Going Mobile Friday, August 6, 2010

Lift, yoke, spend: the end result being, I live in Amherst, Massachusetts, now, with most of my stuff. It's a state I have yet to spell correctly on the first try (I always want to squeeze a fifth "s" in there), I am almost totally indifferent to the baseball playing on televisions in this city's many collegiate-style bars, and distances are to be judged by long, dull real estate patches of no public interest at all (I used to say we lived near Emily Dickinson's house until I walked there--now I say that Emily Dickinson's house is the nearest thing of interest to us). All that being said, I feel as if I were renting a patch of paradise. Just past the sliding doors of our kitchen are not just trees but a whole, dense woods from which exotic animals sometimes stumble, brace themselves, and retreat. The birds here have strange calls and sound to my dead, urban ears like amusement devices.

I just bought a bike to get around. It's a small bike, designed to fold in half and then in half again, and it fits well in the space between the bookshelf and the front door. Balancing myself on the thing is like balancing a watermelon on top of a moving pineapple, but when it gets going it's a pure joy. I bought a black helmet embossed with a bright green four-leaf clover. I think it suits me. I'm inclined to wear it on my head at all times, even at dinner. The bike will assist me in getting to the area's many record shops and bookstores, where I will attempt not to spend my dwindling resources. About which, more later.