira and I did but once – way back in 2019, which feels like a lifetime ago. It went so well that it merits a repeat try, now that we are vaccinated and able to meet up semi-safely. This was also a weekend away that I badly needed; so much stress has been building in my family and professional worlds, and I have felt it expanding to the point where I have announced to anyone in my path that there are no more fucks to give. That’s been a dangerous frame of mind to carry in the past, but it’s also quite freeing, and there’s something to be said for such freedom. Boston has always been a place of escape and calm for me, as has my friendship with Kira, and taken together they formed a welcome return to emotional form. 

Boston was ablaze in autumnal splendor, thankfully holding onto its leaves and flowers this late in the year, and the city granted us two days of sunlight and relatively warm weather. 

A gingko tree sang like a canary in a coal mine, all glory and luminescence with the impending danger of losing it all. 

After making a perfunctory walk to get some dinner supplies along Boylston, I returned to the condo to wait for Kira’s arrival, setting up the holiday decorations and a charcuterie board. 

While the weekend was slated to be our Friendsgiving celebration, our first night was just a return to what we enjoy best: comfort food and each other’s company. After over a year apart, Kira and I did some catching up that went beyond our sneak preview of this reunion. She is one of those friends whose affection and understanding remains undimmed by the passing of time or the difficulty of distance. We picked up where we left off, as much as the world had knocked us about, and we found gratitude in our friendship again. 

The holiday spirit warmed the condo as we ate and talked and ate and laughed and ate and ate some more. Candles flickered as the evening closed, and we put on ‘Home For the Holidays’ to lull us to sleep. Our second Friendsgiving had begun…

Night and day, and all the extremes of Mercury in retrograde continued on my second day in Boston. The day dawned in brilliant and sunny form – a rare gift in the midst of a few months when the only weekend weather seemed to be rain. The condo was flooded with morning light, and it was the kind of fall morning where you take a few extra minutes in your bathrobe to simply exist, to inhabit the moment and contemplate the day.

Outside, the fountain trickled its watery melody, and I put on a little Cole Porter to start the day. The sunlight was strong, and the crisp chill of fall looked to make for a beautiful day.

I took advantage of the weather and ventured downtown for some shopping. In keeping with the kookiness that this weekend was highlighting, an enormous turkey was trotting about Downtown Crossing – which is probably the section of Boston that would appear most inhospitable to, well, wild turkeys, but there it was, bobbing its head among the manicured landscaping of mums and crotons. 

Shoo, you fool beast! Thanksgiving is coming soon. You in danger. And when you find yourself talking to a turkey in the middle of Downtown Crossing, it’s time to check your sanity at the door. I walked toward Government Center, to scope out where Oceanaire was located. I was having dinner there that evening with a friend from high school, Paula, who had gotten in touch earlier this year. 

Unsure of how things would go (I was, in her words and my own estimation, a bit of a terror back in high school) I walked in expecting the worst and the best, and while she was armed and ready to cuss me out for previous transgressions, we had one of the best dinners I’ve had in a long time, complete with revelatory conversation, rekindled memories, and a new understanding of the past, and hopefully the future. 

As we said our goodbyes with a promise to do this again, the feeling that I was in a novel came over me again, and I recalled a November evening many years ago when I unexpectedly happened upon a guy I had been seeing and he dumped me on the spot. That’s a story I’m not sure I’ve ever fully told – and while that’s basically it, I’ll try to flush it out more fully later this fall. For now, I took the long way home for the second Boston night in a row, thrilled to be back in the city, happy to have found that I still get along swimmingly with an old friend, and somehow haunted for all that had happened that evening, and all the evenings so long ago.

As I walked back along cobblestone streets, and the increasingly quiet air of a city that was still slumbering in many ways, I opened myself up to the ghosts that seemed to be all around me. Who was it that so haunted Boston here? Which people from my past were whispering to me on this night wind? They felt so real, so tangible, so present… and yet I couldn’t quite make them out. They were familiar and so close and still tantalizingly out of reach. As I made my way back into the South End, to the streets where I first sought a home for myself, I finally realized who the ghosts were. 

There, near Union Park, was my former self – the young guy who was looking for a condo way back in 1995. There, too, was my high school self, laughing and joking with Paula in orchestra. There was the young man who kissed a guy on a September afternoon and felt his face almost bleed with the rough stubble of his facial hair. There was the boy who snapped a Chinese yo-yo into the air near the Boston aquarium after being utterly transfixed by an angelfish in the big tank. There was the guy who ruined the birthday dinner of his friend Alissa because he was so drunk in the messy aftermath of a break-up. And there was the man who married his partner Andy in the Boston Public Garden, kissing him and pulling him into a hug because he was so happy to not be alone. 

All of the ghosts who had been haunting me there for all these years had only been previous versions of myself. That’s why I could never fully see or place them, and why whenever I got close the image was distorted and blurry, like some funhouse mirror. I didn’t want to face them, until tonight. And once I did – once I saw them for who and what they were – once I understood that it was just me haunting the night and prowling the Boston streets – suddenly they dissipated and evaporated. By acknowledging my ghosts, I let them go, and felt the weight of years suddenly depart. 

