You know, some days it’s all pity, some days it’s all scorn. Though they are so closely related it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between them.

Wednesday I had a break between classes and took a stroll around the Back Bay. And after admiring the Hancock, which looked smashing against a stormy sky, and some stonework on the Old South Church I hadn’t noticed before, I took a stroll down Commonwealth Ave., and sat for a spell on a park bench.

There are days, as I said. And this was one. You know, the sun was out—in and out, but out—for the first time in two weeks, or something utterly ridiculous, and you know how people are. They forget themselves. And everywhere I looked people were rushing around, like they had someplace else to be. It seems like nowadays you are hardly ever where you are.

There were a couple of dog walkers who went about their task with utter joylessness. And you’ve got to admit that if you can walk dogs joylessly, you can do just about anything joylessly. It was impressive in its way. There was a neatly attired jogger with a tennis racket sticking out of her backpack. She was wearing the ubiquitous white ipod earphones, and looked determined in her joylessness, as well.

A pinched-face yuppie yammering on his cell. Two pumped-up gym bunnies jogging by trying to show the world how str8-acting they can be. And the construction worker who joined me on my bench, methodically, meticulously unpacking his methodically, meticulously packed sack lunch piece by crinkly, crunchy piece over the course of an endless half hour.

And there I was joylessly watching all this determined joylessness joylessly unfold before my eyes. Thinking, of myself as much as those around me: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Every gesture, every thought, every breath. All in vain.

But this is the danger of sitting on park benches. They should be required to post some sort of warning on them.

I’d gone to see Poseidon with my friend Robert over the weekend, and I thought about the stereotypes we were supposed to be happy to see survive in the end. And now, as I watched the self-style stereotypes around me, I thought, please God, let me die alone. And that’s what you get from watching Hollywood disaster movies. It’s not just that I don’t want to be part of the body count on the nightly news. The real reason is I don’t want some other drama queen stealing the scene. I’m only gonna die once. It’s my freakin swan song.

So, as you can see, last Wednesday I had only contempt. No pity. Except for dogs.

I got up and moved on, thinking about how hard we work to eliminate the magic in life, but how sometimes it still manages to slip under the radar. Occasionally things happen that shake up the manufactured and painstakingly maintained mundanity of our thoroughly modern lives.

For example. I have been receiving communiqués from my past, a boatload of them all at once, from all corners of the globe. From places as unlikely and disparate as Paris, France and Lawrence Kansas; Budapest, Hungary and Hobart, Tasmania. From friends and lovers, old students and teachers. From different points along my path. And all these messages came thundering in over an utterly random two-week period. After years, nearly a decade in a couple of cases, of silence.

You know, what is that?

No, really. What is it?

I had very special lunch plans today, and was working in Back Bay all day, so I had no choice but to hit the gym early. Early meaning seven-thirty or so, which I know is not really early for early purists. I assure you I was up at the crack of dawn, but the last thing I want to do first thing in the morning is work out. I like to have a couple espressos over the space of an hour before I do anything that requires coordinated movement.

But as for the commute. What a difference an hour makes. I was afraid the seven o’clock wouldn’t be all that different from the eight o’clock rush, but it was a not unpleasant ride into town.

Except that on the train I discovered to my chagrin that my editor at Metro had cut off the last line of my weekly op-ed piece (you can find the “alternative ending” here). In fact, it didn’t bug me all that much. I’m pretty mellow about my Metro gig. This is just some more of my ongoing campaign of shameless self-promotion. But why not, right?

I wrote about immigration this week. I didn’t make it to the rallies, though. I wonder if the T was clogged up with immigrants. Somehow I doubt it. The illegals I have known and loved have always had cars. I knew a lovely guy, Brazilian, who was a busboy at Chili’s. Does the T go there? I don’t think so. He had to drive, of course. But not to worry, he had his fake driving license and all that.

Now that the weather’s certifiably glorious I just walk from Park Street Station to Boylston and Berkeley, where I “work,” through the Common and the BPG. They’ve filled in the pond. There’s a fragrant magnolia in bloom right now that is simply magnificent. Took me back to my childhood. The so-called “Proust Effect.”

All I can say: get out and smell things now, because once the blooms all fall off you’re shit outta luck. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow, or fall victim to anosmia, so don’t put it off.

