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Heartstock, Part 2

​This is the second installment recounting my series of heart encounters on September 10 and 11, 2017 in connection with a pilgrimage I made to the site of the original Woodstock festival. This post covers the evening of September 10, after my encounter with Sion at Big Pink in West Saugerties. Read Part 1 here.

Unexpected Wilderness Interlude
Sion had mentioned it was an hour and a half drive to Liberty. It hadn’t looked that far on Google Maps and even with the time it would take to find my way back down the mountain roads to the highway it seemed like an overestimation.

But even after I’d found something like a main road it seemed to be taking a long time to reach the highway. The GPS was showing dozens of miles to go on the 2-lane rural road I was on. It was lovely and peaceful, and for the time being I was driving in daylight, albeit with the setting sun hitting my eyes at various turns so I kept driving blithely on.

I skirted the north side of the Ashokan Reservoir then took a sharp left onto another 2-lane road through… wilderness. There was a house here and there but otherwise the unassuming road passed through an untouched valley. Meadows. Ponds. Outcrops. Everything looked pristine. Lovely. Enchanting. Wild. And still dozens more miles to go before the next crossroads. It made the rural roads leading to Big Pink seem practically metropolitan.

Follow me down the road

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Heartstock, Part 1

I had a series of heart encounters on September 10 and 11, 2017 in connection with a pilgrimage I made to the site of the original Woodstock festival. There’s so much to share that I’m breaking the narrative into 3 parts. Here’s the first. It’s long and I hope you find it worth the time it takes to read. Enjoy!

Setting the Stage: A Long, Long Neck Ago
The whole story starts, as all good stories do, with a giraffe.

I’d become a fan of internet sensation April the Giraffe in February of this year. Watching her and her baby daddy Oliver on a webcam during April’s final months of pregnancy helped me get through the final months of a long-term contract job that I was unhappy about having to leave.

When April gave birth on April 15 my gentleman friend and I were on a long weekend getaway, attending a relationship conference in Denver. The “she’s giving birth right now!” text I’d signed up for came around dawn and we huddled together in bed watching on my iPad as Tajiri came into the world. So it felt right to visit the new giraffe family on a future getaway.

April and me
More April in an upcoming story.

Accordingly, July found us spending a weekend in Binghamton, NY, the closest big town to April’s home, Animal Adventure Park. Details of that park visit aren’t directly relevant to this story although a few hearts were given. They’ll be recounted in a future post.

The part that is relevant is that on the afternoon following our giraffe visit we were chilling in our hotel room, thinking about what else was nearby that we might visit before dinner. On a whim I asked how far away Bethel, NY was. The original Woodstock festival was held there. I’ve long been fascinated by the event, even though I was only 8 years old when it happened. If we were within easy driving distance it would be a nice add-on to the trip.

Read on

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The San Francisco Treatment

Here’s video from my most recent story, told on August 26, 2017 at The Auld Shebeen in Fairfax, VA as part of Better Said Than Done’s “Vacation and Other Disasters” show. Learn about the disastrous day trip to Monterey I incurred during a San Francisco vacation in October 1991. My narrative falls necessarily into the realm of creative non-fiction because 26 years later I remember only the basic sequence of events, not actual conversations or the finer details. My first draft, presented at rehearsal 2 weeks before the show, was basically a memory dump with a tentative framing device. The notes I got from my fellow storytellers helped me fill in some gaps and solidify the frame. In the interest of time and cohesiveness I had to compress some timelines, leave out some details and alter others. Along the way I gained some insights about why things played out the way they did all those years ago. I’m pleased with the final product and it got good feedback from the audience and my fellow storytellers. I’ll shut up now so you can watch the video. When you’re done and if you care to do so, read on below for a behind-the-scenes look at the actual events.

Go behind the scenes

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Heartless Encounter

This past week I learned you can give a heart without giving a heart.

On Wednesday morning while I waited for the elevator in the parking garage at work, I admired the leather-looking bag carried by the stylishly-dressed woman who was also waiting. It was yellow, a color I don’t normally think much of one way or the other, but this bag was a deep shade of topaz that I found pleasing. I said so out loud to the woman. “Thank you!” she smiled, “I got this at the thrift shop.” “Wow,” I said, “I never would have guessed.” “I get most of my clothes there” she replied, as we both stepped into the elevator. “This skirt was a few hundred dollars online but it only cost $20 at the thrift store. And I got this jacket, scarf, blouse, and… you know what? Everything I have on today came from the thrift store!” “That’s amazing!” I said, and I meant it. Her delight at talking about her clothing and where she got it was so infectious that I wanted to give her a heart. Only I didn’t have one on my person — no pockets in my outfit. There were a few in my rolly-case but it would have taken longer than we had left before she got off at her floor to dig one out. I could have asked her to wait while I got one but she was already smiling so brightly that for the first time ever I felt a heart would be superfluous. We brightened each other’s day just fine without one.

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