New Paltz

Sitting on the floor of Kon Tiki in New Paltz, all felt right with the world. All was not, in fact, right. The longest job I've ever help was still ending too soon. I was still mentally ill -- though more sunlight does tend to ameliorate this. I am growing inexorably older on a dying planet in what I hope to be the tail-end of a pandemic (we were here only because Amber was getting her second Pfizer shot nearby). But it felt nice in a way that things haven't since the bonfire in the fall.

My relationship with New Paltz has always been a dicey one. While I was a commuter student at the college, I felt rejected by this town that warmly embraced its residential students. Years after graduation, when I lived in a village that was barely worth noting, at a boarding school that treated me like an indentured servant, in a relationship turned septic, New Paltz became a respite under the guidance of Dan Kessler. Countless facets of the town were at his fingertips and which he thought nothing of offering to me. I loved him, and I loved the city. It was my rescue from a tailspin.

Smelling the incense, listening to the girls gossiping with the sole woman working, sorting through a box of assorted stickers for ones that would suit my altar items box, things clicked. I felt filled by the day in a way I had not been by most preceding it.

I try not to dwell too long in nostalgia -- the past is a country from which I have been exiled -- and I don't think that is what I am feeling. Since the pandemic hit, anything the strikes me as usual or a step toward it fills me with a curious joy, particularly when it involves contact with strangers. Though we are masked and remain so through the day until returning to my car, shopping here is reminiscent of the Before Times. I ask the woman working how much a lingam the size of a finger joint would be, and she tells me to take it. This small gift charges me, more so when she keeps discounting the items that we bring to her counter. Again, it is a matter of a few dollars, but I find it delightful. I wonder what I have done to warrant such treatment. In my black mask, I suspect that I look less charming. Perhaps she is just friendly and indifferent to a matter of a few dollars. I think this until she gives us a Kon Tiki tote bag with the proviso that I must hold it with the label out. That pushed her generosity into suspicious territory. Though, given how it bolsters my happiness, I don't care to question it much.

As I walk the streets, I comment on how much of the town has changed. The club where I had my first date with Amber -- where I enjoyed many 80s Nights dancing with Jess and Rosemary -- has been an empty nothing for years. It would not have survived COVID anyway. The coffee shop is a restaurant. The record store -- a mainstay for decades -- is brightly lit and now seems to be an organic Bath & Body Works. The town I explored with Dan Kessler, the one I felt rejected me when I was its student, sloughs off and changes to suit the new population.

There is a dearth of places that hold the potential of happiness for me inherently. I can never relinquish that New Paltz served as a setting for my first real night with Amber. It is no surprise that I would grant it some favor for that. Daniel, too, first appeared in my life from a random party in this town, two of the most influential people in my life. I can pinpoint less savory memories, encountering people who did my life no favors, but I weigh them less. The memories are here, and they are not.

I don't know that I will ever recalibrate to a social paradigm like the one I knew before the pandemic. I used to feel that I had to play the activity planner for my herd of beloved introverts, but they are few. It had been well-proven to Amber that I can survive on little outside contact if I am not given to believe that there are potentially memories awaiting me and if kept busy, which my articles for Grunge tend to do.

The world is slow to wake again, as perhaps it should be. There are no concerts I am missing, no dinners out, no parties. Going into a few shops is enough to delight me. There will, no doubt, come a time when I am inured to these more subtle pleasures, when fuller of other company, exhausted by the multitude of social events. I look back at how spoiled I was of options, such that my frustration was that I could not do them all. I cannot imagine that fear of missing out now, the country having missed a whole year, one that will stain us going forward. I look toward my August vacation -- which should happen with as much normality as possible, barring some disaster still unforeseen. Dan privately reassured me that, evidence mounting to the contrary, his family will not be abandoning New York before it.

Now that the weather is apt to permit this better, I will endeavor to hew from the blankness of the calendar opportunities to make such contented -- and comparatively humbly -- memories.

We may do something for Amber's birthday. I doubt a trip, as she intends to work full time to make up for two of her coworkers on maternity leave, which gives her the means but not time to enjoy herself. I have work enough with overdue books and constant articles for Grunge to keep me occupied. Also, though Amber's presence has been a component of many of my best memories, I can enjoy myself on my own.

My hope is not unfounded that there will be semblance enough of the world before that there will be bonfires and picnics.

Soon in Xenology: A new job.

last watched: Invincible
reading: Radium Girls