I made a little friend of the squirrel in the picture above this morning. Well, I say “friend,” but we were really just using each other. I wanted a picture, and he wanted a nut. I didn’t have a nut, and I never said I did. He assumed. But while he was cute enough in his Beatrix Potter way, the whole Beatrix Potter Shtick has been done by squirrels the world over. The beef I have with him is he only had that one pose, like he is in the picture. Even if I’d had a nut, I don’t think I’d have given it to him for that. Maybe if he called another squirrel over and they beat each other up for it.

COINAGE & KARMA. I got a free ride yesterday from JFK and I still don’t know why, but I wasn’t gonna ask. The token lady was outside her little booth, standing at the open gate, and I had my dollar out to get my token, but I guess she didn’t want to go back into her little booth to get me one just then. I consider it karma for a wait I had a couple years ago on the orange line, for which I wrote an email to the MBTA to get my fare reimbursed, and was told to go fuck myself.

THE EYES HAVE IT. I have definitely noticed that now that we’re officially into Spring, people are perking up a little. There’s been more eye contact out there in the last few days than there’s been in the past six months put together. People are funny. It’s still tentative, sometimes slightly teasing, rather curious than cocky at this point.

I spent many years in Budapest, and people there always make eye contact, and often stare brazenly on the subway. The staring used to bug me, but you get used to it. The eye contact on the street always gave me something to think about, though. On the one hand, it gave every outing an air of possibility, because each little interaction was a tale of its own, pregnant with possibility–visions of romance and violence, fantasies of intrigue–where did she come from? Where is he going? Was that an invitation in her eyes? Was that a threat in his? That’s what I have always loved about city life–that’s what’s missing from the suburbs. Fact is, in the suburbs, even if you make eye contact it’s in a familiar and thoroughly domesticated setting, like the supermarket or the post office, or the drive-thru from the safety of your car–and lacks that primal frisson of connection—and that vertiginous moment of “right now, if I look again, everything could change. Right now if I don’t look away, everything will change.”

Returning to Boston, I found it bugged me that you’d be passing somebody on the street and you’d be looking at them and they’d be looking at you, but you’d get about to where they were in focus, and they’d shift their gaze to the sidewalk. This is before there was any possibility of making real eye contact, mind you. Of course, in primates, the sustained gaze is a sign of dominance, while avoidance is a submissive or deferential gesture.

But here it seemed a sort of wholesale conflict-avoidance. The fact that the potential interaction was aborted seemed also to argue that people you encounter on the streets of Boston, for the most part, feel that conflict is the most likely outcome of interaction, at least with strangers on the street. Which is not so surprising, seeing as Boston is a city with a population widely stratified along social and economic lines. There also seems to be a lot of self-segregating due to race, class, and age, which is not so unusual, either. I think there’s probably more eye contact amongst strangers in cities that are racially and economically less stratified, more homogeneous.

Of course, psychologists and sociologists have a lot to say about these things. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin –Madison studying autism found that “in autistic subjects, the amygdala — an emotion center in the brain associated with negative feelings — lights up to an abnormal extent during a direct gaze upon a non-threatening face.” It could be that Bostonians have hyperactive amygdalas. Only compulsory mass MRIs can tell us for sure.

In New York City, in the days after 9/11, some psychologists-about-town, and at least one journalist(“gawker” Alex Kuczynski) noticed something: “In acts described by psychologists and sociologists as subliminal bonding consistent with wartime, instead of averting gazes when a stranger stood close, many New Yorkers made eye contact. The cultural historian Neal Gabler, who walked Manhattan’s streets for three days after Tuesday’s attack, said that New Yorkers have always cultivated the blank face. “It is an immunity mechanism, an emotional tax that you pay when you live in New York City,” he said. “Now, people have left it behind and are looking at each other with a different kind of civility, looking for some kind of contact.”

Kuczynski quotes Dr. Gordon Bower, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, on the result of millions of years of evolution in facial expression: “We are now able to pass on an emotional contagion, where one sad person can through their body and facial language pass on sorrow and grief to hundreds of other people,” he said. “It is an empathic, imitative response that even little children have.” Indeed, eye contact is so elemental even newborns seek it out.

