Long Live Aimlessness

5/21/2002

Summer has finally settled on Boston, and I’m in love with the city again. How could I not be totally infatuated with a city where I can walk everywhere? Now that my days are numbered, every train ride and bus commute seems special again, and I’m taking as much note as I can of everything – I’m trying to store up all the little details for future reference. The ripples in the brick sidewalks near Harvard Square. The bums who smoke pot on Commonwealth Avenue in front of the Russian grocer’s. The young girls who sit in deep discussion on the porch of a frat house. The streets are wider in Brookline than elsewhere.

There is nothing quite so wonderful as sleeping as late as you want too in your very own bed after a long trip away from home. I did that last weekend with Mr. Puck curled up next to my stomach, reading comic books. This is heaven.

Aral and I have committed ourselves to having The Best Summer Ever pretty much full time. She’s not actively seeking work until the fall, and while I spend the mornings going on interviews and hitting the want ads, I’ve pretty much dedicated my afternoons to lying around reading comic books, and my nights to cooking amazingly good food. Thanks to the 30 pounds of produce my Grandfather sent me home with, I’m eating better than I have in a long time. Aral and I swap off cooking for each other, so that one night we have her amazing vegetarian dishes and the next something southern. I’m seriously into deserts now, too; I made a chocolate pecan pie Sunday, and a double chocolate torte Wednesday. I’m going to do pralines next week, for no other reason than that it’s fun to cook when I’ve got time. Zucchini bread, yellow squash casserole, fried green tomatoes – thanks to Grandpa we’re eating like queens. Tonight Aral’s making strawberry daiquiris and something good with tofu, I think.

I went on an interview Tuesday with the Harvard School of Fine Arts, and with a little luck I may end up working for the world’s largest slide library. They have 750,000 images stored in the basement of the Fogg museum, and I wouldn’t mind working there at all. Competition for jobs is stiff right now though, so I’ve also been to a temp agency, and taken all the skill tests they make you go through. I was pleased to discover I’m up to 50 words per minute as a typist. With any luck, I’ll get a boring data entry job that pays well, and I can sit out the rest of the summer listening to mix CD’s, eating gourmet cookies, and watching trashy TV with Aral. Why not?

I’m 25, and I have given up on accomplishing anything else in a town where eggs are $1 . 55 a dozen. I might as well kick back, write, and enjoy the fact that I’m only responsible for myself. When I move back South there will be my family to consider on a daily basis. I’ll be helping my parents and grandparents, and tutoring my sisters. I’ll be babysitting my cousins and working my ass off so that I can get a house one day. And so I dedicate this one last summer to just me, here in Boston. This summer I will lay on the banks of the Charles and bitch about the new Batgirl statistics (they made her too skinny!) while eating cookies and discussing hot young men with my roommate.

Life is good.

I’m also reading like a madwoman – ever since Bob showed me the Cambridge Library’s collection of graphic novels, I’ve been in heaven. I was worried that with my finances is disarray that I’d have to cut back on one of my favorite forms of reading, but luckily that isn’t so. I’ve just about completed the entire run of Preacher now, and I’m probably going to start reading Transmetropolitan soon. Dust loaned me his copy of Why I Hate Saturn I read the new Michael Moore book, and I’m going to start some Evelyn Waugh. I’m totally into cookbooks right now. I’m trying to figure out how to get to DC for the 4th of July, and to NYC before August. Mat and Emily should be visiting soon. I’m into some serious road trip scheming and general summer mischief. Canada is not out of the question, despite a lack of cash so severe that I’m filing for unemployment Monday. Still, it’s my life, and I’m loving every damned minute of it. Viva Boston Summers.