Oooof, I got hit with an attack of Sudden Onset Bitterness, which this time around I'm treating as an occupational hazard for whatever my "career" "actually" "is" (walking around and bumping into people I know). All you can really do (all I can do anyway, unfortunately), is treat it with grace, wait for the edges to soften, and try to zoom in on certain details.

It's Strawberry Picking Season

They tell you at the pick your own strawberries place that you have to wash the strawberries before you eat them and I feel like this is true but as a control technique to keep people from eating fresh strawberries in the field, I gotta say Ya Right. This might work on the rabble but not on elite wanderers like me. I ate a lot right there in the field, I'm an incorruptable menace.

The strawberry field has a beach-like quality, in that it's a treeless outdoor summertime area in which you spend a lot of time close to the ground. Sonically this manifests as a shocking lack of echo, combined with the low frequency roll-off inherent in faraway cries of mostly joy. A sound thrown out over the field by a child to land nearby without a bounce. There's also a smell of hay, which is strewn in the path to keep weeds at bay. Straw and strawberries are not related botanically or even socially, the commonality is that both are strewn about-- the straw is strewn and the berries are too, just scattered indelicately on the ground. That's fine for straw but it seems insane for something so precious as a strawberry. The straw lends the field a bready smell, which mixes with the berry smell to produce a heavenly fragrance of sun-warm sandwich. Or like a car parked in the sun, with a jelly sandwich on the dash, wafting out right when you open the door. If you told me "so-and-so smells like a jelly sandwich" I'd probably place that information in the derogatory column, but at the same time if I ever met someone that smelled like a strawberry field, I'd probably follow them around forever. Same smell.

Unprofessional Strawberry

You guys are probably waiting on tenterhooks for my Bloomsday report but after a few days of writing I have to say that it's not going to be that type of thing. One thing I will say though, and this is a lick that James Joyce never hit (exactly), is that after lunch at the Pickle Barrel and a heavy old mug of their delightfully weak coffee, me and Ali walked to Mike's old boss's house and ate strawberries off the front lawn. "I just grow the ones in front for the squirrels" said the man, days before, bragging about the strawberries in the back lot. Ali told him "well the squirrels [points to self] really appreciate it!". What's crazy is that being allowed to eat them with the dignity granted to wild animals really inspired our humanity-- we each only had 3 or 4 and left the rest for the next guy. They were so tiny but also incredibly powerful. Soft, sweet, and so flavorful that I cried out in the street, like a bird yelling AHHHHH FUCK YOU GUYS to everything that isn't, in that moment, the bird itself. Or like Diana says after the key change on "I Hear A Symphony": "I cry not for myself / but for those who've never felt the joy we've felt". Not to undermine the appreciation of the professional strawberry, which is good, but this amateur model was probably the best cubic centimeter of food I've ever had in my entire life.

One More From The Tower

OK, I'll say one more thing about Bloomsday. I was excited to do Bloomsday in Worcester because I could start the same way Ulysses starts, chapter one, a tower. Just up the street from the house I grew up in is this classic folly, Bancroft Tower--

You can't go inside anymore, it's been chained shut for my entire life. Of course I've had a few different methods of gaining entry over the years, but they've since patched up those vulnerabilities and I haven't put in the work to figure out a new one. But I sat behind it and read for a little bit, which was pleasant, and then just as I started to think "what now", a small group of kids and teachers showed up waving foam swords (the kids) and clutching clipboards (the teachers) on some kind of field day or year-end event. I thought for sure the teachers would be bugged out that I was lurking in the shadow of a cold castle in monster mode, or the kids would be like "there's a weird man here". But no one cared. That I was doing my own thing was obvious and anyway the kids were on some type of scavenger hunt so they had a mission objective that probably elided any low-hanging fears. Plus they were emboldened by the narrative power of a sword. One of them came up to me straight up and asked if I've seen any rubies or gold rings. I really wish I had a riddle prepared, or that I said what was in my heart-- little bro, everything I see is a ruby or a gold ring. Instead I said no, which was true, but probably sounded like a lie, which I liked. Walking away I saw some gold foil that had been cut into stars but it seemed unrelated to the children's quest, it was too far down the road. Then there was a discarded aqua blue pocketbook with items spilling out of it, but I didn't want to get too close because it seemed like a trap. Maybe I should've checked? But on the other hand I did have a really lovely day. That happened last Tuesday, the 16th, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

links / misc

• The Supremes "I Hear A Symphony" [YouTube, 00:02:44]. It doesn't get much better than this but I does get at least this good.
• more songs about music: Beach Boys "I Can Hear Music" [YouTube 00:02:28]. Carl is so sweet and lovely on this I can't stand it!!!!
• my artists residency program has been really nice lately, apply if you're in the area (of Providence RI), or you're planning a visit! It only takes 90 minutes or so. It costs $250 but there's a scholarship available which brings costs to the artists down to zero. We've given out over $30,000 in scholarships, at a 100% success rate-- what other arts nonprofit can boast such stats? [rf5.org/residency/]. Previous residents are welcome to apply for the alumni program. I'm available for arts non-profit panels and I'm honestly great at that sort of thing, I'm both pleasant and disruptive, and my speaking fees are competitive with my peers.
• I didn't get this post up on the website by my self-imposed deadline of 11am Tuesday, but last week I did complete my goal of hitting that deadline 10 weeks in a row. As a result I don't have to pay Greg Harvester $200, which was a penalty I created without Greg's knowledge or consent, because I knew he'd hate that. And I am able to get the reward I had established for myself-- a yellow and black rugby shirt, which I've wanted for years but put off getting because it's hard for me to buy things at full price. Sadly David Hockney passed away last week, he was a big reason why I wanted one of these shirts (also GeGeGe No Kitaro, and cartoonist Will Laren). I don't know if I can get one now, it feels like cosplay. And it's still kind of a lot of money for me right now, I'm still in austerity mode :( RIP to England's cutest painter.

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