With or without chevrons, a journey

We set out early. I hadn't slept much for several days, and I know I was still awake about two hours before the phone rang to wake me with the news that Ian was on his way to Chicago. It was about 6:30 am. I blinked, bemused for a long moment, and reminded myself not to be angry with Ian for calling more or less when he was supposed to.

Our destination was a park near a college campus, to embark upon a 22-mile bicycle ride through the city of Chicago on a beautiful morning near the end of summer. Our spirits were high. We were glad to be doing this event, glad to be doing something together. We have been friends since sometime at the latter end of the 1980s: high school students, later bandmates, and now just very close friends who have known one another for a lifetime.

We got our rider numbers, prepared ourselves. Ian told me that he had not been on anything approaching this long a bike ride since perhaps his boyhood days as a scout. I could tell he was a little nervous. I told him that a leisurely ride of this sort of distance was generally far less tiring than even a 3-mile bicycle commute through morning traffic to work, and that he would do fine. I told him that the fact he had not ridden a bike lately would work in his favor, as his muscles would be surprised.

We set out in the third wave of 22-mile riders. Chevrons and an occasional sign would guide us, and we had a paper map of the route as well.

The first half was pretty delightful. We rode at our own pace, allowing the clusters of cyclists to pass us. Sometimes, we could no longer see any other riders from our event. At the halfway mark, we paused at a rest area the organizers had established, to eat bananas, drink water, catch a second wind, and complain to one another that our asses were sore already from the bicycle seats.

Shortly after we reestablished ourselves on the ride, something changed for me. It wasn't that the tease of rain which had felt so refreshing turned into outright rain, chilly and thick. It wasn't that the wind sometimes grew fierce and made our progress require more effort. It was something internal, sparked by something Ian had said. Along the way, we had discussed music, thoughts of the future, the ride itself. And as we skirted alongside yet another park on our journey, Ian said to me that he was really enjoying the feeling of being in the city, rather than driving through it.

I looked around, and I couldn't see what he meant at all. I've long prided myself on my ability to see Chicago as something new each time I move around within her borders. This very blog has at times been stuffed with such observations. But in that moment, it felt as though Chicago had nothing it could do to spark me into finding its hidden beauty. I knew even in that moment that this was temporary, a trick of the light, as it were. Tomorrow, I could go out and find new ways to fall in love all over again.

I also knew, though, that this ride had become the beginning of what feels like a farewell to this city I have lived in for so much of my adult life. I am ready for something new, to be seduced by another city, another town. I will not be leaving anytime soon, so of course my feeling could change, but I feel a new chapter starting, and it is not set here, I don't think.

I said nothing of this to Ian. I don't know why. I think he would certainly have understood it if I tried to vocalize it.

We continued riding, and for some reason, the event organizers had plotted their route so that the second half of the ride took us into the crowded shuffle of the loop. All at once, our leisurely ride took on all the mannerisms of a morning commute. The rain grew somewhat relentless, and we had to become far more vigilant about the increasing number of cars we shared our roads with. They poked at our comfort zones, and edged us toward danger of collision from time to time. At one point, we shared a single lane of traffic with both construction and a city bus, breathing hot exhaust into my face as I moved behind it. I told Ian that he was essentially experiencing the worst form of some sort of Chicago Bicycle Commuter Fantasy Camp, but instead of three to five miles, we had close to ten to go, growing weary from the dozen already under our belts.

Eventually, with some help from the increasingly confusing chevrons, we completed the ride. We both agreed that it was a worthwhile experience, but one we could have easily organized for ourselves for free, choosing our route at whim. We were soaked to the skin, and more than a little exhausted.

And I thought it was fitting that in what I had come to view as the first leg of a farewell tour of my city, Chicago had shown me both its beauty and its frustrations. We had gone through affluent neighborhoods, and ones I might normally grow somewhat uncomfortable with even in my car. We had seen the peaceful side of a Sunday morning on a warm summer day, and the chilly danger of being unprotected in traffic during a heavy rain.

Chicago remains a glittering jewel, with far too many facets to count or experience in a single lifetime. And one day, I might return here with fresh eyes and love it anew. But for now, it feels like it is somehow less mine, and that I am somehow less a part of it.

Before I got home to process some of these thoughts (which are not nearly as negative as I fear I have painted them. I am rusty.), I got one more delight. I stopped at a sandwich shop on the way home to get something to eat. When I asked the kid behind the counter for "lots" of tomatoes, he put what amounted to two whole tomatoes on my submarine sandwich. I love tomatoes, and have never experienced that particular largesse at a chain eatery. That moment served as at least a minor reconnection somehow, and maybe what it indicated was that even though I think I might be ready to leave, Chicago will never stop finding little delights for me to experience. In that, I feel that I can leave on a note of happiness when I finally go: two dear friends shaking hands as they part for what could be a weekend or a lifetime, hoping they have made their mark upon the other in some small way.

*****

I am trying to relaunch this blog. As you may be able to see if you used to read it regularly, I am changed in some ways since the last time I scribbled things here. I hope that my writing will improve again with time, and that I will find my way back to communicating something complicated with a bit more grace than I have now.

Technology = weird

As part of my preparation for Lollapalooza, I looked into various ways I might be able to use my phone to communicate with the outside world. It turns out that I have two different ways to update my blog from my weird little mobile device, and three different ways to update via Twitter/Facebook statuses. That seems like at least two too many ways to stay "in touch" during a three-day music festival. Woodstock, this ain't.

It got me thinking about the various ways the digital age has completely changed how things are done. Practically nothing remains the same as it was twenty years ago, when they were still pressing vinyl for any album that came out and photography was a weirdly poetic alchemy of chemicals and paper and darkness and time.

But fear not, gentle Blogreader. This is not a post of weepy nostalgia for a simpler time. Frankly, most everything is way more convenient nowadays. If nothing else, it turns out that digital was the main thing that kept me from taking a lot of pictures earlier in life. I simply did not have the time or money to invest in it back in the pre-digital days. Film was expensive, let alone darkroom fees, paper, chemicals.

Blah, blah, blah. The long and the short of it is that I might fling some words or pictures up here from my phone during the weekend.

*****

So Lollapalooza starts in a few scant hours. We have not been blessed by the weather gods. Tomorrow should be gorgeous, right up until it rains. Saturday and Sunday are both scheduled to peak above 90°F. I'm hoping that our proximity to the lake will provide at least a small amount of relief. Even so, I expect to sweat out a lot more than the one liter of water that the rules allow me to carry into the festival with me.

Lolla rules also prohibit me from bringing in my good camera, so I spent a little time today dinking around with the consumer model I used to use a lot. I discovered that I no longer know how it works with any certainty, so I'm not sure if I'll get any decent shots or not. But I sure will try.

*****

Speaking of things I never expected to have the word "electronic" attached to them, I have begun a transition to electronic cigarettes. They provide the part of a normal cigarette to which I am addicted, without any of the stuff that is striving to kill me. So that's nice.

*****

Tomorrow's lineup includes Gaslight Anthem, Heartless Bastards, Fleet Foxes, a tough call between Andrew Bird and Of Montreal (that I suspect Mr. Bird will lose by virtue of not being the kind of performer one benefits from seeing in a festival), and a headliner matchup between Kings of Leon and Depeche Mode. The current plan is to see a bit of each of the latter two. Am hopeful this will be enough to sustain my friendship with Los Angelista. There are also dozens of other bands, but the list above are the ones I'm most interested in seeing. Fleet Foxes, especially, who had one of the best records of last year.

Sorry, Decemberists.

More soon...

In which a return to blogging is attempted

When last we saw our erstwhile blogger, he was spewing forth yet another apology for not blogging more often. Even though he seemed to mean it, it was nonetheless a bit tedious. The only thing more tedious is the several half-hearted attempts he had made to keep the blog alive during his ridiculously lengthy absences. Such attempts typically began with some sort of announcement that he was back on the blog.

*****

I am back on the blog, Blogreader*!

*****

Next weekend is Lollapalooza, once a national touring festival and now something which happens only in Chicago, once every summer. Typically during a heat wave. I have never attended one of these before, but I think I had tickets for whichever one Siouxsie and the Banshees co-headlined (1992, maybe).

The lineup looks really good. There is almost never a time in the three days that there is not at least a band I would be willing to see, and there are several slots where I shall have to make a choice between two or more excellent shows. So I've got that coming up. Currently, it is supposed to storm all three days, so I'm expecting a wet, muddy, exhausting slog through the contemporary indie scene. This hasn't seemed to dampen my excitement.

*****

I also have about a 74% chance of another longish trip to London, similar to the one I took in 2006, near the conception of this blog. This was really when I started blogging seriously, and I expect I'll once again be sending my travels home in 300-word blobs for my friends who cannot come.

*at this point, I'm assuming that the term "Blogreader" applies mainly to my mom and whatever friends I personally harrangue to come and read this. But if any old Blogfriends remain, please stop and say hello.

Bitching about Flugtag

Today was the corporate-sponsored Flugtag (Flying Day) and I trudged down to watch people fling their homemade flying machines into the lake. The basic premise is not much more complicated than that. People form a team with their friends, build a vehicle of some kind, throw it off a landing and watch it break nearly instantly and plunge into the chilly depths of Lake Michigan. Their device can have no engine, it must be human-powered, so one or more members of the team generally ride or follow their creation into the water. The debris is collected, some sort of arbitrary judging is scored, and then the next team takes their turn. I'm not certain what the judges purpose could have been, as all the attempts were measured in distance as well.

I had thought it might be a cool place to wander a bit and get some pictures of the flying machines, but I was mistaken. When I arrived, the main area for viewing the crafts had been closed, and the throng of us were herded to the beach just north of the activity. I walked south as far as I could go, but never once even caught a glimpse of the actual staging area, or any of the crafts that the assembled teams had spent so much time on. Instead, we had a jumbo screen and a network of inescapable speakers to bring us the inane and apparently limitless chatter from whoever was functioning as the emcee, and several of the "judges," most of whom seemed content to use the name of the team for a weak pun or sexual innuendo.

So it was all the fun of watching something on television, except in a crowd. And I was hungry. They had closed down the little food vendors along the beach, and I stood forlornly next to what would, on another day, be an ice cream stand. I surmised that the refreshments were likely available only inside the now closed-off main area, so the several thousand of us outside of that area were on our own.

Within about three team's worth of activity, I realized it was like watching something I didn't particularly want to watch, except in public, and with no other channels. Two of the teams, for instance—pretty close to one another in the lineup—had been inspired by the aerodynamic charms of the locomotive. In each instance the team had chosen "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne as their theme song.

I cannot imagine what had made it so crowded, save for this being one of the last nice weekends that can accurately be called summer, and our first day without rain for a few, with rain resuming tomorrow with the remains of yet another hurricane arriving in our area with its spent fury and thick blankets of rain.

Still, once I fled the crowded beach, it was a nice afternoon to be out and about in Chicago. I'm still kinda sad I wasn't able to get any good pictures of the weird "aircraft" from my vantage. I had thought I might post a few, and bank a few for some Phoctober fun.

On the bus

Thursday morning on the bus, sans iPod, I found myself seated next to two men about my age, who were standing in the aisle and talking to one another in the privileged tones of the corporately secure. They began by assuring one another that the bus was not normally considered an appropriate mode of transport. Both used "fuck" as the most frequent condiment in their sentences, and one of them said "retarded" a couple of times. At first, they were discussing a sporting event.

"Did you see the game?"

"Yeah"

"Fucking intense."

"Yeah."

"The ending?"

"Yeah, the part at the end."

They reminded me of the people who populate the best of David Mamet's early stage work: often, he has two characters speaking passionately about something with which they may or may not be familiar. It was entirely possible from what I heard that neither man had actually seen the game. I was not able to discern so much as what sport it may have been.

The bus had reached maximum density and the driver had begun to skip stops rather than risk letting more folks on, but these men spoke loudly, as though they were certain that there was not another soul for miles. Children often have this quality, but in a confined public space, most adults do not. Or at least I don't.

We passed a tower of condos near the river.

"You know what those places cost?"

"No. I bet it's retarded."

"Sure, just think about what a fucking membership across the street costs."

"They include a membership?"

"No. I don't know. I'm just saying that's expensive."

"Right."

"The club's expensive, so the condos have to be."

They got off soon afterward, in the midst of discussing recent or potential sexual conquests.

That's the thing about a rush hour bus ride. You never know what you're going to overhear or see, or become involved in. Two days earlier, a young woman sitting next to me was idly reviewing the images on her cell phone, which included several topless shots of herself. And on Monday, a woman said "Steven, you're breaking my heart" twice into her cell phone, each time in a sort of dreamy singsong. She said nothing before or after, and more than a minute passed between repetitions.

It's nice, I guess, as a writer, to absorb these things. To watch the behavior and be curious, to remember and to record.

But all the same, most of the time I'd rather have my iPod.

*****

Speaking of sporting events, I attended one Friday night. I'll post about the experience soon. In the meantime, there are some pictures of the park and some fireworks which are freshly added to flickr.

Chicago fog

I'm not sure if it's actually fog, when the visible swarms of water molecules do not really reach the ground. It may be more accurate to call it haze or mist. But I'm not gonna go look it up.

The last couple of days have brought it, though, whatever it is. The place I am working at the moment is on the 24th floor of a building right on the river, and all of the windows have grown completely opaque in the afternoons.

From the ground, it combines with the large scale of the buildings downtown to create something eerily pretty. I think in a place without tall buildings, it might just look cloudy, but here the mist swallows things. Depending on your angle, the street you are on can appear to gradually fade into nothing at all.

Looking upward, I kept thinking of the origin of the word "skyscraper."

Some pictures of the fog. More pics of this, and other things, have been added to Flickr. Bigger on Flickr, too.

Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

*****

And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

*****

I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.

Summer, summer, so long (part 2)

(The first part of this post is just below, and additional images can be found on my Flickr page, which links via the animated gif at left.)

It is the night I enjoy. This shouldn't surprise anyone who's been reading for a while. It was also no surprise to me that returning to the carnival after sunset felt more like a real experience.

It was the last night of the fair, and technically summer was already over. The actual equinox had been some time in the afternoon. I was trying to feel it, to be in that zone of special attention. I was eager to assign meaning to the carnival, the passing of summer, the dawn of autumn.

It wasn't easy to even feel autumnal, hot as it was. I was forced to spend a certain amount of brainpower thinking about sweat and heat, which knocked me clean out of the atmosphere I was attempting to create within my head.

Still, wandering a carnival alone can be an interesting thing. Immediately I noticed that the sense of people having fun was much greater than it had been during the afternoon. The barkers were busy calling victims to their tents. I don't know if it was because it was the last night, or if they were doing it all along, but I noticed many of them guaranteeing prizes to the children of those with the pursestrings.

"I'll make sure the little one wins," I heard more than one of them say. It struck me us unbearably sweet. Carnivals are, after all, the province of children. That single block and the tiny overflow onto side streets was no doubt an endless new world for some of the children who hurried back and forth beneath the colored lights.

I know that these things always seemed that way to me, when I was young.

I walked and I watched, snapping pictures when the mood struck me.


It occurred to me that I might be able to see the skyline from the heights of the ferris wheel, so I plunked down four dollars to be slowly spun to its apex. The operator was not gentle, though, and each time I reached the top and stopped, I found myself in a wildly swaying basket. With all the motion and my camera's low-light limitations, this is the least blurry shot I was able to get. The others are more...abstract.


I was able, however, to get some general shots of the carnival from up above it.




After the wheel I became camera-shy. I don't know why. I think it had something to do with not being content any longer to merely observe. I wanted to experience something as well. Perhaps the notion that I might have enjoyed the wheel more had I merely looked around rather than fighting with my camera sparked this idea.

I walked up and down the length of the carnival several more times before finally deciding that what I truly wanted to do was get some small slice of the fun I would have had here as a boy. I wanted to be flung and shaken by a great beast of a machine, spun and dizzied and out of my own control. I wanted to tap into something primal with speed and wind and motion.

Another four dollars got me enough tickets to accomplish this feat.

Some of you may know that about five years ago, my chronic stomach problems developed in such a way as to make me carsick. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I kept circling the machine I had chosen, retreating, pondering maybe just riding the ferris wheel again. Here is the ride, which is also in the last post as the example of last year's cell phone photography, what Minx is calling the "red spinny thing."


Eventually, nervous beyond speech, I dared to climb the steps and hand my tickets to the operator. I sat alone in a dangling cab, pulled the enormous bar down over my head and body to secure me within it. Four or five times I nearly raised it up again to exit. I honestly did not know if my stomach could handle it.

The fact that I can debate myself endlessly sometimes meant that I still had not completely made up my mind, stay or go, when the ride let out a metallic groan and began, ever so slightly, to move around its axis. The machine's purpose was to spin and spin until we were lifted into the air and parallel to the ground, then it would tilt and sway us around as we hurtled through space, trying out this angle or that until the operator decided we had gotten our money's worth.

The beginning was tough, the slower part. I focused my eyes on the empty car in front of my to minimize the dizzying effect. Soon enough we were airborne, whirling and hurtling along. I gripped the bar tightly, pushed it down into my leg with enough force that it briefly hurt, and I wondered if I had crushed the cigarettes in my front pocket. I had the thought that I would really want at least one to remain undamaged should I survive my ordeal and walk upright among people again.

People like these sorts of rides for different reasons. For me, I suspect, it is the exhilaration immediately following the ride which makes me love them. My body telling me for the span of the ride that I am in peril, that I might not survive, only to be reassured in a set amount of time by a slowing down and a stopping. A new lease on life, a chance to live again.

And I did feel that exhilaration as I wobbled through the gate and down the steps from the ride. I had not even felt sick once we got moving, had conquered that small part of myself for at least a small moment of time.

I walked down the length of the carnival once more, and back again. Now I was smiling slightly to myself. I was a part of the carnival, I was one of the revelers, there in the dark on the last night of summer.

Summer, summer, so long (part 1)

Last year I told you about an end of summer carnival. I guess by "you" I mean the four people who were reading me, most of whom I knew personally. I don't blame you for not being here yet, Blogreader. There are a lot of blogs.

I inadvertently jumped the gun a little, posting about the event a day or two before the equinox, or on what I am now calling the "prequinox," because it makes it sound like maybe I did it on purpose.

This year the same carnival came through, and I made sure to nip down there to make up for the cell phone images from last year's post. I have to say, though, that some of the images from the phone came out beautiful in ways I have not been able to replicate with the nicer camera.

I went alone, milling through the people first in the morning and then again at night. In the morning, they were still setting up, and although many of the games and rides were going already, they had not captured that air of breathless fun that a good carnival should possess. My best guess is that this is because there weren't enough packs of children running around yet. That and the barkers at the games were less eager to verbally pull folks off of their path to try and bilk them a dollar at a time of money in exchange for stuffed animals and such.






It was a lazy affair in the morning. The bearded man in the final shot above kept letting that guy and gal throw darts at his balloons more or less for free, possibly out of boredom. It was while standing there taking shots of this trio that a woman came along to upbraid me, claiming that I was simply not allowed to just wander in and take pictures of the games. I could easily have argued with her, as I was standing on a public street at a public event, but I decided to simply leave and return after an interval.

When I told him I had been chased away, my friend Craig suggested it might have something to do with the fact that carnival games are notorious for being rigged, and that they didn't want evidence of this recorded. And the games are rigged, of course, just not, I don't think, in ways that can be easily documented with a camera. They are more subtle than that. The prizes, for instance, generally cost less than the fee for the game.

My return trip to the carnival after the sun had set will be the subject of Part 2, which I should have up in a few hours.

Yard sale

"OK, Alex. We'll take twenty for the antlers and ten for the hat."

The antlers in question were mounted to a block of wood, and sat atop a pile of t-shirts.* The hat was in Alex's hand, a gray fedora which he turned to peer at from different angles.

I was just walking by, affiliated with neither Alex nor the woman with the dyed red hair who was presiding over the collection of cast-offs along the sidewalk. This was just another neighborhood yard sale that I happened upon during my weekend wandering. I would not have even known Alex's name had the woman not used it.

I had seen perhaps a half dozen of these sales in the hour or two I was walking around. Coming across a yard sale has always been something I enjoy, like finding that a thrift store has unexpectedly materialized in the middle of a residential block. I like to look at the things people have selected for themselves and then decided they no longer had a use for.

On one of the last truly nice weekends of the season, they had bloomed like late summer flowers all over the place. I took a note of the impromptu signs taped to streetlights and stop signs at nearly every intersection and adjusted my walk to take in as many as I could.

