chicago

I used to be big-time on the pictures but something about it clicked off and taking them now makes me feel cheap and hollow. So I pressed the capture button on my little red (pink) camera precisely three times during my Chicago trip: one of the underside of my train upon my dad's request, one of Aya and me in the bean because that is what the bean is for, and one of the most depressing eternal flame of all time surrounded by ratty crazy pigeons (Aya: "chickens") to show Lisa.

Here are my Chicago pictures:

My nest on the train. A big white blanket, two pillows, two books, countless crosswords strewn about, a journal, the pen, mangoes (Lisa) apples (Juliette) cheddar cheese and chocolate covered raisins (Morgan) crackers (Tatyana) Cliff bars (Joe) little bread rolls (Pater), both seats fully reclined, a queen-sized square of property that has become my tiny kingdom.

The stretch of the Colorado River through Ruby Canyon that makes my whole self ache for something else. Pure desire.

The absolute blackness of flat Nebraska at some deep hour of night. I already feel like I'm crawling along the ocean floor when along side the train comes a massive truck, red and white lights surrounding its edges and wheels, the most beautiful gem I've ever seen, and I'm Zissou, right at home, swallowed, at rest.

Stepping out of the Amtrak station onto Adams Street and immediately being punched in the face by Chicago. Chicago, that somber city indeed, like a slug to the stomach or an anvil on your toe, like heavy, like brick.

Facing a tall concrete building after stepping out of the bus onto a dark street in Hyde Park, turning around a couple of times, lost and confidently waiting to be found. Out of the quiet comes that familiar clip of boots on the sidewalk and my full name called out, I whirl around and there's Aya, and the full weight of how much I've missed her wells up at the back of my eyes and I'm so glad to be just where I am just then.

Looking out of a third story window surrounded by green and reddening ivy onto trees, a park, a runner wearing long black leggins, the 6 bus, brick and beauty and seriousness. Saul Bellow lived here and I feel it.

A five-foot stretch of the Michigan Avenue bridge smells like bleu cheese, intensely like bleu cheese, like you are fighting your way through a massive round of bleu cheese, and ends abruptly, inexplicably.

Catching my first sight of Lake Michigan in the daylight and realizing I'm right in the middle of Ordinary People, and that what I thought was shoddy 80's camera work was actually an incredibly accurate portrayal of that steely, magnificent, ironed flat, terror-of-God lake. Later, seeing the el stop labeled Skokie and tasting pancakes at the back of my mouth.

Slouching down low on a bar couch in a neighborhood I like but don't know the name of, Aya on my left and Jon, meeting and exceeding all hyped up expectations, on my right. They talk over my head as I look across to the angry belligerents on the bench against the wall, watching them work themselves up, until one of them pounds one fist into the other and jumps to his feet, spits on the floor in a rage, and sits again, exhausted. I snap my attention back to the local conversation but I don't participate and I've had a bit too much and I'm so so content.

A shoddily handwritten sign on the doorway into the el, blue line temporarily closed, an arrow pointing vaguely westward. I never feel danger this late. My first experience in a cab. I am proud of our all-grown-up conversation and I wonder if he listens.

The glittering dining room of the Drake in the late afternoon, a harp, a fountain, all whiteness and brightness, lap it up. Another wedding party comes to rain on our bitter quasi-single parade; for a quiet moment with our tea and our freedom we are better than they are, smarter and better. I realize that I came to Chicago not for the sights or the bricks or the popcorn but to gripe and plot and hope over various liquids with Aya, and that this is what we do and I love it.

An inadequate goodbye in a doorway, a further goodbye note left in thin red pen on a napkin. We'll see each other at Christmas we've still got Christmas there's always Christmas.

Home home home home. Sitting up high on the back of a bench so he'll spot me, yellow backpack on my left, morphing the driver of every small grey car into him until I see them clearly enough to realize that they're a Chinese woman, a blond girl, an old man. Then finally in one car the vision holds and he's here he's getting out he's here and we're two grins and he's here and he's helping with my bags he's here and hello, perfect hello.

today i play

heartbeats ... the knife
wagon wheel ... old crow medicine show
look at miss ohio ... gillian welch
copperhead road ... steve earle
frankie's gun ... the felice brothers
furr ... blitzen trapper
lady on the water ... blitzen trapper
the breeze ... dr. dog
creep ... radiohead
nice dream ... radiohead
sulk ... radiohead
disco 2000 ... pulp
common people ... pulp
long forgotten fairy tale ... the magnetic fields
kiss me like you mean it ... the magnetic fields
under pressure ... bowie + queen
ziggy stardust ... david bowie
rebel rebel ... david bowie
pale blue eyes ... velvet underground
afterhours ... velvet underground
this time tomorrow ... the kinks
strangers ... the kinks
les champs-elysees ... joe dessin

new approach: face value.

no interpretation or extrapolation or inference. no guessing or assuming. no wondering. knowing or not knowing, asking, being told, believing, accepting, understanding. fact. happened. make sense.