Mercury was pure madness in retrograde when I ventured into Boston a couple of weekends ago. I hadn’t planned for, or known that it would be, the weekend that the Red Sox were heading to the playoffs, nor had I been made aware that the Boston Marathon was following on that Monday. The city was alive and full of energy not seen since pre-COVID times. None of it appealed to me, so I laid low with a few friendly visits and down-time at the condo. Still, the city would swirl me into its electric maelstrom whether or not I wanted it, like the leaves that were starting to fall. In many ways, Boston felt eerily like Savannah – haunted and enchanted and at its most beautiful when night fell. 

The fountain in the middle of Braddock Park was still running, and I would leave the windows open to listen to it through the night. For some reason, it is more of a comfort at this time of the year than any other – maybe because it means the air is still warm enough for water to run. Holding onto that somewhat-unseasonal warmth made it easier to celebrate fall. The falling leaves felt less sad. 

After an early-bird dinner (because I’m old now) I found myself drawn to the Boston Public Garden, and as I headed in that direction I remembered my friend Kira, who was probably getting ready to finish her shift for the day. Shooting off a quick text to see if she wanted to say hello, I felt, and not for the first time the weekend, as if I were part of some Edith Wharton novel, where people from the past were re-populating the present moment. Kira wrote back she was ending her work day in an hour or so and would stop to say hello. 

It had been a few months since I’d last seen her, and that time was brief and bothersome. I hoped we were both in different places, and that we could start hanging out again. Forgiveness seems hard for both of us. Talking things out does too, but there’s no other way to forge a friendship. The night teased with a warm breeze. Drama was in the air. And Mercury remained stubbornly in retrograde motion. It would either be a really good meeting, or a really bad one, and I couldn’t be sure which way the wind would take us. 

We decided to meet up in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel, where we’d spent some happy holiday strolls, and which seemed like an auspicious way to rekindle what we once had. I arrived early, and settled in with a sparking water and lime, while a wedding party bustled about the space. Kira appeared shortly after, and we sat down to talk. It was just like no time had passed, the way two friends – if the friendship is pure and true – can simply pick up a year or two or ten later and nothing has really changed. 

We were enjoying each other’s company so much that she decided to take a later train. I offered to walk her to the station to extend our time together. Now that everyone was vaccinated, we’d be able to do this again in time for the holidays. We’d missed out on that last year when the world lost its way. 

We walked through the Boston night, with all its requisite magic and mayhem, and everything felt old and new and comforting and exciting all over again. We also made tentative plans for a Friendsgiving weekend in a few weeks. At South Station, she showed me where her train would depart from and we shared a quick hug – our first in almost two years. 

Instead of taking the T back to a station near the condo, I walked the whole way, passing the preparations for the Boston Marathon, and all the places we once frequented. A new/old friend was in the city as well, and we had a dinner planned for the next day. The drama had just begun…

There was a puppet stand, and a woman dressed head to toe – or tail – as a mouse. 

The mouse nodded, for I did not see it at first, hidden slightly behind a make-shift puppet stand.

The stand held masks and puppets and mysterious objects that were surely laden with charms or curses or spells. 

Backing away, and sensing danger or trouble, I moved into the sunnier and safer section of the Garden.

On that day, I would not be tricked by magic or enchantment. 

On that day, I would not fall. 

When the sun slants into the bedroom bay window, and the afternoon shifts from mid to late, my favorite place to be is reading a book or lounging in the sun-soaked bed of the Boston condo. I actively seek out this pocket of time for a siesta whenever I am in town, though when I lived there it more often seemed like I was out and about than home during this precious portion of the day. Perhaps that’s why it’s so lovely – always tantalizingly out of reach, its elusive nature addling to its allure – and I wanted so badly to have such a life of leisure so as to afford an afternoon siesta in the middle of the week. Alas, such treats must wait for retirement, or the occasional vacation day, or this recent Saturday afternoon when I could luxuriate in bed on a break from walking the city with family. 

There is a great deal to be said for simply existing and enjoying a moment of rest and repose. Too many of us feel uncomfortable or nervous when we pause or stop for more than a second in our break-neck pace of life, unaccustomed to such mindfulness, to the treat of calm and stillness when we make the effort to truly slow down. Meditation has allowed me to access that – though I have to say I’ve always been able to stop whatever I was doing and take a lunch or a break and re-charge. It’s why I can sustain and maintain a consistent pace. (One doesn’t keep a daily blog going for 18 years by burning out and posting in fits and starts.) The same goes for the steady stretch of jobs I’ve managed to keep and advance through for two decades – that doesn’t just happen. Whenever I feel myself getting anxious or agitated by work or website posts, I step back and pause, indulge in some self-care and recharging, then continue on with a lighter mental load. 

When such an indulgence can occur in a city like Boston, as the afternoon sun is filling the bedroom bay window and the autumn light is warm and abundant, I feel all the more grateful.