Reenacting a Scene, or: The Brunch

 

Just about over a year ago, when I made the decision to consent to Cornell’s wooing and move to Ithaca, I wondered what it would be like to live here.  Along with wondering, I had little preconceived settings of what it might be like.  I had a scene in my mind, unsupportedly detailed, the scene which represented What My Social Life Would Be Like, and it was a potluck, people of mixed ages all wearing earth tones, eating curried squash or the like, and talking about wind energy. Also for some reason, in my mind, this was occurring at the little Buffalo Street book store. That’s just how I imagined Ithaca might be.

Because reality is rarely like the churning whimsical creations of the brain, this scene from my imagination hadn’t happened. Until today. Just minus the bookstore.

It was a birthday brunch at an artist’s cooperative space, far enough out of Ithaca that I felt I was on a little journey. 

I love the story of how I became to be at this brunch. Once upon a time this fall, I was out dancing downtown, and with the late-night post-groovin’ munchies, I waited in line (with residual neon green hair from some Halloween function) for some duck-fat fries. A tall woman with short hair caught my eye and her partner reminded me of Peter Watson, bearded and plaid and rugged and I learned later, amazingly, also spent time in Vermont and made cool art creations. Somehow we all ended up chatting; who even knows how this starts, “I like your hair”?, “Amazing fries, huh?”  Some way to reach through the welter of people all strangers and connect with another. We had some good laughs on the same eccentric wavelength and there was such pleasure in connecting with people like this.  

The best part is that the next morning I was waltzing down State St, and happen to notice enthusiastic waves through the window at the State Diner. They were my Miss Tall Shorthair and Mr. Vermont. How wonderfully serendipitous. So I went in and sat with them while they waited for omelets to come out. “How did you possibly see me just walking by?” I asked disbelieving. Oh yeah….green hair.  May have served like one of those irritating flashing beacons atop a lighthouse.

So this brunch was in honor of Mr. Vermont’s 45^th birthday and I was tickled to be invited. We ate eggs baked adorably in a muffin pan, the requisite bacon and mimosas, my massive purple bowl of cinnamon ginger popcorn. “This popcorn has a wear mark in it”, observed Mr. Vermont, as he gestured to the large concave area he’d been scooping from methodically.

We spanned many generations. From a quiet lurking teenager to the hippies gone to seed, the wood worker who had made the beautiful long table we sat around, the table winding naturally with the curves of the wood. I loved being in this old farm house of someone I didn’t know, studying the postcards on the wall (“wait! I’ve also been to that very temple in Cambodia!”), and taking in someone’s kitchen, which is really a window to a soul in some ways. Like the beautiful table, there was a wooden counter top curving naturally with the character of its tree, part knife block as well, all these handles mysteriously protruding from the smooth wood.

I perched on a high chair, another beautifully contoured work of wood, taking in the scene before me reuniting with the one in my imagination. The yellow-grey hippies (one wearing gray camo pants with a grey plaid shirt, all atop crocs) rolled joints and puffed contentedly into the room, people served themselves more hash browns using the machete-recrafted-to-spatula, we swapped snow storm and road trip stories. Sentences starting like, “when I was hiking the Appalachian trail.” We discussed colony collapse disorder and yoga. “Yoga is the gateway drug to The New Age”, said one seeded hippie, making a funny.  “No, yoga is the gateway to gluten intolerance,” said Mr. Vermont and we all laughed.

Amazingly, a statistically unlikely proportion of my friends in Ithaca I met arbitrarily like this. Not introduced through a friend, not met in a class. But random people unconnected, seen at a park or an event, and someone was brave enough to extend a sentence. I have found Ithaca to be a cornucopia of fascinating and engaging and passionate people; people I just itch to be friends with and cannot help being curious about.