As it so happens, I’ve now lived in Chicago almost as long as I lived in New York. I feel like I should have some sort of emotional response to this simple fact, alas I do not. Mostly I just wait patiently for spring. It’s coming. Winter has given way to late winter. Eskimos might have ten million words for snow or some such bullshit; in Chicago there are at least four thousand permutations of winter.
I am sitting in a coffee shop summoning the will to do work. I am distracted by a table occupied by four incredibly stylish teenage girls all eating bagels smeared with the same sickly green topping. I admire their confidence while having absolutely no envy whatsoever of all the nonsense that will likely befall them in the next five to seven years.
The other day I saw this guy with a prosthetic hand colored a disgusting shade of tan that corresponded not at all with his natural pigmentation. It was curled in an atypical fashion around one side of a paperback book, while his other hand, daintier and gloved, clutched the other side. While I certainly do not approve of his choice of fake appendage, I am mostly left curious as to what he does with all those unneeded left gloves.
If zebras are supposedly “virtually impossible to lasso with a rope” and allegedly are mean little buggers who bite and never let go, then I would like an explanation for this, Tijuana:
A casual Sunday afternoon of cat brushing yielded this:
Leading me to believe that
a. pets are kind of gross
b. the cat really ought to be brushed more often
In other news, the past is doing that thing again whereby it attempts to force me into reconciling myself with it.
two unlikely combinations that are working very well for me lately:
mayonnaise + grilled cheese
rowing machine + mission of burma
Earlier at the grocery store I was serviced by a cashier with the rather unfortunate name of Donka Y. I am not above rushing outside to laugh aloud, though I guess I’d like to think I am. Simple pleasures, indeed.
It is Sunday night and I sit here listening to old Do Make Say Think records while the bath fills up. It feels as if I haven’t heard these songs in years, which may very well be true. This band always seemed more appropriate for autumn than for late winter, especially that one autumn five years ago. At that time the weary and not always hopeful strains seemed like one of the few appropriate things in my life. Winter strikes me as being on the cusp of an exodus, anyway, and my whole life was on the cusp of something then. So maybe it’s the perfect thing for this night.
I haven’t done much today besides read while in a supine position and re-arrange my furniture and closet. When I decided to live where I do, it was in part because I wanted to experience a tiny existence. What I suppose I didn’t realize is that things are always rushing in to fill up a life, causing it to pull at its seams. It takes careful and constant pruning to keep things under control.
The book I am reading is really quite incredibly sad. I cannot seem to put it down, though I question my own absorption. At this moment I’m not sure what I’m getting from it, exactly. And I’m not sure I will discover it anytime soon, but I have a strong suspicion that eventually I will find these words germane to um, something.
It will be really nice when (if) I am able to appreciate the lyric “we could take a leap of faith on your bed and land as a pile of flesh” for the sheer loveliness of the words and not be reminded of that long ago, heavily rotated sex mix.
A couple two three years ago I had a panic attack inspired in part by excessive listening to No Bad News by Bonnie Prince Billy and you gave me this CD with cheery tunes and took me to Jumbo’s Clown Room and there were strippers with pasties and Thai food across that street. And to be honest, that CD always worried me because it said “KH Mix” with a little smiley face written in marker that was always so light, even when that mix was brand new and we were brand new and we had something called a future, even if it was shrouded in panic. I always feared that eventually that marker would fade and eventually that CD would be blank, just like all the other blank CDs despite having been made in the spirit of cheering me up in a time when you probably needed cheering more than me anyway. Maybe I failed you, because now that CD is lost to the ethers and sometimes so are you, and I guess to me that isn’t No Bad News at all.
Hey little bird – hey little bird
Thank you for not letting go of me when I let go of you
I went to bed at 8 o’clock last night and today I feel much refreshed. It’s supposed to be 60 degrees today and tonight I will attend a cocktail party with my boss. I cannot wait to see:
a. her get a little liquored up
b. the ensuing behavior/remarks
I know it’s only February 10th, but I am already starting to think about summer and beach.