The signs for these events are nearly always misleading. One told of a "Huge Family Yard Sale - Something for everyone!!!," but contained nothing but cast-off clothing items, some of which had clearly been bought in bulk from a discontinued uniform company. Another, which had also promised a wide array of items, did not exist at all. Instead of the tantilizing promised books, records and furniture, I found a small piece of paper taped to a door. A shaky hand had written "No Yard Sale Today." A third, which did not list a location and which I never found, promised a "Yar Sale," which I can only assume meant that they were selling off equipment used in piracy.

As I was passing Alex and his haggling opponent, I was starting to get sick of yard sales in general. I'm glad that they still exist in our eBay-obsessed world, but the amount of miscellaneous crap was becoming wearying. And this was one of the sales where the person who organized it clearly thought of herself as an entrepreneur. A box of pins from the 2006 Olympics sat in the sun with a sign explaining that you would find these for $6.95 anywhere else, but here they were only $4.00.

This made me a little irritable. I sort of hate the assumption that the original price of an item has any relevance once it is sitting for sale on someone's lawn. Maybe this would have been a good deal if I were some sort of collector of Olympics memorabilia, but I doubt it. And if I were such a creature, the 2006 Olympics were recent enough that I would doubtless have already added these items to my collection elsewhere.

"Sir! Sir! This hat!" Alex seized my arm as I attempted to pass. He spoke with a Slavic accent, which is not at all uncommon in this neighborhood.

"This hat," he repeated. "What do you think?"

He thrust the fedora at me. "Uh, a fine hat," I said.

"Yes. But what? Five Dollars?"

"A hundred, easily, in a store," the woman countered.

Alex rotated the hat again, inspecting it and clearly expecting me to do the same.

"Is fine. Yes. In good shape, but I think maybe needs some cleaning, yes?" He made a show of pretending to brush some dust off the brim.

"In a store, a hundred," the woman repeated.

"Well, this is a yard sale," I said slowly. "The original price does become sort of irrelevant." I was torn between my desire to flee and the fact that the woman was giving me a perfect opportunity to vent my displeasure at her pricing method.

Alex made a triumphant crowing sound, raising the hat into the air.

"Well, he's not the one selling it," the woman countered, casting a baleful glance at me.

"True enough," I said, freeing myself from the conversation and resuming my walk. I was no longer the unwitting accomplice of amateur hagglers, and that felt nice.


*A note about the antlers: I do not personally think it's cool to kill something and take a trophy. I am consistent in this belief. I don't like it when serial killers do it, either. Just so you know.

More about bricks

Last week I mentioned the demise of the Lighthouse Diner in my neighborhood, and seeing the crew out early in the morning, sorting and stacking bricks.

I like the idea of bricks as urban molecules: universal, interchangeable Legos they use to build the city. When the building comes down, the bricks go somewhere else. Why would you throw away a perfectly good Lego?

It turns out that the bricks in question were being claimed by a company called Windy City Antique Bricks. Here is their truck, all loaded up and preening atop a bed of rubble. I could tell that the truck was there on the off chance that someone might take its picture, so I indulged it.

Out and about

I've grown quite fond of my morning walks. I generally leave the house shortly after dawn, which is nowhere near as early as it would have been even a month ago. Stupid hemisphere, stupid wobbly planet.

Every restaurant which is open early in the morning seems to have a small cadre of morning regulars, generally older men. I watch them greet each other and the workers behind the counters. The workers sometimes have their regular orders already prepared for them. If one of the men has been absent the previous day, the others give him grief about it. Since they all look to be somewhere around retirement age, I suppose this is their way of having somewhere to go, a routine to start the day, and a sense of community. While I doubt I could be satisfied with a Croissan'wich from Burger King every morning, I am nevertheless a little jealous of their little morning community.

*****

By 7 am, a crew of about six workers were toiling on the former grounds of the Lighthouse Diner, separating bricks into piles. Periodically, they would strike a brick with a hammer, perhaps to knock off the cement which used to hold it to another brick. I watched them work for a couple of minutes. They worked very fast.

I wonder where those bricks are going to end up. Another building, one assumes. For the rest of my walk, I am looking at all of the bricks in the buildings I pass, wondering what structures they have previously been a part of.

*****

I stopped in at Tommy's Cafe, one of the more interesting hybrid establishments in the neighborhood. They are a full, working eatery, but also have a surprisingly large selection of new and used musical instruments. Mostly guitars, but I did spy a few other types of noisemakers in there. I was tempted for a moment by a clarinet, before recalling that I don't really have any money anymore. Not to mention that I do not play the clarinet.

I mentioned that I had not been in since they changed locations a couple of years ago and said something vaguely complimentary about the new setup, which makes the place seem much nicer than it did when it was a couple of blocks east of its current location. Now it has levels, and a much larger selection of guitars.

In exchange for my flattery, I was given one of the worst cafe mochas I have ever tasted, although in fairness it was also by far the cheapest.

And apparently they make Star Wars-themed guitars now. I spotted Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett. Wonder why they only had villains. Wonder why they make Star Wars guitars. Before I left, I also started to wonder why a music store had talk radio on instead of something musical piping through the speakers.

A keen eye for detail

The ability to notice, to actively observe and mentally record things in one's life is one of the most important traits a writer can possess.

So you can probably imagine how great it felt when I was out for a walk the other night and suddenly realized that an entire building that used to stand on a major intersection near me had vanished into rubble.

