Little Miss Understood

Something funny about yesterday’s entry: even though I wrote fondly of it, I bitch about summer as well as the next person. Especially since I flake out in the heat. I have passed out from that swarming, swimming feeling caused by sun bouncing relentlessly off of the unforgiving concrete landscape, the dizzying stench of stewing rot that hovers thick about each dumpster, and that foul blast of hot air from sewer and subway grates that coats your limbs in stick. Bile floods my mouth and I dry heave when I see flies coating log after log of abandoned sidewalk dog shit. I cringe and spit when I discover that I’ve been swimming amongst plastic bags and cigarette butts gracelessly bobbing on the surface of the lake–pathetic urban jellyfish.

Sights, sounds, tastes, and smells are visceral for me. My physical responses to the world overwhelm me. I goose bump and tear up when I see something good and pure. When I feel loved, I smile until my face hurts really bad and blush until I sweat. My stomach rolls onto itself and I dry heave when I see destruction or injustice or rot or the litter box. My physical reactions to the world come at me so strong that I pass out. From what others tell me my reactions are not so common, but once you get to know me, you get used to my quirks.

Perhaps because of my peculiar sensitivities, the world is always many things at once to me. Past, present, and future fold onto themselves and exist in one layered plane. Good and bad merge and I can see them living simultaneously in everything, inseparable. Beauty and deformity are the same fascination. Death and life are all at once.

So, getting back to summer: I loathe it as much as I adore it. I feel this way about all the seasons. Although summer’s particular gift is that it is the one time of year when it is impossible for me to think of the future. I am stuck in the present, in the moment, sticky with watermelon drippings, unable to move forward until the brisk shiver of fall sweeps me up again.
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What did you eat for breakfast today? (I had peanut butter on whole grain toast.)

::Random Tangent::
Speaking of seeing the dualistic nature of everything, we Netflix-ed A Streetcar Named Desire last night and I couldn’t stop seeing fat, jowl-ey Marlon Brando where the beefcake young Marlon Brando lit up the screen. But man, he was really great. Watching the movie you totally get why Brando is such an icon: he was so ahead of his time in his acting style. Where the other players in the film delivered their dialogue in the wavering falsetto of the day, Brando spoke plainly, spoke in a way that made you forget he had actually memorized a script. I realize that the female characters were supposed to be from a different class than him, but even so, their acting style reflected caricatures of women born to the upper crust rather than convincing, organic personalities.

Also, what was with Tennessee Williams writing a female character afflicted by “spells” in every flipping script? If he was going to write these “spell-ridden” women the least he could have done was talked to one to see how women really have spells. If he would have asked me I would have told him to drop the feverish ranting and get with the belching, accidental farting, and hitting your head on stuff on your way down to collapsing in a puddle of cold sweat.

Any Netflix reccomendations?

Summertime Limbo

Summer’s time is syrup. Hours ooze and glop, filtered through humidity and leaf shadows splashed slap-dash on the sidewalk. Popsicles and blueberries dance between minutes; gagging down a proper meal fills an eternity. Respite from amber-trapped moments come from tall, sweating glasses of ice water sipped and held delicately to your wrists, your neck, the insides of your elbows.

Days saunter, weekdays marked only by the absence of beach bumming and the 8-hours of air-conditioning at work. Notions of employee dress code are forgotten and crises are dropped carelessly, guiltlessly at 5 pm—that we ever worked late before seems laughable. Unleashed from the office, we gallop to the bike rack, kids again. Us again.

One bike ride blurs into the next, one morning run all runs, a never-ending game of Frisbee. Life on rollerblades. Entire days spent in a bikini with a battered, sandy paperback book, interrupted only by sunscreen applications and cool-down swims. Beautiful, effortless sandal tans.

I am having fun this summer. My pulse has slowed and my muscles are loose, loping in these long languid days. It’s hard to wrap my head around the cold, hard fact that change is coming. Change is nearly here.

Monday we got our visas. Wednesday I broke the news to my writers group. Thursday I gave my resignation notice at work. Doctor’s check-ups and Vet visits have been crossed off the list. Place tickets are booked. The U-haul is reserved for us to ship and store our stuff in Michigan. Packing has commenced. Bittersweet toasts with Chicago friends and co-workers have begun. We are leaving Chicago August 31. We are moving to Scotland.

