[Formendacil]

There is a prevailing belief that all Barrow-downer meetings must invariably be excellent, a belief that has no doubt been greatly assisted by the fact that, as yet, there has not been a meeting reported as a failure. There is, however, no property of the Barrow-downs, nor of Barrow-downers, that makes this a necessary condition of all BD meetings, and though so many visits thus far have been writ with the happy endings of comedy, nonetheless the material is there for a tragedy.

This philosophical caveat out of the way, let me recount the visit of myself, Formendacil, to Feanor of the Peredhil and Nienna, in Boston, which while not a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions, should still not be painted in the colours of too much joy.

The portents of woe began frightfully early in this particular tale. I almost didn't make onto the connecting plane in Toronto (yet again, my abject apologies, Bêthberry, but perhaps it is best, in the end, that you were not entangled in the Doom of the Noldor), for as I was going through U.S. customs to get onto my second flight I was cross-examined by a U.S. Customs agent wanting to know my business in the USA.

"Visiting friends," I answered truthfully.

"How do you know these friends?" he asked, and my mind hit a blank. "We met on the Internet," did NOT seem an adequate response, so I said the first thing that came to my head. "We met in college." It was vague enough to cover a multiplicity of meaning, and eminently plausible, but--of course--mostly untrue. In
the case of Fea, we either met while we were both in High School, or else we had not yet met--and the met that had not yet happened would be, really, post-college, since we're now all allegedly Grad students. I suppose, in Nienna's case, it could be considered true that we met in college, but... really... not true.

Soiled by this falsehood, they let me on the plane, and to add to the deficiencies of the trip, I arrived in Boston a ridiculous mess. Now, this wasn't my first BDer meeting (I visited Brinn in Idaho last year), but I doubt that even after a dozen BDer meetings that I'll be any less anxious prior to first-time encounters--all the more so when, as was the case this time, I'm meeting someone I've become quite well acquainted with (albeit not in person). Fea, at least, has the
dubious distinction of being one of my favourite Downers, Nienna of being all-too-closely associated with her. So, basically, imagine the kind of giddiness that might precede TGEW meeting the editor of the The Barrow-Downer.

Fortunately, my plane wasn't late--meaning I had no extra time to course adrenaline through my veins--and somewhat dazed I followed the stream of passengers from the plane towards the baggage retrieval, only to find Fea and Nienna waiting there.

My first words were fairly clumsy, basically to the effect of "I really don't know how one goes about meeting someone they've already met," and Fea's response was, unhelpfully: "informally." It was perhaps awkward for a minute or two as my mind was more on the imminently arriving luggage, but soon enough we were on our way, with no apparent problem in each other's company. Conversation was much helped along by my mentioning that there had been snow that morning in Calgary (where I'd flown from), that my plane had been de-iced before I took off, and the ensuing outrage of the ladies at the inconsiderateness of Canadian weather.

As mentioned by Fea in her preview post, I did, indeed, have a tie on. I can't really say that I recall her saying anything about it beyond asking if I always wore one (I don't quite...), but perhaps, being a man, I missed out on all the delicacy of delicious denotation in her query. It would be consistent with the tone of the visit for her to have been insinuating I'd overdressed for the occasion, or that I might be weird (I am, but that's not the point).

I should digress and mention that Fea and Nienna no longer live in the mass-Downer location Brinn met them at over the winter, with Lariren Shadow and Mirandir, but they have now moved to Boston to pursue grad studies in their fields. It is also worth mentioning that this move had just been accomplished the day before I arrived. Not that I didn't already know this, for when I was looking with Fea at dates for travelling, we ended up with two more-or-less mutually compatible blocks of dates, and being the gentleman I am, I asked which they preferred. Naturally, they responded that they preferred having the extra manpower during the more laborious transition period at the beginning. Hence, I was to be put to work on my so-called holiday.

The most strenuous task, certainly, involved moving in a couch. Fea and Nienna, you see, did not bring a couch with them from their last residence, so there was a scouring of the thrift stores one morning to rectify this situation, followed that afternoon by the arrival of Nienna's father with his van--a necessary tool for the moving of a couch.

Now, the couch which the ladies selected is quite the specimen (See it with me here. Note the scowl on my face). Quite apart from aesthetic concerns like colour and pattern (which are of negligible concern to those doing the moving), they selected a couch that could, quite comfortably, seat five Feas (or Niennas, but probably only four Formendacils). I can hardly fail to note that these young BDers live on the fourth floor of an elevator-less building.

Of course, if you were to judge by those conditions, you might assume that the reason there was relatively little tourism on my part during the rest of the trip was because I took that long to recover from hauling the couch up the stairs. (Here we rest at the foot of the apartment building, on said couch. I apologize for not re-shooting to centre us more, but Nienna disappeared.) Instead, my weighty task was to be shared, as we had the good fortune to start blocking the stairs just as a couple of young men from the second floor had the back luck to enter the building and volunteered/got volun-told to assist. We didn't break the news though, until they were wedged in around one of the bends in the stairs, that the couch was going to the fourth floor...

