November 6, 2010
Saturday

Today marked the half-way point in my sojourn at the Vermont Studio Center. I’ve been at work for twelve days, and after today, have twelve more to go. In those twelve days, I have read one short novel and a half dozen short stories, written thirty pages of meandering prose in my journal, (only) seven blog posts, and made major revisions to two short stories. The revision work is exactly what I had planned to do in this time. Last night I assembled the folder of the paper bits that went into the revision, placed it on my Done! pile (on the top shelf of the bookcase, where I can gaze at it with some satisfaction), and got out the folder for the story I’ll be working on next week.

And today I took a break.

I stopped by at breakfast. Some people are here for only two weeks, and they were leaving today, so I needed to say goodbye to them. Then I put on some sturdy walking shoes (I’ve been wearing my fur-lined suede Børn clogs, which a slightly tipsy artist carrying a pizza box told me the other night would make me catch my death of cold, a line I had just put in my story), and headed for the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington.

Burlington, with a population of 38,000, is the largest city in Vermont, and also the smallest city to be the largest city of a state. It’s on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain and is home to the University of Vermont and two other colleges. The Church Street Marketplace is a four-block pedestrian mall with many small shops, a pronounced dog-friendly attitude, and a noticeable artsy-weirdsy personality. I’d been there once before to meet an online friend for lunch and clear my head after Bread Loaf.

And I needed to clear my head today. It took about an hour to reach Burlington, a pleasant if not spectacularly beautiful drive, since the trees are mostly bare or brown now. (The drive back is prettier, because you’re going into the mountains, which now have snow on the top.) I parked in the garage that’s attached to the Burlington Mall. When I first saw the B above the door, I thought it was a Boscov’s, a local department store at home. It might as well have had a Boscov’s, because it had everything else a modern mall should have — Macy’s, Starbucks, Old Navy, Hallmark.

I walked quickly though the mall to the outdoor Marketplace. I wandered around in a resale shop full of funky vintage clothes, went into a sock store that turned out not to be very interesting (I was hoping for handmade items, but it was just a large inventory of the kind of socks you can buy anywhere), and stopped at a chocolatier, where I bought some white chocolate embedded with raisins, cherries, and apricots. At Zinnia, I bought a pendant of turquoise and coral that reminded me of the kind of work I imagine Callie, the artist in my story “Cardamom,” makes. At Danforth, a pewterer, I got some Christmas presents for others.

The last stop I made was at Borders. I wanted the current issue of Poets & Writers, a cold drink, and a brief rest of my feet before I started back. I got some kind of fruity kula thing, plucked a worn-looking People magazine off the rack, and made my way to the seating area.

All the tables were occupied, but there was a lounge chair available. I sat down across a coffee table from  a man who had fallen asleep, his head back, his mouth open, and the newspaper he’d been reading sagging on his chest. I had to step over his outstretched legs to get to the seat.

After a week of being immersed in Serious Literary Fiction, I needed some froth. The People issue featured a cover story on the rumored impending engagement of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton. Other than those two, however, I hadn’t heard of most of the others whose comings and goings were chronicled. After a little while I just sat and watched people.

I was aware that the man in the chair opposite me had woken up. And I knew that he was looking at me. He wasn’t unattractive — kind of an ordinary forty-something, a little on the shlubby side. I leafed through the magazine again, and when I looked up, he caught my eye.

“Weren’t you in the computer store earlier?”

“No,” I said.

“I really thought I’d seen you there. Maybe I’ve seen you here.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

In the story I worked on last week, the main character, Daniel, plans how he might approach a woman (Callie, the aforementioned artist) he hasn’t seen in more than fifteen years. He knows where she works and where she eats lunch, and he tries to figure out how he can maybe fall in step behind her in line, or bump into her in the bookstore of the college where she teaches. ‘You look familiar,” he might say. “I think we’ve met.” I made a mental note to add a line indicating that Daniel, though he wobbles toward shlubbiness, knows how very cheesy that sounds.

The guy tried a few more approaches. He saw my Poets & Writers and asked if I was a writer. To his credit, he did not ask me if I was published. He commented on my Nike sneakers with the red swoosh and the hearts on the laces.

Finally, he said, “I’m not getting anywhere here, am I?”

“No, sorry.”

“Is it because I was snoring? I know I fell asleep. Was I snoring?”

I kind of felt sorry for him. But not too sorry.

“No,” I said. “You’re too old for me.”

“I’m 37!”

“Like I said.”

I got up, smiled at him, and left.

My hips were a little stiff. I tried not to walk like a woman old enough to be his mother. 

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent