Fall Break

Yesterday, Dan and I and the Little Dog took our annual Fall trip out West to Northampton and environs. We were out for a little leaf-peeping, a little escapism, and a little taste of the Autumn That I'm Having a Hard Time Getting Used To (TM).
Fig. 1. Leaves were peeped. Though I didn't get any really spectacular photos of blazing trees or impressionistic hills, I think this fall is the most spectacular I've seen in a long time. I guess that's a good reason to be thankful for the cold snaps of the last couple weeks, yes? Fall always makes me all shades of nostalgic, and never more than when I'm taking the fall drive out to Northampton. There's this one rise in the road on the Pike near Brimfield that affords an amazing sloping view down into the valley as you come over the top of it. I know I don't live out there anymore and it's likely to be some time before I live out there again, but it always feels a little bit like coming home. There's simultaneously a drop in my stomach and a bubbly feeling of excitement that never fails to make me feel choked up. The same thing happens to me after turning onto 91 North, after passing the Holyoke Mall, when it starts to look more like Northampton. The view out across South Hadley just south of Mt. Tom is another spot, as is the first view of the Connecticut river, just before Exit 18. And the whole Pioneer Valley is speckled with spots that make me catch my breath and want to cry happily, and yet out of a sense of nostalgia for lost experiences and fading, but still warm memories.
Fig 2. Cider Donuts were consumed. These were still warm when I bought them. Still warm. It was the kind of day where there was a line waiting for the donuts to come out of the kitchen. Crispy on the outside, sugar and cinnamon crackling with each bite. Little puffs of cider-y steam. Divine. If anything tastes like fall, it's these donuts. We enjoyed them with a half gallon of cider that we drank from the jug. A perfect meal, all in all.
Fig. 3. Dan ate some donuts too.
Fig. 4. We drank delicious beers at the Northampton Brewery. I had an 8 ounce (very petite) Hoover's Porter, which was one of the finest beers that has ever passed my lips. Why, oh why don't they sell it in bottles?!Fig. 5. As we hit the road back home, we made a pitstop for a strawberry shake at the Whately Diner. This was another college haunt and definitely a place I wanted to share with Dan - he's also a big diner fan. The pink neon glow and the shiny metal of the diner's exterior is frozen in time, I think. It's fabulous, but still somehow unsettling. Dan said it seemed like an X-Files episode should have been happening around us. It's true. Places that stay static while the people who inhabit them (however temporarily) are uncanny. Places that change, although we expect them to stay the same, however, moreso.

More photos here.

Ungeduld...

On the subject of dissatisfaction... I'm feeling really antsy for no good reason. Of course, I have papers to write and to grade, exams to prepare and all that, but I'm not feeling stressed about them. I am naturally feeling procrastinatory, but what I really want is to have some totally random, totally surreal, totally weird experience, like I often do when in Europe. Last trip, it was the squatter bar. In my Cologne year, it was so many things... Amsterdam and stumbling around the red light district with Dan, Aachen and the Feuerzangenbowle, that one night I was out with Dan and Crispy and we ended up in some swanky bar doing really sweet shots, (my birthday that year was the underbelly-bad-version of this phenomenon). In Hamburg it was also a lot of nights... any choice of Kiez nights, stumbling to the Fischmarkt at dawn or going to the Golden Pudel the first time, or that night with the white wine and the boys from RLH or, even, translating Red Hot Chili Peppers at 3 in the morning with a totally un-surreal Spießer-boy.

I read about things like Ruby Town and the bizarre-o things that happen there (thanks, Paul, to whom I link quite often) and I wonder why everything here seem to have to be done under the auspices of a university or everything needs to be already established as Important or be, at the very least, easily digestible to be shown as art. I'm no huge art buff, but I do really appreciate the kind of mild discomfort encouraged in the art world I've glimpsed in Germany. The cool thing about it is that you can go and have these surreal experiences without much effort at finding your own surreality. Here even the supposed bastions of the avant-garde aren't even avant-garde any more.

To do something here that gives the same surreal feeling, the same kind of out-of-body feeling, you have to go a little more out of your way, a little more into territories that seem less safe. Maybe I feel this way about Germany because of its unavoidable foreignness. No matter how well I know the place, it's still going to be foreign, barring exceptional circumstances like moving there and staying forever. But even then. But what I mean is that no matter how normal the things I do there would seem in Boston, say, they seem odd because of the inherent foreignness of being there. I mean, I could maybe seek out some underground bar in Chinatown and have that same feeling, but I'm not at all sure it would be safe.

I wonder if it is just this city that is staid and rubber-stamped and whether I'm getting more boring and old because of it.

Or maybe I just need to write my papers and stop whining. Or just go get trashed somewhere weird tonight.

I sometimes (often) miss the "fragmented life in regard to US and Europe" and the kinds of late night emails it inspires. It may be time to run away again soon.