a love letter to massachusetts

030625 - a love letter to massachusetts

The best friends I made in Massachusetts all embody the main trait I take away from living here. That is, how being deeply nerdy in specific areas is treasured and encouraged by everyone worth befriending. I’ve spent the last two years being unapologetically enveloped in interdisciplinary topics of interest, learning far more about public transit systems, apple genomes, histories of small cities than I ever thought possible. A stray MBTA fact from me would be cherished by the people around me because trivia and learning is regarded with utmost importance. I feel deeply grateful for having wonderful people around me who took me under their wings to explore together, committing far too hard to experiments and schemes aplenty, and for being the most life-loving, optimistic friends one could ever ask for.

A small subset of a much larger list of great people in no particular order, with some of my favorite anecdotes:

Alex: Alex was a slow burn worth waiting for. We met through a series of very Alex-coded and Arielle-coded events. Alex met Taryn through his Strangers Project, where he has approached and talked to a stranger every day for the last 3+ years without fail. Taryn invited him to Beans, the Socratica node I started in Boston, and he became a weekly staple in my life and the easiest co-host promotion I’ve ever made. At Beans, Alex worked primarily on election maps. I’ve always known of the existence of Map Nerds but he was the first I met in the flesh, naming every county in New England and clocking stranger’s electoral districts in the midwest from a random landmark. He took a Beans sabbatical to do a 7-week road trip across the midwest, stopping only in small towns and befriending the pub regulars nightly. (He orders a soda.) What I love most about Alex is how dedicated he is to people. I’m thinking about Hank Green’s recent commencement speech at MIT where he remarks about orienting curiosity toward “everyday people problems” over the problems that dominate our current axioms; societal, wealth-steering problems dictated by the powerful. It’s not often you find somebody who embodies the care it takes to get to understand, and I mean really understand the everyday people of their country, and Alex is that person. He has taken every step possible to always step out of his comfort zone. His strangers project is not a tick-list of haphazardly getting to know someone. It’s a profound curiosity of understanding the world better through the lens of people we pass by without notice. He’s a patron of the cutting edge of the indie Berklee music scene, and a friend who roots for the people in his life by always showing up for them. As a proper send-off, Alex and I took a day off work to explore the North Shore of Massachusetts. Our road trip companion was a 400-page monster of a book retelling the social stories of how these towns came to be. To Alex, I’m thoroughly grateful to have hosted and spent the last year as close companions, and from him, I’ve received my greatest lessons of empathy and humility around the people we pass by daily. These are the people worth fighting for.

Kevin: Kevin was one of my first friends in Cambridge. The first time we met, we had a four hour conversation where I learned his favourite hobby was experimenting on beetles in his basement (they're freakishly large now...) and automating a pet axolotl's tank. In my first month here, he took me to MIT's ginormous MRI room and we played with weird magnets. We did a bunch of fun experiments together, including trying to clone Newton's apple tree (failed), embedding miraculin into Gala apples (failed), making ocarinas out of sweet potatoes (somewhat successful), and hacking into MIT's Atari lounge (successful!). Happy to say that Canada is also welcoming him post-grad and BCI is in good hands. To Kevin, you kicked off my ability to overcome any form of scientific insecurity almost the moment I touched down in Boston. You are the human example of “anybody can be a chef” from Ratatouille, where anybody can be a scientist, and it’s cooler to experiment and fail than to never try at all. I’m beyond elated to have you as a newly-minted, fellow Canadian.

Claire: Claire is just one of the coolest Youths around. I sound terribly old when I say that. In reality, she is not that much younger than me but has a spectacular brain, a contagious curiosity, and a love for listening to music before it becomes mainstream. To Claire, another wonderful cohost of Beans, who was a pillar for me to rant to, a go-to concert partner, a sounding board aplenty, and someone I look up to as a role model for my future children. I cannot wait for them to learn your unfettered ambition, your fearlessness in approaching seemingly large problems, and to be infectious with passion for solving problems & time-old, open questions. You made my Sundays feel safer, more curious, and I love rooting for you.

Samuel: Sam spent a year building a mechanical clock and it still does not tell the time correctly. You have to admire the patience of his craft. I have read with Sam at least twice a week, every week, for the last 6+ months at True Grounds in Ball Square. It was my first time being a true regular somewhere and the baristas knew my name (though my order changed every time). I know where Sam’s mind is at via the books he reads and not the conversations we have. At one point, I was convinced he was building a bomb (this has now been debunked) when he brought Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy to our 7:30AM reading sessions. I feel grateful for Sam for our early mornings that neither of us have ever missed or cancelled (wow!), for being so willing to commit to this time together, and for sharing many scones. It’s been a pleasure to share my favorite moments of the day with you, engrossed in the world history of mining or a classic novella, and our mornings together are genuinely one of the top 3 things I’ll miss most about moving away from Somerville, MA. Thank you.

