thoughts from places is a vlogbrothers series in which one person makes a video describing a place when they visit. he talks about his ideas, memories, and well, thoughts. it exists as a 4 minute capsule of a time and place. i don't like photos or voice recordings of myself being on the internet, so blogging it is. the original iteration of this project was to collect fabric from each of these places to make a quilt of everywhere i went in my 20s.
places:
i figured i should retroactively make entries about the places i went after i turned 20. this trip was delayed cause of covid. i took the lake shore limited the evening before i had a day off, and then back on a sunday. it was my first time ever on an intercity train! i collected my little baggage tags and got to sit in the comfy seat and i think i just watched the countryside go by until it got dark. someone sat next to me at worcester and i asked but he didn't have a mask. i fell in and out of sleep the entire way there. got picked up from the station and went to my friend's house. it was a short trip, i arrived on a thursday and left on a sunday. got elderberry honey at a farmers market, went grocery shopping, accompanied someone to get ears pierced. it was a nice baby step into the newfound freedom of, oh shit i can go places.
fabric: i didn't remember, but some was given to me later by the friend i visited. green.
this trip was weird and scary. it was my first time flying alone, and i also didn't tell people i was gone. the hotel had no free internet, and so i woke up at like 5am local time every day to get in my daily dicking around on tumblr. seattle is beautiful, but kinda smelly. it's rainy and wasn't too too cold when i went. i love the way neon lights reflect on rainy streets. that's something that my home climate doesn't really have. i met up with two internet friends. i've always wanted to go to olympia national park. i think the pnw has a lot of natural beauty (banana slugs!!) that i didn't get to see due to the nature of the visit. one night i ducked into a bookstore out of the rain, and stumbled into the jahrzeit of someone very near and dear to the people running the place. i don't know what compelled me to stay, other than maybe the spirit of whimsy and momentary companionship on the other side of the continent. i listened to poetry and was introduced to the beautiful world of klezmer music and sang l'internationale. then i dropped off my postcards and went to sleep. i still don't know who got them.
fabric: had the project idea after i left. asked a friend who visited seattle to bring some back but they forgot as well.
after years and years, i finally had a passport! ditched class to make my spring break a little longer. took a greyhound up. two kids playing french minecraft pocket edition (is it still called that?) in front of me
fabric: i didn't remember, but some was given to me later by the friend i visited. pink with unicorns on it.
what a beautiful place. holy fuck what a beautiful place. the people i met were so cool and the work they do is fascinating. i want to make a positive cultural impact like they do. history and culture and race are intertwined and very complicated. i got.. Looks. and glares. a handful of times. i guess that's on me for walking through a parking lot after dusk with a hoodie and a mask. i got more into inaturalist here, over 150 observations, and i have so many observations of passerines now. there's so much to say. how can i ever describe over a month of getting to know a place. i woke up. i walked to breakfast. i walked to class. i had tea. i had some more class. walked to lunch. walked to class. walked to the beach. walked to dinner. walked to my dorm. walked to the cattle grid. then back to my dorm. even though this was the daily formula it was switched up and we went on ferries and buses and hikes and what a place. we learned folk music and barn dances and at the end we all went on a midnight walk to the cattle grid in the rain and caught toads.
i flew into london in the end of may, broke my glasses on a double decker bus (will never look at them the same, though i do play this up for the bit), took the caledonian sleeper with a friend up to inverness, went to two eyeglass shops and called another and called two jewelers and went to a silversmith who was able to solder my glasses for 40 gbp. im still wearing the same frames. on the way back home i took scotrail from inverness to edinburgh waverly, then lner from edinburgh waverly to kings cross. youth railpass ftw.
fabric: the store in the city was closed by the time i made it there, had to leave the city the next morning so no chance. i bought blue wool on skye.
took the lake shore limited again in between my summer classes. got picked up in albany instead of sdy just cause it was quicker than waiting for the train to link and start moving again. makes me want to make the trip the rest of the way to chicago. saw a friend, and friends of that friend. it's like a mycelial network except we're, yknow, human beings. i remember sitting at a state park on a bench watching the light drift through the trees and talking about ourselves and our lives.
