The weather has been pretty nice over the last few days, so I thought I would share a few glimpses of how that all looks.
These are the types of things I spend way too much time thinking about. On Sunday, I was having a lovely dinner when I noticed the chairs at the table next to me were arranged randomly by color.
Immediately, I started to search for a pattern but found none that was readily apparent. There were 13 chairs total – a prime number – with 3 colors of chair: 7 grey, 4 tan and 2 burgundy. If you combine the tan and burgundy you get a 6, 7 sequence, but that’s cheating. 2 and 7 are also prime numbers, but 4 isn’t. 247,274, 472, 427, 742, 724: not prime numbers. 2-4-7 maybe as (2 + 2 = 4; 4 + 3 = 7). To confirm that one I need 1 more chair or 11 more chairs in a nice chartreuse.
But I I was never compelled to run over and re-arrange the chairs to fit a pattern because I was enjoying the challenge too much. I still am. That’s good, right?
As I explained in my last Looking Back post, my birthday trip for 2015 included New York, London and Athens. Today, I thought I would post a few thoughts/observations from my time in Athens.
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I was not expecting the smoking issue here. It seems Greece passed a smoking ban in restaurants in 2010, which was marginally enforced and then abandoned completely during the recession. Now, it is not clear which restaurants follow the law and which don’t. I learned of all of this when, on my first night here, the host was dragging me into the “smoking area.” I felt like I had gone back to North Carolina in the 1980s of my youth. I asked for non-smoking. But is there really any such thing as a non-smoking “section” of any restaurant that allows smoking?
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I’ve enjoyed the food here: it has been high quality and very reasonably priced. But most of the dishes have been familiar and unsurprising until tonight when I had milk pie. Milk pie! Remember it because you will not want to miss it. It’s reminiscent of chess pie and buttermilk pie from the south with a phyllo crust. The filling is somewhere between cheese cake and cooked custard with a honey sweetness. Amazing! I don’t know why I have never seen it on a menu at a Greek restaurant in the US unless it’s because it’s difficult to make. Getting the consistency of the filling just right could be tricky, I imagine.
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Last night while at dinner a 20-something man and woman were seated near me. At first I thought they were on a date, but then I realized he was way too excited to be with her (straight men don’t act like that) and she had that demeanor that says, “I’m glad to be hanging out with you but I know I’m not getting any later so I’m not that thrilled.” It was comfortingly familiar and made me miss my female friends.
It also made me ponder why gay men cling to their female friendships probably more than women cling to gay men. Maybe as women progress in their struggle for their own rights and as straight men respond to that changing dynamic, gay men offer less of a novel perspective. As straight men become more like their gay counterparts in the way that they view what constitutes masculinity, they are much less threatened by those strong women that have most often been the gay community’s greatest allies.
So where does that leave us as gay men? While straight men necessarily have access to that female energy within their romantic relationships, gay men don’t. We have to seek out those friendships with women that are crucial, I think, to having a balanced and healthy emotional life.
Despite all those heavy thoughts, as I left dinner and the conversation at the nearby table regarding life, work, and boyfriends, I couldn’t help but smile.
When I arrived in Dublin last summer, the weather was as nice as it gets and I spent hours at a time exploring on foot. I was walking around south of Ballsbridge when I encountered the below scene of a Grey Heron crossing the Dodder River (one of the 3 main rivers in Dublin).
I think the term Irish weather should really be one of those place-based terms that stand for something else, like Boston marriage or Stockholm syndrome. It would have to signal something pretty awful though, “I know that shrapnel wound is excruciatingly painful but at least it’s not Irish weather.”
When I returned from Japan late last month, I was treated, within half an hour, to sun followed by the gathering of dark clouds, a hale storm, heavy rain, and then sun again. That cycle occurred on three other days as well. I keep waiting for the frogs and locusts. Luckily, I don’t have a first-born.
I’ve heard that June is nice, but the implication in that observation is that only June is nice. But, over the last week or so, things have been sunny, bright, clear and CHILLY. I’ll try to be more like the Irish and just forge ahead with an optimistic outlook that nice weather is imminent, even when it isn’t.
Here’s a pic I took earlier in the week during a trip to London. The weather was quite nice so folks took to their boats in this canal near Mile End.
I wrote this in February of last year but didn’t publish it. I love looking back on impressions from past trips because there is so much that is forgotten with the passage of time, like ennui and burning pizza!
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Two years since my last post. That sounds like a long time in the abstract, but is it really when lived? Two years ago I had gotten back from a less than satisfying trip to New Orleans because of interference from work. I’ve always prided myself on being able to travel unencumbered with professional pressures; yet, my last trip to NOLA in February of 2013 changed all that. I’ve since realized that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become subject to the same petty but persistent demands – experienced by most – of the paying gig. Since then, I’ve traveled for work, which has to be to most cruel punishment of all created by Beelzebub to torture the lover of travel. I’ve also gone home for the holidays and had a couple of short trips.
But now, I’m on the last week of a true vacation. No work. No work email. For three weeks. I’m living like a European.
So why do I feel so unsatisfied? I’m in Athens. I spent five days in New York. I went to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show for the first time, which was as much fun as I expected. Yay, doggies! And then five days in London.
I do feel like I’ve spent most of my time willing myself to relax and disconnect. Why don’t I feel it? Have I built up this trip so much through anticipation that it has inevitably disappointed? I feel like I’m working at relaxing. What has happened to me? Where has the real me gone?
I have moved around more than I had planned. I caught a cold at the end of the New York portion so stayed in a hotel for the first couple of days in London (rather than subjecting friends to nasty, American germs). I’m now in my second hotel in Athens because my first was hosting kids who have never stayed in a hotel before and wanted to stay up all night slamming doors and burning pizza – the fire alarm went off at 4 a.m. Isn’t the first time without adult supervision magical – for you but not for everyone else? And it was expensive. And not in central Athens.
So now I have a view of the Acropolis and have a non-rainy day tomorrow. If the gods smile, I’ll be able to avoid tourists and enjoy the marvels of ancient Greece in relative peace. I’m still waiting to completely relax. Maybe I just haven’t had enough Ouzo yet. Now there’s a worthy goal.
Samuel Beckett Bridge over the Liffey on a chilly night last month.
I took this on the recent trip to Japan. It’s nearing the end of the short cherry blossom season, but there were still plenty around. I snapped this quickly, which gave the photo, I think, a painterly quality.
Cherry Blossoms in Nagano
I’m adding a new sort of (hopefully) daily feature. Pic of the Day. This one is from Herbert Park near my house here in Dublin. It’s a good sign of Spring, which I’m still waiting to arrive.
Herbert Park Flowers