7h55 - 8h00am

once every while that smell when i wake up that feel that chill that complete all encompassing comfort that reminder of ENGLAND! and i know today has legs because it started with england.

sometimes it's nice to be scary rather than scared. yesterday, as i walk apace past a kenneth brannaugh lookalike on market street near hayes valley:

jesus, you scared me.

is it the hood? should i not wear the hood?

no no, it's just, you know.

what?

the city, you know.

my map is not done, probably won't get done. i lost my ruler, see. the ruler was the heart of it, because without the ruler there are no little squares, and sans squares continents and countries and counties and towns and individual homes get squashed and reassigned, and i kill and displace millions with the stroke of my humble pencil. so i'd rather let it sit.

Today's Dream

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.

Many are convinced that mechanical time does not exist. When the pass the giant clock on the Kramgasse they do not see it; nor do they hear its chimes while sending packages on Postgasse or strolling between flowers in the Rosengarten. They wear watches on their wrists, but only as ornaments or as courtesies to those who would give timepieces as gifts. They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires. Such people eat when they are hungry, go to their jobs at the millinery or the chemist's whenever they wake from their sleep, make love all hours of the day. Such people laugh at the thought of mechanical time. They know that time moves in fits and starts. They know that time struggles forward with a weight on its back when they are rushing an injured child to the hospital or bearing the gaze of a neighbor wronged. And they know too that time darts across the field of vision when they are eating well with friends or receiving praise or lying in the arms of a secret lover.

Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. The live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock. They make love between eight and ten at night. They work forty hours a week, read the Sunday paper on Sunday, play chess on Tuesday nights. When their stomach growls, they look at their watch to see if it is time to eat. When they begin to lose themselves in a concert, they look at the clock above the stage to see when it will be time to go home. They know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses. Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings. Sadness no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock. As such, the body must be addressed in the language of physics. And if the body speaks, it is the speaking only of so many levers and forces. The body is a thing to be ordered, not obeyed.

Taking the night air along the river Aare, one sees evidence for two worlds in one. A boatman gauges his position in the dark by counting seconds drifted in the water's current. "One, three meters. Two, six meters. Three, nine meters." His voice cuts through the black in clean and certain syllables. Beneath a lamppost on the Nydegg Bridge, two brothers who have not seen each other for a year stand and drink and laugh. The bell of St. Vincent's Cathedral sings ten times. In seconds, lights in the apartments lining Schifflaube wink out, in a perfect mechanized response, like the deductions of Euclid's geometry. Lying on the riverbank, two lovers look up lazily, awakened from a timeless sleep by the distant church bells, surprised to find that night has come.

Where the two times meet, desperation. Where the two times go their seperate ways, contentment. For, miraculously, a barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world in either time, but not in both times. Each time is true, but the truth is not the same.

Requiem for a Dream, I failed you. You were too rich and too real. I'll see you later.

Hello, Roughing It! What a little romp you are.

chop chop

I've killed my world and I've killed my time. Thank you, Kinks, for you articulate better than anyone the feeling of becoming a stranger.

I don't have anything to say I'm just bloggingabloggingablogging.

Sat on the balcony for 45 minutes today straining to spy a helicopter. The day was perfectly clear but you'd be surprised how much concentration it takes to look for a helicopter. I thought maybe I could read my book while I watched, but no, you have to keep scanning, left to right to left to right, so you don't miss it. It's surprising what hijinks your brain decides to get up to when left taskless for 45 minutes. First of all, it turns every sound, and I mean every sound, into the sound of a helicopter. When people opened the door behind me, that was a helicopter, and when they came out and sat on the balcony and chatted away, jabberjabberjabber became chop chop chopchopchopchopchop and their voices were helicopters. The T outbound was a helicopter, and the pelicans mucking about were helicopters, and the helicopter that flew behind me, in the wrong position, which was not the helicopter I was looking for, was absolutely a helicopter.

But my brain can wander in two directions at once so while it was busying itself dressing up the sounds of the city in helicopter clothes it was also just leaning on the generate random memory button. Remember when Ross called you on that payphone at school yes I do. Remember when you were driving along Grizzly Peak and you heard At the Bottom of Everything for the first time yes I do. Incidentally remember all the lyrics to At the Bottom of Everything yes I apparently do. Want to sing them right now under your breath on the balcony yes I do. Don't forget about the time you thought your parents forgot about your eighteenth birthday and then they surprised you and it made you cry, don't you forget that. Don't forget that the name of the kid that broke your arm in fifth grade was Brandon Fein. Go ahead and forget which of the Tamayo brothers you had a crush on, but remember that it was either James or Justin but definitely not Jeremy. Remember that they served shrimp at the department Christmas party last year and that the first time you hung out with Aya was at Cafe Claude. Remember that you went to England in the winter of 1995 and that someone surprised you with the plane ticket in an envelope at the bottom of the driveway on a warm day and that you yelled out. Remember Bear. Remember when you found out that Morgan Wagner is the one who makes all the Christmas candy and not Susan. Remember Simon March. Remember Sick Boy. Remember auditioning for county honor jazz band and feeling pretty good about yourself. Remember that your audition number was five. Remember remember the fifth of November the gunpowder treason and plot. Remember, that is to say never forget, that when you were standing by the fridge as a youngster and your brother was taller than you due to his age, not just his genes, he told you to remember the number nine, and remember that it was this fact that surfaced as you read the last words of Cat's Cradle.

Number nine, number nine, number nine.