I think my vertigo was brought on by stress. I am the queen of the psychosomatic symptom, after all. After Vertigo swallowed me whole last week, I was freaked out enough to take a rest. I took a 4 day break from biking/running (a crazy thing for me to do in nice weather), I went to work (but I worked no overtime), and I retreated from social life (books and movies took the place of friends and conversation).

During this rest, I had a chance to realize that I’m married to a cell phone. I miss Shaun.

Until now, the long distance thing has been totally manageable. Its not been ideal, but prior to the Vertigo, I was really fine. I had Chicago back, full of friends and farmers markets and museums and lake-side loveliness. I like my job. I have a new bike! But really. Seriously. This. Sucks.

Since our long-distance began in late May, Shaun and I talk at least once a day. We email. Google chat. Text. I am sick of talking. I’ve grown to hate talking. Talk talk talk. My jaw hurts. I hate my computer. Roar.

My agitation at the talking makes me a bitch to talk to. It makes me a shite listener. “What does that even mean?” I hear myself asking. The threads of language become tangled in my agitated brain. I sound like a snot-nosed brat.

Don’t get me wrong. I love talking to Shaun. He’s the funniest person I know. Smart. Twisted. Grand. But I also like experiencing things with him. Its just as much about sex as it is about seeing something hysterical and being able to communicate it to someone with nothing more than the lift of an eyebrow. Its about seeing new things together. Its about making things together. Meals. Homes. Evening walk routes. Netflicks queues. Its about playing frisbee and with someone without worry about how much you suck at it. Its about being able to ask for help. Its about not even having to ask.

I don’t understand how to cook for one.

Anyhow, he’ll be out August 19th. For good. This is never allowed to happen again. It blows.

Once I let myself come to terms with everything, I felt better. Squee had her old friend of our from high school over last weekend–someone who I always liked a great deal but never really established a true relationship with. So it was really cool to get to know her and chill out. She’s really come into her own; I always remember her being pretty in a hippie chick sort of way, but she is a real bomb shell now. She reminds me of Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons. We three went to a great patio restaurant for drinkies on Friday night. The outing was my official end to my pity party: I miss Shaun but thats no reason for the summer to suck. Life is now.

Saturday, I felt 100% good again. After my morning run and a few chores, I took my bike in for a small repair. I rode downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Photography (at my alma matter, Columbia College) to check out their latest show. Ate a brown bag lunch (patty pan squash salad w/ cold brown rice) in the Art Institute Sculpture garden. Rode back uptown and went swimming and read my book at Foster Street Beach. I came home and drank a cold beer and ate some yummy trout with farmers market kale and tomatoes while watching the BBC series, Spooks, on DVD. This is my idea of a perfect day in Chicago. This is why I call this place home.

I move into our new apartment on Friday. I pick up a rented cargo van Thursday evening and pack it up in the night. I’m doing this in the evening because I’ve arranged to buy a Craigslist couch and the seller needs me to pick it up Thursday evening. I’ve also arranged for a guy to help me move the couch from Craigslist. The dude just lives down the street from where I need to get the couch from and he seems super nice.

Here is the couch:

It is ugly in the way that I like. It reminds me of circus and burlesque queens. Plus, the price just can’t be beat and I like that it is 6 feet long and deep. I like tall armrests/couch-backs. It makes me feel like I’m in a cave. I’ll be sleeping on this couch until Shaun and the movers arrive in mid-August.

I’ve also arranged to buy a Craigslist chest of drawers and a cool, vintage Eames chair (below):

It needs a little patch, but I like it. And again–the price is great for a vintage Eames. These pieces will go good with our art. I like that I get to match the furniture to the art. Ha!

I also want to make good use of the cargo van on Friday by going to the garden store to fit our new pad with some vegetation. Some herbs and house plants, since its too late in the season (I think–I might be wrong) to take advantage of our yard (yes–we have a little yard for the first time ever. YAY!). While vegetation is not exactly in the budget at the moment, I want to take advantage of having a vehicle (for new readers: I’ve been car-free for nearly 8 years. I’m a bike/bus/subway rider and lucky to live in cities where this is possible.).

