We briefly contemplated the purchase of a new road atlas (to replace a dog-eared 1998 Rand McNally North America), but thought the better of it. Instead, we pored over the decade-old atlas at Burlington’s Penny Cluse for brunch and plotted a route forgoing Interstates for more scenic state roads.

Dusty from two years' barn rest

Day one: The Wooden Soldier in Fair Haven, Vermont provided a late-morning snack: coffee/tea and a grilled muffin.

Diner counter at the Wooden Soldier

Woodland art and St. Patty's observance

Day one continued through upstate New York, stopping for lunch in Saratoga Springs. Prefaced by popcorn, our lunch (a burrito fit for  two) came with sweet potato fries served with squirm-inducing sweet raspberry dipping sauce.

Circus themed resto in downtown Saratoga Springs

Near sunset we broke our resolution to stay off the Interstate. The hilly two-lane roads were beginning to make the driver a bit nervous.

A representative stretch

Dinner, day one: an Indian place called Amber in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Thums Up or Limca?

After dinner entertainment: “Bachelor Party” (1984).

Tom Hanks keeps his promises

The afternoon of day two: Virginia’s Skyline Drive, a way-point recommended by our friends Chuck and Darrilyn.

Day three, morning: A breakfast stop in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

From a bridge in White Sulphur Springs

Who could resist a french toast cheddar cheese sandwich?



We walked into the Mason Jar Café feeling voracious at 11:30. A sign on the buffet told us we had missed breakfast. But we were the only ones in the place and a waitress asked what we’d like, so we told her we were looking for breakfast. She said she’d go back and ask the cook what he could do. What did we have in mind? Eggs, toast, potatoes? She disappeared briefly and returned to say it was as good as done.

A mason jar inside the Mason Jar

Breakfast was simple but delicious and extraordinarily friendly. As we polished off our meal, the place started filling up with a lunchtime crowd ordering towering cheeseburgers that tempted us to stick around. We opted instead for some provisions at the Food Lion for a rest-stop feast later in the day.

No photos exist of the twilight arrival in Louisville. After three days of travel through foreign territory, pulling off 64 at the already familiar intersection of Lexington and Grinstead felt unsettling, like booking a room in an Alpine resort and finding yourself inside a scale replica of your childhood bedroom. All that remained of our thousand-mile trip was to navigate the few blocks to our new apartment.

1. This “flash fiction” (or something) site.

2. This singer/loop pedal player. Sis and I saw her perform last summer, opening for a single-monickered Canadian songstress, outdoors on a hill in Vermont. Caught her again last night at Summerstage (and was more than slightly distracted by all the loud talking. It’s free, but does that mean you should shout through the whole show? I kept thinking that just a little closer to the middle and the front, people were actually listening. But every time I edged closer to the stage, I came within range of another loud, irritating conversation. Sheesh.). She’s really something. Catchy and fairly mesmerizing. Surprising and inventive. It’s possible that she might also be a shorty. Next U.S. appearance is in SF, 8/22.

Two things I expect to enjoy:

1. Mr. Dream, playing 7/10 at the Charleston in W’burg. I guess I’ve spent long enough looking at this bar warily from the pizza place across the street.

2. This sci-fi thriller looks promising. Never seen it, myself.

Of course this kind of ambiguity often surfaces in the middle of a story, only to be resolved by the ending (this is the pattern we’re accustomed to as viewers/readers: confusion/doubt/uncertainty contributes to tension, which is eventually relieved by explanation or action and the release of tension). In these cases, I’m really happier with the story up to that point–that is, until the story unambiguously tilts in the direction of one possible meaning, foreclosing its other forking paths. Here I’m thinking particularly of The Third Man, which is beautiful through and through except I always sort of wish that Orson Welles would never show up. Vertigo is another very good example of finely balanced creepiness completely spoiled by an overabundance of dramatic irony–we know too much after the ruse has been revealed in that awful letter-writing scene.

