bitterfig

Thursday was my day off and also the first day of Terminus, a huge ass international Harry Potter Fan Convention that just happened to be taking place in my home city of Chicago. 

 

An on-line friend pointed me to a website of informal meet-ups that were being held and I ventured out to a couple of them.  The S.P.E.W. Intersection (named for Hermione Granger’s society to emancipate House Elves) was for vegetarian/vegans and people interested in raising social consciousness.  We met at Kramer’s, a health food store in the Loop with a café area (though sadly no bathroom).  About 10 people came, a diverse group including a woman from Canada, a couple from San Francisco, and a mother and her teenaged daughter from outside of Syracuse, New York.   

 

It was a lot of fun.  My toehold is Harry Potter fandom is writing fan fiction but most of the others were into Wizard Rock so it was pretty neat to learn a little about that whole phenomena which I know almost nothing about.  I talked quite a bit to the guy from the San Fran couple—he had a background in hardcore music and had gotten into Harry Potter and Wizard Rock through his girlfriend.  He seemed to find it a relief after the drugs and violence in the hardcore scene.  We got to talking about vegetarianism and it turned out that he was originally from the Philippines.  When he was growing up his family had raised pigs and chickens for food and he’d actually participated in the butchering.  I thought it was interesting that rather than hardening him to animals this first-hand with the violence inherent in meat eating eventually made him receptive to vegetarianism. 

 

The teenaged girl wasn’t really participating in the conversation (I think she was busy being mortified by her mother who was describing how she converted to vegetarianism after reading the life changing book Skinny Bitch) so I asked her what Wizard Rock bands she liked and would recommend and that sort of drew her out a bit.  In a way, that interaction put me in mind of my very back burner goal of teaching.  It’s something I periodically toy with then dismiss.   After all, how could I handle a classroom of teenagers?  It’s all I can do not to start crying when a customer gets irked because the pomegranate kefir is ringing up at the wrong price.  Yet I feel like I have an affinity with teenagers.   And I enjoy talking with them, finding out what they’re into and what’s important to them which I think is usually appreciated as a lot of people tend to dismiss their interests. 

 

After the S.P.E.W Intersection I went to another meet-up.  This one was called Siriusly Snaped and it was for the slash pairing of Sirius Black/Severus Snape and was more focused on fan fiction and art.  It was really neat to meet other writers and artists whose work I’d seen on-line.  I’ve never been to any kind of convention or fan meet-up before and have only ever tentatively broached the subject of my fan writing with people I know in real life a couple of times (“By the way, I write gay porn about fictitious characters for fun!”) and I think most of them are pretty baffled so it was really fun to be able to talk about slash and writing fan fiction with people who not only knew what it was but enjoyed it. 

 

So basically I rode the El into unfamiliar territory and spent about several hours meeting and talking to new people; all and all not a bad day for someone with a touch of social anxiety. 

On Monday night (08/04/08) my street got absolutely pounded by a couple of severe thunderstorms.  The first came at around 8:30 p.m.  The wind and rain was so strong I really thought the windows might break.  I thought the power might go out so I turned off the computer (stupid storm, I was trying to watch Life on Mars) and lit some candles.  A few minutes later the lights went out. 

 

There was a second storm during the night that was ever worse than the first.  Just a relentless bombardment of thunder and lightening that seemed to be directly overhead.  I don’t know what time it hit or how long it lasted because I had no watch or clock but it was fairly lengthy in duration.  I couldn’t sleep because it was so bright and loud so I ended up grabbing the sofa cushions and bedding down in the windowless bathroom till it ended and I actually dozed off for a while so it was going on for quite a while. 

 

On Tuesday morning there were two trees and a lamp post down as well as numerous clumps of fallen branches on roofs, porches, parked cars (one of which was completely caved in) and blocking the road and sidewalks.  The nearest stop light wasn’t functioning and there had been a direct lightening strike and a fire just a block to the South.  However the damage didn’t seem too widespread.  Just a few blocks away the power was working and there were just a few scattered branches. 

 

I had to work at 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift on Tuesday.  The power was still off when I left home a little after noon (I hung out in the library near the Market until it was time to start—unlike my apartment they had working timepieces and air conditioning).  I must admit I probably spent a large portion of my shift desperately hoping that I would not come home to a pitch black building. 

 

I am happy to say I didn’t have to.  When I got home the power was back on.  It’s been a long time since I’ve appreciated being able to turn on the lights or having a working refrigerator so much. 

Yesterday I had lunch with my sister, her husband and kids and my brother-in-law’s mother and sister at the Hancock building.  Traffic was light because of the holiday so I was able to bike in.  There are people I work with who regularly bike 20+ miles a day but for me the five miles from my place near Logan Square downtown and back was a pretty long ride, definitely the longest I’ve attempted this year and it left me pretty exhausted.  This may have been for the best because I was actually able to sleep last night despite the war zone like noise levels that go along with the 4^th of July. 

 

Still, I do think I might need to start adjusting my calorie intake a bit for my level of activity.  I’m riding my bike fairly regularly now and I know that burns more calories than my usual walking but I’m still eating the same amount (around 1800 calories per day which according to thedailyplate.com is a little less than maintenance level for a sedentary person of my size).  I’ve been quite tired the past couple of days but also restless, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything and I think it may have to do with this but I’m afraid to eat more.  Every time I do manage to eat 1850 or 1900 calories during the course of a day I usually counter it by doing extra exercise or eating less the next day.  

 

I find it very frustrating that it’s still so difficult for me to make these adjustments.

 

On a more positive note lunch went well.  Everything seemed okay with my sister and I talked and had a nice time without drinking (or really eating since we had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory where about the only item that fits my caloric restrictions and vegetarian standards is a dry side salad). 

 

I don’t get downtown very often so following lunch I decided to pay a visit to the nearby MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and see the Jeff Koons exhibit.  When I got there, there was a sort of installation/performance piece called “Peace Salon” taking place out front on the plaza.  It was by Chicago based artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien and she was offering “free buzz cuts for peace.”

 

I picked up the handout that explained it, which I quote here:

 

“Participants who would like to make a commitment to peace are offered a free buzz cut.  By having their heads shaved, the artist believes that the participants are acknowledging their connection to a larger world around them.  In doing so, she believes that they are symbolizing their solidarity with out soldiers at war and honoring their sacrifices in their ongoing commitment to create peace.  Furthermore, my shaving one’s head O’Brien hopes that the individual is released from a physical attachment since she sees attachment—to ideas and things—as the source of war.  By shaving one’s head, the participant is choosing to be one step closer to peace.”

 

I thought this was a pretty interesting idea.  For me, cropped hair is associated not with soldiers but with holy people, monks and nuns.  It also inverts the 60’s notion of long hair as a symbol of rebellion and peace loving. 

 

An interesting idea.

 

And I’ve always been sort of curious about how I’d look with a shaved head.

 

So I decided to give it a go. 

 

I have to admit a big part of my motivation to go through with it comes from the fact that I’m going to visit the parents in Upstate New York on the 14^th.  “How Far Will You Go For Peace”, a sign near the installation asked.  I think I read it as “How far will you go to piss off your parents.”

 

I’m still trying to decide if what I did was very bold or very stupid.  I’ve never had my hair this short before so it’s going to take some getting used to.   If nothing else it'll be interesting to see how it effects my lesbo street cred. 

( more pictures of me with no hair )

I had both Thursday and Friday (07/03 and 07/04) off so I ended up getting a bit of a holiday weekend.

 

Thursday I did mostly mundane stuff—laundry, grocery shopping, seeing my therapist—but in the evening my brother-in-law took me to see Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears.  It was playing at my favorite theater, the Music Box, which is one of the few old style, non-multi-plex movie houses left in Chicago.  It’s so beautiful, it’s been around since the 1920’s and has the old fashioned marquee outside, a huge, ornate theater, even a red curtain over the screen that goes up when the show starts.  They operate as an art house and revival theater and show a lot of foreign films and more off-beat movies.  It’s actually been ages since I’ve been there.  Lately I’ve only been getting to the movies about once a month.  Back when I was working for Biff (and making a bit more $$$$) I actually used to go to the movies at least once a week.  I rather miss being able to do that. 

 

Mother of Tears is the third installment in Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy that began with the 1977 classic Suspiria (one of my favorite horror films) and continued Inferno (which I haven’t seen) in 1980.  These movies deal with three sister witches—the Mother of Tears, The Mother of Sighs and the Mother of Darkness—who have houses in Germany (Suspiria), New York (Inferno), and Rome (Mother of Tears) from which they spread chaos and evil. 

 

I’ve always preferred the chilling, atmospheric giallo of Argento’s early days to his latter work which is more baroque and vividly horrific.  Still, Mother of Tears was a pretty enjoyable as a gory horror movie with strikingly bizarre imagery and minimal story.  Many creative things were done with intestines, and some gorgeous Roman architecture was shown as packs of witches resembling Madonna circa 1983 descended on the ancient city. 

 

There was actually a strangely retro vibe to the whole film, as if it had come a few years after the previous chapters of the trilogy rather than nearly three decades later.  All the witches wore new-wave make-up and the scariest witch, a Japanese girl with a silver front tooth reminded me of nothing so much as a particularly menacing Tama Janowitz. 

 

The heroine of the film was played by Dario Argento’s daughter Asia.   She’s been in several of his films but this was the first I’d had the opportunity to see.  I’m fascinated by the idea of a man directing his daughter in horror/exploitation films being terrorized, raped, tortured and occasionally grotesquely murdered.  There’s something so pathological yet telling about it.  It really lends a whole other level of uncomfortableness to something like a routine fan service shower scene when you know that the director is the actresses Dad.

 

My brother-in-law Dean had brought a bottle of citron vodka along and we had spiked cokes but I didn’t drink enough of mine to even get buzzed as vodka sort of turns my stomach.  Even with the citrus flavoring it still tastes thick and chemical and sort of vile to me.  I consider this repulsion a good sign.  My ex-boyfriend, who was a recovering alcoholic, always said that one of the things that separated alcohol abusers from casual drinkers was that the abuser would drink anything available to the point of intoxication whereas the casual drinker tended to have personal preferences and wouldn’t drink if they couldn’t have something they enjoyed. 

 

I’ve been drinking again for a little over a month and it really is an experiment to see if I can drink socially and casually.  So far I feel like I’m doing all right.  I did go out of bounds at the party a couple weeks ago where I embarrassed my sister but I didn’t totally lose it.  In the past I’ve often figured that once I go past a point I might as well relinquish all control and finish off the bottle.  I didn’t do that this time and I think it’s because I’m trying to look at drinking differently, not as a huge cathartic experience I allow myself a couple times a year but as something I can incorporate into my life and do in moderation maybe once a week or so. 

 

As I said, it’s an experiment.  If it doesn’t work I’ll probably go back to not drinking at all because I know how dangerous problem drinking can be. 

Over the weekend I finally got out and did some serious bike riding.  On Saturday morning I rode to an ANAD meeting which was a couple of miles away and then on Sunday I rode to work. 

 

It’s taken me an inordinately long time to get back on my bike this year.  Part of it has to do with the crazy weather we’ve had this spring (I actually just missed being caught in a really bad storm yesterday) but it’s mainly fear, sort of a delayed reaction to my accident last summer that was really brought home when I found out that two cyclists had recently been in fatal accidents not too far from my neighborhood (one death was literally a block away from where I live).

 

On April 20, 22-year-old Tyler Fabeck was hit by a car at the intersection of Logan Boulevard and Western Avenue.  On April 30, 24-year-old Amanda Annis was killed at the corner of Kedzie and Armitage (another girl was killed at the same corner back in September). 

 

When I rode my bike to work last year, I often went through the Logan Boulevard/Western Avenue intersection and frankly it made me very nervous because of the heavy traffic and poor visibility because of a highway overpass.  When I was riding over the weekend I tried to stick to side streets, though you really have to get on a main thoroughfare with a light to get across Western Avenue. 

