Part 23 - porcupines and a Eureka moment

Shane,

Its now my turn to be off the radar for a while. We're heading up to the Adirondacks for a 5 day camping trip in the High Peaks region. So, not so much booze-soaked, as say sweat and dirt covered, and probably craving an ice cold beer by day 2. Hopefully I'll see a couple of porcupines. Have I mention I'm now obsessed with trying to find real porcupines? Growing up in Hong Kong the extent of my exposure to animals was the occasional field trip to a 'farm', and coming across cows (which are amazing climbers by the way) when hiking.And speak of cows and Hong Kong, I came across this wonderfully cute story about a woman trying to save wild cows:

http://www.timeout.com.hk/big-smog/features/22176/hongkonger-yeung-yeung-founder-of-cows-home.html

Your note passing story reminded me of the elaborately constructed systems children concoct for themselves - how everything seemed to be so important, and every step so critical to some final, indeterminate goal. I think I was too much of a conscientious (a word that I'm pretty sure was on most of my school reports) student to pass notes, but I have this awesome memory of building this complicated structure out of rulers, pencils, books etc with the guy who sat

next to me in 3rd grade, so that we could borrow each others erasers/ color pencils/ pencil sharpener, without ever reaching over and using our hands - some type of Fischl-Weiss device.

Regarding the private/ public nature of this blog and this project in general, I often wonder how much of has to do with the nature of typing onto a computer versus say, having to hand-write all our correspondance. I'm going to demand that one of our correspondances be done via snail mail. It'll be an interesting comparison.

But even beyond the mechanics of how this project is done, the whole nature of this project is really about us inserting ourselves into what should have been a discarded, private manuscript. We've given ourselves carte blanche to freely comment (and criticize) this foetal manuscript, snidely projecting our own memories and re-enactments on this proto-book.

But hell, how awesome the ride has been.

Anyway, speaking of rides.... as we begin my section, Kee is is driving Reshevsky and our Rowan down Third Avenue to some club, where throngs of decadent young people undulate to music, and Reshevsky has some table reserved for him with champagne (sounds like a typical night at one of those terrible Meatpacking bars). Rowan is clearly very happy to have her champagne flute constantly refilled, and as the night continues, she finds Reshevsky's company more and more enjoyable, and the decadence of the club more acceptable. It's wonderful how alcohol affects all people the same regardless of what decade they live in . Under the guise of going to use the ladies room, she finds a phone that is shielded from Reshevsky and dials the number that supposedly is Matt Cater's. Unfortunately some breathless sounding young woman answers who is unable to tell Rowan where Matt is, or when he'll be back. And dear old Rowan, manages to even feel jealous for this unknown woman who may simply be his answering service.

Back at the table, she promptly BURSTS into tears in front of Reshevsky and is unable to calm herself down. She then proceeds to break down and after some cursory prodding by Reshevsky, she breaks down and tells him that her aunt won't let her leave, there's some sort of unsavoury business abound and Matt had promised he would help. Reshevsky remains icily calm, and insists that he will try to help her. And as luck would have it, at the very bottom of my last page, he has a Eureka moment - snaps his fingers and says ....

You're up. Don't let me down. I must know what Reshevsky's brilliant plan is.