visiting Norfolk

Yesterday evening I arrived at the home of my sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew, along with their two dogs - it's really becoming too much to say, I've already started just shortening it to "my sister's family." Saying that always makes me pause and ponder, though, since until pretty recently I always considered myself part of my sister's family! Maybe the easiest and least existentially challenging way is just to say, "I'm now in Norfolk, staying with the Zarets."

Elliot and Zoe's enormous house

The Zarets have been fabulous hosts, except for the two puppies, who tend to leap and slobber on you a bit more than you might like, but this is excusable, since they are still just puppies. They do have quite a large house with plenty of spare rooms for guests. It's funny, though, how they pretty much fill their enormous, beautiful house in Norfolk the same way they did their also lovely but somewhat cramped apartment in Washington, D.C., where I visited last spring. Gadgets, toys, literature, ridiculous collectibles, vitally essential items I haven't yet quite identified, all piled up or scattered about - I'm not trying to say that my sister and brother-in-law are slobs, or anything, just that their dwellings tend to be squeezed full of all their joy and enthusiasm and life, to such an extent that some forms of life might choose to dwell there of their own accord. Right now, though, they've kept those life forms to a minimum: just a few fruit flies, and me.

I guess it shows that you can change your city, your house, your tax bracket - but you can't change your self that much, so your lifestyle never changes that much either. Which is fine, because Zoe and Elliot seem to have found a nice domestic routine, busy with all the tasks of being parents and dog owners and home owners and hosts to siblings. It's a little scary, though, to observe their routine and realize how closely it resembles that of our parents. Come home from work, make dinner, watch television - these are the inescapable pillars of middle-class life in America, it seems though somehow I always thought we would escape them. I guess that's why I'm now a freelance musician, single, without cable.

Thank you for putting me up, and putting up with me, Zoe and Elliot, if you read this! I don't think they often read hella frisch, though, which means I can write a lot of stuff about them I otherwise might not.

to read more about my nephew Isaac and see a picture in this blog's archives, click here!