And yet, I still can’t quite believe it. It’s hard in summer to think past the five-day weather report, to see anything beyond the gurgling white surf of the lake humming sweetly between my toes. Without the mandates of my to-do list, I would be driftwood, I would be lost.
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What time of year are you hopelessly in the moment?

::Random Tangent::
The company I sometimes teach essay writing workshops through hired me as a freelance essay grader this summer. I got my first packet to grade this week and reading the essays makes my heart sing. Some are laugh-out-loud funny with syntax errors that change the meaning of a phrase, typical of most high school writers. But others are just incredibly written. I just finished one from a girl who describes her first day in a U.S. classroom after her family moved to D.C. from Nigeria. Amazing stuff.

Looking for a better blog than mine? Of course you are. Try my mom’s. She is posting her travel essays from her recent trip to Mumbi, India. She was volunteering at a school there and learning astounding things. Click here and be amazed.

Dog Days.

This week has been busy. A new ad campaign that I worked really hard on at work received rave reviews from my colleagues and is scheduled to grace the public this Thursday. The short story that I started a few weeks ago was work-shopped Wednesday night; my classmates and instructor’s reactions to it made my heart sing. When I got home Wednesday, my grandpa surprised me with a phone call to arrange time for us to hang out in Scotland (FUN!). Conversation, smiles, and margaritas happily dominated Thursday night when Shaun and I attended our friend’s engagement party. Saturday night/Sunday morning Shaun and I participated in the LATE Ride, a 25-mile ride that happens from midnight to dawn (we finished earlier) to benefit a group called Friends of the Park.

As cool as the LATE Ride sounded, to be totally honest, it blew. The registration booths were packed so close together that bikes and people were unable to move. I hate the phrase, but it truly was a “cluster fuck.” To make matters worse, there were only 10 porta potties for all the thousands of riders, and above the porta potties was a busted speaker that blared only the treble of the god-awful muzak that the event organizers had confused with “entertainment.” Hordes of full-blattered people huddled in lines for the porta potties with their hands clamped over their ears, cringing. It was like some sick form of torture, really. Also, McDonalds was the event sponsor, so after participating in a nice, healthy bike ride, instead of bagels, fruit, and water like these events usually pass out, they gave away fatty, farty McDonalds breakfast sandwiches. The smell of a McAnything makes me want to dry heave. The ride was nice enough—crowded and slow in a few patches, but overall fine enough. It just sucks that instead of the whole fun communal vibe happening at the start/finish line, participants were aggravated, cranky, and full of processed, greasy lipids.

Oh well, at least I feel good about giving money to the parks, since I use them all the time. Also, the moon on the lake was stunning: it hung pregnant and yellow and low, bathing the inky surface of the water in light. Seeing moonlight ripple and wave on the open water like that made me understand why mariners were so invested in tales of mermaids and deep sea monsters: it was almost hard to believe that I didn’t see a shimmering mer-tail or the long, languid neck of Lockness lift from the moon bathed lake.

Today is HOT HOT HOT. Our neighbor’s thermometer reads 105. And we have no air conditioning. After early morning chores, I employed my usual cooling strategy of hanging out in the shade by the lake, where it is usually cooler and breezier than anywhere else. I biked down to Foster Street Beach this afternoon to have a chilly swim, take a breezy nap, and read some Updike. Imagine my disappointment when I was already sweating when I was not even half way out of the water. Breeze was non-existent. The mosquitoes were feasting. I opted to bike back to our sweltering apartment to read between frequent cold showers. I think even though we are scrimping for Scotland as of late, we’ll see An Inconvenient Truth in the neighborhoods chilly air-conditioned movie theater this evening, just to beat the heat. How funny is it that we are using a documentary about global warming as an excuse to bask in the poluting loveliness that is air conditioning?
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What is keeping you busy in these dog days of summer? Do you employ any successful cooling strategies?

Something I saw on Friday and wrote about today. Enjoy!

