It feels so strange to finally see this Boston puzzle assembled. The box is like an old friend that's just kind of always hung around. For about a decade it was the only puzzle in the house until we got one more. So I remember seeing this puzzle in Joe's apartment when we first met. The place was an utter dump. He didn't have much, but there was this puzzle. We were just talking about how the only things we still have from when he lived alone are the bed frame, a set of very good sheets, his bass and this Boston puzzle. Joe thinks someone gave it to him when he'd decided in senior year to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston.
I found this puzzle impossible to do, because the image details are so very very teeny tiny. I am This-Puzzle-Is-Too-Small years old. Placed here and there around the puzzle are little fun facts, written out in a comic book font that look like the footprints of a fly to me. I could have done it when it first came out, according to the copyright this was published in 1980. Sure, give me my 1980s eyes back.
Even if I could see the damn thing, it's too hard. You can't go by the map in your head because this is well before Big Dig, and a lot has changed in Boston in the past 40 years. Buildings and businesses have tiny little signs bearing names I don't recognize. Aside from a few landmark places like Union Oyster House, few names ring a bell. There's banks I never heard of, building names that don't ring a bell (what's the Stadtler?) and delivery trucks with logos I've never known. Restaurants, too. What's Jimbo's? There was a German place called Wutzberger? Wut? This whole puzzle was a Wutzberger.
Joe was curious and looked up Chamberlayne Junior College. We learned it had closed and merged with Mount Ida College, which then closed too. You never think of colleges closing. They seem so permanent. My college closed last year, in a simpering disgrace after years of dirty tricks with the money. People are truly awful, terrible things. No wonder the planet is wiping us out. Why wouldn't it, we're the worst.∎
The only other puzzle we have is called City Doors. I did this one. I like doors. Joe got this puzzle for me...or wait, did a friend send it? My memory is murky because it was when I first had my nervous breakdown and was in and out of the loony bin. In my tele-health therapy session this afternoon we talked about how amazing it feels to have done something like a whole entire jigsaw puzzle. This is the kind of thing I haven't been able to do for six years due to my broken brain. I have never been able to do this puzzle. I tried once and my brain just couldn't do it. So thi sis great. I did just have an adjustment to my medication, so maybe this is a sign that there is good news to come? That I can maybe actually get better? I'm going to keep trying. Maybe I should try another puzzle. Maybe I should try reading something. I haven't been able to focus on reading a book in years. I miss it. I miss my original brain. Mental illness is awful. 
