I'm Melting, I'm Melting

Purple pom pom flowers in the Public Garden

Here’s how NOT to hook up with a dear old friend, one you’ve not seen in nearly a decade.  Meet at Park Street Station in downtown Boston on the hottest day of the year. Then walk, through legions of picture taking tourists in the Common, Public Garden and Back Bay, to the Museum of Fine Arts. Granted, that’s only a few miles -- really not a long walk -- but the temperature was near 90 and, well, I’m SO not a crowd or heat person.

I’m even less of a crowd person now because I don’t have auditory vestibular nerves (balance and sound) -- severed during my fun, little surgeries. My sense of balance comes from vision now -- if I’m distracted, as in large crowds, remaining upright becomes a giant challenge. Think Neo in the Woman in Red Training scene with Morpheus in the first Matrix movie.

 Like Neo I was trying awfully hard, mightily even, to pay attention to what the speaker, Joe not Morpheus, was saying. I was trying to adjust to how he speaks, how he forms words, so that I could 'hear' him. And I'm doing this while we're walking fast through a sea of humanity.

We get to the MFA, and I’m thinking ‘Hey, I’m doing pretty fair with the lipreading -- all things considered’ and then the John Singer Sargents, the Manets, the Monets and Morris Louis’ appear. I lost all ability to focus. Sargent and Manet are brushstroke gods. They describe, depict, bring so much to life in one stroke. I could spend a day in constant awe in front of any of their paintings.

We continued to explore through the new American wing, through Iranian ancient ceramic and glass, past Botero’s and Gaston Lachaise’s bodacious women.

And then, too soon, I was just done in -- I couldn’t  look at more art while walking and concentrating on lipreading anymore. I needed to just sit, have lunch and catch up with my old pal. So we did. We hit Symphony Sushi for a salmon roll combo plate and sauvignon blanc. YUM!

Next time we get together, and it won’t be ten years this time,  we’ll attempt less. That is, we’ll get together for a meal and conversation or a movie or the MFA again (but NOT on a feverishly hot summer weekend day).  Hey, maybe even a hike in the Blue Hills or the White Mountains! (No, I never learn.)

Note to self: wear appropriate shoes no matter what activity I attempt.  For the sweltering cross town walk yesterday I wore my new sandals.

Yeah I’m real bright like that -- bright and blistered that is.

I'm Melting, I'm Melting!