I woke up at 4am and decided that I should start a substack that I write early in the morning before going to work. The rain is coming down. I’m in between finishing something that I may never finish and starting something that I may never start and I miss the epistolary and I guess mostly I want to goof off outside of the coordinates of social media.
Last week and the week before I had COVID for a long time, for the first time. I slept my face off and plotted a lot with my business partner Pippi about how to take care of work stuff without actually being at work. The part of this story that is missing is that I gave Pippi COVID before I knew that I had covid (I also gave it to Bonnie and Kevin - I’m sorry guys & owe you forever). The day that I had come down with it, it was so hot out that it was near impossible for me to feel the difference between a personal fever and an everyone-at-an end-of-the-world 98 degree meltdown day.
At work we were about to be hosting a family residency and so the house would be filled with the children of Artist Moms who would be working towards an art show. From afar I wrote a scavenger hunt to introduce the children to the nooks and crannies of the Victorian mansion that they would be living at for the next week. One of the more precocious children who was perhaps sick of doing art projects with some younger kids was overheard saying that the best use of her time would be TO DO MORE SCAVENGER HUNTS, like all day. I might have taken this offhanded-through-the grapevine compliment from a 10 year old too seriously, because it really got me thinking about making scavenger hunts.
In the early 90’s as a teenager on the cusp of being allowed to drive around the wastelands of Long Island, one thing that my friends and I would do to entertain ourselves was to make up scavenger hunts for each other. Part finding things, part dare, part incitement to vaguely criminal activity, part wholesome rhyming riddles, part advanced placement curatorial studies. Did other teenage friend groups build elaborate instruction-sets for each other’s fancy? If I were to be really pretentious about these lists of instructions I would talk about them as performance art scores, but it is possible that we were just kids trying to make the best of living in the sprawling suburbs. A landscape with a sick underbelly that fueled countless episodes of true crime or scandal tabloid television shows like Geraldo or Hard Copy. Anyway, I think that in a number of ways these friends might have been unique and special, but maybe everyone thinks that about their teenage friends.
This story is about to come full circle, as it was on an adventure visiting this town where I grew up on Long Island that I contracted COVID. I went back for a reunion show of a hardcore band that my friends had been in. It was at the town’s dive bar, which was also the joint where Jack Kerouac drank at when he and his mom famously lived in said town, which at that point was mostly a fishing town on the northshore of Long Island. It was out further than most people who were commuters wanted to take a train from on a daily basis. After 9/11 that all changed and real estate prices skyrocketed. My folks figured that it was a good time to cash it all in and sell their house and they got out of dodge and I never really went back.
Suddenly like 20 years passed. But there I was on the night when Trump had gotten shot, hanging out in a dive bar with giant screens playing Fox news hovering about the crowd on mute, while teenage angst anthems were being reenacted by 50 year olds. I felt like I had been dropped on my head into a wormhole. Which to be honest, was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. The band was really good. There was a new singer (the younger sister of the guitarist). At one point she publicly announced that her enlistment for this reunion show hinged on them being cool with a rewrite of the lyrics of one song twinged with a dose of skate-bro-bravado-misogyny. And this was the moment when I cried - the world maybe actually has changed for the better?
I drank some shitty non-alcoholic beer and remembered people’s names who I hadn’t seen in three decades. I hugged too many people and when it became overwhelming I sat alone in a corner looking out at the crowd pulsing with dramas and histories, feeling glad for my life choices starting with having gotten myself the hell out of that town. But also I was starry-eyed with wild admiration for these weirdos siloed in a hell hole who I had come up with who went on to do all sorts of things.
Anyway, that got long-winded, and what I was trying to say is that I feel like I have a couple of credentials when it comes to the crafting of places to hunt for, which is really what this is all about. Why subject oneself to finding things? Well it is certainly optional! Why look for buried treasure? Why travel? Why attempt to see things in a new way? I don’t know, don’t you sometimes just feel your legs going wild with a desire to walk somewhere new?
So the other day while waiting for children to smash a Piñata that Exyl made, Zoe was joking about learning about things in Rhode Island and said “you should make a Scavenger Hunt for us - like for adults”.
“Ok” I quickly agreed, knowing on an intuitive level that is actually a thing that I want to do. But not because I know about so many mysterious places that I want to tell others about, but more because I want to keep learning and digging into Rhode Island and all of its strange nooks and cranies. Sometimes it's hard to remember to travel, when you might only be going a few miles away. But travel can be anywhere, its an agreement between your eyes and heart to be open. So here’s the deal. This newsletter will contain a lot that’s just me riffing and blah blah blahing, but within each newsletter will be a section that’s about a RI locality and will include a clue that will take you to an actual physical location in Rhode Island or nearby environs that I think is kind of special. Find it if you want to. No rush. God and climate change willing, it will be there in the future.
FAQ
Q: Before I subscribe to this newsletter - I gotta know, how often will it come into my already overloaded inbox?
A: Around once every 6 weeks - maybe a little more, maybe a little less
Q: I’m a big fan of geese, will there be actual goose content?
A: YES! PROBABLY!
Q: I’m a Canadian Goose, will there be content for actual geese?
A: You Canadians have to stop pooping so much in all of our urban green space. But probably yes, there will be information that will be entertaining or relevant to geese of all nationalities.
Q: What if I know about some incredible secret places in Rhode Island that I think should be part of a gooser?
A: Sounds great, tell me all of your secrets!
Q: What is the difference between a duck and a goose?
A: Geese have more neck bones and are kind of assholes. In case you are wondering a duck and goose can not lay eggs together. Or like they can lay eggs, but the eggs won’t hatch. Or the eggs of the eggs won’t hatch. Something like that.
Q: It seems like you might be writing about places that you’ve gone to in RI a dozen or so times, but I’ve lived in quahog-ville for my whole life, will I be annoyed at your writing?
A: You are more than welcome to be annoyed at my writing on any number of fronts, but the genre of travel writing has existed for a long time, people just usually write about places a little bit further away and not like 7 miles from where they live, but we are blessed in RI to have 400 little villages inside of 31 towns and 8 cities inside of a breadbox.
Q: I am a Rhode Island Red chicken, i.e. the actual state bird, and I’d like to know why you are ignoring me and getting involved with all of these other flighty friends like ducks and geese? Who do I talk to about this egg-regious error in your ways? Where is THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT?!?!
A: Great question. See photo below.
Q: Will this newsletter be funny, like will it quack me up?
A: Possibly if you have a fowl sense of humor. (oh my god I’m so sorry - but also I can’t promise that goose/duck puns won’t happen)
Q: I heard there might be buried treasure - do I need a shovel?
A: This is currently not true - no buried treasure, but also what kind of New Englander are you that doesn’t have a shovel in your car?
Q: It seems like you might just be writing about a bunch of unrelated things that don’t really go anywhere?
A: True, but see the title of this newsletter.
Ooh la la!
I hit the subscribe button fast.