catching up: boston --> upstate new york --> cleveland

we started heading west today, and it feels so good! with under three weeks to go before we make it back to the bay, we still have 11 more places we'll be sleeping in before then. i'm currently writing from a motel in cleveland, ohio, where eli and i are gratefully crashing after a VERY stimulating cleveland cavaliers playoff game we attended. i know, we're a long ways off from the woods.

and now...
a recap of the past two weeks!

boston was hard and beautiful and heart-achey for me! eli was sick the whole time we were there, like, entirely out of commission, which was a big bummer for many reasons. i'm so grateful we have the resources and support to have taken the space we need (which in this case looked like a private airbnb in my old neighborhood) for eli to rest and for both of us to take refuge.

so to follow up my last post, i ended up slowing down in an unforeseen and forced way, but still managed to see many loved ones, friends, and special places i've missed since leaving for the bay in january 2014. it felt good to be in boston in that it's familiar and i feel pretty constantly nostalgic for it, but i also felt pretty raw and like i was really grieving what was my home there (specifically, "the fort," the collective house i used to live in). housing has been really unstable for me since moving to the bay -- i've lived in four different situations in just over two years, and am gearing up to figure out what the next one is. and being in boston now, i was able to experience visceral memories of what it felt like to turn the corner and look up and see my house and feel like i was really coming home. and how it's not my home anymore, and nor do i wish it was... but how deeply i crave being in the right space to lay down some roots and stay a while.

i've found home in so many of the amorphous senses, and am so fortunate in that regard. but, i am really hoping to find a geographic location to call home in a more permanent sense sooner rather than later.

Jamaica Pond, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston where I used to live

 

anyway, i cried a lot in boston, and i cried a lot driving out of boston, and it was good, you know? and as soon as we were on our way outta massachusetts, eli started finally feeling better, and that was good too.

after boston, we spent almost a whole week in upstate new york, mostly in a tiny town called millerton. we spent time between several retreat centers, farms, and land projects i'll let eli share, and  additionally had lots of fun endeavors and adventures with friends including but not limited to:

• me and margot (one of our hosts) spontaneously starting a band called TREYFE: having band practice on a sunny wooded trail, and even having a delightful and ridiculously fun "concert" with our three year old friend lev guesting on the xylaphone
• watching beyonce music videos in a giant bathtub, i mean hello.
•  a sort of failed but still really fun water balloon "fight" (before we get back to the drought, you know?)
• watching "the jungle book" at the drive in movie theater in adin's (another host) new/old bright blue pickup truck!

there was lots more, but again, i'll let eli share their thoughts and reflections on the different projects we had the opportunity to visit.

the treyfe "concert" (recordings to come! really!)

finally, we spent a night in niagra falls, which honestly and somewhat confusingly was one of the most depressing places i think i've ever been. the falls themselves are so beautiful, and i was warned that the surrounding area was a huge tourist trap... but i think i was picturing, like, a tacky gift shop (something i secretly love). and what is actually there is so much more intense -- planet hollywoods on top of hard rock cafes on top of arcades on top of "dinosaur adventure golf" on top of like, five wax museums. like if fisherman's wharf and the jersey shore and times square had a baby, and it barfed up all that plus a colonial nation-state border. it's just kind of amazing/terrible how something so intrinsically beautiful and incredible could be exploited and profiteered to such an extreme. anyyyyway... i don't think eli and i were the target audience for all that. but, we rode the ferris wheel, and felt the mist of horseshoe falls on our faces, and that was nice.

the wackness of niagra falls. we did get to walk to canada (pictured here) and back without a hitch, pretty wild (but unsurprising) compared to our border patrol experience in texas...

!!!!!!!!!

tomorrow, we head to chicago! and all that jazz...

til next time,
xo freddie