Other, earlier, adventures included bodyguard duty as Nienna and I escorting Fea to the Prudential Centre Barnes and Noble for the submission of a job application. Now, according to Nienna, Fea and I were equally useless and going off in the wrong direction, but in my defence, I was just following Fea, until we got lost, after which I was fully committed to our being not-lost, while Nienna slowed down the process by phoning for directions. (This picture shows Fea in the foreground with us industriously moving forward on our side of the street, while Nienna stands opposite, pointing probably at the building next to the Prudential Centre.) We were totally on the cusp of going in not-the-absolutely-wrong direction. I also aver that, while it was raining while we were on the train, it was not when we arrived. Unless, of course, you were walking under trees with water on their leaves, going in the wrong direction.

I blame Fea.

Of course, that particular Barnes and Noble has nothing on the location alleged to exist at Chestnut Hill. I blame the completely absentLariren Shadow for that, since she actually phoned them (well, phoned someone who said they were them) and ascertained that they were hiring, and as it was on the way to Fea's grad school, she and I decided that while we were on a jaunt to see how far the campus was and what it looked like, we would check out the wisdom of that location.

Except... well... we couldn't find it. Not that we got there immediately. Fea, I maintain, got us lost on the hike down to the train--in the rain, but even after we'd been on our feet for probably an hour and a half, and should have just headed back towards the apartment, we ended up walking all around the location it was supposed to occupy, and determined that it was most definitely not there. We weren't lost then, though, as Google Maps confirmed upon our return. It was the bookstore, not us, that got lost, because we were definitely right where it should have been... but where it apparently should have been was a tennis club with high fences. Of course, on the way back, to save our aching legs, Fea decided to take a "short cut." Short cuts make long delays indeed... an extra five minutes for sure, at the end of a long hike, and then, remember, we had those four flights of stairs.

No account of this visit would be complete without mentioning that I made pie. In the midst of being ignored by my serious hosts, I unveiled both a desire for pie and the recipe to make it--an extraordinary gesture on my part, I'm sure you'll agree. Although I would have been content with just apple, and would have rested at that, nonetheless Fea definitely expressed an interest in strawberry-rhubarb pie, which I was gracious enough to indulge, for her own good (she was procrastinating on her first grad school deadline). Was this charity reciprocated? Not exactly... The other, apple, pie was shortly be used to mollify Nienna's father, who is quite fond of it, after they broke the news of the couch they bought--and so we're back to that point in the tale.

Fea thinks there's a story to be told about me playing Nintendo, but I would say that's the real story there is not that I played Nintendo, but that I was harassed into playing Nintendo. I distinctly remember being decidedly non-enthused about the Wii, which on their end simply would not do. However, when I begrudgingly didn't fall asleep, but began to humour them, I spent all of ten minutes on Wii Fit before the actual using of the Wii turned into Mii-making, which I think that was a Pyrrhic victory at best for the Nintendo evangelisers.

More details could be enumerated, but adventures such as these were the basic staple of the trip, which otherwise included incompatible diets, incompatible worldviews, incompatible sleep habits (I am, it seems, more of a morning person than I give myself credit), and incompatible notions of straight roads.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post, where I mentioned that not everything about this visit was stellar. When I said that, I do not mean anything I've recounted yet was bad--even though true. Not even the couch moving. No, really, it wasn't until I had to leave that the visit was less than excellent.

You see, Fea and Nienna were so welcoming, and the visit was so excellent generally, and given that it was more an experience of coming to live in Boston than coming to visit Boston, that when time finally wound down and I had to leave... I didn't want to. I had to, of course. I had work on Monday (and money is an unfortunate necessity in the average life), and I had a friend's ordination to attend before that, so I couldn't exactly just forget my airfare and become an illegal immigrant. Besides all of which, I am quite fond indeed of western Canada and the people there, for all that it snows in June.

All the same, it was a very melancholy Formendacil that Fea left at the airport, one who has since been trapped between the certainty of having to go back and visit again and the clear verdict that travel upsets his routine and is dangerous to his mental equilibrium. Also a Formendacil who has had to go from having a social life around the corner in the next bedroom to scattered out and about and on the Internet--which is to say, that, all told, I felt like I got along quite well with Fea and Nienna.

(This is an excellent point to note, then, that everything written above is, of course, subject to the caveat that an alternative account by either or both of the ladies may well contradict everything. I take no responsibility for that.)

Postscript

Coming back into Canada, I had to go through Customs again. For whatever reason (I'd be in the wild land of speculation if I were to guess), I got hauled out of the rubber stamp processing line and into the "search his luggage" room in the Ottawa airport.

The first question I got asked, entering the search room was:

"Do you always wear a tie?"

"Umm... well, not always. But often."

(At this point, I'm already grinning because this'll be a good story, but trying hard not to, lest I get strip-searched.)

"Do you have any sharp objects I should know about?" I replied in the negative, only to get asked sharply a couple minutes later why I hadn't mentioned the diabetic needles.

I tried to explain I had thought she was asking about weapons... knives, nailclippers, and whatnot, but whether she believed me, I can't say. Certainly, she seemed to lose interest when she'd exhausted my luggage and not found any contraband.

Having got through customs, I needed something to read on the plane. Not having a copy, I let myself splurge on a hardcover of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, telling myself nothing could be more appropriate to end a wholly un-epic, heavenly wonderful, BDer visit than an addition to my Tolkien collection.

As a sign of the barbarity of our times, I challenge you to find and purchase a pen and writing paper in an airport, especially past the security checkpoints. I managed it, but I was about ready to steal napkins.