1a. I promptly forgot about the city when I got back to Portland and saw the pink sky over Casco Bay.

1b. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about being in Maine and being in New York and being in places in general. It’s habit by now. At least I don’t bite my nails.

2. One of the (many) things I miss about zine publishing is the schedule: one or two issues a year, 32 booklet pages. For me that is a perfect level of casual-writing output. Frequent enough to be serial, spaced far enough apart to allow for rethinking, revising and general ruminating. The truth is, if I didn’t get paid to type things on a website every day I probably would not type things on a website every day.

2a. This is one of the (many) reasons I don’t type things here every day, or even every week.

2b. Or here, even.

3. In case anyone’s still reading, here is a picture of some sled dogs I met last month.

3a. Things sled dogs eat include: raw venison, raw smelt, hard-boiled eggs with the shell still on, raw carrots.

Anyway, I’m fine, in varying shades of purple. The lesson here is always wear a helmet when bicycling. I was wearing my helmet and if I hadn’t been I might not be typing this right now, and just think how sad you’d be. Also, eff you U.S. health care system ($1,200 for a CAT scan “just to be sure” on the noggin front? Deductible votes no!) and thank heavens I’m a filthy hippie who knows how to take care of myself (ginger for inflammation; arnica for bruising; loads of B vitamins; hatha yoga to prevent stiffness; small quantities of organic beef for iron; an acupuncture session to hit the reset button). Free advice, there you go, no copay necessary.

* * *

I’ve spent a lot of time lying on the couch, giving myself a crash course in American rom-coms. There is no helmet for that, as far as I know, but there should be. It should’ve been called He’s Just Not That Into You Because You Are a Terrible Movie And He Resents Having His Intelligence Insulted For Two Hours, and 27 Dresses Plus a Free Shotgun For Shooting Your Eyes Out Afterwards.

On the other hand, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People was very good, Kirsten Dunst notwithstanding.

It is nice to have an excuse to lie around and watch movies, even if some of the movies make me angry and my DVD player is held together with Scotch tape.

* * *

Comrade Trying to Schedule Plans: So what’s your deal?
MPS: I’m going to raise commodity prices by establishing a system of “domestic allotments” that will create artificial scarcity conditions
MPS: OH WAIT NO that was FDR’s deal

Gchat: How to lose friends and alienate people.

* * *

Current obsession: traffic islands.

* * *

Fetal joke: Something about the Senate voting down ACORN funding on account of the prostitution video thing and the Senate’s continued funding, via payroll, of David Vitter. (Joke never carried to term. It will not be missed.)

* * *

So what do you think? Brain damage, yes/no?

Hark, a seagull. Or a rat in a seagull costume.

Fun fact: In olden times, banner ads were made out of bricks.

The city of Belfast has strong feelings re: literature, and is not afraid to say so via magnetic poetry on a sidewalk board.

The city of Belfast is also rich in history. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Watch the Frederick Wiseman documentary, if you are interested in a more recent perspective.

Fun fact: Putting elephants atop cinemas is a festive Maine tradition. We switched from gazelles in the mid-1940s.

Here are some guys in makeshift kilts launching a rowboat. Another festive tradition.

Here is why I turn up my nose, literally and metaphorically, at roses from florists.

Maine is not really all that great. The black flies are terrible. The mosquitoes are worse. We got eight feet of snow last winter. I saw a pothole the size of my car just the other day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice for a visit, but you don’t want to leave the city and move here.

Also the natives are shifty.

Very early this morning I decided to take a walk, so I got dressed and headed up the hill and down the gravel path and past the horse pasture and onto the paved road, in what I might’ve termed good spirits if my mind hadn’t been completely blank. For the first mile and a half I was alone with the music and the squirrels and a couple of these birds I’ve seen lately (Kind of heron-like? Storkish? Except brown, and in a field? Ornithologists?), but then I hove over an incline and spotted two people, one about 1/10th of a mile away, and another about 1/10th of a mile past that.

