I'm back from Baltimore now. I spent the $63.75 on an Acela express ticket to Philly, subsidized with $25 from Gary Timin, in recompense for vagueries planning that meant I would likely miss the earlier cheaper train; travel options on a Sunday night are quite limited. And the next SEPTA to Swarthmore after I arrived at 30th Street at 9:40 was the 11:26, so I decided just to take a taxi here. It's only money after all. All roommates are here, as is Matt, whom I've not seen in a while. Food and alcohol are tempting, but I've eaten so much this weekend that I may cut myself off after this piece of mochi. It was a muted departure and only now, listening to and then nothing turned itself inside-out, a perfect happy-sad late-night album, does the emotion creep back in.

Emotions muted all weekend, by a stream of fabricated locales, backseats and public restrooms, generic experiences, polite detachedness, suburbia, a distant world from the one we left on Friday. Emotions gradually drain out after an initial burst; after inadequate sleep, last-minute conclusion paper-delayed start time, narrowly missed trains, misplaced credit card, it was all too much and Alyssa was in tears in the train station. The harrowing descent into the surreal reality: dream-like chance encounter with Tim S-W; crowded standing-room train sitdown standup to let people by; a boy fingering air guitar; taximan takes us for a ride but we arrive in Towson safely, more than eight hours after intended start time. Meet the parents. Mom (Carole) is terrifically warm, down-to-earth, plainly brilliant in a personable way; a intellectual without overt ties to academia, of the sort that makes me hopeful and happy; she reminds me (in appearance and otherwise) of Alex Omo and Nora Schey. Dad (Gary) matter-of-fact, bespectacled, is also extemely likable, if only slightly less so because of the way I find myself beginning to speak like him when I'm around - he makes frequent pithy, meticulous, detached, slightly sarcastic comments, often seemingly for his own benefit, which can come off as blasé and mildly huffy as well as considerably playful. Not particularly representative, but this stuck with me: "one may make the practical arrangements more easily than the emotional ones." I wasn't around long enough to really warm up to him, I think, but we had a good rapport going. G-ma (Laura) Jane is also plenty welcoming, reminds me more of Betts than of Delia (on the Grandma scale). Ken, her husband of fifteen years, suffers a severe hearing deficit that often relegates him to a Selsdon-Mowbray-esque comic relief role in family proceedings (one memorable moment in the mall after Carole had suggested we split into two groups: "maybe we should split into two groups," pitch perfect Selsdon or M. Smart); a frustrating state of being no doubt, but he seems to put a smiling face on it. He would periodically turn to me with quips like: "bet you didn't expect Baltimore could come up with such a wild bunch!" or "did they tell you about the oddball who married into the family?"

These four met us at Ken and Jane's Towson "Ivy Hall luxury apartment," the last private (that is, non-public) place we would see for a while. Even so, it had the same fabricated feel (immaculate retiree neatness, knick-knacks and afghans, Anne Murray on the stereo) as the string of suburban spaces that followed in the next two days: first the local mall, a veritable community center, home of the Italian Garden (eggplant/chicken parmigiana), then the Marriot Hunt Valley Inn (McCabe-esque handrails and cafeteria breakfast), BWI airport (to pick up shock-haired brother Alex, oddly reminiscent of mine, with a sort of constant surprised sunday comics expression and quick to chuckle and rib about working out with me), a highway-side cemetary (the graves of Maj. Milton J. Timin, with a star of david, and aunt Gay, with the puzzling epitaph "for those who love time is not"), Arundel Mills mall for lunch at Fuzio (pad thai and feta-tomato-basil focaccia, not half bad for mall food) and a stroll through the "neighborhoods," a cineplex for Spiderman (really enjoyable, exactly what I'd hoped for, with comfortingly predictable/smirkworthy conspicuous product placement/gratuitous wet tank top/patriotic Sept.11th bits; also a bit of nostalgia for me from my Marvel card days), Chi-Chis (mexican springrolls and quesadilla…), and Patrick's (a stripmall "fancy" restaurant, for the culminating lunch - um, see next sentence) - two long days of eating and sitting, in changing-but-identical suburban settings, interspersed with driving along the wooded highways of Maryland. So Patricks - we had the bizarre back room, an amalgam of decorating styles with hunting and bird sketches, military photos, porcelain gnomes, "hidden passageway" wood paneling, huge stained-glass ceiling light, and bookshelf wallpaper. A luncheon in honor of Gary and Carole's 25th, but no vegetarian options on the three-item menu; I had a surprisingly tasty shrimp salad platter (cole slaw, pasta salad, fruits and veggies) rather than filet mignon or chicken for (effectively) breakfast. There were about sixteen people there, including several distant relations that Alyssa had never met. So I didn't make great efforts to be sociable, just a few mild conversations about college/post-college. It was brilliant outside
(after delicious almond/lemon cream cake rolls) in the parking lot, lingertalking before we piled back in for a long drive into the city for the Walters, which has about tripled in size since I've been there. It's now much more the pma/mfa mold of big city art museum, rather than the quaint little gallery that Meredith and I saw about all of in an afternoon. A and I wandered through some assorted medieval and renaissance galleries, but hung out mostly in the Asian section - Thai buddhas, Chinese "pillows," Japanese ink paintings and ceramics, and especially tons of tiny intricate Japanese figurines and sword-hilt-pieces of amusing scenes "child frightened by mask" "snail on mushrooms" "rat eating fish head" "man fooled by dog-witch dressed as a woman of the court" "rabbit churning butter in the moon." Best of all were some incredibly evocative monochromatic paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi, a Danish artist whose works were somehow featured in an Impressionism exhibit, mostly of vacant interiors, occasionally populated with solitary contemplative figures - reminded Alyssa of Vermeer and me of Chris van Allsburg. Look at this "Four Rooms, Interior from
the Artist's Home." The Walters, of course, is directly adjacent to Peabody, the Washington Monument, that Indian place, the Meredith gallery, and all of these places I spent time at with Meredith, seems so long ago now. And so as we drove past them, strong emotional resonance - maybe I should have contacted her about meeting up this weekend, but I thought it would be a hassle + not to mention weird. As it turned out, maybe it would have worked; we could have met for dinner and avoided this silly business with the trains (albeit forgone the final meal, grandkids at grandmas, of canned tomato soup, mac+cheese, ice cream and cookies), which meant that cousin Jenny (mid-20s, loud and gregarious, very much a family member - she was the most enthusiastic proponent of a roomswitch subterfuge under-the-parents-noses that meant that Alyssa and I could watch Silence of the Lambs in solitude, for the price of a lazy morning switchback) did the awfully nice favor of driving me back in to the train station - another Meredith memory zone. I notice that she's back on the faculty list at HCSMF&I, so maybe I'll send her a birthday note there. That would be nice.

SO: a fine weekend, unemotional, only a brief chance to discuss "summer expectations" (seeing other people - sure, why not), plenty of fun in between snide glances at the suburban establishment, the as I said surreal reality. We left every restaurant full and irritated, and Alyssa thinks that's a fitting description for white America.

the hours will get you
the owls will get you
when I was a swear-word
the hours were shotguns