I may have started in Ithaca, where I now call home, and I may have arrived in Rochester, where I've been stamping around since I was a child. But riding a bus there made me feel the fresh edge of the travel, as if I were almost across seas and unable to speak the language. Just me and a backpack, observing the world, eating figs from my pocket. The power of associations, huh!
Waiting for the bus in the cold, I wore my Grannie's long dark furry coat (this coat my new prized possession, we think it may be as old as my father, my last name stitched into the lining), like a portable nest that fits on my body, and my bah-sheep ear-flap hat. A young man looked at me pointedly and asked me something I couldn't understand. He clarified and I realized I was just asked if I were Russian, in Russian. "Thought maybe you could have been one of my relatives from Russia" he said, a little abashed, but this tickled me so much that we both laughed pleasedly over it. For me, little exchanges like this are just one of the perks of not having a car.
I got off the bus among the tall buildings and cold blowing trash of Rochester, and walked the few blocks to that fortuitous coffee shop, where the most remarkable four leaf clover and stolen bike story was staged (see the entry dated July 5th or 6th, 2014), and amazingly on the way there found two four leaf clovers. There'd been a little abandoned plot of land that someone had thoughtfully covercropped with clovers, and I thought, how brilliant it would be to find a four-leaf clover there. I usually don't find them when I fervently want one, they show up more readily when I'm a little mellowed out, but I still wished I could. And with no further ado I found two immediately and carried them to the coffee shop and gave one to Mr Barrista who remembered me, and he smelled the clover in a sweet display as if it were a flower, and wouldn't let me pay for my cappuccino. A cappuccino so light and perfectly amalgamated, lofty foam entwined with buttery espresso.
It was the first time in a long time I had walked into a coffee shop and knew no one. That doesn't happen much anymore in Ithaca, even though I've only been there 9 months now.
I met my mother for a ramble about the public market and was squealing over persimmons ($3 EACH in the Ithaca Weggies, but here $2.50 for 5) and buying zatar and soon hefting around no small load to import back into the pricey land of Ithaca.
The traditional Italian cheese shop was one of my favorites; I could almost pretend I was not in America anymore. All the cheeses were unceremoniously set out on the counter--who needs refrigeration--and the lack of prices and sufficient labels was like being back in a hut shop somewhere foreign. I had no idea how to engage with these cheeses, or how to even begin to choose a cheese. So I asked, hopefully, "What's your stinkiest cheese?", and was taken on a fascinating tour of four different types, little flaccid white slabs passed to me by an eager gloved hand. The first was like eating a soft foot fresh from a muggy work boot, with an Italian name I was all good intentions to remember but have since forgotten; the third was the winner...a nose of fresh grass, a little lemony somehow at first, then ending in rich bitter bliss.
The rest of the weekend was being ferried around in the cars of old friends I love dearly, people who have known me over half my life, going from concert to house party, farm house sleepover to cookie making project, cookie party to Thai food dinner....the weekend warming and woven together by food and friends.
What wonder that the magic of travel and feeling somewhere freshly could be combined with the comforting standard of old friends.
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