Pigs and Cherries
© The Author, 2006

A woman dressed solely in black—skin-tight pedal pushers, a curve-hugging tank, and six-inch platforms—boarded the subway with a sack full of cherries. Lipstick pushed up over the natural line of her mouth; smooth crescents of shimmering burgundy threatened to invade her nostrils. The woman’s shiny bob-ed hair matched the cherries with a precision that if not planned, was a welcomed, stylish coincidence. She moved briskly to an available window seat and impatiently, wantonly, tore the plastic sack open with claws the color of a man’s pulse. The woman glanced around at her fellow passengers, making certain she had their attention before she tilted the pale line of her neck back, parted her sex-soaked lips, and dangled a ripe cherry by its stem over her hungry, outstretched tongue.

A mummified Asian man, watching through the overgrown strands of his eyebrows, stripped her bare with his eyes. A stingy white businessman in a travel-rumpled suit licked his thin lips. Two corn-fed teenage Puerto Rican girls in miniskirts giggled and a young black man listening to a headset stage-whispered, “Damn!”

The woman bit into the fruit and chewed with vampiric violence. She spat the pit into her palm and eagerly dug into the bag for another cherry. On and on she went, sucking and shucking and spitting and wiping thin strands of dark, sticky juice from her fitful mouth. Her hunger was fevered. The bag was endless.

The famished seductress was reaching the climax of her consumption, a slight “mmmmm” rolling kittenish in the dark, berry-stained space of her throat, when the train stopped at Addison and opened its doors to a slew of rowdy Cubs fans, freshly sunburnt and stewing in the beer-yellow fizz of afternoon intoxication. Boarding with them was a toffee-colored gambling man wearing a referee’s shirt and an unfortunate Jerry-curl. “Guess ‘em, guess e’m, guess ‘em!” He cried, whipping a cardboard slate, three Pepsi caps, and a fuzzy red ball from behind his back. “Guess which cap the ball is under and win what you bet!”

The yeasty stench of desire thickened as the attention of the passengers, loosely packed onto the swaying train, was now torn between the prospect of sex and the prospect of money. Swiftly taking note of the conflict and unable to match the seductress’ personal appeal, the gambling man held a fat stack of crisp monies over-head. Thick as three steaks and fresh as a newborn, the hard copper smell of cash cut through the musty reek of rutting.

“Whatever you put up, you win. Got $50? Make it into $100. Let’s play!” A steely skinhead solidified the victory of greed over lust when he peeled $50 from his wallet.
“You’re on,’” the skinhead snarled. The seductress looked as if she’d bitten into a rotten cherry; her face soured and bitterly, she spat out the last pit into her palm.

The gambling man, smelling sweetly of peppermint hard candies and Old Spice, welcomed the crowd that gathered around him as he slipped the ball beneath a Pepsi cap and shuffled the caps around with the flourish of a talent-show magician. In two tries, the skinhead won $150. A round-assed black woman with a gold front tooth put up $50 and lost it. “That was my grocery money!” she cried, stomping her sandaled foot.

The gambling man consoled her, “Hey lady, you bet, you loose. Try again.” A light-skinned gentleman won $50. He gave his winnings to the grocery-less woman selflessly, suspiciously.

The betting continued down the length of the train car, the gambling man’s hands getting swifter with each game, creating more losers than winners as he moved to the opposite side of the cab. There, by the doors, a thick-necked teenage girl clung to the slim waist of her window-gazing boyfriend, watching the gambling man with gluttonous interest.

The thick-necked girl was pink as a pig. Her oink-ish upturned nose sat arrogantly upon her porcine face. From beneath her baseball cap, wet, curly pigtails jut. She wore a loose fitting Cub’s jersey and from kaki shorts, her hammy legs protruded. The boy that this pork-parcel clung to was lanky and cherub-faced. Still growing into his wide blue eyes and apple cheeks, the boy would soon be handsome. But his current boyishness and sweetly obvious virginal status made it possible for him to overlook his girlfriend’s barnyard aesthetic. The gambling man approached them, his gold wristwatch flashing as his hand flitted the caps to and fro.

