May 20, 2006
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Changeling
Soon we’ll be discovering new favorite’s once again: new favorite grocery store, new favorite bakery, new favorite evening walking route, new favorite park, new favorite bike path, new favorite museum gallery, new favorite place to eat, new favorite movie theater, new favorite bar, new favorite newspaper, new favorite used bookstore…you get the point.Details are non-existent at this point, so I won’t get into any specifics quite yet. But when my lovely partner broke the news to his sister, who was visiting us this week, I’ve never been prouder of him. It’s his attitude that is so damn sexy. With a warm smile, he said something like, “this year I’ve just been trying to create as many options for my life as possible. There were many possibilities before. And now there are a few real options.”
And all of them deserve a toast.
We moved to Chicago a week before we got married in January of 2002. Shaun had just graduated from college that December. I was a 19-year-old college sophomore, transferring to Columbia College. Neither of us had job. We didn’t really know a soul. We found a place to live in a day. Most importantly, we were game for an adventure. And that is why we survived. We both found jobs. I graduated from college on time, and went on to find a great job at my favorite museum.
We adore Chicago but there is more adventure to be had. When I imagine our goals, I think of a yellow dog running free in a field. Shaun and I are chasing after her, laughing, happy. If we live to be old, we’ll die sometime around 2080. Until then, I’d like to romp around this world with the person that I love and that slobbering, playful pup.
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Have you ever been to New Mexico? How about Scotland? Ever lived in NCY? If so, what did you think?::Random Tangent::
Although all the excitement of this week cheered me up, there is still a goddamned rabbit thumping around in my ears! I went to work Wednesday–Friday, but it certainly was a challenge to grin and bear it with my eardrum jack-hammering away every couple of minutes. Ear infections are the PITS!Also, for anyone 21+ in the Chicagoland area who is looking for something fun tonight, I want to encourage you to go to a benift for my favorite Chicago writing center, 826CHI. They are having a fun, fake-me-out prom tonight. $20 in advance ($30 at the door) and that includes all the bad music, spiked punch, and beer that you can handle for the evening. Thrift store prom attire is encouraged. I’m going to look tragic in a 1970′s floor-length dress and a cottonball crammed in my ear. So come out and have a riot for a good cause!
Tickets at: http://www.826chi.org/prom.html
Comments (8)
moved from nj to nm and it’s been one adventure after another… if i had my choice, it would have been nyc!
looking at life like it’s an adventure makes changes easier to do and while every move has its downs, the highs are wonderful- so where-ever you land- make the most of it, and if it happens to be nm, then i’ll take you out for new mexican! i know some great hole-in-the-wall places!!! 
Congrats on this shadowy good news! Alas, I haven’t had a residence outside of New York state, so I can’t help you much on that front. But I can be excited for you, if it helps.
Congrats, congrats, congrats to you and Shaun. I know y’all have been working on this for a long time. Your patience and perseverance are a thing of beauty.
I’ve been to Scotland several times, and I love it. Edinburgh is one of my three favorite cities in the world (right up there with Chicago). The people are very friendly, and the land is gorgeous. It’s big on a human scale, not gaspingly, gigantic like the Rockies, but the kind of rolling big that makes you want to take a deep breath.
New Mexico is also wonderful. I’ve been camping there several times and visited Santa Fe a couple of times as well. Great food, and the natives are friendly. Parts of it can be a bit overrun by visitors, typically Texans (who are loud and obnoxious, but appreciate the land) or Californians (who are more sedate, but just want to build vacation homes with hot tubs). The land is positively God-sized.
Comparing the two, I’d say Scotland is more of a an active, social, intellectual place, while New Mexico is more of a contemplative, discovery, spiritual place.
Personally I love the adrenaline rush that is New York City, but I wouldn’t try living there without buckets of money. When I was in my 20s, I might have tried it on the cheap, but I’ve been about as entertained by cockroach-infested walk-ups as I care to be in one lifetime.
