(what I learned in) Boston

Time Travel and Reality

I didn't fully realize that I had left Reality until I had to return to it. Isn't that always the way? Wherever you are sort of feels like it's real until you are forced into something a little more real-- closer to the Real World I've come to dread.

“We should get food at Argus when we get there.”

Thirty thousand feet up, and about three hours away, at least two states between us and the Argus Bar in Madison, Wisconsin, and we were planning our dinner. Four hours earlier, we had eaten lunch in Boston, Massachusetts, at the oldest restaurant in the U.S. Shrimp and oysters that had possibly been caught that day, hauled in from the ocean we had taken pictures of that morning. My hat had floated away with a gust of wind into the Harbor two days before. In three hours, we would be 1100 miles away from that place, back at home.

Before we left, the boys kept talking to me about time travel, and I did not understand. Louis C.K. has a bit about this amazing feat of air travel, and I didn't quite get his amazement. Not quite.

Not until I did it. And, holy shit, they were all right. In a few hours, I went from vacation to the Real World, an incredible distance for both the body and the soul, and a damn fine feat for the human mind and human existence to achieve.

It struck me at that point in the air, planning dinner a thousand miles away from lunch, embarking on a 25-hour day, chasing the sun toward a Wisconsin evening after a Massachusetts afternoon. I had hardly felt the distance between Wisconsin and the East coast; you hardly experience it flying tens of thousands of miles over the land, peering down occasionally at specks of life that are not at all recognizable as the sort of life you know.

I went to Boston because I was ready to start seeing the world. Wisconsin is amazing, but I am ready to see the rest of everything now. One night in December, I told Stefan that I hadn't been outside of the state since I was twelve, and I hadn't been inside an airport since I was eight. We left the bar, and he drove me to Dane County Regional at three a.m. We were prepared to leave town that night if the world was prepared to facilitate it. Unfortunately, there was no flight headed anywhere on this Sunday morning until six a.m., and we were too tired and too drunk to wait three hours for an impulsive trip to somewhere in the Midwest. We decided to postpone our trip, which, incidentally, gave us the opportunity to plan it a little bit.

“Where have you not been yet?” I asked him.

“Boston,” he answered.

“I'll check my calendar.”

Three weeks later, we were packing our bags at the Hart Compound and preparing to catch a bus to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee.

The buzz of travel is exhilarating, but these boys all looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. I was high on this incredible satisfaction, contentment, this lust for life which had culminated into an overwhelming, all-consuming, completely pervasive emotional drive to live.

“I envy your excitement,” Adam said, apparently having lost the wonder years ago after one too many road trips across Kentucky.

I don't think even Kentucky could take away my wonder.

At the airport about an hour, we ate a shitty meal and drank Milwaukee's own Alterra coffees. Out of nowhere, we heard a huge cheer on all sides of the food court from groups of strangers gathered at the few TVs. Packers versus the Bears, and the Packers had just scored a touchdown with a few minutes left in the game, which meant they'd win and make it to the playoffs. Such excitement from everyone around! It was touching to see groups of strangers in their travels come together for a moment with Wisconsin spirit.

It was sunny and warm for January. We were seated near the emergency exits on the plane, which afforded us twice as much leg room as the other Coach passengers, and Google Chrome offered us free wireless for our flight. It was a fantastic day to start to see the world.

Pulling off of the runway was just as exciting and beautiful as I had imagined it would be-- which is not incredibly either of those but a little bit of each. It was slower than I imagined, which gave me time to watch the airport, then the city, then Lake Michigan and Wisconsin's shore disappear below us. Leaving the ground for the first time is a little bit magical; you can feel the plane lift off and take to the air and cease its reliance on the earth below, and then you are simply gliding through the air at a speed you can't even feel from inside the machine.

After the second day in Boston, I was thinking about moving there. The trip quickly solidified a desire to live on the East Coast for some time, to experience living everywhere, reminded me that I will need to break free and be a transient artist, experience the world everywhere. The entire time I was there, I loved Boston. I loved its transportation and its people and its sights. I ate in the restaurants and shopped in the stores and saw the markets and walked through the rush hour.

The city's population seemed young, and every place felt safe, which reminded me of home and put me well at ease. In contrast to the people, the city itself is very olde, and everything is absolutely beautiful. All of the buildings are olde and huge and majestic, with such character and style that nothing has anymore. The streets and sidewalks are periodically paved with olde bricks, which can't stand the climate at all. They are all torn up, crooked, uneven, and unfixed. This city felt warm to me, exciting, welcoming.

Boston Public Library

Chinatown

Fenway Park

Granary Burial Ground

Clam Chowdah

Harvard Yard

 Boston Harbor

The "T" subway

Now I have returned home, a step back toward Reality, but somewhat comforted by the memories of the trip and the plans that have formed in my mind to leave this place once again to see the next.

My mind is exhausted by the business of Reality. I would prefer to travel and write stories, move through time and space without a thought. I want to eat and drink in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and Bordeaux, pay every tab with a thousand words. In the Real World, I have to instead deal with money, work, divorce, love, school, still trying to write and to live.

I am inspired, though, by my first taste of Life outside of Reality. I am ready to leave this Real World, to no longer toil over its concerns. Money is not real, and love is not real, and school is a creation of the system I reject, and work exists only to move money around. I can experience love in my own way; I can make art instead of work, in this life of my own creation, without the Real World that does nothing but drag me down. I am ready to live in this artists' life, time travel, see the world and record it, live where nothing exists but to Write and to Live.

-The Editor