I've been taking a lot of walks lately, and had probably passed the missing building four or five times in just a few days.

The pile of bricks behind a chain-link fence was the former home of the somewhat crappy Lighthouse Diner, which if nothing else served for a time as the only 24-hour eatery in the neighborhood. It was not infrequently filled with transients and neighborhood crazies and always seemed to be right on the verge of spinning off into chaos. I tended to go there in the middle of the night, when the drunken remnants of the local bars would also be pushing themselves in for some pancakes or a hamburger, unwilling or unable to simply go home and let the night end.

I frequently ordered egg sandwiches, if only to marvel at how they never prepared a sandwich even remotely resembling any of the previous egg sandwiches I had had there. Each one was indifferently crafted from a new concept of an egg sandwich by the artists behind the counter. They were like snowflakes.

I once read an entire Nick Hornby book while sitting at the counter in the middle of the night drinking their coffee. I, too, was unwilling or unable to simply go home.

I moved to Colorado, waited two years, moved back. Shortly after my return I wandered ravenous to their door in the small hours to fuel a marathon work session. To my chagrin, I discovered that the Lighthouse now closed at 8pm most nights. I never found myself there again.

So, goodbye, Lighthouse. I'm sorry I stopped coming by.

And I'm sorry I failed to notice that your building was gone.

Samarat-ish

Wandering through Chicago afternoon heat not long ago, smoking a cigarette, I saw a woman on a bicycle staring at me. I blinked at her and continued walking on the sidewalk. I was a little surprised when she pulled up off of the street and headed straight for me.

She had that look in her eye that suggested she was about to ask me for something. My guess was a cigarette. I reached toward my pocket to retrieve one.

"Can I use your phone?" she asked. I continued to fish for my cigarettes. My brain told my hand "not cigarettes" and made me cock my head to the side.

"Excuse me?"

"Can I use your phone?" She explained in detail how she was working for a promotional agency but using her own phone, had gone over her limit and the phone had been disconnected. She wanted to call her father in California and have her service restored. She asked if I had free national calling, which I do, but pretended to be unsure about while I made my decision.

I cannot reconstruct in my head why I agreed to let her use the phone. I took it from my pocket and handed it to her with a look that I hoped said "please don't run off with my phone." I suppose it was the notion that I would want someone else to be helpful if I had a similar problem.

She placed her call and walked several steps down the sidewalk away from me. My eye went to the bag and bicycle she had left next to me, trying to ascertain if I could sell these items for as much as I had paid for the phone should she break into a sprint. I had already decided not to chase her if she decided to betray my kindness. I was already too sweaty, and I figured I could have the phone shut off in less than a half an hour. All I would really lose was my settings and contacts contained within the phone. Unless, of course, there is some huge scam involving stolen cell phones whose machinations I am unaware of. I tried to imagine how such scams might run as I appraised the items next to me.

The bicycle would maybe fetch $50, tops. The bag was more of a mystery. She had her purse with her, so I knew not to expect it to contain her driver's license or credit cards. It didn't seem heavy when she put it down, so gold bars was unlikely as well. Paper money was a possibility, but the mere fact that she had left it behind made this possibility seem remote.

I puffed on my cigarette and shifted my gaze from the possessions which would become mine should she flee to the woman herself, speaking into the telephone with a measure of agitation. She was at least as old as I am, and her face suggested she had a couple of years on me. I was a little concerned that someone might reach this age and still be dependent upon a parent to keep her phone alive. But such things are certainly not unheard of.

She finally finished her call and walked back to where I was standing, wiping what I presumed to be sweat or grease from her face off of the shiny surfaces of the phone. She thanked me several times, repeating the story about the promotions agency and her father.

"Thanks for not assuming I was a psycho who was gonna run off with your phone," she said.

"Well, I was prepared to sell your bag and your bike," I admitted.

"So, this thing...I'm promoting this show next Friday. A couple bands and a burlesque show." She reached into her bag, which I could now see was filled with small glossy cards advertising her event. "I'll put you on the list if you want."

I took possession of the cards she pressed into my hand.

"Seems like if I decide I'd like to go, I should pay my way in to increase the chances of you having continued cell phone service." She didn't seem to find this as amusing as I did, and pedaled off soon afterward. She said she would put me on the list anyway, under "phone man," should I opt to attend.

I walked home, thinking about the youth who had offered me a shot of what seemed like vodka on the street several months ago. Is it weird that I am more likely to give something to someone who asks on the street than to take something which is offered for free? I eye both groups of people with a certain amount of suspicion. I suppose that's something.

Labor day, and a tomat-ode

Monday was Labor Day in America. As it is a day off of work to celebrate the working folks, this is often the year's most ironic holiday for me.

Other countries hold similar celebrations on May 1st. A little research revealed to me that some of these international celebrations of labor can be partially traced back to the Haymarket Riots in 1886, right here in Chicago (the American celebration can be traced back slightly further, to 1882). Grisly stuff, the Riots, but you can read more about it here if you are so inclined. Apparently, getting an 8-hour workday made into law was quite a difficult process.

Why does it always seem like the fair city of Chicago is only ever noticed when something horrible happens here? But enough of civic self-pity.

*****

I spent my Labor Day laboring, once I finally finally shook off the shackles of sleep late in the afternoon. I am proud to say I was putting words upon paper again, although not on actual paper. Actual words, though.

What finally roused me was a phone call from my friend Craig, who was returning from a weekend visiting his folks on the other side of the state, near the Mississippi River and the Iowa border. This is the area from which he hails.

Craig was calling me to get me to come outside and claim some of the tomatoes which his father grows, and about which I have been pestering Craig since the last time he gave me some, late in the summer of 2002. I ate them like apples, juice running down my chin. They were heaven itself.

It should be noted that I adore tomatoes, even the hard, mealy things which use the same name and are commonly available here in the city. These are something else entirely. Craig's childhood home was a working pig farm. His parents retired some time ago, but the 25 years of pig feces has left them with some incredibly rich soil. Tomatoes apparently leap forth from these patches of land like the cicadas which flooded the air earlier this summer.

He brought me five tomatoes, with instructions that I should be careful to eat them today and tomorrow lest they split their skins and attract insects.

Not a problem. Two have already fallen. After I hit "publish," the third shall meet its fate.

Twinkly

A favorite recent picture of the skyline.

This city, she glow.

Shorn to be mild

That's right, Blogreader, a double pun, specially designed to induce a groan and a rolling of your eyes. Other possible responses include a sharp sigh, a frown, wondering why you bother to read this blog, or a narrowing of your freshly-rolled eyes. All of these are normal, and should resolve on their own.

I'll give you a moment to forgive my punnery before proceeding.

*****

It does not take a genius intellect to deduce that getting a haircut from someone with whom you do not share a language can sometimes result in a vast discrepancy between the intended haircut and the one on your head as you exit the place, a little bit poorer financially, and with a bemused expression stapled on your face. Often, one will also have an urge to reach up and check the haircut for up to six hours after the event.

In spite of decent scores on several standardized tests, I have found myself in this exact situation on more than one occasion.

I have been contemplating a shearing since October or so, whenever it was that I began injecting "my hair is getting long" into conversations regardless of the topic currently under discussion.

Saturday, as I wandered stickily along Chicago Avenue looking for pictures to take, my hair kept obscuring the viewfinder of my camera, or sneaking into my mouth when a breeze picked up. I have accidentally lit it on fire on several occasions while putting flame to cigarette. I was also sweating heavily. I felt I had had enough when I chanced upon a hair salon which was open and bereft of customers as a result of a street fair which was not yet underway, but which had blocked off all traffic for several blocks to allow the vendors to set up.

I asked the woman nearest the front how much a cut would cost and, deciding it was a reasonable price, walked into the back to have my hair professionally washed. I assumed the first woman would be the one doing the actual cut, and she spoke English well enough, but it turned out that she was far too busy fussing with her own hair to do mine. Instead, the young woman who washed my hair was assigned to follow through to the end.

I was asked how I wanted it cut, and I answered. The woman from the front walked back and asked me again, translating my answer into Spanish for the benefit of my stylist, who nodded and began cutting.

Our path together was a jagged one. She started by cutting too little, and then cut too little again before I said the word "drastic" and she seemed to understand. With that one word, she removed more of less all of my hair as I stared morosely at myself in the mirror four feet away.

I had thought I might get something along the lines of late '65 Beatle, but ended up with Contemporary Bland. Still, I guess it'll be a while before I start moaning about needing a haircut again.

As a side note, my friend Ian called my longer hair, coupled with the blazers I started wearing a lot last fall, my "writer's costume."

So here it is: my freshly shorn locks, in a picture I call "Self-portrait at Bus Stop," taken an hour or so after the cut.


At the Puerto Rican market later that day, Junior's brother told me that every time he sees me I look more and more like "someone who fits in." He cited my formerly purple locks and the long hair I had had earlier in the day. I told him that my work with the CIA demands that I be somewhat flexible about my appearance. I added "and my morality..." under my breath, and his eyes widened and he clearly did not know whether or not I was joking. I enjoyed this. Then he told me I looked like I was putting on weight.

One final note: Blogger's Terms of Service require that all blogs publish at least one post about the blogger's hair, and one about the blogger's children and/or pets every six months. So I am only doing my duty by telling you about all this. I'll probably get the one about my cat out of the way tomorrow.

Batman spoilers! And way too many pictures!

Sunday I went to see an old friend from high school. I left early to give myself plenty of time to wander around the area near his hotel, which was downtown close to the river.

When the bus finally arrived, I was the only one on it. The driver only stopped once in the miles between Western Avenue and State Street, and fourteen people got on when she did. I'm pretty sure I've never been the only passenger on a city bus before.


Once I got downtown, I waded through the throngs of tourists, opportunists and general pedestrians to get a look at the part of my city that they put on postcards. I'm not typically one to take pictures of skyscrapers. A close-up of something rusty is a bit more my speed. Still, from the right angle downtown Chicago has a weird beauty to it. Here are a couple of samples:


I crossed the river, headed north by the corncob-looking buildings which adorn the cover of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I was a little surprised to see what appeared to be military vehicles on the bridge ahead of me. Up close, they didn't look ultra-authentic. Something about the camouflage seemed a little strange. Within a few minutes I realized that I had stumbled onto the set of the next Batman film. A group of extras in fatigues milled about, while another cluster wore ties and overcoats in spite of the very muggy heat.