Best of luck.
I was looking for the right word a minute ago, and of course it came to me just as I hit the “submit” button. New Mexico is more of a comtemplative, artistic, spritual place.
I agree with Brad^. And I also think that this makes it imperative that we meet before you leave town! Jeez, I hope you aren’t leaving in the summer, which is the most wonderful time of the year in Chicago. Well, I have free time and the weather isn’t keeping me housebound anymore, so almost any time is great.
Of all the places you mentioned, I suppose New Mexico would fit my mood the most, although Santa Fe is rapidly filling up with shallow art collectors who have no regard for the land or the indigenous peoples. But it still is an awesome place, especially out at Bandelier National Monument, where you can climb the cave dwellings of the Anasazi Indians.
NYC will always have a place in my heart, but I agree with Brad that you have to love cockroaches if you go there with no money. There is no living on the cheap in NYC, it’s either Trump-style or complete, abject poverty. I’ve seen friends in the poverty state, and I wouldn’t want to be there. One of the beauties of Chicago is that you can live on the cheap and still have a decent lifestyle. My son was offered a NYC internship and the living space was described as lower East Side, which translates to winos and gangs–not even cool enough to be Greenwich Village. He decided to go for something else.
But I can’t miss you! Let me know when you fell better and we’ll have coffee.
BTW, I never heard of your writing center before. Do they take people of all ages?
Lynn
Possibilities are so exciting! Well, when they’re good ones. A toast to yours even though I don’t know what they are, you make them sound wonderful!
Ew! I had an inner ear infection all through November and part of December. I read below too. I sympathize, the nauseous feeling took a while to wear off. No getting up fast and turning quick corners after eating. Hope that clears up soon for you.
And that event sounds fabulous! Today was “senior skip day’ after prom. If I ever made it to something like that it would be “teacher skip day” as well. It had to be a blast.
It’s funny you ask! I’ve lived in both NYC and New Mexico and here are my reports on both:
New Mexico is dry. It’s beautiful and in a nearly constant state of drought. Naturally, a lack of water hasn’t stopped the subdivisions and strip malls from popping up all over Santa Fe. There are good places to live in the Fe (older, with character) and then there are areas that look like Anytown, USA meets adobe. .. .seriously, up until recently there was a building code that said all building must be built to look like adobe, and so they are… It was fun to live there for five months but frankly, the Texas tourist schmanana got old rather quickly. Maybe it was because I worked in a coffee shop and had to deal with that crap on a regular basis, but it seemed like everyone my age worked in a cafe or a [insert service industry job here] and did their real passion (music, writing, art) as a side hobby. It’s a very cultural town in terms of art galleries, but very few of those art galleries showcase the work of young, emerging, cutting edge types. That being said, there is a small but strong group of youth counter culture artists types that make Santa Fe worthwhile.
NYC… smells like stale urine in the summertime. Nothing trumps New York in terms of neighborhood character (not even Chicago) and, despite Guiliani’s efforts to gentrify, it has retained much of its greatest things. That being said… it is SO EXPENSIVE to live there, that even as I was living at my mother’s rent-free and had a well-paying job and I didn’t feel like I could partake in the cultural excitement around me. Lynn’s right, it can be very difficult to enjoy NY on a tight budget… but then again, that’s part of the fun—finding ways to cut corners and do fun things cheaply. It’s all about finding the right neighborhood and the right group of friends, because entirely too many New Yorkers are obsessed with stocks, bonds and iPods. I love New York, dearly, but it was time for me to leave.
Also, I think I would have enjoyed Santa Fe more if I wasn’t on the phone to Chicago half of the time. Asa living in Chicago and not in Santa Fe had a major effect on my experience of it.
I sent you some email from the ‘drbrad.org’ domain. I don’t know if the spam filters got it, the email gremlins got it, you’ve been too busy, or if I’m being a pest. You can contact me via my page (“send an email” link).