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Borrowing Trouble Blog

People-cation--Visiting & Borrowing Trouble

6/27/2015

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Borrowing trouble could become a habit. I have just returned from a visit home with my mind teeming--joy, intrigue, and of course, trouble. 

Perhaps it would have been more sensible to take the first week after school ended for the year and hibernate at the beach. My mother often chides me that the first week of summer vacation with me is none at all because I am still traveling at 70 miles per hour and ticking items off my internal checklist. This year more than previous, the seasonal influx of tourists took the blush off the revered boardwalk and beach.  At Assateague, the charm of ponies tossing coolers waned after a day of jumping out of their way during the Air Show weekend. The clogged streets of Ocean City worked my last nerve, so I scurried back to Baltimore for a week to visit the people I love.

After the riots of spring were spurred by the death of Freddie Gray, Baltimore has been sporting a black eye. Even the toughest of my Salisbury students quailed if I mentioned a trip home for the weekend. I've sought to calm their fears by insisting that the Baltimore looping through the same scenes of destruction on TV is not my Baltimore.  The city I look back on fondly with ten years and the veil of fiction-writing to muddy the lenses is one of small neighborhoods, corner bars and restaurants, patchworks of parks, historic landmarks like the Walters or the BMA, the touristy Inner Harbor, Fells Point and Little Italy. My grandparents lived in Highlandtown and we shopped the avenue or walked to Patterson Park and climbed the pagoda. As recently as April, I drove through the neighborhood that hosted crowds who gutted the pharmacies and liquor stores, terrorized residents and threw rocks at the police. 

A week at home and I find that Baltimore has changed. The Inner Harbor at five p.m. is quiet despite a plethora of restaurants and shops waiting for customers. Events have been cancelled or have been moved out to surrounding counties, and city businesses are reporting drastic losses. The tax base that was struggling to support a population skimming along on the poverty line is looking to leave. Someone suggested that razing blocks down and rebuilding from subterranean rot gave me pause. How do you save an entity that is rotting from within?

So I have returned from ridiculous traffic on the Baltimore Beltway, a tour of the exterior of the Hampton Mansion (the gardens are under a glorious reconstruction--another blog there), and quiet evenings on Normans Creek after noisy meals with family. Walking through an alley in Towson on Wednesday, I realized that my version of vacation isn't place-related at all. I visited with all of my Baltimore friends and every branch of my immediate family. As each person told the stories of their recent troubles and joys, I borrowed a few. My mother leaned over during a particularly intense discussion of a work-related conundrum and said, "This would make a good book!" 

So if traveling is for education, and vacations are for rest, then people-cations are for rejuvenation of the store of ideas, expressions and impressions.  

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Borrowing Trouble

6/16/2015

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Battling curiosity and avoiding boredom, I have often borrowed trouble. I was in the midst of a huge project a month ago and scrambling for time to tackle all the little details when it occurred to me that I created this stress. I said I would take a major event on in May when seniors need the most attention, every event in family life converges and a year's worth of work was wrapping up for the year. Two field trips, a creative writing magazine, senior projects Trouble comes in the form of inspiration infused with enthusiasm that sees many a  grand scheme to fruition, but this borrowed trouble also leaves me stranded sometimes in the middle of immense projects. If the projects go well, benefits spill over like the ESWA booth for the Maryland Library Conference leading to a new design scheme for the Gaithersburg Fest, book signings where I've met someone who inspires a story, field trips for students to places they haven't seen or theater workshops for kids who need controlled drama in their lives. But when a project doesn't go well, I am left wringing out my psyche like a dish rag. Case in point is the dreadful end of my tenure on one professional board. Lessons learned:  don't commit too far from home (I'm still working full time after all and weekends are sacred family time), and if it doesn't feel right, don't do it. It is difficult to cut negativity out of your life if it has become a comfortable habit.
So the borrowed trouble is coming in threes at the moment--Lilac Hill, Portia and Salt Magazine articles. 
Lilac Hill cannot loosen its grip on my imagination. The hills behind this page harbor so many more stories that Lilac Hill Folly has grown epic. Tamping it down will take a chunk out of the first weeks of summer that are committed to travel, reunions and rest.

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    J D Cooper

    Writer and Reviewer

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  • Home
  • Borrowing Trouble Blog
  • Lilac Hill Home Page
    • Lilac Hill excerpt--Chapter 1 >
      • Sarah and anxiety
    • Return to Lilac Hill >
      • The Truth According to Maples
    • Lilac Hill 3--The Folly
  • Other Projects
    • Haunting Genevieve's Reach
    • The Portia Journal >
      • Portia--Excerpt
    • On Bishopville Road
    • Pirates--Science Fiction
    • Baltimore Stories >
      • Confessions Home >
        • Setting as the Genesis of Motif >
          • Reflections
        • Setting: Love Affair with East Baltimore