A Day in the Life, Part VISweet Home Chicago?

And then:

The anti-climax.


A return to the city with the highest sales-tax in the nation; the worst postal system of all major cities; and government corruption that serves as a backdrop for Gotham City.


[Not to mention, the astoundingly empty apartment.]


But it's not all bad. There are free festivals. Bike trails galore. Forest preserves, a beautiful skyline and storms powerful enough to transform downtown into a land of Oz.


Monday night, for example, the Lightening Detection Network — who knew such a thing existed?! — recorded 90,000 bolts of lightning in northern Illinois (essentially, the Chicagoland area).

That's a year's worth of lightning in a single night. And I'll tell you — it was an amazing sight (terrifying, even) to witness.


But this summer, otherwise mild, has had its share of freak storms... including one early June that ruined countless pieces at the Printer's Row Book Fair and sent a friend and I running for cover (but not before we helped a few sellers try to protect their goods).

Sirens were wailing all around us,



And by the storm's end, sellers were offering books as discounted prices — or discounting them altogether.


And I thought there was something strangely... poetic... in this juxtaposition of a syllabus and a trash can...

and a mysterious foe.

Particularly in a land I can never quite call home. A city I at once love and hate with equal ferocity. A land I refer to, in my loneliest moments, as the city of Cold Shoulders.

(With apologies to Carl Sandburg.)

But this is it. This is where I have been, and where I am. It's where I go at the end of the day, and where I return after vacations and camping trips and — yes — a 3,000 mile sojourn to the Pacific.


But, why, then, cannot I not refer to this place as "home"


And actually mean it?

Thoughts Concerning My Benevolent Nature

Some call me generous; others, thoughtful. And if both camps agree on one thing, it's this:

I'm always looking out for other people.

That's why I don't want you to torture yourself when it comes to selecting the perfect Christmas gift for me this year.

I'll tell you.

Everywhere Signs

And so ends the first major event of my summer, though I have much more to post about once I recuperate from this most recent bout of writing and photo uploading.

Until then, I give you sundry images from that 3,000 mile road trip — mainly, funny signs and other oddities that didn't jive with any previous entries, though I wanted to post them all the same.

But first: best to step back a rung or two on the maturity scale before scrolling down.

A Day in the Life, Part V"Washington becomes Oregon"

There's something altogether humbling about turning the page on a calendar.

I did that today for my home and work calendars (all five of them), amazed to realize the summer is nearly gone.

Next will come autumn, and then winter, and then spring, and then summer.

You know the story -- it neither begins nor ends, it just... keeps going. Sometimes considerably faster than we like; and some days slower than we ever thought possible.


But enough of that; you're probably wondering why one person would need so many calendars, in which case I feel compelled to say the quantity has more to do with an obsession with art, rather than an obsession with time.

Though it is most certainly both.


Every time I turn one of those pages, I'm as eager to see the next month's artwork as I am disturbed to see the previous one pass.

And I cannot help but think, too, how ironic it is that days drag on whereas years pass in a proverbial blink.


A marker of a life wasted, methinks. A failure to enjoy the moment and the desperation that comes when you realize months upon months are full of wasted days.

So stop wasting them.

I am reminded, too, of a recent communique from a friend, asking who the real me is -- the words and pictures he knows from this fiber optic anomaly, or the girl with an off-color sense of humor who takes pride in her life's misadventures (not the least of which involved getting lost in the hills of New England).

I've been thinking about that question, and now -- days later -- my calculated response is the same as my immediate:

I am both.

Look at it this way: we've all heard the tragic tales of our favorite comedians. These people who -- on stage -- made us laugh so hard we cried, though their personal histories were often of a much darker ilk.

I won't at all profess to contain that level of tragedy or propensity for fame -- because I don't -- but the comparison remains the same:

I'm the reverse, in a way.

Roughly half of the people who read me have never met me. And so, all they know is this... melodramatic voice.

Though in person, I'm full of jokes, terrible puns, and stories of woe that nearly always have a humorous spin.

I'm the girl who cackles with glee when she realizes a simple word has been transformed either by time


Or some like-minded imp.


The girl who thinks this street name -- in hippie city, USA (i.e. Eugene, OR) -- is too fitting to be an accident.



The girl who mispronounces a name she's known all her life when it's out of context, and realizes just how unfortunate (that is to say: humorous) it really is.



And so on and so on, for days upon days.


But you know what I most liked about Eugene? This statue, which seemed more alive to me than most of the people I pass on any given day.



It's the first little boy that most stood out to me. Because for all of my love of literature, and movies, and plays... I understand and appreciate his desire to turn away from the speaker.

It's not so much that he's adverse to fiction.

(In fact, I imagine the converse to be true.)



But that he's immersed in life.

A Day in the Life, Part IV"The Northwest Passage"

I don't often talk about my dreams — neither my aspirations for the future nor what happens whenever I close my eyes.


But last night, well... last night I came face-to-face with the very beast that's made it nearly impossible to write, or speak.


You see, the follow-up to my most recent apartment fiasco is that my landlady now turns the cold water off at night, long before I generally go to sleep.

That means no tooth brushing, no face washing, no showering and — last but not least — no toilet flushing.

And it was the final in that list that I attempted to do around 10 p.m. last night, only to realize my water was already off for the day.

[Yes, I realize what she's doing is very likely illegal — but I have almost a year left on my lease and moving is very time consuming and expensive].

I was so... frustrated... that I couldn't fathom any way to spend the remainder of my evening, except to sleep. I had no words for anyone.


No thoughts.


Just a simple tinge of anger and frustration, welling in the pit of my stomach.


My mind was a jumble of sounds and images, all of them indiscernible. And even as I crawled into bed, I knew sleep would not come fast enough.



How could it, with my pulse racing as it was?


But when it did — when finally the last drops of daylight faded from my eyes — I shouted in my sleep the very thing I'd been meaning to say.


My family was visiting. My sister and my oldest nephew were in my living room watching cartoons when I realized something was awry. I looked up and saw bubbles forming across my ceiling, spreading with pox-like rapidity down the hall and into the living room.

I grabbed my nephew and shouted for my sister to follow, as hole after hole burst through my ceiling and water spewed forth, ruining most (if not all) of my possessions (which are almost entirely sentimental in value).

I called my landlady to report the incident, and lost my temper for the first time — lamenting the photos and books and letters that lay in ruins.

"I just want things to be right — I want back everything that I've lost!" I shouted into the phone. "Life isn't meant to be so complicated!"

And I continued.

I'm tired of all of this.

[There was an exclamation point in my voice when I yelled this but now — in the world of conscious thought — a period and a pregnant pause will suffice.]

And that, as they say, is the rub.


I'm struggling to speak and write because everything is wrong, or even...

Out of place.



And I've come to realize that nothing I say or do will help to restore order.


What I see in this world — what I feel — is so often at odds with what I experience. It's at odds with every newspaper headline and every rush hour traffic jam.



And this streak of bad luck — if you can call it that — isn't a streak at all.


This isn't a phase.



This has been my life, and for as long as I can recollect.


So when does it stop? When do things get better? When do I stop being a doormat upon which other people shake their muddy shoes?


Or for that matter: when does writing about such things cease to suffice as a means of catharsis?


It stops when I stop.


All of it.


And that, I suppose, is what I fear.



That I'm stopping. That I'm giving up.


That for all of these traveled miles, for all of these experiences — however beautiful —



I have forgotten myself along the way.


I worry, then, that there is nothing left to regain.


(And so: no reason to try.)


And yet, even still,


I persist.