The Note
Wake.
I’m achy. And…something.
Go downstairs, the house is empty.
Find note:
“How many cups of coffee do you drink? P-nut butter in fridge. Sorry store was out of ground fresh pnut butter. Please lock up when you leave if I am not home & when you come in late : ) Take fruit water melon is cold hydrate take some H2O’s. Be safe Meet kool people. The ones who aren’t record & retreat! cuz Not nice people suck. Think good & it will be good Nina”
The melon is indeed cold.
Bike toward Wilkes-Barre.
Passing sign reads: “NO CRUISING 3 times past this point within 1 hour / 6 times past this point within 3 hours / 8PM to 3AM / MON thru SUN.”
Immediately scan road for cruising cars.
Shabby strip malls and parking lots instead, mostly empty and wasting.
Labor union bridge, like a Roman promenade. A dramatic entrance into downtown.
The view down the Susquehanna is captivating. I linger.
Imposing art deco banks and industry buildings, either empty or rented by Masonic Halls.
Ambiguously sketchy town square with a park and lots of random memorializations. The birthplace of HBO and America’s first jazz festival. I find the latter hard to believe.
One coffee shop and an empty but blaring pub with street-side patio across from a Boscov’s (The Boston Store). I go in the coffee shop. Two stories with seating on a over-hang landing with board games stacked in a corner and wall-to-wall carpeting. End up writing a blog post in under an hour, the words pouring out of me, about how much I have been both hating and missing Boston in just the one day I’ve been gone. De-acculturating. Grieving.
Hot as hell. I love it.
Find myself at an abandoned train station, across an abandoned bottle factory. Both are beautiful and ruined.
There is nothing going on in this town for me. Not my people. They’re somewhere though–an old train sitting in the train station has been painted, not quite graffiti and not quite art, but still an expression.
Return at dusk, go for a run.
Grid of neighborhoods, houses used to belong to the industry magnates, now filled with orthodox jewish families, like Nina’s. I run in circles, passing down the same streets because I can’t tell them apart. For a moment, I fear I am lost. I forgot to mentally track my turns. It feels symbolic, even appropriate.
Come back, I don’t see Nina. She is in her bedroom with the door closed and the t.v. on.
I shower, climb back into the very hard twin bed in my host’s son’s attic bedroom, currently away at college. Bare save his old furniture and a lava lamp. I put the lava lamp on, watch the magenta and orange goo slowly form into large teardrops and globules and ooze their way up and down, up and down.
Before sleeping I write my thoughts down on the day and plan for tomorrow–a trip down a coal mine. I am feeling apathetic. A blank canvas, no personality, a little morose. I am the color grey, like the cracked streets and empty strip malls and expired art deco buildings. I enjoy this darkness that is in me, though. I am reveling in it at this moment, feeling comfortable with the pain and loneliness. It is familiar to me, reminds me of my youth. A non-belonging.
As a grown woman it feels sexy, and I am wearing it with both pride and shame.
I talked to no one all day, and didn’t even try.
I find that morning’s note: “Be safe Meet kool people.”
I did neither.
I didn’t want to.
Originally published at thewayfproject.com on March 9, 2016.