I heard a coordinator telling the well-dressed extras to do something "when the helicopter comes." So you have it on good authority that the next Batman film will feature military vehicles, people in ties, and at least one helicopter. A pair of choppers were soon flitting back and forth, much to the delight of all the people with cameras who were present on every side street.


Yeah, those are the big spoilers I promised in the title. Before you get all sad that my spoilers are lame, ask yourself what Batman spoilers you have to offer based on firsthand evidence.

Yeah. I thought so. Moving on...

I thought it was reasonably cool to have bumped into the filming, at least until I kept being shooed away from public areas. They had goons with headsets trying to keep people from walking all sorts of places, even blocks away from where they were going to be filming. Which is sort of understandable, I suppose, except that there were no cameras out, no shooting going on. My best guess, this being a Batman movie, was that shooting was not likely to begin until after dark, which would also explain all the lights I saw further down the block, still wrapped in sheets of plastic.

I finally met up with my friend at his hotel, and we had a nice meal. We walked around, chatting, until it grew dark and my friend needed to go to sleep to prepare for another exciting day at the conference which had brought him to town. Apparently the conference was run by an association for people who work at associations. This notion both repels and attracts me. Certainly I find it amusing.
It was good to see my friend again, and good also to visit the part of the city where the buildings grow until they touch the sky. In both cases, it had been too long.

Thunder in the vicinity

I checked the weather online. Instead of "cloudy" or "thunderstorms" it tells me that the current condition is "thunder in the vicinity." It is trouble enough that the current temperature is nearly 90° at one in the morning without such vague, ominous weather reports.

Perhaps Yahoo! has hired a poet to interpret the weather. I expect hitting refresh will result in a short passage from "The Tempest."

We have had nothing but consistent heat and moisture for days and days and days. Chicago has long been a city of extreme weather. It does no season particularly well. Summer's lazy warmth always gives way before long to these oppressive, miserable stretches from which there is no genuine relief. Spring here comes late and flickers almost immediately into summer, like a flourescent bulb: off, on, off, on, off, on, on. Autumn may be the best season here, cool and crisp, but sometimes we flit directly from summer to winter without blinking, the leaaves yanked from the trees with the weight of snowfalls and frost. Winter, of course, grows bitterly cold or brings blizzards which blot out the lines between things. Not too many years ago, we went from early November to early April without ever seeing the temperature reach 50°.

Winter may very well be better than summer. There are things a person can do to work against cold, and the sleeping is better. Aside from hiding beneath an air conditioner, there is really nothing a person can do about heat. There are only so many layers of clothing to remove.

Usually during a heat wave, the city has to open cooling centers throughout the city to try and minimize the number of elderly or homeless casualties. These are the most common groups who pay with their lives for our relative position to the sun this time of year. I don't know what these places are used for the rest of the time. I refuse to believe that there is simply a vast array of empty buildings ready to be conscripted during times of crises. They must serve some other purpose.

But all is not so grim. Today I am ready to start putting words to paper again. I have discovered the keyhole into my novel's new opening, and the key as well, and as soon as I post this, I shall give it a twist and feel the tumblers of the lock give way.

Hope all is well with you, Blogreader. I hope there is no thunder in your vicinity, metaphorical or otherwise.

Breaking Radio Silence

I've been feeling unusually quiet lately, Blogreader, as you may or may not have noticed from my lack of posts. I've been writing a little, outlining some—thinking and plotting and dreaming a bit in the hopes that I will soon have enough planning done to start my new draft.

I've been staying off the computer more than normal as well.

This isn't depression, this latest batch of quiet. I am familiar with depression, and this is something else. As near as I can tell, it is simply quiet.

It is good to be silent sometimes, I think. Besides, using the standard picture/word ratio, my last post was slightly over 10,000 words. Surely that was enough to last a while.

*****

You guys seem to have continued the tie score as to whether the clouds in the previous post were cotton candy or the impending apocalypse. I suppose I will declare cotton candy the winner on the basis of the earth's continued existence.

*****

We have been having a heatwave here. If you don't understand the cliche about it not being the heat but the humidity, come and spend a summer in Chicago. Sadly, the really bad heat, the kind that actually claims lives, is not due until late this month and throughout August. So there's that to look forward to.

I finally broke down and bought an air conditioner two years ago. Within a few hours I was puzzled at how I had survived for so many years without one. As much as I support energy conservation and the like, there is also a limit to how many hours I am willing to lie in a pool of my own sweat trying to pretend I'm not miserable.

*****

Announcement #1: In case you have forgotten or were not aware, the next GBA(s)FC will be starting August 1st. I imagine it'll run a lot like the last one, except that I will be scaling back the prizes somewhat. I plan to have only a single winner in the Author's Choice and Jury's Choice categories, and possibly an honorable mention or two. This is due to budgetary restraints as well as wanting to make sure that the people who win feel special. A friend also pointed out that a high percentage of winners also can make the people who do not receive an award feel worse. This makes sense to me.

*****

Announcement #2: I will be quitting smoking on Monday, July 16. Tuesday at the latest (depending on when I finish off my current stash). This will not be my first attempt to quit smoking, but I hope it'll be my last. So wish me luck with that, and send me candy if you wanna. Well, e-candy, I guess. I expect I'll try to blog when things get rough, so you can expect some posts about how I'm feeling terrible. What fun!