magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

By noon I was on a train headed north which would, if I didn't freak out and bail at 125th Street, lead me out of the city for the first time in nearly three full seasons. There wasn't any sort of feeling of finally, I'm getting out, nor was there any sort of hesitation. I wasn't really feeling a whole lot of anything. I didn't want to listen to any of the music that I put on the memory card in my phone. I didn't want to read the book or magazine that I had put in my bag. I didn't have any inspiration to draw.

The woman sitting in the seat next to me was probably about my age but had the sort of New York voice that I associate with women in their late 40s. She was very cute though, and despite the incongruous voice, or maybe partly because of it, I found myself intrigued by her. Probably the fact that she kept her sunglasses on for pretty much the whole trip (she got off the train about half way to the end of the line, which was my destination) added to that mysteriousness. Of course, I'm not really the type to strike up a conversation with a stranger on a train, even if I wasn't headed out of the city to deal with my ex-girlfriend who I haven't seen since the night we broke up, almost two years ago.

---

Aaron picked me up at the train station, and dropped my off at our mom's house. We made plans to all get together for dinner later. There was a brief heavy downpour, northwestern Connecticut's brush with Hurricane Ophelia. Sam came home. And then mom was headed out to some art openings, the faculty show at Hotchkiss School, and a show at a gallery that has taken over the building that once housed the Riga Mountain Roast coffee shop, and upstairs, Lakeville Internet.

I probably haven't been in that building in almost seven years, since LI started crumbling into a former dot com, and I moved to Austin for the first time. It felt like it feels to go back to your old grade school, years later when you're all grown up. It seemed tiny, as if I were really in a 3/4 scale model of the old office. Even though I'm still the same size now as I was when I first started working there. (Ten years ago, it all seems impossible.)

Then dinner at one of my favourite Japanese restaurants anywhere, Bizen in Great Barrington, with my mom and both of my brothers.