It feels so good to be home. We got back Friday evening and pretty much stayed vegetables over the weekend to decompress from the trip. Cooked a big pot of curry so we wouldn’t have to mess with food for the rest of the weekend (aside from our traditional weekend biscuits and gravy) and just lounged around as much as possible. My wife made her candy Chex mix that we’ll be giving out to neighbors and we took some of that, as well as a gift from the trip, to thank him for keeping an eye on our home and taking care of the cats whilst we were away.
The train was interesting, and under other circumstances would have likely been enjoyable, but my balance issues prevented me from enjoying the full experience. As soon as the train started moving, I could barely stand at all (as experienced by our “test” walk to the cafe car on our first night. It was a bit disappointing as I had planned to hang out on the observation deck to read and write, but it was practically impossible for me to navigate myself there. Because of that, we ended up taking all our meals in the room, and I ended up spending most of the train ride confined to the room.
Speaking of the room, that first and last legs of the trip had us in a room that straight up had the toilet in the corner, reminding me of images I’ve seen of jail cells. I guess they expect prison rules to apply – make eye contact and assert your dominance while relieving yourself. We ended up using the space to store luggage and just frequented the shared bathroom right outside our room when necessary.
The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors was amazing, and was everything I had hoped for since I first heard about the project in the early 2000s. We walked the short trail they had and I hope to return sometime during a summer so I can experience it with warmer weather and sit outside for a spell. We had the dinner there on Friday night and the artists, Alex and Allyson Grey, both joined us at our table where we conversed the entire time. During dinner, they told us the story about how they were originally in the process of selling the Sacred Mirrors paintings, but took MDMA for the first time and both had the same vision of the Chapel project to display them and backed out of the sale at the last minute.
I did get some of my own creative time in there as well, and cracked open my beginner sumi-e paint set I picked up before the trip. I ended up mostly practicing brush stroke shapes and calligraphy, but I did do a couple pieces that came out not completely amateurish.
That’s it for today – I’ll cover NYC tomorrow. May or may not post the photos in a gallery later too…
Song of the day: Home by Dream Theater
Leave a Reply