BOSTON MADE US HAPPY

The Boston trip was a joy, but already it seems like ancient history. Almost two months have passed and much has passed through my mind. New York tends to take over my life, both physically and mentally. Boston was a great break from the usual, and before all the naysayers come to comment, let me explain why I like it:

I went to college north of Boston, on and off from 1988 to 1994. It was north of Boston about half an hour, an hour by commuter rain train, at a small liberal arts college called Bradford, and many of my weekends were spent trolling around the Back Bay, visiting the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, and sitting in bookstores and cafes of Harvard Square. I had a friend who went to Harvard, who I visited in his rooms, and attended some meals with him in the dining room on Plympton Street. It was interesting to see, as they say, how the other half lives. My college was small, scrappy, and out of the way. Harvard was the center of all things, and Harvard Square a fantastic extension of everything the university is. The Cambridgites and Bostonians are a hardy people, gracious and full of life, and their cities are filled with history, with ideas, and with an essence that is American to a T.

This was a time in my life before I held any of the professional roles that I do now, neither an art writer or curator, and in fact being years from even wanting these occupations. I merely wanted to write, read well and deeply, and engorge myself on a life of empirical pleasure. I liked Boston specifically because it was not New York, and eventually, for its own merits as well. Being a New Yorker is a divine pleasure, but I have discovered that there are joys at not being here. My favorite places tend to be not too far away. Boston is one of them, the Pioneer Valley another.

This trip was my first in nearly five years--and my first travelling with someone I know from New York (someone I am deeply in love with), so it had a redolence that is hard to describe. Alighting in Boston is like coming home again, though it’s a home I am constantly rediscovering; as I become myself, so does it become more a part of me.

Our first evening there, after settling in, we got dressed and went to attend a closing reception for an exhibition at the Pierre Menard Gallery, run by the affable and erudite John Wronski, whose companion is the artist Heide Hatry, an eccentric and brilliant person herself. We enjoyed the last of the reception and had dinner with them at Dedalus Cafe, and a quick ride home so that we cook cheerily collapse.

The second day we spent in Back Bay, starting by getting off the T at Hynes and having lunch at the Trident Cafe and Bookshop on Newbury Street, visiting boutiques, and walking as far as Copley Plaza before sitting and soaking our feet in a fountain. I visited The Raven Bookshop and bought a copy of Camus’ The Rebel and we found a local Starbucks that had cloth benches outside and the most aggressive Sparrows I have ever seen, they were tough enough to fight off pigeons for that last little piece of scone left by somebody’s elbow. Then we walked to the very beginning of Newbury Street, through the Public Gardens, and up Charles Street into Beacon Hill, ending up on a bench facing the Charles River, with the sun making the water shine and dozens of sailboats making figures eights in the basin of the river a hundred feet off shore. We could see all the way back to Massachusetts Avenue where we had started our day.

Photograph by Michele Basora