Noemma: Noemma, a first-coworker that I can now call one of my dearest friends, was my constant reminder of how important girlhood relationships are. From our countless venting sessions down the Somerville community path, to sharing wonderful, delectable dinners bonding over GREAT wine, you are the person I go to without hesitation when I need to get something off my chest. You listen to and understand me in a way that no man could ever (haha), you are beyond humble in the vast amount of knowledge you bear but never flaunt, and you are a tour-de-force when it comes to making life happen the way you want it to. Most of all, you make me feel cared for and seen -- whether it’s through a shared song, a Yafa baklava, or a photo of a blooming flower wherever you are in the world, I am lucky to be in your brain. Thank you for being a de-facto older sister, friend, and comfort -- I feel unbelievably grateful I get to work with someone I love and care for beyond the projects we do together. I will miss you so much, but we will never be too far from one another.

Dai: Dai is my 50 year old boss/CEO who became one of the greatest friends I could ever ask for. Dai is this seemingly mysterious and stoic presence until you see him in the goofiest T-shirts and neon-green furry leg warmers dancing on Highland Road to covers of Mariah Carey’s hits (but his music taste is actually mainly gangster rap). I think the best way to describe the way I feel about Dai is by explaining the way I feel as a passenger in the back of his car. We were once driving to a Dairy Queen in a small town in Massachusetts while it was torrentially pouring rain and visibility was at (what seemed like) an all-time low. Dai’s GPS died a few seconds prior, there was a large truck in front of us, and I quickly inputted the Dairy Queen address into my phone and gave verbal cues to make a last-second turn onto an exit off the highway in metric form (not empirical). He made the turn, and although we could not see it or feel it, we definitely just shared a near-death experience for a $6 Blizzard. But Dai did not say a word about it. We carried on through the rain, making our way to the DQ, and I did not feel any form of fear or adrenaline. This is all to say that I feel the way a child does when their parent is at the wheel, unknowing of the world unfolding around you but feeling tremendously safe in their care. To Dai, thank you for teaching me how a workspace can feel like a real home, for the privilege of being able to work with people I love, and the privilege of being able to wholeheartedly work for altruistic, meaningful world outcomes. I am a better thinker, a better carer, and a better person because of you. None of the last two years would have been possible without you. I will miss our monthly diner breakfasts, our Weathering Heights hugs, your spunky vocabulary and sayings, and sharing a random dance-party or dozen all together.

John: I could never end this list without John. It feels too foggy and nostalgia-goggled now to recollect, but I’m 95% certain I disliked living in Massachusetts until our friendship formed. John is my co-worker, but more importantly, he is a best friend, someone who shares the same mind, loves the world in the same way I do, cries openly in the same moments I do, commits to ridiculous acts of whimsy, brings the world alongside him and not the other way around, and feels every emotion to its very core. On a surface level, John and I have directed some silly schemes together: the MBTA Googly Eye March, a cloud appreciation day, barking at the barking crab dressed up like crabs, throwing up on the T while dressed up like a crab, running a 5km marathon the next morning in a vomit-covered, dissolving crab costume, a weekly album party (we just passed a year)... but none hold a candle to our numerous late night conversations in the desert looking at the stars, the tears we’ve shared together in the Weathering Heights kitchen, and the birds we've listened to on a 45 minute walk in perfect weather. To top it off, a shared, almost tantalizing obsession over open system carbon dioxide removal. It’s funny -- when I think about John, and perhaps in general, the people I really love deep to their core, I also think about their greatest faults and how I love them too. I have withheld these cons from the rest of the people on this bulleted list, but John’s is too prominent for me to not name. One of my greatest annoyances of John is his naiveté towards the grandiose detail of the everyday item, and the social norms that were instilled into me from a young age. Namely, this is mostly about food -- I will savour miniature bites of a well-crafted food item and John will one-bite it and say, “yeah, it was okay.” It’s like that scene in Ratatouille (two Ratatouille mentions in one blog?!) where Remy is eating the block of cheese and hands it to his brother, who is like, “yeah, that’s food!” It has annoyed me to no end. Simultaneously, John will take a bite of a cucumber and also declare it is the best food he has ever tried. Then he will proceed to eat it raw for a month straight, then never again. I think it makes me appreciate how something simple can bring much more joy than something intricate -- specifically, this is a male-coded trait to no end but nonetheless, it has changed how I prepare food for different groups, a love language of mine I hold dear. To John, I love all the good and the annoying about you, and the annoying is not even close to being bad. Thank you for unknowingly pulling me out of a funk and helping me find the joy in Somerville, MA. Thank you for the daily wonder. Thank you for being you. I am my favourite, best, silly self when I am with you.

