TRIP TO VERMONT

Rented a car and drove seven hours up through Connecticutt and New Hampshire to Johnson Vermont and picked up Cara at the Vermont Studio Center where she’s been doing a printmaking residency the past threeweeks. Not without difficulty. A wrong turn cost me an hour out of my time as I had to drive twenty miles to turn around only to be stuck in traffic where I had the good fortune to see an extremely obese woman in car behind me eat a hamburger and read a romance novel.

Most of the country looks the same this time of year, grey stick with patches of coniferous green. It was however warm, even with patches of snow on the ground, and Johnson, though small enough to fit in your pocket, had air so sweet I actually swooned taking deep, healing inhalations into my Manhattan-contaminated lungs.

That night we drove to Burlington and searched in vain in the historic downtown area for late-night food and settled on strange gyro meat items from a heavy-metal kebab joint playing loud grindcore favorites. Historic downtown was filled with drunken hoards of local students which was bascially nauseating to witness. Stayed in grotty hotel that obviously has had long career as swinger/orgy headquarters and rendezvous for extramarital encounters. Box spring appeared to have blood handprint on it.