“Where’s the ball, where’s the ball, where’s the ball?” The gambling man demanded.
The girl pointed her hoof at a Pepsi cap.
“Show you got the cash and I’ll turn the cap over.”
She raised her snout to the bewildered face of her boyfriend, pleading with him. Blushing, the boy’s shaky hands dipped into his wallet for $50. The gambling man smiled and turned over the cap to reveal the gaping absence of the ball. The crowd of passengers resounded, “Snap! Your girl missed it! Sorry dude!”
“No fair!” The piglet squealed.
“Win it back, win it back, win it back,” the gambling man cried, his mercurial hands shifting the yellow plastic caps.
“It’s that one! It’s that one!” The girl snorted.
“Show the money, show the money!”
The boy broke away from his fleshy companion. His wide eyes scanned the crowd and lowered in embarrassment to find all of the passengers looking at him, shouting at him. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it man!”
“Daniel!” The beast sounded, her beady eyes fixed upon him, silently informing him that his betrayal would have dire consequences.
The boy swallowed back the acidic rush of bile flooding his mouth. He opened his wallet yet again and plucked his last $100 from its folds. The gambling man lifted the Pepsi cap. Nothing.
The passengers exploded, “Loose her, man! That bitch don’t treat you right. She ain’t worth it!”
Color drained from the boy’s cherub face. He looked out the window as the pig burrowed herself into the scrawn of his chest.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

The boy remained motionless, moneyless, empty. After a time, he let his eyes lift to see the cherry woman rise languidly from her seat as the train approached her stop. Slowly, intentionally, the cherry woman opened her fistful of gleaming red pits and let them fall, ravaged and forlorn, onto the sticky floor of the rocking train.

These past few weeks have been keeping me happily busy with moving plans, out of town visitors, writers group, summer parties, moonlighting as an essay grader for a college prep program, enjoying this beautiful city for one last summer, and re-examining my love of fellow man through biking.

Hold the phone: “Re-examining my love of fellow man through biking?” Write like a melodramatic freak much? Sigh. Neglecting my blog’s made me loose that sassy blogger touch. If you will, read on, patient reader, read on.

Happy Friday!
Last Friday I was reminded of how much I really love humans. Most of the time when we congregate we are ugly and volatile mammals, but every once in a while entire big groups of us act like lovely, well-behaved creatures. I found an amazing group of such well behaved specimens at last Friday’s Critical Mass bike ride. For those of you who don’t know, Critical Mass is a worldwide movement, (not an organization) to demonstrate support for sustainable living by having huge unofficial bicycling rallies. In Chicago, an average of 2,500 riders congregate on Daley Plaza after work on the last Friday of every month. Together, they embark on a leisurely ride (that’s RIDE, not RACE) though the city streets. They fuck up traffic and wave and say “Happy Friday!” to those they pass. Some have stereos blasting fun music form their bikes. One lady had a bubble machine on the back of hers. This Friday, a dog rode in a milk crate strapped to a man’s bike. A sign on the crate read: Today is Timber’s 13th birthday. Say “Happy Birthday Timber!” And everyone did. I met two lads who biked for ten days to Chicago from Minneapolis. I met a woman who biked topless with only black tape covering her nipples. There are families with kids. There are spandex clad enthusiasts. There are those like me who bike to work because public transit is chronically tardy due to the brown line reconstruction this summer. Cars cannot pass because the group sticks together and refuses to budge. If a car gets pushy, riders disembark their bikes and block the cars by standing in front of them. If a person gets clumsy and falls, strangers stop and help with a smile. Bikers occupy every square inch of the road for miles—it looks like China.

Critical Mass is a great way to allow urban riders feel ownership on the roads where cars are so often asshole-ish to us helmeted pedal pushers. Riders feel more confident after a Critical Mass ride. Which makes them better riders. Trust me—I used to be a really skittish rider. While I’m still no sped demon, I’ve been more comfortable and smartly contentious since the ride. Critical Mass also shows those who see it an alternative, a second voice. And most drivers aren’t as pissed as you’d imagine. Most wave and smile and watch as a world of diverse, happy, utopians fly by them, and they wonder, “How can I do that, too?”
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What has been amazing you lately?

::Random Tangent::
Plane tickets have been bought. U-hauls have been scheduled. Closets have been purged. Leases have been signed. Classes have been picked. We are moving. We really are.

Also, I got Wolfin issue #2 in the mail last week. LOVE IT!!!!! I’ve blogged about Wolfin before, but it really deserves another plug.