On Wandering, through Cities and Books

Hey Friends,

If one of the most magical things is a few hours to yourself in a new city, it can only be made better by food, and books. I found myself in Providence, Rhode Island this past week on a visit to see my daughter, with most of a day to myself, as she was at work and my husband was arriving that evening.

I set out to wander through the hilly city of historic buildings (each plaque tells a story – many about what year the house was moved from one street to another). I stopped for quahog-filled clam chowder and clam cakes at Dune Bros. Seafood in Fox Point. Then I explored an antique store, a glass flower shop (each had a small white dog co-working there) and headed over to Wayland Square to check out two bookstores and a cheese shop.

I found it funny to see many Wisconsin items at the delicious East Side Cheese & Provisions, and liked that if you brought your own bag, you could deposit a 25 cent coin into one of several boxes toward charities as you leave the shop. Which brings me to the books. At Books on the Square I made a note to buy Samin Nosrat’s new cookbook “Good Things” when I had more room in a suitcase. I loved her first “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.”

Just down the street, I then lost myself into the used bookstore Paper Nautilus – I have no idea how long I spent there, in the main and basement levels, poring over familiar and new titles. In the poetry section, I found a first edition of “The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser,” which while also a heavy book, was rare enough to need to be bought at that moment and brought home to Madison. Over the past couple of years, I have been reading everything I can by Rukeyser, who is known as the godmother of documentary poetry.

I opened the book just now randomly to share, like wandering, a bit of whatever poem I found:

Night - Music
When the exposed spirit, busy in daytime,

searches out night, only renewer.

That time plants turn to. The world’s table.

When any single thing’s condemned again.

The changeable spirit finds itself out,

will not employ Saint Death, detective,

does its own hunting, runs at last to night.

Renewer, echo of judgment, morning-source, music.

What have you found while wandering?

 –    Shannon