But, yes, there are real dangers—but mostly inconveniences—associated with eye contact. I can’t deny it. I remember when I lived in Portland, Oregon. There was this big pockmarked homeless Indian in my neighborhood. I was working nights and he used to hang out in a doorway on my way to the bus stop. He was usually three sheets to the wind by the time I was getting to work. He was always very aggressive, demanding money or cigarettes, and because of his usual state of inebriation and his formidable stature, I found him threatening. I crossed the street to avoid him when I could. Whenever he accosted me I flashed him a look and grunted something. But one night I decided to just ignore him completely. This is something a lot of people do with beggars and bums on a crowded city street, but the less crowded it is, the more likely you are to provoke more of a reaction by ignoring them than if you just go ahead and acknowledge them. This was definitely the case with the pockmarked Indian. He flew into a rage, cursing me, throwing an empty bottle, shouting “Hey! HEY! I said ‘HEY!’” Demanding I acknowledge him. I didn’t. I hurried off to the bus stop, and made a note to try a different route from then on out.

Since that unpleasant incident, however, I always make it a point to acknowledge beggars, but I still don’t give them money. For many of mendicants it’s kind of a “gotcha!” game. If they can catch your eye, even for an instant, you lose, and owe them a buck, or whatever. This may be because of the empathy that eye contact seems naturally to engender. But I’ve been on skid row myself and never resorted to begging, so I feel like my empathy for the situation they’re in does not preclude a certain lack of sympathy for the solution they seem to have come up with.

Another danger in the city is that it seems like it’s mostly crazy people who aggressively seek out eye contact. I passed a mischievous-looking guy near the Pru yesterday, and knew I was in for something if our eyes met (but probably even if they didn’t). All it took was a glance as he was passing, and he barked: “John Lennon! Imagine!” at me. I laughed, and without breaking my stride, shouted back: “Double Fantasy, baby!” and passed without incident. He shouted over his shoulder back at me: “You got a fat wallet!” But what he took for a wallet was actually my leather-bound Moleskine notebook, which I often keep in my back pocket.

IN OTHER WORLDS. Anyway, at JFK there were two Asian students, one looked like one of those happy fat Buddhas, talking with great enthusiasm about some computer role-playing game. The whole way to Park Street. You know how people who are really into that sort of thing are. I mean, they can bang on forever about the different characters, their morphology, and their magical qualities. And listening to them, you’d swear it was all very real.

At Broadway, it probably was, an interesting character got on. He looked like he was maybe a Vietnam Vet, wearing what looked almost like a sort of paramilitary uniform. He had on those strangely-fitted pants your school custodian used to wear, the ones that were made out of indestructible rayon. Sensible shoes. A black SWAT-like vest, with some sort of walkie-talkie-like devise attached that would issue bursts of static at fairly regular intervals, prompting him to minutely adjust the volume with controlled competence. He wore a black baseball cap with the emblem of the Dept. of Public Safety Texas Rangers on it, pulled down so low you could not see his eyes, and, in fact, his bearded face was completely obscured. He may have been wearing Unibomber shades, too. Still, I felt like he was on our side, somehow.

Watching him, I thought, aside from the fact that his trousers are too short, and are exposing his white and red-striped (but matching) tube socks, he’s in an absolutely airtight world of his own construction there. OK, to some extent we all are, but his was hermetically sealed, with its own set of signs and symbols intelligible to none but him.

Then, the next stop, a mother got on with four little boys, all around fivish, sixish, sevenish. I think three were hers, because they looked just like her. And they were all lovely. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Squirrely, but in a Beatrix Potter kind of way. The crazies shrank from them immediately, of course, but the boys themselves were so completely good-natured and innocent, they didn’t shrink back from the crazies.

You could tell riding the T was this big adventure for them. And they were bold explorers, watching the goings on with fearless, utterly unselfconscious, good-natured curiosity. And genuinely cute kids are few and far between, let me tell you. But all four of them were delightful.

10,000 JOANS.After the gym I dropped into the Boston Public Library. There’s an exhibition, 10,000 Joans, upstairs in the McKim Building through June 15th. The exhibition, consisting of Joan of Arc memorabilia I guess you’d call it, hints at something, but with no program, brochure, or guide accompanying it, and very little explanatory signage, you’re left to sort it out on your own. There are guided tours, and I’m interested enough in the subject matter to take time out for one. (The exhibition’s title is a bit misleading, though. The number of Joans on display is in the hundreds, not thousands. I think the ten thousand figure comes from the complete collection, impossible to display, obviously, all at once, in the gallery space available.)

Because, truly, the story of Jeanne d’Arc is such a compelling one on so many levels: religious, yes, but cultural and political even more so. Americans don’t always get the deep, enduring significance of national saints in Europe. Sainte Jeanne is, of course, patron saint of France, and as such a symbol of French history and identity on some levels. Does the exhibition explore this? I couldn’t tell.