Anyhow, its going to be a busy weekend. But it is the tail end of everything. And soon my regular life will be back and better than ever.

Also: I’m not thrilled with the book I’m reading, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. I was looking for something fun and funny (but still really good–I tend to really struggle with “beach books” and chic lit makes me want to kill myself), but this is not making me chuckle yet. Any reading suggestions? Books I’ve found funny: Master and Margarita, Jitterbug Perfume (I tried all the other Tom Robbins, seeking the same fun and I did not find it), and everything David Sedaris (but I’ve already devoured everything by him, including his latest). I also think Death of a Salesman is hilarious. Few things have made me laugh harder than when Willy Loman calles Biff an adonis. I also think the names Biff and Happy are hillarious, in general. I want to name two horribly ugly purse dogs Biff and Happy. Or perhaps two salamanders. Godot also makes me laugh. Whenever I wait for the bus, I am really waiting for Godot. I read: A man named Pozzo enters with his slave named Lucky, who he calls Pig. I laugh. You can see why its hard to find a funny book for me, can’t you? For instance, I thought that The Happening was the feel good hit of the summer. People tell me that it is a horror movie, but I’ve not laughed so hard at a movie in ages; I see a man walk into a lion cage at th zoo and calmly feed himself one limb at a time to a tiger. I laugh. Mark Wahlberg is a comedic genious.

With these things in mind–any suggestions?

During my lunch break on Monday, the world slipped away from me and I fell down on the sidewalk.

I have 2 theories as to why this happened:

1.) Our world is actually a decoration–a snowglobe of sorts–resting on a giant coffee table belonging to a giant god. On Monday, around noon, the god decided to plop down on the couch and read the newspaper. He flopped off his clogs (gods love clogs) and propped his hairy feet on the edge of the table’s glass top; for a few uneasy moments, the table’s top perched haphazardly on the table’s base. Luckily, the giant god’s mother bristled into the living room and said, “get your filthy feet off of there.” He did and our world was put back to where it usually is.  

2.) I have vertigo.

I remember reading an article once upon a time about how deep sea divers can get lost in the water; they swim around so much that they forget which way is up. On Monday–and thrice since–I’ve struggled to find which way is straight. I may have an inner-ear infection. My ears are warm in a yucky way. I can feel my brain folds in a buzzy, gross headachey way. If I were a baby, I’d wail a bit.

I’ve been to work all week, ploughing through.Yesterday morning, I tried to convince myself I was fine by going on a 6-mile run. I ended up walking most of it after nearly falling over into Lake Michigan. Luckily, I’ve had enough sense to retire my bike until I’m sure that I won’t fall over onto a car. But man, I need to get better; I’m seeing the doctor asap. I’m not usually prone to jealousy, but I’m green with it riding the crowded bus to work, looking out the window at all the happy bikers smiling at the sun.

Ever had vertigo?

Do we become the stories we tell about ourselves? Sure we do. But not all stories are plausible. Many narrators are unreliable. The line between invention and articulation is a tricky one to navigate; our doubts and fears and desires get in the way.

A classic example of this is the mid-life crisis sports car. No matter how much the protagonist invests in communicating the story of his virility and youth, the subtext is clear: this man is terrified by death. He is haunted by each strand of hair that his scalp sheds. He desires nothing more than to be desired. He is a sad figure. He is telling a story with his sports car, but not the one he thinks he is telling.

Luckily, not everyone leaves the storytelling to the darker side of their psyches. Many people strive to shed the fictions inside of them and make an attempt at an authentic life. This doesn’t mean truth-seekers don’t tell stories, but they might forgo telling them through consumer goods. Truth-seekers seem more likely to bristle under categorization: unlike the mid-life crisis sports car man, they expect no definition or articulation of self through the cars, homes, or computers that they buy. While they are sure to have preferences like any living thing, someone dedicated to an authentic life won’t expect the type of car that they drive to say anything specific about them, other than the fact that they a.) are wealthy enough to own a functioning car and b.) know how to drive.

