inauspicio.us

i just left star island, which is a monstrously sa…

i just left star island, which is a monstrously sad thing to have been made to do. the week (actually nearer to a week and a half, since i was so distraught i had to go back and visit) was over, and even if i’d had the kind of time to stay on island, the thing that makes the place for me is the particular group of people that are there. this was driven home when i went back for a couple days of the conference after mine: walked down to the dock in the morning looking for tom kennedy, he wasn’t there; past eliot looking for heidi and peter leading lower el, they weren’t there; looked anywhere for fred mills holding a baby, no such luck. so it was sad but probably instructive to realize that even if i could stay around longer there wouldn’t be any point. the star island that i know doesn’t exist at any other time. which is not to say that my extra time on teh island was less than spectacular. it was hardly any time at all before i was made to feel like i belonged and it was particularly difficult to leave a second time, knowing that the first time i’d tried to leave it hadn’t really stuck.

and, although i will undoubtedly try, there’s not really anything i can tell about the time i got to spend on island. i find this to be true anytime i have something that’s just too exciting happen to me. a bus trip or a new kind of toilet paper, that’s a story. but this is just too much for me. i can’t get the stories across because there are too many, too much fun, too much joy wrapped up in it for me. i would quite literally have no idea where to begin.

so i’ll move straight on to the annual post-star letdown. why go to a place that leaves you filled with sadness and longing for weeks after you’re there? i don’t know. wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world but i don’t know why. the beginning of september is always tough for me. fortunately this year my friend john got married the weekend after star. nothing like a good old-fashioned reminder of how great life can be back home to help kick those post-star blues.

john and kate were married at the downingtown, pennsylvania quaker meetinghouse in a beautiful and touching ceremony. part of the beauty of the entire experience was its understatedness, maybe the frst time i’ve ever seen anything associated with john be understated but not so shocking that the effect was ruined.

i went to the wedding in the most roundabout way possible. after pricing out the trains and checking on the car situation (bleak), i picked up a roundtrip plane ticket to philadelphia from hanscom airforce base for a relatively bargain price. the key component of this particular trip though, was that rather than leaving from logan, nearly an hour from home, it left from a tiny former military base about two miles from my front door. huge added bonus: no wait for security. so the flight took off on time from boston but landed nearly an hour early in philadelphia. took a train from the philly airport to the philly train terminal where i waited for my friend dan check’s train to get in from new york city so we could take another train out towards the wedding together. and i was feeling prety smug about how well the whole thing was workingout until the train stopped about twelve miles short of our destination and the conductor ordered everyone off. hadn’t really prepared for that one, eh? and the taxicab company that had been widely rumored to exist in case of emergency turned out, acording to locals, to have shut down a year or two ago. dan made more inquiries: i slipped behind a dumpster to change into my suit. pretty soon it was obvious that the only way we had any prayer of getting to the service on time was to hitchike. so we struck out along the road, dressed to the nines with our thumbs out and a big sign that read “going to WEDDING in DOWNINGTOWN”. it took us about five minutes to pick up a ride from an extremely pleasant woman who turned out to be acquainted with kate from high school. and just like that, we got to the wedding on time. there was even plenty of time to spare for people to exclaim over us, and for john to demand that the photographer take a picture of dan and i holding our sign.

the way home from the wedding was less tightly scheduled but more convoluted: dan scored a ride home from one of john’s co-workers who also turned out to be willing to drop me off at the philadelphia train terminal. plenty of time to spare on this end, because my plane was scheduled to depart a mere fourteen hours later and the prospect of spending the night in the airport, eciting from a distance, dimmed rapidly in the harsh flourescent light of reality. negotiations followed. we can change your flight, they said. too expensive, i said. tough shit, they said. i’ll survive the floor, i said. then there was a pause. i’ll pay any price and call it a bargain, i said. nine forty-five pm, they said. the gate is three miles from here.

so a long walk, a small sandwich, and two stiff drinks later i’m only ninety minutes early for a flight that will put me back through boston and into my bed by midnight. i guess the whole problem could have been solved by a cheap hotel but hey, why make things easy.

dan and i left the sign, written in red magic marker on a piece of paper donated by a butcher shop, rolled up on the table with the wedding gifts for kate and john. it seemed like the most appropriate destination.