The Hill

Fairy tale-like house on the flat of the Hill

A wee magical house for elves

Between my doc visits on Tuesday I took a stroll around Beacon Hill and Back Bay -- concentrations of great wealth and beauty.

Did you know that there used to be a bad side to the Hill? The MGH side versus the Common and Public Garden side was nothing but tiny, junk, sleazoid apartments and rooming houses.

My cousin Carmel lived in one when she was going to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts back in the '60s. All little eight year old me saw, on our one visit to her there, was the grand romance, the glamor and enchantment of being an artist, living in the big city on a tree lined street. Yeah, her room was small and dark with just a single bed/cot and wooden chair but MEIN GOTT the joint fired my imagination up something wild.

I so wanted to be her.

And then I grew up, moved to Boston and found that:

a)  while the apartments on the bad side of the Hill were still miniscule, broke-down, decrepit and dark, the rents for these roach closets were completely unaffordable.


b) I no longer wanted to be Carm.

Converted carriage house

By the time I was 22, she was in her mid 30s -- married with kiddle, living in a big house in a fancy, posh suburb. She counseled me, me who'd just come off the carnival road, to fit into the tiny socially conservative and acceptable box allotted to women in the '50s.

Yeah, sorry. No. Desperately unglaubwürdig.

Hamlet refers to Polonius as a 'tedious old fool' BUT he totally nailed it when he advised Laertes:

carriage houses on the flat of the Hill

'This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Daddy gave me the same bit of advice when I was in high school, hopelessly out of step with the norm, trying to hard to fit in. I didn't get it then but, thank the theoretical gods, it finally sunk in.