Walking from my boyfriend's apartment to his sister and brother-in-law's, I pass along Sampsonia Way, a narrow road with a whimsical name typical of this War Streets District.
On the blocks either side of The Mattress Factory, the houses seem to have been saturated with the spirit of creation housed there. One is dark wood clapboard painted all over with white Chinese letters; small, each the size of a hand, so that the entire thing appears to be a big advertisement or notice. Another house has an installation of three pieces of driftwood, each as long as a man, and carved with even grooves. It's door is glass, with white script running horizontal filling it.
A third house is red brick, and has plaques in place of windows. The upper windows are all memorials. The window to the basement, a thin narrow thing at street level, reads like this:
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or what you no longer possess waits for you in foreign, unpossessed places. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
I noticed it, and did that awkward pausing foot drag where your body has not yet decided whether to let curiosity win out. My decision to return to the spot of sighting was denounced by a small energetic dog behind a fence.
The rest of the walk I thought about the things that I left behind. This time last week I started a fever, and was throughout the shivers and sweats I was inconsolable in my hatred of America and her food, people, traffic, noises and smells. My well-wishers tried their hardest to bring me little doses of the homeland - blackcurrant jam on toast, Harry Potter read aloud, Classic FM playing all night.
Eventually the pitiful cry came, ' I want my mummy. I want to go home.' Her cool hands, soft but firm touch and lovely smell.
We spent Monday in the ER and several doses of antibiotics later, the cursed infection is dying down. Positivity has returned, along with a huge appetite. Pieroghies* for dinner tonight at the Rock Room!
*Wikipedia has a horrid sounding but accurate description of these as 'half circular boiled dumplings of unleavened dough.' They come stuffed with a mixture of cheese and mashed potato and are often served with onion. A Slavic food, and also very much associated with Pittburgh,
