I got to take a little walk around Boston.
It was the last day of the week, the last day of work before vacation. The boss said, “Things are quiet enough. You should head off early.”
I was inclined to protest. I still had to wait for the train, so why not work?
But then I saw that there was still some light shining through the margin of the day, and it’s been a while since I’ve done any of my cellphone street photography. So I agreed.
Why not do something fun, for once?
The Wife and I are kind of broken when it comes to fun.
Vacation fun. It’s like, we don’t know how to do it. But it’s fine, because we don’t really have the money for it. Well, maybe we do. But one-week vacation travel is the last thing we want to spend it on. The sort of get there, check in, check off a list of planned experiences then pack up and get back, and hope that all the photographs and memories are worth it vacation sounds like a heck of a lot more work than fun. While any kind of arranged tour, cruise, or bus trip sounds like a prison sentence.
It’s been over a dozen years since we’ve actually gone anyplace together.
While she has taken a couple extended months-long trips to England (pre-Covid) for art and inspiration, I’ve stayed here. Which is fine with me. With little enough time off work and a four-hour commute, the last thing I want to do with free time is travel.
I was overdue for a break, though. Burnt out and running rough. It’s been a couple of years since I took a week off to potter around the house, when the most ambitious thing I wanted to do was drive back into the city for a day and buy this typewriter. Halcyon times!
The April after that, I took a week off to catch up on yard work and house repairs. I’d just got my trees trimmed and brush burned when I learned my mother had been hospitalized. Grateful I had the time for it, I spent the rest of that week in the hospital. Her illness turned into a four month nightmare, which used up the rest of that year’s vacation time (and more) dealing with nursing homes and ugly family drama.
Everything turned out great in the end. (But I was still exhausted.)
This spring’s "vacation" was spent prepping houses for AirBnB rentals – back breaking 14 hour days that had me eager to return to my job, where at least I got a proper lunch break and naps on the train, because my boss is a kinder boss to me than I am.
All of which brings me to this one.
My first proper break in two years.
It was surreal to walk around the city at sunset, knowing there was nothing I had to do for the next nine days.
What a strange feeling, to float around on two feet just lookin’ at stuff.
The city streets are crowded again.
Covid seems a distant memory, another world, which is strange, considering how long it went on.
To be honest I miss the quiet of those days sometimes, especially when I’m worn out from long hours. But they didn’t lend themselves to my brand of photography, which involves shouldering into crowds and taking close-ups with a tiny wide angle lens. It was fun to swim into that human sea again.
What d'ya know, the minute I didn’t have any place that I needed to be, it felt good to be around people.
I headed past Government Center towards the Rose Kennedy Greenway, savoring the sensation of being on the edge of a day, at the threshold of a wide-open week. I walked around what used to be the edge of the city, out towards Long Wharf, on streets that used to be mud flats. (This guy has a fascinating video on the geographical history of Boston.)
I found this outdoor market of fruit and vegetable sellers.
Plus one fishmonger, packed in on a couple of streets near the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
It hadn’t been set up when I got my license renewed back in 2018, but it’s probably just a weekend thing.
What a project, driving in all that produce, setting it all up, taking it all down again, the literal fruits of modern prosperity flowing in and out like the tides.
Old-school pointing, haggling, the basic sign language of “how many?” and “how much?” when it’s too loud to be heard over the din. All this human interaction. The absolute opposite of Doordash or Instacart.
Coming off a shift at my own retail store, I wasn’t in the mood to buy anything. But I was happy to collect a few faces.
(Turns out I stumbled on "one of America’s oldest open air markets," the Haymarket, hence the name of the T station.)
I got a nice view of the sunset through this archway.
I remember seeing this building as a kid, from sitting in traffic on the elevated central artery. Or as a young adult from my own car, trying to get myself to the airport, which was a much harder thing to do in those days.
It’s the sort of landmark you remember always passing by.
How strange to be standing here, I thought, on the ground in this place, now that the old nightmare of a highway is buried underground. How strange that I've worked in this city for six years and have never stood in this place.
Maybe I lack the desire to travel because it feels like there’s too much in my backyard which I haven’t seen yet.
Where am I going with this?
I don’t know. I guess the joy of having a “regular job” (or at least one of the payoffs) is not having to worry too much about whether my writing holds together when I’m in the mood to do a little typing. I can just stare out the window and tap away. It might be an odd thing to do when you find yourself relaxing into the first free time you've had in two years.
But it’s my thing. And I don’t have to worry about selling it.
Anyway, the sun continued to set, the light got redder. It was a Friday afternoon and people were excited about their weekends. I was excited about my week.
I made it to South Station with a few minutes to spare, happy to sink into my evening train-nap after the long walk.
There was a last-minute disappointment/surprise.
The Wife texted to say the guests had canceled. They were going to let our AirBnB through Thanksgiving. It was the last booking of the season.
This is a drag, financially. But the loss still isn't as much as the expense of us actually going somewhere on vacation. And it meant we could move from the cottage back into our house, and enjoy a place that people actually spend money for.
It meant that, sigh, we did have to move a little furniture and rearrange things. But it’s not really work, is it, if it’s at your own pace and alcohol is involved? I soon had my computer and office space set up how I like it for the season, and then I came across this typewriter and thought, “Why not?”
So, here we are. In the middle of something, thinking about edges and margins.
Unless otherwise stated, images are the work of the author, sometimes assisted by a bucket of algorithms he keeps under his desk. Feel free to copy, remix and share images from this post according to the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 4.0 International license.
Camera divider and signature illustration by 
