I find that I'm not in the mood to say much about yesterday's drive to Providence and back. I've getting to know that route as well as the road between Birmingham and Atlanta. We left Woodstock at 10:45 a.m., and we got back about 10 p.m. The Hudson at the Castleton Bridge is frozen even harder than when we last crossed it, back on February 19th. Somewhere in the Berkshires, we saw a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) soaring above the Mass Pike. It's only the second time in my life I've seen one. Providence is almost as bad as it was in late February. Traffic was nearly at a standstill everywhere. Mountains of filthy snow and ice. Drivers who showed not the slightest evidence of caring about their safety or anyone else's. A desolation of human being and automobiles, steel and glass and frost. Kathryn and I are both done with winter in northeastern cities. Never again.
Kathryn's mom says Rhode Island has had more snow this year than the average annual snowfall in Anchorage, Alaska – by fifteen inches.
At the post office box, there was a package from Buenos Aires, a cardboard tube containing the painting by Santiago Caruso that served as the cover for La Joven Ahogada, the Spanish edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. A friend (who shall be named later on, in some future entry) bought it for me, and Santiago shipped it more than five thousand miles to me. Thank you both.
I have a few photos from yesterday, which are far more interesting than me trying to write about yesterday:
The cabin in Woodstock, just before we left for Providence. View to the north.
The woods just to the east of the cabin, view towards Overlook Mountain.
Our street in Providence, as the sun begins to set.
Stale Hell 2015.
Back on I-90, nightfall. 6:34 p.m.
The package.
Sunrise, this morning, from the window by the desk where I write. 7:20 a.m.
All photographs Copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan
---
When we head back home to stay, late in March (after all the dentistry is finished), I'll be meeting with the curator for American and British literary and popular culture collections at the John Hay Library, Brown University. S.T. Joshi has helped me arrange for the Hay to take my papers, and there are many boxes that have to be sorted through, boxes of manuscripts and files and correspondence. Old journals. Notebooks. Part of me is reluctant to let go of it all, but it will be infinitely safer at the Hay than with me.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast