Sam Butler At a far district when I find it in rain the Albany station is empty, parking a glistening macadam without interruption. Time to kill before the train I make a few bad turns looking for a place to eat. Streets run by vacant lots, broken walks, rubble and buildings with boarded openings and blank facades. Where it rises up I sense from the gain in elevation I am on one of those low hills above the confluence of the Hudson with the Mohawk. I reflect for a moment through the rain-spattered glass, and roll it down to get the feel of it. To his question, I reply "Eat In," and I pay him. In a glass showcase a variety of cheap chinaware on dark fabric with careful folds in it. A round figure has black eyes and rich red garments with a high sheen. Nearby a black lacquered fan lays open with a frayed silk cord and brilliant mother of pearl. The jewels are jade, a soft green with white intermixed in gold settings. Paper lanterns are strung above in celebration. An immense 10-foot aquarium is against the wall with many large gold fish slowly navigating the watery confines. Their bulbous lips pulse rhythmically and pairs confront one another from time to time pausing momentarily. Pleased at my interest the guy speaks to me from one end of the tank. He's had it here for seven years and the very largest one is an ancient grandfather. He makes some sign and the whole school of them dash over to him in an instant churning the water. There are coarse plastic tables by the window. I take a seat below an island with oriental pines, vegetation in abundance and large decorative birds in plumage. A small stone bridge arcs above the flood. The large river landscape is dark, in traditional style, under glass. I share the compartment with a foreign visitor, genteel in appearance on a limited though secure income. From the sporadic but intense, self-conscious scratching I see he has a literary habit. When I express interest he reads me from a strange notebook. HUDSON LANDSCAPE. The near scene is a whirr of factories, blank brick walls, habitations, dirty backyards and intersections with barricades, flashing lights and vehicles in line along the road. For miles the tracks parallel an old canal, with unkempt trees and scraggle atop the old horespath. When the view opens up in farmland, seeding, cultivation and harvesting patterns are clearly inscribed on the natural slopes and depressions. Barns, silos and other distant objects move along slowly in spite of the speed of travel. The blue above has white puffs on it and remains fixed. CHINESE RESTAURANT. The man at the register indicates a list, a container with pencils and asks if I will carry out. The free- standing tables, chairs, eating booths and other fixtures are second hand, suggesting moreover that they have been assembled and reassembled in other not dissimilar situations. Upon a shelf in red light, a shrine with various fruit in bowls, colored cloth and a plastic seated figure in repose. A large Negro woman enters with a matching companion and places the food order, pronouncing the oriental words, with respect to both the vowel values and stress, correctly and with confidence. She doesn't bother with the list. At the end I am offered a confection in a glassine wrapper which I reject. As a young man he leaves home to make his fortune in a far colony. The natives are grateful their wild land is turned into sheep. After a while through a continued influx of disinherited sons he is able to sell out at a great profit. A boy he befriends there asks for passage home which he supplies and in addition a regular allowance which he continues till his death many years later. As a bachelor in an upscale Georgian row house with white front and columns he lives in a closet. I've arranged the meeting at one of those lifestyle cafes that grow up off Houston attracting tourists who come for the galleries. Arriving early I take a table with gin in a glass. The weather is mild enough for no coats and I sketch a slim girl with a small dog who stops at the corner for the light. The fabric is airy and her fashionable high shoes set it off. Signal control at this hour is one and a half minutes but there are no jaywalkers in spite of the light vehicular traffic. I take care not to catch her eye. An exhousewife from Indiana she raises the two kids on her own caring for mice and hamsters in a biology lab at a midstate landgrant college. Later she takes a course in electron micrography, works in commercial pathology preparing biopsy and forensic specimens just microns and even angstroms across with no folds or knife cuts at which she's skilled with a certificate. I help her with the menu the style of which she finds unfamiliar and this leads to animated expressions of food politics, corn and Monsanto. Farther on she warms up to tell me her group took on the Army Corps of Engineers and stopped them dead at their dam building. As she is vegetarian I find the roasted veggie for her. When the food comes I see she has had the waitress add chicken to it, a menu option. She doesn't drink and altered states of mind have no interest for her. Washington Square is just a mile from the disaster and the closest open public space. The usual horseplay and solicitations are not in evidence. An area is blocked off by chain link fence and this is completely covered with handbills, photos, decorations and memorabilia. Many appear as "missing," an additional pain beyond ordinary loss. Flowers are faded but the appetite of the curious is not. Passersby peruse the exhibits as at a gallery but crowded closer up, with more intensity. Carried along with the importance of the event, I take photos, visit an exhibition at an Engine Company uptown by the hotel and buy a souvenir fireman's jacket. We stop for sushi lunch in Saratoga Springs and I order expansively from the chef I like who surprises me with excellent hamachi from the belly, very pale. Hoping for an opportunity to mend things between us, I suggest staying over though we're just hours from home. We take a room in an upscale B&B at the end of the street, a high Victorian that perfectly suits her tastes. It's small, all white, tall ceilinged, with plausible furnishings including a high fourposter. We haven't slept together for months, but we both need a nap and lie down together on the antique bed without discussion. When we're settled I make a familiar conjugal signal which she turns down with a curl of the lip. Nightime on the street at a Northcountry music spot we share an ordinary meal with a lady on guitar. At the table without thinking I fill out a card and get on their mailing list. I make the left turn out of town on Lake Street as directed but nearly miss it since the faded wooden sign and entrance are on just a small gravel pulloff alongside the macadam. The trail is old trolley bed through an extensive young swamp backlit warm orange at that hour by low sun. Grasses growing together in small hammocks make live stepping places for me to get inside for a view closeup. The leaves of maple and other water tolerant trees make a bright canopy that blocks the sky forming shade. At a dry spot on the trail I rest for a while under a silver birch with bold markings. By a bridge farther on waters swirl with energy waving the grasses and I see where a drain runs out toward the river beyond. All the while back I stop often getting down to observe the vegetation at ground level, the small stalks, sprouts and gangly forms that proliferate in that world. 12/14/09 Renssalear NY