I've been walking like a maniac of late. When I come into town to teach, instead of taking the subway from North Station to Harvard Square, I hit the pavement instead. It takes about an hour to get from Point A to Point B, but I don't mind, as public transportation almost takes as much time. Along the way I pass a number of landmarks from my former incarnations here in the Cambridge/Boston area. First I pass my old apartment above the Middle Eastern restaurant and the former gay bar, at the edge of Beacon Hill; then I cross the street where my very first off-campus digs were, a fully-furnished apartment with a garden courtyard and a semi rent-controlled rent; over the Longfellow Bridge and past the Dewey Library at MIT, where I spent three years working after deciding I didn't want to study science anymore; after that the remains of Building 20, where radar had been invented and where the MIT Archaeology Department (my academic home at MIT until I left) had its headquarters until the whole structure was demolished in order to make room for the new and extremely cool-looking Stata Center; then the Royal East restaurant, where I scarfed many a bowl of Suan La Chow Chow and too many plates of General Gao's Chicken, and ironically an eatery owned by the same people who provide us our Chinese food - just as good, mind you - out here in Peabody at a place called Su Chang's; past the Baptist Church I roomed directly behind one summer, the summer I also drove cross-country with my best friend Mark then went to Mexico to study the Aztec language, thanks to the folks in Building 20; then up through Central Square, where I pick up a Vietnamese iced coffee at Toscanini's and proceed past the home of that coffeehouse whose name I'd rather not mention, where I first learned that it's really all about the benjamins, no matter what you put in your mission statement; and finally to The Greek Institute, where it's actually not all about the benjamins, shocking as though that sounds.

I love to walk, but especially so these past few days. I feel like I'm sweating out the past five years of my life, all that failure and self-doubt oozing out of my pores in the sultry summer mugginess, arriving for class every afternoon a little more confident, a little more clean, a little more myself. And probably a little thinner, too...

p.s., the novel has reached 45k. I'm thinking the big 50,000-word-mark will happen sometimes next week. I think I'm going to celebrate by starting a new story!