Cinderella and Christmas Eve

I was triple Borowski'd in the last two days. Last night at the Irvine Spectrum in Cancun, I came across glass sculptures by an artist named Borowski. Here's one to check out. I rarely fall for sculptures in malls, but these were special. Then, today at the airport, American Airlines kept paging a Borowski who was late for his flight to Dallas. It sounded enough like "Berdichevsky" to get my attention. A few minutes later, a General Borowski made a cameo appearance in the novel I was reading.

I am not the late passenger. Glass bottomed sculptures. Someone who commanded a submarine. What does this mean?

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If I had speculated only a year ago with whom I would travel through Chiapas, I wouldn't have thought of Sanjai. In fact, I wouldn't have thought Sanjai would want to take such a trip. So I'm very glad he decided he did. He was a fantastic travel companion--thoughtful and adventurous, open-minded and resourceful. He has a new perspective on things that I admire. It would be oversimplistic to summarize it as "if not now, when?" -- but that's an important part of it. And it's something I'll take to heart.

Once, he led us both to a cave behind a waterfall with only a rope for support. He never hesitated to sample Mexico's ubiquitous food stalls, or to check out random places to stay for the night (indulging my travel writer instincts--I always want to know how all the accomodations in a given town compare.) He shared my fondness for town plazas, and took even the minor setbacks, like a noisy room or a missing pilot, with good humor. When we lost our Lonely Planet in San Cristobal, he suggested photographing someone else's at the bus station. He packed light. He could hop from big bus to little bus in thirty seconds flat. He ate lots of "puerco." He took great pictures, with and without flash. And heck, he rocked Chiapas. So--thanks, Sanjai. Looking forward to the next one.

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Ironically, after trekking through Chiapas for a week to no ill effect, we both caught colds in Cancun. Other minor nicks: I sprained an ankle at a restaurant (again in Cancun) and bloodied my shin a bit (on the airplane.) Maybe highly processed environments aren't my strong suit?

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If you want to study peculiar demographics, try Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square on Christmas Eve. The only women there were two behind the counter and one with her husband, drinking coffee. The rest of the clientele was male and mostly elderly. One of the younger ones, sitting alone, was scribbling in a notebook. Two were studying physics. Still wearing my backpack (which I kept just below 25 pounds) I walked in from the subway station to pick up bottles of juice and a sandwich, and was not too startled to hear everyone speaking English: two days in Cancun had readied me for that. It looks like I won't be experiencing the culture shock that usually comes with returning from another country.

Earlier, on the bus from the airport to the subway, a high school girl from Texas asked for help finding her way to a town in Northern Massachusetts. Ruby described herself as a "small town girl" feeling very lost in the big city of Boston. I imagined all of a sudden how disorienting Boston must be to a first-time visitor--all this talk of Red Lines and Blue Lines and Green Lines, and purple commuter rails dashing off to the periphery. In the end, I left her at Government Crossing, hopefully safely en route to North Station to catch her train to Haverhill. She had missed the 8:30, so even as I type this, she must still be waiting for the 10:35. Here's hoping she makes it safely and soon.

Walking to my apartment, I also passed the Kong. It was still open--does it ever close? For years, the place didn't mean much to me: a Chinese restaurant open late, where once I drank my only shot and another time ate a two a.m. dinner while applying to work for Let's Go. However, this last semester (my last semester?) it became irrevocably linked to Kong Runs with the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Assocation (a.k.a. HRSFA.) A fellow HRSFAn calls for a Kong Run, and a few minutes later whichever of us are hankering for crab rangoons or good company arrive at the Kong to munch on appetizers and talk about... well, once we talked about antelope. The HRSFA folks amaze me. If I had met them (or their predecessors) my freshman year at Harvard, I may never have transferred to Stanford.

On the airplane, a flight attendant apologetic about our late departure passed out free headsets. I took advantage of mine to watch a Cinderella movie, in which the title character suffers "the gift of obedience", forced to obey any order anyone ever gives her. She only overcomes it just in time to save the prince's life. That's about as far as the plot had gotten when the plane landed. What can I say--it reminded me of Ever After, which I loved. I guess I have a soft spot for fairy tales.