Growing up I felt about Boston how I felt about New York. Something in me knew I belonged to it.
This time last year I got it in my head that I needed to go. Why did I feel the need to go now? I don’t really know except to say it was somewhere new and novel. I had a desire to look forward. I also wanted to be able to look back at something without having to remember everything.
So I made plans to visit Boston with my mom. We chose October for obvious reasons, and it did not disappoint. The autumn leaves, Harvard, whale watching… it was one of the best weeks I’ve had since 2019.
Anything that could go right did, and anything that could go wrong didn’t.
Except for the person who vomited off of the top deck of the whale watching boat onto the passengers below. Fortunately I ducked around the corner, but others weren’t so lucky. We were, however, very lucky to see several whales. Two of which were a mom, named Cosmos, and her baby, who was less than a year old and already weighed 2,000 pounds.
But what I most want to tell you about is Harvard.
In another world I think I could have attended Harvard. Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious, but I’ve always loved traditional education. Attending classes and reading on the lawn with the autumn leaves falling all around me was the epitome of an ideal. Still is, apparently.
The morning I visited Cambridge, I grabbed breakfast from Tatte, a French-Israeli bakery which I had every single morning I was in Boston, and ate on the Yard as I soaked in the sun. I visited the Harvard Book Store and bought just the right amount of books. I purchased a Harvard sweatshirt, an item I’ve always wanted to own. Basically I spent the day indulging my fantasy.
To end the day I wandered through a neighborhood near Harvard in search of an ordinary house.
I love David Foster Wallace as most people from my generation do. I have only read some of Infinite Jest, but I have read quite a few of his essays, though I’m not sure if this qualifies anything. Still, there is something I can’t articulate about my admiration for him. But the moment I decided to go to Boston I knew I would go in search of that inarticulate something.
There is a house where David lived for a time, where he began his work on Infinite Jest. It sits at the end of a street that has a reputation for being extremely quiet. In fact when my mom and I were walking the street a man came out of his house and greeted us in a hushed tone, and when we said our goodbyes he gave us a polite reminder to be quiet.
By all accounts the house is pretty ordinary. There are power lines running in front of it, trees and greenery blocking most of the view. It seems as if it’s been divided into multiple units now. Like I said, ordinary. Yet I stood there staring at it for a long time.
There’s something mystical about the places where people you admire lived and worked. History clings to its home. No matter how dilapidated a place becomes or how much it morphs over time, it forever belongs to the people who inhabited it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Neck, his inspiration for West Egg, and the home where he wrote the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby. Jack Kerouac’s Long Island home and local bar. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s Lower East Side, NY. There are, of course, countless examples.
Joan Didion, a writer who managed to embody the entire state of California, once wrote: “Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them… A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image…”
As I stood there staring at the house where David lived, there was no doubt that he had managed to turn an ordinary house into something extraordinary. History happened there. He immortalized Boston in a way no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Boston belongs forever to David Foster Wallace.
And I can’t help but wonder, what place will belong to me?
After awhile, I sat down on the corner of the sidewalk of that eerily quiet street and wrote a few lines on a post card that I’m still thinking about today: I don’t pretend to be anywhere near the same level of intellect or talent as David Foster Wallace, but I like to imagine we are all making our ordinary places extraordinary too.
I'm so glad you enjoyed Cambridge and Boston. I always knew you would. If you get a chance, visit The Cape and the islands during the off-seasons. Magic light provides wonderful photo ops. And I know you don't eat fish...but that's the place to try a lobster roll ☺ -KK