2003-05-27 - 12:24 AM
My stomach is full of butterflies and I am picking off my nail polish, thinking about getting on a plane tommorow. Not so much the flight as where it will take me- a place I don't know but keep reading about, keep listening to the Smiths so I can almost picture grey skies and old streets and "centre" and not "center". I have matching luggage now- the sure sign of being an 'adult"- a suitcase on wheels seems right for me, despite the yuppie aesthetic.
Today I went to the Bannan Republic store (and just the name makes me cringe) to exchange some shirts my sister got for me for a different size. I was so disoriented by the store I spent twenty minutes wandering around, touching clothing and shaking my head at the price tag. Why so much new stuff? Why so many shoppers (mostly young women my age) walking by me with piles of clothes to buy? Do they do this every season? I am adding up the 100's of dollars in my head. Identitical blonde salesclerks help me with my exchange. I feel so disoriented- this quaint New England town constructed for conspicuous consumption. I guess it feels different in New York- because it is all around me and so I can try to avoid it, consciously avoid it. To drive, in a car, to a place just for shopping (even if it is a town's main street) is some kind of upper middle class vacation ritual here that makes me so uncomfortable and disoriented. I tell the story to my friend Noella and she reminds me that just down the street there is an Abercrombie and Fitch in an old library.
But today was also one of those beautiful "adventures close to home " days- Dugan showed me a secret (and open to the public) garden in the middle of the city (of Portland, Maine), behind the house that used to be Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's. The bookmobile (check out www.mobilivre.org for more info) was in town and Noella, Dugan and I spent hours reading books and zines. And I found a copy of New Order "Ceremony" on vinyl for $3 finally. A good day to remember as I head off into a new unknown.