So the first coherent thought I had today was that if these two people and I were standing at 1/10th mi. intervals in another context, an empty airplane hangar, for example, we would have no choice but to ask each other what we were doing and what caused us to be there. But because we were all on this little-trafficked road in the woods in the morning we didn’t feel the need to say anything, we just gave nods of understanding as we passed.

Gent, to Cashier, in a tone of Confidence: That was my ex-wife, y’know. Just left. With that fella.
Cashier, to Gent: Oh re-ally? That planned?
Gent: Whaddya mean?
Cashier: She here cause you were?
Gent: Naw.
Cashier: She say hi?
Meaningful pause.
Gent: Yep.
Cashier: Well then.
Gent: Oh, I mean- she gimme a ride th’other day, so, you know.
Cashier: Okay.
Gent: But I tell you what, she did see me out with a girl, too.
Cashier: Oh, well. There ya go.

¹“Christy’s coffee! It’s just like coffee, except made with sewage!”
²New magazines.

Q: Why isn’t the train coming? What do I do? What’s going on?
A: Deal with it.

Stand responsibly behind the yellow line. Enjoy the gust of wind that presages your train’s arrival; watch the rats and garbage scatter.

No reason to think Ukrainians aren’t self-reliant, but here’s proof.

Am. Lit. Hist., West Village

You may build as many condominiums as you like, but the Giglio will still be paraded through the streets of Williamsburg every summer.

This is the Brooklyn from the novels. I can’t say for sure if it’s real. I do know that the park on the right was named for my relative.

The caption on this painting in Columbus Park reads: “1980. Life in America, my grandfather found, was indeed unknown and unpredictable. Picture unknown.”

Cathedrals of the Financial District.

Belowground, barely distinguishable: the remains of an old Dutch cistern. Aboveground, reflected: Goldman Sachs.

“To Joe! Merry Christmas! I hope we keep in touch more in the future. I am really going to need family on my journey. I love you very much and will always admire you. Have a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year! heart, Audrey.”

…inscription on the back of a painting, garbage can, Clinton Street.

If you ever find yourself hungry in Lennoxville, PQ, be advised that “Jerry’s Special Chicken Sandwich” at Jerry’s, which sits on the right-hand corner just after the beer hall, consists of the following: a processed breaded and fried chicken patty, crackling hot; one slice tomato; two slices iceberg lettuce; three small strips of bacon; and a demure schmear (this is not a word in French Canada, I know) of mayonnaise, all on a sesame bun toasted within an inch of its life. It will cost you $3.95 Canadian and it is delicious.

By that point you’re not far from Sherbrooke, which feels simultaneously like a frontier city and a university town and a manufacturing hub and as far as I can tell is all of the above. The girls outside the convenience stores have restless eyes, they’ve already plotted their escape. If you are from New England the rest of the drive will feel familiar-yet-alien and you will notice that the land looks as if a large hand had lifted Western Maine and tugged its edges, spreading it out, giving the hills more space. The barns lack the distinctive roofs of La Beauce to the east, but the houses are pinker, tidier, giving off an ineffable whiff of something you might be tempted to call European. Depending on your inclinations you may also indulge in the greatest Canadian sport of all (high-speed, competitive driving).

The nice thing about a destination where there isn’t much to do is that there isn’t much to do except stroll one way and then the other, stop for tea, watch people and dogs strolling one way and then the other, repair to your room and read, rinse, repeat. A decade had passed since we last drove through Magog and in the interim things got built up, more shoppes, more traffic. The finished product is a little ode to various mindless pleasures at the northernmost tip of Lac Memphremagog, and therefore it contains elements of Old Orchard Beach: the line of Harleys at the outdoor bar, the bronzed women in denim bustiers, the men with potbellies and blinking cell phones. But everybody was happy because there was no reason not to be.

At the local version of Reny’s I found these wigs, not to mention provincial flags for hand, home, and car; fleur-de-lis beer cozies and pendants; blue-and-white garlands. I laughed even as I recognized the sentiment. Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.