I’m picking on consumer goods because American-style capitalism thrives on the darker halves of our psyches, so the examples seem the most accessible. But examples could be found elsewhere: to what extent we are defined by our gender, our sexuality, and society’s expectations of someone born to our race/class/and region. Finding your authentic story is tricky amidst all of this. Its hard to know which things we’ve convinced ourselves of are inventions and which are articulations. Sometimes the cross-over between the two is so frequent the whole thing gets too blurry and boring to navigate. After all, we don’t want to live our whole life with our heads up our asses.

Stories are easy to find in others but they seem to hide away whenever we try to find them in ourselves. Perhaps they sense confrontation. In any event, I’ve only been able to nail down one that I’m sure is storytelling at work in me. It is a story that has had an impact in shaping me. It is a story that I like and am happy about.

Since my cousin and I were really small, we loved to proclaim: “We’re WEIRD!” We’d do this without shame, with a smile on our faces. I think this was referencing our preference for Garbage Pail Kids over Cabbage Patch Dolls, our love of making satirical radio shows with the tape recorder (“I’m Bob Evans. And I’m Seven Eleven. And THIS is 20/20.”), and our generally spastic games of make-believe (we liked to stage infomercials in which people died demonstrating various products). We knew that other little girls played dolls and house–both of which were UNFATHOMABLE to us. “We’re WEIRD!” was a challenge to that idyllic little girl and to status quo in general. It was a recognition that we were different and a proclamation that we wanted to stay that way forever. And for the most part, we have.
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Do you have a story that you tell about yourself? Feel like sharing?

What are your thoughts on the following statement?

We become the stories we tell about ourselves.

My brother Anthony and his girlfriend Taylor are on their way to Chicago this morning. I can’t wait. I haven’t really had  chance to hang out one-on-one with Anthony in a few years. A combination of oceans and teen angst kept us apart, leaving sibling-time exclusivly to Julian (the youngest) and I. But I miss Anthony. And I adore his girlfriend. And I was so very happy when he took me up on the invite.

I may have mentioned it before, but it is so weird to me that my brothers are young men. I moved away from home when I was 18 and my brothers were still boys. Skinny, dimple-cheeked little loves. I still see that in them, so tangibly, just beneath the surface of their man-suits. Julian is 16 now. Soon, Anthony and I will be able to go to the bar together.

Crazy.

Also crazy: I had a really good and unexpected night last night. After work, I went to the Village Cycle Center for a bike tune up. While my tune up was happening, I had a beer and read the paper in the next door pub. I read that there was a FREE Pitchfork Music Festival Preview happening that night in Millennium Park. So after my bike was ready, I cycled over, laid down on the lawn, and read my book while listening to fun live music. It was really great. I got turned on to a great new (to me) band: The Fleet Foxes. Really great. Ocean Color Scene meets The Jayhawks. Folk/Rock/Indie/Goodtimes.

After the concert (and a few chapters of me book), I biked home in the night. The moon was big and orange overhead. The lake lapped the shore. The night was soggy and Midwestern and fireflies flickered; fat floaty gems.

As I approached Foster Street Beach, I was happily surprised to hear the thumping beat of a drum circle. A group of fire dancers writhed in the middle of the circle: blazing hula hoops burned bright, poi balls were aglow. An assemblage of bi-standers danced fire-less on the outskirts. Traditional Indian horn music soared overhead.

And the drums. And the drums.

Apparently, every full moon an informal group of fire dancers gather near Foster street beach to revel in its crazy energy. It was really fun. I parked my bike and danced with strangers. I’ll be back next moon. And hopefully I’ll meet someone who will teach me how to hula fire.

Have a good weekend, ladies and gents. Happy full moon!

Oh yeah! Props to Grandpa Jaggers for the photo featured in my new Xanga lay-out. The mountain sunset is the view from their deck. Amazing!