To Parody or Not To Parody?

So many of you do such fantastic posts when it comes to documenting your travels–Millicent at Different Dirt and walternatives come immediately to mind–that I hesitate to post about my WOEFUL trip to the east coast last week. I fear some of you may assume it to be an attempt at parody…which, unfortunately, it is not.

It was All Too Real.

I was set to do a poetry reading at a local university on Long Island as one of the writers in their Visiting Writers Series. I actually signed the contract to do this well over a year ago, like in November of 2005 or something, when I was really pretty excited about it.

Times change. People change. Sometimes, in the meantime, people might even decide to adopt a Waiting Child from China who is almost 19-months-old and has a nickname like The Bee, and can I just say that the desire to read from a stack of year-old poems to an audience of college students who only half care what you might be talking about decreases in direct proportion to how badly you want to meet that daughter and how close you might be to getting to doing so? Er, yeah.

But obligations are obligations. And, in general, I enjoy readings. I was just really hoping I wasn’t socked in to either JFK or O’Hare (had to come down in Chicago on the return leg) in the midst of some blinding blizzard, which y’all seem to be picking up in rapid succession in the latter days of the winter this year.

One of the last things that R. says to me as he drops me off curbside at the airport is “take lots of pictures…I want to see what the east looks like these days.”

Well, okay. But here’s the thing: I was on the ground on Long Island a grand total of 16 hours, and nine of those I spent in bed. I actually don’t often sleep nine hours, and this trip was no exception. But I wound up with a hotel room without heat, and so I spent an inordinate amount of time curled up under the covers, trying to stay warm. And, no, I didn’t demand to switch rooms, as inconceivable as that sounds. When I arrived in my room, I just figured that the frigid temps were the result of it being unoccupied, so I ratcheted up the thermostat to 85 degrees, unpacked all my stuff–even hung the next day’s clothes neatly in the closet and laid out all the toiletries I would need in the morning, when nerves might get the best of me–and went down to the lobby to have dinner before the kitchen closed.

When I came back up to the room, it was stubbornly consistent in its deep freeze. In fact, COLD air was pouring out of the vent, so I just shut the “heat” off completely. It was 11 o’clock at night, I was totally unpacked, and I needed to be up early on east coast time (two hours ahead of where my body was). So, I decided to make the best of it. I put on a turtleneck underneath the jammies and then my overcoat on over that and wore those, plus my gloves, to bed. It felt a little like winter camping, except that the mattress was quite nice.

In the morning, I remembered what R. had asked me to do, and I managed to snap a few shots out the windows. Here are my travel photographs to share with you all:

Now, I realize these aren’t the sort of thing you’ve come to expect from other travelblogs. No gargoyles, Georgian architecture, statuary, or even a cornice to behold. Nary a single sheep in a pastoral landscape to feast your eyes on, although I must admit to just missing the little flock of Canada geese that winged by as I opened the curtains. Hope that suffices, cause that’s all I got.

I had breakfast with the faculty committee at 9:00 AM, my reading was at 11:00 AM, and by 12:05 PM, I was in a limo on my way back to JFK for the long haul home.

Oh, except for this:

When I stumbled exhausted through my front door at midnight that night, my big dog Spot thought it necessary to show me how much I was missed. I was bending over, greeting the other little dogs, and his skullcap met my cheekbone, and I literally dropped to the floor it was so painful. This is the next morning’s fallout. Shiner, doggie-style.