One thing the exhibition hints at is the incredible appeal and the richness of the material devoted to her story. Up to the present day. But here again, an exhibition of this size can’t even hope to scratch the surface. It did not include any reference to the French military’s helicopter Carrier that bears her name, Jacques Dror’s distinctive Art Nouveau-inflected church in Nice (that has been nicknamed “the meringue” by local critics), or depictions of her by cheeky French artists Pierre et Gilles. This is partly a limitation of an exhibition of an idiosyncratic private collection rather than a more systematic exploration of any certain theme. As a collection of artifacts it’s interesting enough, I guess.

One of my favorite books that takes Joan of Arc as its subject is Michel Tournier’s Gilles et Jeanne. By the way. In fact, I’d recommend about anything by Tournier for a good read.

My, but this has turned into some kind of lengthy discourse, hasn’t it? I will have to save my observations of my orange line journey home for another time. Until then, au revoir, mes petites grenouilles.

Yes, I’m back in dear old Boston. St. Armand’s is a nice place to visit, but not much going on, aside from the aforementioned walks along the beach, which I’m not knockin’, and the occasional Jerry Springer sighting. More about my week at the beach here.

Back in Boston things are much as I left them, with the additional remnants of a little snow event I missed. People seem to be sort of perking up a bit, having survived January 24th, the most depressing day of the year, at least according to University of Cardiff psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall’s calculations. His formula looks like this:

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

I don’t know how much snow we got while I was gone, but the motorists on my dysfunctional block here in Dot apparently felt it was enough to merit breaking out the old “space-savers” again. Drama queens. I mean, I took a walk around the block and noticed it was just my little street where people had put out the space-savers. I don’t know what to make of that. Is there something wrong with my block? Is it something in the water? It doesn’t seem, on the face of it, to be any more small-minded, petty and possessive than any other block in Boston. But there’s obviously something going on.

I would write about taking the silver line from the airport last night, but I didn’t. I caved into pressure from Itchy, who had offered to collect me at the airport. I thought there might be a little sushi stop on the way home, but no. I should have taken the T.

Speaking of sushi. My aunt was all like, “oh, your uncle loves sushi, so you two will get along famously.” But while we got along just fine, he’s not a true sushiphile. My aunt saw him eat a california roll once and that’s what she based her judgment on. She’s like that. You know people who see you, like, clog dance once, or whatever, and then forever after you’re referred to in mixed company as “my nephew the crazy clog-dancing fool.” And it’s like you tried it on a lark, and you never ever did it again. But that’s the problem with families. They won’t let it die. My aunt doesn’t eat any fish at all, by the way, which I can’t understand. And thus she talks about fish like it’s just a given it’s disgusting. It’s like, “No, I don’t drink puss from lepers’ boils! Are you kidding?” That’s how she sees it. So, we didn’t have fish but once the whole time I was down there. And no sushi.

So, literally weeks after the first dusting of snow, the chairs, boxes, and pylons marking those precious parking spots as “saved” are still out. As I said before, what bugs me, personally, is not so much that people do it the day of a snow storn, after they’ve labored to dig out their vehicle, thus clearing a spot, but that even well after the entire street is cleared they continue to claim that spot. This shows their true motives and mentality. They just feel entitled to a spot, period. And a little snow gives them a perfect excuse to claim it in perpetuity. You know, weather really brings it out in people. You want to see someone’s true nature? Lock ‘em out of the house in a downpour. Or lock ‘em out of the car in the cold. Then you’ll really know what you’re dealing with. Anyway, given the ridiculousness of the whole “space-saver” thing so early in the season and after barely a dusting of snow, I was enormously gratified to see on my walk home from JFK that someone had gotten fed up and done something about it, even if it was a little OTT.

The picture shows what’s left of the chair someone had set out to lay eternal claim to “their” spot. Actually, there were several more parts of the “space-saver” strewn about on the lawn of the house nearby, a bit hanging from the fence, and some other bits lying about here and there, in I’d say about a twenty foot radius from ground zero.

This was about a block from my place. Folks on my street are smarter than the average, or have learned from experience not to use materials that are too easily splintered into a million pieces by irate neighbors who get home from work before they do and aren’t Darwinian enough by nature or nurture to have saved a spot for themselves. My neighbors favor plastic or metal “space savers” that can’t be blown to bits except with the aid of, say, a Howitzer.

Do I need a special license for one of those?