There Are Some Prerequisites For Getting My Money

There aren't actually that many prerequisites because as it turns out I am quite law abiding and also don't really like conflict, so basically if you are a freshly-scrubbed looking college student with a clipboard and an Oxfam shirt or you have the ability to issue parking tickets, you can get some of my money. That being said, one of the things I really must insist on is legibility.

I parked at Riverside last week, instead of my normal Westborough commuter rail game plan, and of course because the parking gods hate me I got a ticket.
I always enjoy parking tickets because they need so badly to justify their paper use. You could really just write "$5 IN THE DROPBOX OR WE'RE BOOTING YOU" but because the simpler a task gets the more frippery you need to put on the paperwork, they always have lots of random underlining and up-capping and "COMPUTER CONTROL" and what have you. The good thing is that I'm reasonably sure they will never know it was me because that license plate number is nowhere near readable.

Of course, we know I will totally pay this stupid ticket because I am a wuss, except for one thing:
WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT? Is that an H? I have to pay them 6H dollars? How do you even pay something in Hs? What is the exchange rate for Hs? This part is important because I am in grad school and that means I have like, four dollars on a good week, so if $6H is more than $2.50 I am going to need to buy more Ramen. 6H kind of sounds like 4H so maybe I need to groom a sheep or something. I blame this whole goddamn thing on pennies.

DISCURSIS!

Dear pennies,

I hate you. The bottom of my cool kid backpack is AWASH in your stupid coppery pointlessness and my car cupholder is full of you. I don't know why the Mint keeps making you, because I have never met someone who wasn't like "pennies? Fuck pennies, oh my God." You are terrible and you make my life bad.

Love, Die Painfully,

Me

END DISCURSIS!

So anyway I probably won't be back at Riverside for a couple weeks but I have to figure out how to pay $6H before I go back there. Otherwise I'm gonna have to steal someone else's license plates.

Soundtracks and the City

To get home from BU, I take the green line to the red line via Park. There are a lot of things I don't love about the T (starting with the screeching wheels in the morning), but I do like the old feel of the stations. All that cool mosaic work and subway tile gives you such a wonderful feeling of how Boston is. I feel Boston's history whenever I'm in the city, from the cobblestones to the subways to the park space and the buildings - you can't escape the feeling that This Place Is Old, in the best possible way. I harp on a lot about how we need to remember the past and speak often and eloquently about what made us the way we are in order to move forward, and this sense of history in Boston makes that project much easier. It's not so difficult to discuss our Americanness, as it were, in the shadow of buildings that were touched by the Founders themselves.

In any case, I like going downstairs to the red line at Park because it's got this beautiful red tile that was used throughout the red line and there's something about the design of the platform that just feels very...enveloping. There's usually someone playing some kind of musical instrument, and today there was a guy playing guitar and singing. The songs he played just kind of fit the feeling of the station and my mood, and I started thinking about how often that happens. I was out last night with some of the other grad students and the music, again, just fit.

I think this explains why I like cities, and particularly why I love Washington, DC. A city always provides you with a soundtrack, be it comprised of street musicians or just the sounds of a lot of people in close proximity. It's more than just sound, too. Anyone who has spent time in a city can pick up on those small shifts in mood or energy that either carry you along or contrast with your own feeling. There's something about being in one place with thousands of other people, all with different things to do and places to go, and the noise that comes along with those people, that makes up a city's character. Boston has always been a special place for me because of its quiet, deep music, but it was in DC that I found a place that played the full range of music in my own soul.