Only a very few stories care to hold onto their multiplicity (among films, there’s Lost Highway, maybe, or L’Avventura, although in the latter film the question of whether the young woman died or ran away simply fades away to nothing as the movie goes on. Hitchcock’s Suspicion, recommended by JH, is one of my favorites of this type, though I think the chilling ambiguity of the final scene is unintentional. Perhaps in Suspicion the delicious ambiguity is created by dramatic irony, because my preferred reading of the situation–that we still don’t know, one way or the other, if her husband is the murderer–is at variance with the main character’s reading–she believes he’s innocent. In literature I suppose Borges is at the root of all this). We’ll also have to distinguish here between the kind of stories I’m describing and stories that wallow in mere randomness for its own sake, or that bluster portentously without getting to any particular point, or whose point is more atmospheric than narrative. Arty movies have a reputation for this kind of thing (Coffee and Cigarettes either mocked this stereotype or confirmed it). But in the stories I’m referring to, something does happen–we just can’t be sure, by the end, exactly what.

Of course, it’s possible in many cases that what I read as ambiguous is a simple roman á clef whose clef I don’t happen to have. I prefer it that way, and in this instance I’ll embrace my ignorance.

A gloomy Gowanus

This week has been a little hard on poor Petty’s self-image: first, a professional comic who came by the workplace ribbed us for having gray hairs and still working for free. Then, at a very tweedy bar under the JMZ tracks, the frontman of a local literarily minded indie-rock outfit that’s been getting some press kneed us in the groinal area.

On the plus side, Rimpletide has been keeping us company. On a recent jaunt through W’burg with Rimps, we spotted this holder of matchbooks:

No Suze for sale

The barmistress had never tried Suze, and indeed the bar didn’t stock it. But I liked this tiny cooler.

We just went outside to find the kind of light you only see when a late-afternoon storm gets it together to leave the house before sundown:

Udders over the West Village

Just last week we learned this kind of cloud formation is called “mammatus” (“udders”), thanks to this new favorite. To us it looks more like stomach lining, but heck. </OVERLITERAL ATMOSPHERIC METAPHORS>

Last night felt grim and nihilistic after a very uneven literary reading hosted by a journal that has grabbed “headlines” “worldwide” for its millenarian cover gimmick (Rimpletide handily deflated our enthusiasm for this gimmick by [correctly, we reckon] diagnosing its essential anti-humanism: “So no one will be alive to read it?”). (“Ooooh, yeah.”)

But we ended the night by launching a new glossy lifestyle/real estate magazine. So things are looking up.

Un Apéritif Élaboré

This ingredient of course put us in mind of Moxie, that queen of Maine restoratives. Moxie contains “gentian root extractives,” whatever that means. And, on reflection, Suze does taste quite a bit like Moxie, especially when mixed with two parts club soda and served over ice. Both Moxie and Suze were born in the 1880s, evidently a good decade for bitter roots. Of note here: the similar burnt-orange color scheme.

Moxie in the can

We’re pretty sure that Suze won’t replace Moxie in our personal pantheon, but it does offer a much more palatable alternative to the lamentable “Moxtini” for sociable drinking. While quaffing, we might pour out a few drops in memory of E.B. White, who wrote from Belgrade, Maine, in a letter to a New York reporter:

It’s cold here in camp but I swim anyway, because the air is so cold it makes the water seem warm. There is a certain serenity here that heals my spirit, and I can still buy Moxie in a tiny super-market six miles away. Moxie contains gentian root, which is the path to the good life. This was known in the second century before Christ, and it is a boon to me today.

Don't fall on your head

Also, it’s fun to get on the Metro after getting used to the MTA system–Montreal’s cars are a lot narrower, making for a more cozy feel. And besides the extraordinary quiet afforded by their rubber tires, the Metro trains  accelerate very, very quickly.

Rubber tires. (Image: Wikipedia)

A bright idea

I know I should stop being surprised by getting pegged like this.

And what a book! I’d read “Canal Street” already but “Someplace in Queens” has already obliterated a story I’ve been working on for a few weeks.

I leaned on the railing of a large, unexplained concrete pool thick with floating trash and watched a sparrow on a soda can do a quick logrolling number to stay on top. No matter what, I could not get out of my mind “D. D. Dong, D.M.D.”

The whole essay is that good. Or better. Buy this book (in hardcover, if you can find it).