A Lobster's Paradise

Yesterday, I had to beat back fantasies of running away immediately for the Maine coast. I could feel my fingers tighten around the steering wheel as my brain uncontrollably calculated just how long it would take me to drive there from Detroit.

When we lived in New Hampshire, we went to York, Maine, every week from April to October. Though the bookend months were bitterly cold on the water, we went anyway with our sandy blanket, our packed lunch, our books for reading and our beach togs. We would make our way out to the farthest end of Long Beach and stake our claim to a parcel of soggy sand where we would complete several cycles of sleeping and eating and splashing in the frigid waters before packing it into the car, sun-soaked and thick-headed, for home.

There are moments, fairly frequent moments, when I am dissatisfied with my life and it is in those fleeting seconds (or minutes) of contemplation when the urge to run strikes me. Stress can be a trigger, shame and the perception of failure. Also, a warm day with autumn in the air can bring it on, or an accent in someone's voice as they pass. A movie can do it or a book.

In the case of yesterday, it was having just finished Diary by Chuck Palahniuk and then emerging into a crisp, cool day that suggested fall was right around the corner. Thinking of New England island life because of the book and remembering with bittersweet enthusiasm the leaves turning, I just wanted to go home. I kept wondering, bewildered for an afternoon, what I was doing here, where I thought I was going. Ancestral voices chided me for venturing so far from my birthplace, for clutching at the world, for looking for happiness anywhere else.

I am desperate to go back, if even for a day.

Read more after the jump.

Chicago for a day

Last Saturday, a fashion friend and I went to Chicago for an apparel tradeshow. Though we had been in May to the area, we didn't venture into the city, and so the trip was rife with reminiscence. When we were in school, we frequently made trips to the city for concerts or weekend get-aways and so I gleefully pointed out the spots where we used to park near the House of Blues or the train stop where Nicole and I fought so bitterly. I could remember, if I closed my eyes for just a moment, the sights and sounds of the metropolis to the hungry eyes and ears of a nineteen year old girl.

Free from our tradeshow hours earlier than expected, Michael and I wandered through Wicker Park. My memory wanted desperately to visit Clark & Belmont where we spent so very much of our time hanging out on street corners and shopping for clothing but the indulgence of my young adult recollections was not on the agenda that afternoon. Perhaps it was for the best that we were in a part of the city I'd never visited so that the past wasn't waiting behind every corner to slow us down.

Chicago's vitality and real-city feel made me realize just how isolated and small Detroit really is. There are no tree-lined neighborhoods with boutiques and coffee shops and restaurants, there is no respite from the relentless parade of destitution and dereliction, the streets are not full of life and energy. In the city, at least. But there was Chicago behaving like a city should, land-locked and lonely between the two coasts but doing its best to mimic.

Detroit, to its credit, is unique in that way, recognizing immediately that it is never going to be a New York or a San Francisco, and being comfortable with that difference, proud of it almost. Here it is, the crumbling symbol of the death of industry, of resistance to change, and it still sticks its chest out as though those were badges of merit.

I can't say that either is a better place, each serves its purpose, but every now and again I think we might have benefited from all that Chicago has to offer. Just every once in a while when I allow myself to become ungrateful for the gifts Detroit so willingly offered up.

Read more after the jump.