When a website I frequent alters its format, I really have a hard time adjusting. I like to think that I am a fairly adaptable person. After all, I’ve moved like forty times in my life. I’ve acclimated myself to new jobs and new friends and new states and new towns and new shoes. So many new shoes. If the weather suddenly changes while I’m down at the office, no sweat! I might have an umbrella with me, or hey maybe I’ll shed a jacket or two. No biggie.
Alas, Gmail really fucked with my shit last week when it rolled out this new “theme” nonsense. What’s the new theme, Gmail, not being able to read anything in my inbox for lightness of text? Awesome, sign me up. I was pretty relieved to find out that Billy HC was on my side (but then when is he not?) and was going to go ahead and retain the classic Gmail format. I was with him in this classicism. Then, at the last minute, I tested out all the new themes and found that the one called planets is actually rather fetching. The background is black, which is kind of invitingly sinister. Since most emails I send are pretty derogatory, it only seems fitting. And a new planet every day is somewhat exciting. Or at least it will be for like, two more days, when I’ve cycled through them all.
Last week in the New York Times there was an article entitled “A New Wind Is Blowing In Chicago.” In retrospect the piece was probably more condescending than laudatory, trumpeting the city as arising from its perpetual second class status with the success of our own brown boy. Alas, there was a quote which I found quite apt.
“There is a really strong sense of self in Chicago: People aren’t defined by wealth or by work or accomplishments, but rather who they are,” said Alex Kotlowitz, an author who makes his home in Chicago because he believes it is a place to peer into America’s heart. “Obama seems so comfortable in his skin and with who he is. That’s so Chicago.”
Living on the left and right coasts, one is constantly bombarded with the questions “where are you from?” and “what do you do?” Ask someone either of those questions in Chicago and you are met with a perplexed look that says, ”What do you mean where am I from? I am from HERE (or at least the suburban facsimile of here). And what do you mean what do I do? I get off work at 4 p.m. and commence drinking the excellent beers which are so readily available in this land.”
There is indeed something incredibly refreshing about not having to be defined by these limiting, and in my case, transient personal attributes. There is something freeing about entering into a social situation without the anticipation of being peppered with questions and having to recite the same old resume and having to gloss over the unimpressive parts of which there are often so many. This is me in my grey slacks and my North Face fleece. Hello.
The last couple of days have produced snow flurries of varying moistness. While nothing has stuck yet, I eagerly await the glittering of Christmas lights on a powdery sidewalk and the squeaky sounds my boots are going to make as I tread lightly or maybe not so lightly upon my frozen homeland.
