See Me Now

I walked on the Boulevard yesterday, the central avenue of our little town.  It is the street of shops, now serving chic desires where once it provided the goods that people in a small town need.  When I first moved here, there was a five and dime store, a family owned clothing store, a small ice cream shop, a movie theater, plus a Morrison's Cafeteria and a small grocery store a few blocks away.  You had to know where the Morrison's was because there were no big signs.  You used to be able to park near the place you were going easily.  All that has changed.

Now there is a Pottery Barn and a Restoration Hardware, and a Gap.  There is a Starbuck's coffee and a new, hip hamburger chain the name of which I can't remember.  Once, nobody who didn't live here really knew how to get here.  Now it is as if the cruise ships are docking here.  All this has made my town more recession proof than other places, and property values are once again on the rise.  It is the place where I have my studio, and though it is on the "wrong side of the tracks," the neighborhood is undergoing gentrification.  There are few good restaurants in the big city and megalopolis that surrounds us, but there are now a few places where you can get more interesting food here.

My neighbors are all well-off, and I am lucky to have had some foresight in buying houses.  Lucky for a factory foreman.  I must remember that.  I must begin to take some advantage of it once again.

I think that this morning as the federal government once again imposes its unreasonable and commercial will upon us.  I have no desire to screw with the clocks, to try to manipulate the time.  But with the nights coming earlier and darker, the holidays are suddenly upon me.  And once again, I am alone.

I read an article in the New York Times this morning as if by providence.  Holiday travel for singles, something to feed my romantic longings.  My mother is traveling to Prague for Christmas, or so she told me though a revision is that she will be back just before.  I shall tell her that I had made plans before the revision, perhaps, to be somewhere else for the holidays, too.  Venice?  Istanbul?  Havana?  Those, however, could be expensive emotional disasters.

I simply must be out more, outside in the air and sunlight, exercising and entertaining and taking time to contemplate.  I must be an ambler again.  I need to be idle.  I hope that way lies health and reason. I hold onto the thought that I can undo all the damage I have done, even if I can't come back all the way. The morning breaks nice and blue and pink and cloudless, and I plan on making myself present.  That is all.  I will re-establish my place in the world, or at least establish one somewhere in the vicinity. . . if I can.  It is a direction, and will, perhaps, provide me with some narrative structure here, some scaffolding on which to hang the words and images that have for too long now been attached to the wall with old and yellowed tape that threatens to let go at any moment.

I've always loved the scene in "Bram Stocker's Dracula" where the Count comes to London to find Mina.  He is standing across the street watching her and suddenly says, "See me.  See me now."  That will be my daily mantra.

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