🍰✨

After our marathon cheer squad dispersed, I decided to walk aimlessly around Greenpoint. I was a bit overdressed for the weather but buoyed by all the joy and encouragement in the air. Laughing out loud at the line outside of Radio Bakery (I’ll never have the patience to wait for a concord-grape pannacotta croissant, will I?) I noticed from across the street a cherry-red, Fiat-looking car slow to a stop, then reverse into a parking spot. The color caught my eye, but seeing that the driver was on the right-hand side of the car made me look again.

The car wasn’t a Fiat—the make wasn’t recognizable except for not quite being of this time or place. I crossed the street to try and glimpse a logo on the trunk. There wasn’t one. I swung around the front, scanning the car with my peripherals, but the lettering on the hood was too small for me to read. I hoped that the driver, a guy with thick glasses, curly hair, and dark scruff, would immediately exit the car and walk away, but he stayed idling with the right-side driver door open. He eventually got out and spent a long time pulling equipment out of the backseat. I paced the sidewalk, went into another coffee shop, and crossed the street twice more, waiting. I was having a tough time. I wanted so badly to approach and simply ask, “Hey, what kind of car is that? I’ve never seen one around here with the driver’s seat on the right side.” But I was unable to. I knew I would regret not pushing through my shyness, and I do.

This entire situation was activating me in a strange way. I notice a benign, out-of-the-ordinary thing, am curious about it, and find myself wholly unable to approach the person who could explain it to me. Somehow, cheering and laughing with strangers on the sidelines at the marathon, just a block away, is possible, but not this. What a bizarre strain of social anxiety I seem to possess.

Finally, the driver grabbed his amp, wires, and zippered Zildjian bag, slammed the door, key-locked the car, and began walking toward the marathoners on McGuinness Blvd. I watched him for a long time—he didn’t look back.

The car is a Nissan Be-1. According to the internet, it’s a “notchback” sedan from 1987, exclusively marketed in Japan.

A cool thing happened at my alma mater in… 1990?

Ireland Part I: The Bookish Baddie Takes Dublin

On the most beautiful October day in Boston’s recorded history, Hannah and Michael got married. I read a poem at the ceremony and danced to Chappell Roan at the reception.

The day after (another stunning day), I walked up and down Boylston Street for about five hours, just shopping, browsing, and watching the sailboat race on one side of the bridge and the Head of the Charles on the other.

Then I went to the airport and caught my red-eye flight to Ireland.

“We are just complicated animals.”

Spent Friday night at the Met with a colleague-turned-confidante. We circled the rooftop and galleries discussing art, travel, Eastern religion, and matters of the heart.

le-corbustier