When we are in poor neighborhoods

or just those that are run down, this sung phrase enters my head, "on the pulse side of town". Or maybe its not "pulse" but "polse". Either way makes little sense to me.

The aquarium

will have no fish in it, just aquatic plants: different types of seaweed and aquatic moss (is there aquatic moss? must be). The water, however, should remain clear so that the plants are visible. Mossy, but murk-free. There won't just be one such aquarium, but lots of them, all over the house.

(This draws inspiration from the original Solaris movie.)

In an article in the New Yorker I read a while ago, this Japanese animator was being quite misanthropic, looking forward to an end of all people, so that wild grasses could take over our habitations.

When I was in Wales

I hitchhiked 13 times or so in one long weekend. I still have the notebook somewhere, listing each of the drivers and their characteristics. They were all united in none actually being from Wales originally, all had settled from other parts of England.

One man was a vermaculturist, a worm farmer. When he pulled up I thought I was about to be run over. Another man was a lobster farmer (he actually gave two of the 13 rides), and there was a couple who offered a place to spend the night (an offer politely declined). The last few rides were really not in Wales, but transport back to London because the trains were on strike: A virginal truck driver, and then a strange upper-classy man who was living in France but commented that he was proud of his Britishness.

One day you'll discover

a room in your house that you never knew was there. You've lived there for years, or maybe your whole life. But the house has its secrets, and one is this room that you somehow never noticed. It might be entered only through a door that's in the back of a large closet, just like entering Narnia. Or maybe it'll be a secret attic, and you never noticed the hatchway, or who knows where else it will appear.

What do you do in the room now that you've found it? Is it for decorating and fixing up? Or is there something in the room that you discover, and so it links the new room to unusual events?

Revisiting

the past seems to occupy lots of these posts, so much of this is based on memory, but I keep thinking that I will forget which things I've written about, and then continue to mention things that I've already said before.

Put differently, I'm afraid that in noting down my memories I'll forget which I've already remembered, and remember them too many times.

Same thing with thoughts -- will I carelessly keep repeating the same thoughts from month to month?

After we entered

that hotel in downtown Boston -- the one with the giant clock -- we found that the first floor or two was taken up with some sort of exhibit, I don't remember of what. On the second floor of the museum and exhibit there was a narrow staircase , and we began ascending it, up and up, and at some point we knew that our goal would be to go to the very top. It took a long time, and towards the end instead of a door every two flights of stairs, we had to go up four or so, to see the next door. Finally the stairs ended and there was just the final door. Would it open? It did. We were looking into someone's apartment, or really that person's hotel room. I think that's what it was. There was a large window, looking out onto Boston skyline, and the Miami Vice sountrack was playing. Was there the slight sound of movement? Maybe not, but we dashed down and down and down and out.

That was the same day as a number of other things I think: The parking garage with flowers emblemizing each underground parking layer (e.g. a rose is level A, the lilly is level B). And sort-of crashing SteerRoast at MIT, and my friend's melancholy about it.

I sense

a canoe in the future, or some sort of rowboat in my future.

There was a guy I knew who was into Kayak competitions. His challenges were acrobatic, like getting one tip of the kayak to go into the water with the opposite tip pointed straight up into the sky, and then spinning the kayak in cricles -- could this really be true?

The sort of boating I want to do is slow and steady, like rowing to go a long way, an equivalent to walking all day. Living next to water might help.

When I asked

the British guy I briefly talked about his favorite aspect of travelling he admitted that it was the process of getting from one place to another, like the process of arranging the train tickets and then taking the train to the new destination. An odd and honest answer.

We were in Manali. I think I only talked to him that one time. He was sort of boring in disposition, but had interesting background information -- fluent in Chinese, had travelled in China. We were waiting for the Glacier to melt so we could head out of Manali and into Ladakh. I'd been there too long, and I gather he had too.

Asian Supermarkets

are by far the best because the necessity of shopping for food is transformed into an adventure with unexpected possibilities. Most staples are available (though cheese can be a problem) but in addition to these are endless strange items to look at, perhaps buy, perhaps taste. There can be a feeling of adventure and the unknown -- feelings so rare these days that most people watch television to come by them -- and all while shopping for food.

The subways of Washington DC

provide evidence that science fiction is now lagging behind current times.

This pilgrimage has no destination

The route is not known in advance. I don't even know when we begin. But we will start at Finch and Yonge in Toronto. Better start around this time of year, or even earlier, just as the Winter ends. Set out on foot, and follow those giant electricity towers. Probably best to follow them West, not East, because they'll probably go on for furthe, but I don't know how far out they go.

It's a giant dog

Trip to Montreal in my early 20s. Went with close friends who were a couple, we stayed in this cheap place and shared a room. Midnight walk one night to this 24 hour bagel bakery. I think this happened that night.

We saw this huge dog walking in the night by itself. You don't see that a lot, dogs usually aren't that large, dogs are usually on leashes. There was something terrifying about the thought of this gigantic creature alone by itself in the Montreal night.

I think each of us said one part of the three part utterance:

Its a giant dog

and its all alone

oh my god.

The children found an injured bird

and brought it home. It was strange and exotic, not of some species native to the area. Nobody had ever seen anything like it in pictures or on TV either. But the bird was a mess. It was covered with dirt and mud. It had twigs and bits of root stuck to it, and small stones. Through all this, some long colorful feathers could be seen, but most were bent and broken.

The children wanted to keep the bird, and their parents eventually agreed, but they wanted to clean it up first. They tried washing off the mud, but it was almost sticky, like some sort of tar. So they trimmed off the soiled feathers, and removed those that were broken. It took hours, but finally the grime was gone, as were all the long colorful feathers. Some short ones remained though and the bird was clean, but now it didn't look so strange or rare, and the children wondered why they had bothered to bring it home.

Route 27

Whenever we go walking along Route 27 there is always the knowledge (especially where there is no sidewalk and we are just walking along the side of the road with the cars whizzing by) that at any moment we will come upon the half rotted carcass of a roadkill deer. This has happened before. We walk along and see the carcass, and there is no way to avoid it because the cars are in the street, and it is just about in our path, and so we walk by, trying not to look at it (or smell it), and keep going. There are other kinds of roadkill, smaller animals, like the flattened rats that always try to get under my feet when we are walking.

Route 27 will probably be one of my strongest (and fondest) New Jersey memories, once we leave.

The guy on NJ transit

basically forced us into conversation. At first I was hesitant -- I didn't want to discuss the minor complaints he had against the train system. I like the train system, I wasn't in the mood to complain. Everytime I tried to exit the conversation, he found a way to continue it.

So we continued talking to him and soon the topic shifted. Which American cities, he wanted to know, did we think were World Class Cities. We each suggested a few, and he added Atlanta, digressing on the history of the Commodores and Lionel Richie. Did he think we knew anything about the Commodores? Well now I know they did "Night Shift".