The creaky remnants of my French were a source of great shame, and I sheepishly anglais’d my way through most transactions — knowing words but afraid of how they’d sound — until a late-evening stop at an ice-cream parlor put an arrêt to all that. “Non, pardon,” shrugged the teenager at the counter. Not wanting to fail my traveling companion and her dietary restrictions, then, I managed a rendition of “Do you have anything that’s sugar-free / Oh, good, a sugar-free mocha for her / Yes, one scoop / Thanks.” A man looked up from his strawberry sundae and said “You speak French well,” ahh, sir, but you tell me in English….

We dawdled our way out of town, stopping in the shoppes to buy souvenirs to prove we had been there. Which, I suppose, is the same reason we write books and have children and establish historical societies.

But I want to end at the beginning: a notch in the woods between Us and Them, the fiat geography that people obey and deer disregard. For a moment I thought should turn off the music but Britt was singing she’s never been the places she oughta so I let it play, and then the Canadian guard ambled over to ask how we were and where we were headed and was it business or pleasure? (A hearty chuckle to think there was work to be done in the town on our map.) We had our documents and we handed them over for inspection, official-like. No guns, no knives, no pepper spray? Well who knows, ladies, you might meet a bear. And that was that. Window up, accelerator down, the southern edge of the Laurentian shield ahead, Welcome and Bienvenue.

When it finally came the envelope read With a United States passport the whole world is yours. I am a reasonably articulate person but I cannot even begin to tell you how true this feels.

The shirtless gentlemen conducting business from a rusted LeBaron outside seemed neither to notice nor care, but one should never underestimate the Chez Bump.

The Kennebec Café, named after the Kennebec river, is located in Fairfield (pop. 6,573, mostly blue collar families and the occasional moose) and also serves adjacent Waterville (pop. 15,605, including the 2,000 barefooted students of Colby College).

I can’t remember the last time a moose wandered through downtown Fairfield, though I’m sure it’s happened (we have those Moose Next X Miles signs for a reason). But of all the adjectives I might use to describe Colby* students, ‘barefooted’ would not make the top hundred. It’s damned hard to play beer pong or drive up to the condo at Sugarloaf if you’re not wearing shoes, or boots. Or sandals and socks, in some cases.

Central Maine is a place where Souter-style New England understatement and back-country flannel folksiness come together. Like the other Mainer old salts who line up outside before every 5 a.m. opening and hunch over their coffee and doughnuts until closing, Ann and John are at once the friendliest people you’ve ever met and the most reserved.

Dear heavens. Let us parse. Souter, okay, fine, he’s an exemplary Yankee jurist. But for the love of Bean, is it impossible to write a paragraph about central Maine without falling back on ‘flannel’ as a descriptor? Why is the equally-ubiquitous chamois always overlooked? As for ‘folksiness,’ I can’t even- this is maybe one thing I have in common with Southerners ex. Atlanta, a lifetime of being haunted by this word, this cheap nonsense. Ma and Pa in their dungarees. The ol’ red pickup truck. Haw haw, ayuh. No, ‘folksiness’ isn’t just redaction. At best it’s a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation. At worst it’s a form of calculated dismissal.

And ‘old salts’? If there are any aging sea cap’ns in Kennebec County, an hour or more from the coast and a full two and a half hours from anything that could even remotely be called Down East, well, I haven’t seen them. Perhaps they swam upriver and got disoriented before they could spawn? (I am flashing back, now, to a television report last summer in which a national newsman stood on one of Portland’s piers in his crisp navy windbreaker, describing the scene here ‘Down East’ now that our daily paper is on the rocks. He was only off by 200 miles and a million more.)

In conclusion: I get far too worked up about these things, the Atlantic’s new food blog is an excellent read, and the doughnuts are just as good as they say.

*Full disclosure: I attended Colby for a semester and a half in 1997-98. But I never once walked the campus without shoes.