Dead Letter Department #94
weather report: vacation edition
what I found on the flight between Dulles & Hartford: an incandescently charismatic flight attendant, who gave a little disapproving pout whenever anyone turned down the sparkling water or sparkling wine, saying a little sadly, “you don’t want to party?” He wore a massive silver bangle that appeared & disappeared under his strict uniform jacket, and had neatly divided the world of his customers into three categories of affectionate address: brother, which appeared to encompass most men; love, seemingly for for older women, and hon, which I never was able to parse, since I could not see who was getting this rarest of titles from where I was sitting.
After not having hard liquor for some uncountable number of days, I poured the little snakebite kit bottle of whiskey into a glass & topped it with coke, so sweet & fizzy it almost tasted thick, keeping company with the tangles of whipping clouds as I descended to New England for the first time in five years.
The airport was mostly shut down, the way little regional places are between the hours of two and five in the morning, but I saluted the pink & orange oracle of Dunkin’s sign as I passed, remembering the huge vats of sweet milky iced coffee I used to get there, before I moved somewhere with local coffee stands on every corner. My friend’s dog remembered me, & let the whole arrival lane at the airport know it, and then we were off into the semi-familiar darkness.
It’s a strange thing to arrive at night, to know yourself in a different place, but only be able to see the different street signs to prove it. That late the only fast food open was Taco Bell, where we got what I think was the last cheese quesadilla of the night & a little slideshow of the drive through person’s dog photos on her phone: cane corso, of all the things. We pulled over for a rest stop & I saw my old friend the firefly, out there in the darkness, flashing welcome.
what I found at my friend’s house: practically a fucking resort, a peaceful guest room with pale green walls & fancy sheets, windows ringed by soon-to-bloom hydrangea, a view of a hammock & a shedding paper maple out the side door, a tiled shower that sounds a little like a creek when you turn it off & all the water drains away, frog pond complete with gulping bullfrog, shouting confidently into the night, a wildflower garden, a back deck looking out into the woods, not a neighbor in sight.
The first couple of nights I barely slept, & I still don’t know if it was the time change, west to so far east, the unfamiliarity, despite my sleep talismans (including sound machine), or just the feeling of being so out of my ordinary world, and away from all responsibility. It’s been a tough few months, with the sorts of intractable problems that tend to present themselves waking & sleeping. I knew I needed a break, but it seemed to take my body a while to catch up to the the concept of it, relaxing enough to dream strange visions of circuses and alternate worlds with my same friends.
J. keeps saying “Vacation is for resting,” & so I have been: taking naps on the deliciously comfortable bed to the sound of bird song, wandering down to the ancient graveyard at the end of her road, sitting out on the back deck for long lazy hours of talk, greedily catching up on each other in the way you can only do when you’re finally, finally rich enough in time. She’s been making us dinner every night: sweet potatoes, beans & farro with avocado & soft boiled egg, chicken shawarma in pillowy pita, fancy zhuzhed up ramen.
what I found in town: everything the same & so different: familiar roads, though I couldn’t find my way on them these days, the dense jungle of Vermont spring, a farm stand with perfect spring strawberries, the sight of lobster tanks plunked matter-of-factly into the middle of the butcher section at the grocery store, a Hannaford clerk who asked me my birth year for the beer we were buying & then high-fived me, calling me 81.
We spent an evening at P.M.M.’s where they hosted us most graciously with snacks, good beer & even better conversation in their immaculate, peaceful garden. I mentioned how influential she has been on my reading over the years, sending recommendations through the pipeline that have sunk their way into my brain through multiple re-reads (including Ann Patchett's ever-important Truth & Beauty). I was allowed to take a picture of her list of finished books for the year, which I plan to pillage most ruthlessly for my own to-read piles, & perhaps even hope to get more such lists in the future, or at the very least send P.M.M. one of those long opinionated notes you can only write when the other person has loved the same book. The dogs kept trying to smother the bank of sweet woodruff, & I kept thinking how nice it was to see E. in the heart of her family, all of them loving each other so well.
Yesterday J. & I went to a haunted castle, just over the border into New Hampshire, a ruin of fallen rock walls & arches at the bottom of Mount Wantastiquet, & I immediately became obsessed with the woman who built it, a former dancer & costume designer who hosted wild Prohibition era parties, seated like a queen on her cobra-headed throne, chain smoking off a single match all day. Someone had spread a rug on what remains of the floor, out in the open air, & it was easy to imagine that in just the right phase of the moon, you could step off of it & into a ballroom still full of whirling figures, smell the perfume & the smoke & hear the band playing, as though it never burned down at all.
We also accidentally found a geocache, tucked away in the hollow of a massive, ancient tree—a kinder way to leave our initials than carving them, so I scribbled into a notebook—Max & J & E were here, 6/10/24.
Special thanks this week to J.T., who’s helping me keep the home fires burning while I’m away in not-so foreign climes. You can always send me your suggestions of other ruins I should visit or your favorite Vermont creemee stand at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. I’ll write to you again soon, & in the meantime may the magical place you always meant to visit be even better than it was in your imaginings.