Road Trip

My weekend plans fell through unexpectedly and I found myself with a free weekend and a strong desire to get out of Maine.  I threw some things in a bag and some dogfood in a tupperware container and blazed west.  I find myself today in Saratoga Springs, New York -- a peculiar town if I've ever seen one.  It is like Newport, RI, only with horses instead of boats.  And the streets are wider.

I am staying in a fleabag motel around the corner from Yaddo, where a friend of mine is doing an artist's residency.  My motel is right across the street from one of the training rings and this morning the dog and I walked past all of these thoroughbred horses running along on their white taped ankles.  Horses are lovely mysterious creatures, each with an entourage of handlers and riders and drivers.  A cop was stopping traffic to let the horses cross the street.  You could see all the muscles in their anatomy rippling and pulling under their glossy brown coats. 

Last night there was a fun but bizarre little party for one of the resident artists who was leaving.  We convened in the long, empty white studio space assigned to one of the visual artists, with nothing in it but a couple of tables and chairs and a big vase of stargazer lilies.  My friend and I arrived first, with gin and tonic and limes and rum and tequila and coke.  We sat and talked to the visual artist, a charismatic 50s ish black man who kept talking about how overdramatic the writers at the colony are.  His iPod was hooked up to some small speakers and playing Miles Davis, and then later Prince.  A handful of other people trickled in -- an Irish filmmaker, a skinny screenwriter with a grey moustache who stared into his coffee cup of gin, a Spanish visual artist who spoke no English and a photojournalist who was the only person there who spoke fluent Spanish.  The guest of honor, a poet wearing white athletic socks under his Tevas, wanted to dance, not talk. 

I smoked half a cigarette.  The first few drags were wonderful.  The flavor of the tobacco and the mellow sensation of exhaling reminded me of college, when I used to smoke now and again at parties.  But before very long it started to taste stale and awful, and I rested the cigarette in the ashtray and watched it slowly turn to ash.    

Comments

[mj]

Ahhh, my college town. I think I can actually picture the fleabag hotel you're staying at - wrong time of year for something affordable. My apartment my senior year was right down the street on Union Ave, a big white house with lots of porches that I hear has been turned into an overpriced B&B.

Have you been on the Yaddo grounds yet? Try to check out the Hall of the Springs area - I think it may be a state park. And the Indian restarant on Broadway is good eats, as is Hattie's. Have fun!

[turboglacier]

Horses don't really have to be all that expensive, if you think about it. Not like sailing, which is definitely for "other people". Why, you can get an old broken-down nag for $50, and keep her in the back yard for free, and feed her scraps from the kitchen for next to nothing.

[CN]

But you can get an old, broken-down skiff for next to nothing, too, and keep it in the back yard also. And you don't have to feed it anything. In fact, you could, in a pinch, feed the skiff to the nag.