fabric: forgot
downeaster? i hardly know 'er! this is not funny but i will keep saying it. maine is gorgeous. almost missed the train up though, thanks popeyes. it's a shame tha the time it takes is comparable to driving (2.5hrs driving vs 3hrs train), especially compared to how quickly lner took me from edb to kgx (7hrs driving vs 4hrs by train). but anyways. portland's got a cute bus system and cute downtown and BOATS. i love boats have i mentioned that i love being on a ferry. still haven't managed to find sea salt ice cream, btw. the islands are incredible i just sat on the beach and read becky chambers books until it was time to take the ferry back. i wish the trip had been longer, but hotels are expensive.
fabric: actually remembered for once. white with blue fish on it.
hitched a ride on the way up, then took a rented car to vt and then a bus from vt back down. it's the city! got there and then immediately took the rem. i was here for 12 days and took the rem 6 more times. i wonder what it looks like out the window during a snowstorm, must be gorgeous. met a lot of people that i only met in passing or on twitter! it was cool and fun. dyed my hair blue. loved getting to take my time in a place. i went stargazing, though the angle was kinda bad. the car ride was what i really remembered. i fainted on a bus. that was,, an experience that i had. loved seeing people. made some promises to stay penpals though i didn't think it worked out. i got a fountain pen! nota bene fountain pen guy, you are the coolest person on this planet.
fabric: the fabric store was closed. gdi.
it's a new year. im sweaty and horizontal and i haven't done much of anything. maybe this year will be the year of making a website. this year is the year of graduating university and leaving behind the people i've met and it's like i've finally found a place here and it will now all go away. this is the year of having to find a job in a world that is big and scary and beautiful. i don't know how to feel about any of it other than distraught and anguished. there are a lot of big and complicated things going on in this world. i have it better than some people, and worse than others. this is an unproductive way at looking at myself. gonna walk around the neighborhood and reminisce. another year ahead.
fabric: been picking away at the jeans i've been trying to mend over the last year
it's still surprising that i've found myself here, as if i have i haven't actively been planning to be here. maybe it's because of that. hardship makes friends out of strangers or whatever, because i ended up befriending three different people in the confusion of the train being replaced by a bus, but my next train was so smooth that no conversation was necessary. it's nice to be helpful, and it's nice to comiserate. when a retiree grumbles in complaint, hitting them with a "so true" and a "this reminds me of..." seems to be a failsafe combo. i did a stopover at my friend's in the capital region (ny), and it's always nice to give her a visit and catch up. big sleepover vibes. some kids were loudly watching miraculous ladybug in my train car, chat noir's french va is so damn distinctive. currently sitting in the cat cafe in verdun once more, tummy hurts (coffee hubris).
fabric: there's still a chance!
first. i'm sitting in a branch of the public library, after having asked for reccomendations for places with pretty views that are most importantly free. we're all subdued, this city has been waves of delightful and tiring. not sure if every place is like this, or toronto has a particular miasma about it. had one of the best restaurant experiences on a road with a fake sounding name. my shoulders always hurt when i have to carry a bag.
later. walking around a greenhouse. with turtles. i love that poems in passage exists, but i can't find where to reread seed cycle by martin gomes.
later. on the drive back. the night is dark but the car is warm with good vibes (good friends & good music). the feeling of the car on the highway is soporific. until we hit a rest stop.
fabric: way too quick
the world goes silent for a moment one incredible moment, and then the beach erupts into cheers. like, i can't believe we thought it was dark two minutes ago, back when the first round of cheering started (like a certain demographic when a plane lands). at least then we could see the sunbeams through the clouds. everything looks ethereal, like falling into an oil painting. back before the dramatic flash sunset making it orange and purple. but now? the strange refraction makes the entire sky into desaturated waves of blue, the lake lies completely still. the world inverted.
we laugh and take pictures, excitedly pace kicking up sand, and just watch the clouds play with the corona. and crack open some cheerwines. the spiky white corona things of note: it got cold enough to need to get our jackets between T1 and T2, so we walked past the crickets that thought it was dusk. other things of note: the birds fell silent.
and we pause, silent and contemplating. isn't this the coolest fucking thing in the world? the miracle of the sun being 400x further than the moon, and the moon being 400x smaller than the sun, and the axial tilt of the earth aligning just so? later, i sob in relief that i lived long enough to witness it.
a cacophony of seagulls break the spell, alerting us to the first baily's bead and the sunlight's return.
fabric: nope
i am so tired. maybe too many changes too quickly for my body, but i have crashed and burned. every morning i want to sleep all day, or at least sit and watch tv all day. instead i end up pushing myself to do things i will probably like. it worked alright, so clearly,
driving is exhausting, has anyone thought of this? there should be some sort of vehicle that takes you from where you are to where you want to be with someone else driving. it would be more fuel efficient because anyone who needs that route would be able to come along. has anyone done this before? i've drank more than i have any other time of my life (those two activities did not overlap, to any inebriated heavy machinery operation fans out there). 2am ticket to ride was nice.
a nest to fly back to
right okay so i didn't spend that much time outside or seeing things this go around, that's... fine. this time i was the one driving up and down, and i've got to be honest, i liked it better than taking the greyhound but not as much as taking the train. it also meant that i was able to lend a car out whenever people needed one. we attempted a metro speedrun, but didn't complete it, but it was still fun keeping track of the splits in my notepad. anyways, at the top of mount royal i was thinking about people, and how very few people will get to change the mountain-view of the city, the city planners and architects don't make up the majority. and yet, you walk under the bridges and see "2 + 2 = 5 ?" and "FART" and "FREE PALESTINE" and actually everyone DOES get a chance to shape their city. and someone had the idea to build a staircase up mount royal to protect the soil and plants and people built the stone outcropping to view the city and the st-laurent from. and traditions are built by people too so everyone sunrising the mountain after an all-nighter influences the next person to sunrise the mountain and . well. unrelatedly, it's a bit funny that for what was ostensibly a writchal meetup we never actually got around to any writing together or doing the in person author swap week (the whole point of moving authorswap to the first week of july rather than the typical last week of june). the days went by too fast, and that's just what happens when people are stressed and there are too many and there's too much going on.
this is maybe not the first time i've seen the milky way but the time i've been convinced that i was seeing it. it wasn't supposed to be good cause the bortle scale & the city but i got lucky and the clouds r clear n ollie's walked out to the ocean despite warning me about the water and turned invisble. one of those moments where my thoughts r racing too much to enjoy the sights or turn it into smth poetic. not v awe inspiring cuz im mostly just anxious. the salt-rot fog consumes yum. (when is it guano?)
NYC is fun and pretty! was v damp. The bus wasn't too crowded, just late enough that I had to wait in NYC. The windows on this train car are too damn dirty to see any scenery. central Library is gorgeous. oasis. stressful and tiring day!! And I couldn't even see out the long beach train window to calm down. a weekend is so little time to spend here :( was overstimulated, watched some olympics but had a great time playing jackbox!! So eepy.
impulse trip spurred by alice, . i straight up didn't want to do it until the night before. but turns out an impulse trip to nyc is wicked easy. you just drive while solving an optimization problem (driving time and traffic vs metro north parking fee) and once youre done with that back of the napkin calculus you hop on a train. it's so wacky wild that sometimes the trains just turn off and rolllll like lol we slidin. ANYWAYS. weird small cool music in weird small cool venues. women in purple lighting >>>> . earplugs are so cool i love NOT getting hearing damage. good times and horribly embarrassing myself in front of friends :) chillin on da trainnn :D then chillin on da drive home :DD
i felt so small and insignificant and cosmically wrong when i looked up at the stars. and out on the ocean. i never understood what it felt like to look at the stars in terror, not awe, until now. went to the beach the next morning and was totally fine and normal.