my daily morning routine (minus thursdays and sundays) with my new job of working in a kitchen consists of: waking up at 5:45am, drinking two cups of coffee, guzzling a bottle of water, eating a banana, bike riding 3.5 miles to the bus stop, catching the route 5 bus, transferring to the route 3 bus and arriving at work at 8am.
on this daily excursion i have come to notice things one notices when doing the same exact task at the same exact time every day. like how when you take a shower, you tend to have some of your most brilliant thoughts that you wish you could invent a waterproof notepad and pen to write all of your genius inventions down... because you don't even have to think about showering after you've done this 8,395 times in your life (if you're twenty three and a half years old, and shower regularly)...thus allowing your mind to relax and mount into a meditative state of dreamlike consciousness.
as when i am half way to the bus stop i tell myself, "i WILL buy ear muffs tomorrow, i know i said i would last week and the week before... but today i swear i will..." i say this almost every morning to myself, even though it's been an average of 80 degree weather, for some reason, the air hitting my ears while riding 16mph gives me an ear ache which turns to a headache and last for about two hours. i am not opposed to wearing ear muffs in august. i am however disgusted buy the word 'muff" and 'ear' in the same sentence.
there are also skunks on the road that have been slaughtered by cars weeks ago and still send an unbelievable aroma 10 feet before approaching and 15 feet after passing by.. and i wonder, how long will it be before they become one with the pavement? or will someone who is supposed to pick up road kill come by to make my bike ride less predictable.. i mean, if not for the humanity of 3 tons of steel hitting an animal, please... surprise me!
on lambert's cove road there are also about a dozen people jogging in the morning...the same people... sometimes wearing the same orange gym shorts. i predict their sneakers are replaced every two weeks. i bet they're not jogging to work. most of these people have gym systems in their mansions during the winter and most likely retired at 25 because they just inherit too much damn money to have the time to work.
these are the same people who are boycotting the proposal to have wind turbines put up in the nantucket sound because (it just won't look the same! the horizon will be ruined... please, we love paying our electricity bill). i want to take the signs they have protesting on their perfectly manicured lawns and shove them up their asses with the carcass of the skunk their driver probably ran over.
i met someone on my daily bus ride. luckily he lives on a road where he can stand right outside of his home and wave the driver down... so while i approach the bus, sweating from the gallon of coffee i drank and wet from the heaping amount of fog that i ride through every morning, i sit down next to my new friend, convinced that the amount of wine i drank the night before is joining the coffee sweat breath as i chat with this cool post office man originally from new orleans, and we sit and chat about the north east, how "white" it is.. how the rich continues to buy out the middle class in all of the beautiful used to be bohemian places and that why oh why if we are so attracted to the culture in NOLA why in hell are we up here on an island that is so stuck up that even the president is vacationing here. oh yes... we revel...katrina! both he and his wife and my girlfriend lost their homes... but we all agreed that it will soon be considered 'home' again.
so it leaves me here... two weeks away from getting out of this nightmare vineyard. it's glorious vast beauty is diminished by the fact that no one wants to REALLY be your friend... unless you hate it for what it has become as well... and that yes, we may be surrounded by fabulous beaches and water... but everything is private... and did i mention that gas cost $1.15 more up here than it does anywhere else in the country.. on average... and the same goes for food. oh... and all of the towns except two are DRY towns... so this means driving a half an hour through anxiety ridden traffic of asshole new yorkers and tennis moms trying to ride a moped all for a glass of wine ---- i wish i smoked herb... god knows this island is one big crop.... vineyard my ass...
Quite a screed. It wasn't all that bad on the Vineyard, was it? I know you had a hard knock toward the end, but that stuff can happen anywhere. The pictures you took this summer capture the island's beauty. The eye you had for that, and the good times, are worth remembering. Cheers.
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