Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   down the Canary Falls
Saturday, July 3 2004
This afternoon I led our lovebird guests Doug and Sharon on a walk to Dug Hill Road's answer to Niagara, the Canary Falls. We took the long route to get there, looping first through the recently-logged upland forest to the abandoned go-cart tracks. The falls themselves had been reduced by drought to a mere trickle, which made them harder to find. The woods and terrain around them are complex and confusing, so I normally zero in on them by listening.
Someone had set up a hammock at the falls. Unlike the colorful cotton Guatemalan hammock in our backyard, this one was made of nylon and seemed capable of surviving several years. We stayed for awhile at the top of the falls looking at the rocks. Those of the creekbed and on the falls were stained black by the water, which drains an extensive swampy region. Those untouched by the water were so cracked and weathered that they looked like ruins from an ancient pre-human civilization.
Gradually I led the entourage down the rapids below the falls. This isn't a difficult walk since for long stretches it resembles a stairway. For some distance the creek runs at the bottom of a narrow gorge, disappearing completely here and there beneath piles of dry rubble and gurgling to the surface as it passes over a ledge in the bedrock. At the bottom of this gorge it feels like you're in the plateau's basement, with nowhere to go but up (or, perhaps, buried by a landslide). The light filtering through the trees is dim and diffuse because the sun seems to have difficulty finding its way all the way down there. Periodically you pass muddy outpourings where the veins of deep springs burble to the surface.
Suddenly the gorge ends in a dramatic ten-foot-high waterfall where it joins up with another gorge coming in at a 90 degree angle. Both gorges unite to form a wide, flat-bottomed hollow. It's one of the most dramatic and unexpected landforms on the Kingston West Quadrangle.


Today's route is in pink.

From there I led the entourage back up the hillside, taking advantage of a series of well-developed deer trails that formed a cross-hatched network that could be used as switchbacks. Eventually we made it back up to the plateau, where the Stick Trail was waiting to take us home.

At around five we were joined again by the Meatlocker people and we all set out (in a convoy) to attend Kingston's monthly art opening event. There isn't much to say about today's event that I didn't already say about the one that happened a month ago. Strangely, though, the food was uniformly inferior to the way it's been in the past. "They must have all gotten the memo to put out crappy food," Gretchen said with dismay. Her use of the phrase "gotten the memo" was a reference to an exchange we'd had a few minutes before about the use of baby dolls in artsy photographs, something Gretchen had proclaimed to be a bad idea. I'd begged to differ, saying, "I kind of like them." "No," Gretchen had reiterated, "they're never a good idea." "I guess I didn't get that memo," I'd sighed.
On our way back to our cars after the Rondout leg of the tour, Mr. Meatlocker showed me a flyer he had showing the schedule of the art walk scene for the entire Mid-Hudson region. Apparently they're all staggered, with each town laying claim to a different unique day of each month, enabling the enterprising art fancier to hit them all.
As we had a month ago, we stopped in at Keegan Ales for their art opening, which was really just another afternoon of "beer tasting" while fresh new art hung ignored on the shadowy walls. Keegan Ales was hopping today, with at least a dozen people sipping their "samples" in the garden out front. It had the hallmarks of sausage party; almost all of these samplers were men. Most of them were also wearing baseball caps (ignorance's answer to the grade school "thinking cap").
In Uptown, we quickly ran across our various Uptown friends, who would all be getting together later at Back Stage Productions (BSP) for some sort of jazz thing in honor of the birthday of Rupert, the BSP owner who pours the generous drinks. We planned to join them, but the art opening pickings had been so slim that we were all forced to go out for dinner at our favorite Uptown Chinese restaurant, the Tea Garden (which features the words "Chop Suey" in a bigger font than its own name, leading some -including myself- to call it that). All six of us crowded together into a single booth. Everybody else shared vegetarian dishes while I scarfed down a shrimp plate all by myself because I'm just like that when I eat.
Later we went over to BSP, sitting out in front like teenagers for a long time and then later getting in but avoiding the cover charge. (What, a cover charge? Oh yeah, it's not open mike night.") One of the BSP staff took an immediate shine to our contingent (actually, everybody in Uptown seems to take an immediate shine to our contingent) and elected to give us a tour of the back of BSP, the part behind the well-lit bar/stage area. We didn't even know there was a back to BSP, but there is. It's a huge space, and its unexpected existence gave it a surreal other-dimensional quality, as if we'd just fallen down an Alice in Wonderland-style rabbit hole. The walls and ceiling were all painted black and baffled by sound-deadening materials. Hundreds of chairs faced a large, well-equipped stage. It didn't look like the sort of venue that could exist in a town the size of Kingston. Behind the stage was another stage, a relic from another time. Its columns and arches formed a lavish bouquet of decorative plaster, although parts of it had rotted away, cracked, or discolored. At about this time Rupert came back to chastise his employee for bringing us back here. But then Rupert himself started telling us about all the plans he had for the space. Supposedly it includes a complex of underground tunnels as well as a five-story tower, the tallest in Uptown, all of which he plans to rehabilitate into practice space, theatres, and residential property. It was hard to imagine even the collective ambition of all of Kingston being able to carry out his plan.
At the end of the evening Gretchen was seated at the corner of the bar getting her usual rockstar-like treatment (including access to a special beverage containing champagne ordered up by Mark the Straight Hairdresser). Meanwhile I was talking to both Doug and Sharon about various things, mostly Gretchen's new Uptown friends. [REDACTED]


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