Besides the people, I’ll miss my mundane routines and the daily sights I’ve taken for granted. This includes:

The style of New England houses. There is no other place in the world like this. Huge, horizontally-planked, window-abundant. It is the caricature of a house that every child grows up dreaming about.

Waving at the T drivers as they come into my station. A silly tradition that I have never seen anyone else do. I wave, they almost always wave back. There are always smiles -- we need to say hello to our public transit drivers more! Thanks for getting me to my destination, hello, goodbye!

Looking for Googly Eyes on every Green Line Train. Despite being the ringleader of the movement, I have only seen 2 pairs of Googly Eyes (and they were brief, in passing another train) in the last year that they’ve been plastered on. I am an avid Green Line rider. I feel robbed of the luck required to ride one of the Eyed T’s but equally grateful that many, thousands even, have experienced the bliss.

Ball Square. Specifically: Neighbourhood Produce and Dollar Deal Mondays; I had to say goodbye to the staff and they told me they would miss my collection of hats. Thank you for having local produce for cheap. You kept me veggie and fruit pilled (though it doesn’t take much to do so.) True Grounds; for all the mornings I spent there reading with Sam. We have a table. There is one other regular who sat there before us every morning with both a coffee and a breakfast item. He is the true regular. Lastly, the comical “The Pub” and now the newly minted “Pound House.” I love you, Ball Square.

My monthly breakfast with Dai at Kelly’s Diner. I remember once, fresh out of an argument with Michael and puffy eyes, I ordered a stack of pancakes and a slice of apple pie (with ice cream) at 8AM and shared it with Dai while I vented to him. He really is a girl dad.

Highland Road and all my neighbours. Pesto the cat who idles around the gardens and sleeps in a flowerpot. The little free library that always rotated with great books. Alice, who offered me her garden-grown bitter melon. Dick, who hosts a fiddler during porchfest. The kid-full house that hosts PK during Block Party. The couple with the grand piano in their living room and paintings of fruit during Open Studios Somerville. Benny, the dog that jumps up the gate to greet me at the street corner. I have never felt safer in a neighbourhood than when I lived here.

The Somerville Community Path. The walks it’s taken me on, the conversations I’ve had, and my flowers that were planted. A treasure of a pedestrian path, home to many long conversations with Cascade folk and more. Many compliments on my hat were received while walking down to Davis. All the babies I’d say hi to! The strangers I met on a warm Thursday night that took my flower pot to plant on the side of the path. The cat that liked to eat gravel. The time I walked home in a lightning storm and thought I was going to die. When the trees start blooming and I start sneezing. I will miss living so close in proximity to this haven.

Weathering Heights. When I first moved in, I was petrified of living here alone and the noises I’d hear. Now, I’ll miss everything about this house. The two ovens, the way that the lights buzz if you leave them on for too long, our queen sized bunk beds, our shared peloton, my two sinks, the closet with more space than I could ever need, the third floor couches, the first floor couch, our paintings scattered around the house, the painting of Dai that faces the corner, the painting of the lifecycle of frogs that John and I were coerced into taking off the street, a fleeting Table Tennis Tuesday, the many dinner parties with us standing around my kitchen, the water tap that served me very well in my last few months, the dishwasher with a broken cutlery tray, our porch time in the late spring, the way the rain falls on the skylight windows, John’s cloud hole, Monday trash days, the proximity to the T, our overgrown garden, our whiteboards, my speaker bouncing down the stairs once a month, the creakiness of the floorboards at night, even the month long fly infestation (“just open the windows” said the exterminator that came in) - I will miss it all dearly. I'm grateful that I was able to share WH with so many friends and family members over the course of many weekends.

The events that nerdsniped me. Specifically, being able to live in the same area as the MIT Integration Bee, the Ig Nobel Prizes, iconic commencement speeches by iconic people, the endless amount of trivia nights, American history tours in full costume, cultural parades aplenty (including the greasy pole that I never made it to in Gloucester), and many more. It was a privilege that I do not take lightly.

The arts scene in Boston. Specifically, the music scene. The DOZENS of concerts and musicals I attended while here in beautiful venues for not-too-absurd prices. My notable ones: Hans Zimmer at the Garden, Emile Mosseri at Arts in the Armoury where we sat criss-crossed around a white piano while he serenaded us with Minari, Magdalena Bay at the House of Blues, The Brokes - 3 times to be exact (but specifically, the Malden night was my favourite), Laufey in the Boch Center, Claire’s record release party in an Allston Berklee house, Mamma Mia at Somerville High School with Andy and Kevin… countless others. These were some of my favourite memories.

Ironically, the sports in Boston. Truthfully, I was and still am not a Celtics, Bruins, or Sox fan. But there is something idyllic about seeing people, dripped out in the same attire as one another, swarming onto the T to go to and from a game. I learned the Ball Game song and ate a Fenway Frank.

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