 

Right after Memorial Day weekend, something called a Ghost Bike was put up to mark the spot where Fabeck was killed.  A Ghost Bike is a bicycle that’s stripped down, painted white and chained to a place where a cyclist died as a memorial.  After it appeared, I hiked down to the intersection and took some photos of it.  Since then some more candles and flowers have been put around it.  It’s really a chilling reminder of what can go wrong and I’m trying to be really careful when I ride this year and also to drive more carefully and pay more attention to bicyclists.

 

If anyone is interested on more information there was a piece about the Ghost Bike's on Chicago Public Radio a few weeks ago.

There was lot’s of excitement at work yesterday because there’s a major movie being shot a couple blocks away at the Biograph Theater where the Jazz Age gangsta John Dillinger was famously shot (and not with a movie camera)  The film—Public Enemies—is being directed my Michael Mann and stars Christian Bale and Johnny Depp. 

 

Apparently Bale’s just arrive in town and in the break room a couple of kids were talking about going down after work to try and see him. 

 

They’ve actually been shooting for a while.  At my brother-in-law’s concert two weeks ago his sister, Bebe was telling me about it.  She’s an extra and she was telling me about how they’d cut her hair in 1920’s style which means they’re really going for detail.  She’s worked on other period films where they just styled the extra’s hair but never one where she’d had to have it cut. 

 

A guy came through my line who was working on the film as a hairstylist and I mentioned this to him.  I felt like such a Hollywood insider though I’m rather glad I’m not.  Bebe had mentioned that the days were really long and the hairstylist said he’d worked 18 hours yesterday.  That’s unimaginable to me; I can scarcely make it through an 8 hour shift. 

 

Still, I’ll make a point to see Public Enemies when it comes out.  I’ve never really liked Michael Mann as a director but both Bale and Depp tend to gravitate towards interesting projects so their involvement bodes well. 

Things are usually pretty quiet where I live however things have been sort of chaotic lately. 

 

Starting around last Saturday, a student film was being shot in the apartment under mine (I’m on the top floor of a 3 story building).  It was sort of exciting but also kind of a pain in the ass.  The film crew reserved the entire side of the street in front of my building so I couldn’t park there and the shoots went on till midnight many days and were LOUD, also when they were shooting I had to taking the narrow, cluttered back stairs into my apartment which involves negotiating three separate locks I’m not used to.  Also, let’s face it when I get home from work the last thing you want to deal with is a guy with a walkie talkie who makes me wait so he can check if it’s okay for me to go my apartment (“I’ve got the top floor tenant here, is it okay for me to send her up?”). 

 

I should have made an effort to talk to some of the people working on the film but I was too shy.  Also they seemed really busy and focused. 

 

They were shooting at other locations one night during the middle of the week, so you’d think things would go back to normal.  However on that night something happened at the low-income housing project across the street.  It was insane.  For about an hour there were people standing outside screaming at each other, even after the police came.  In the end at least six police cars came.  I have no idea what was going on but it seemed pretty crazy.

My brother-in-law Dean’s concert on the 23^rd was really excellent.  It was at Davenports, a piano bar on Milwaukee Ave. in my old hood Wicker Park

 

This was the first time I’d really heard him sing except for two songs-- “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “Spooky” (you know the one… “Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you.”)-- he performed at the wedding reception when he and my sister got married in November of 2001. 

 

I was really impressed.  He not only has a great voice; he’s also an incredibly expressive singer.  I actually found myself tearing up a couple of times during his show.  Music can do that to me.  I almost never cry over movies (or books, or television shows) unless I’m already really upset about something but sad songs absolutely kill me.  I remember when I was a little kid absolutely weeping over things like “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “Eleanor Rigby” and Kenny Rogers’ “I Wish that I could Hurt that Way Again”. 

 

Of course Dean’s too good a showman to go with too much depressing material and the bulk of his set was more upbeat songs but even these often included a degree of bitter melancholy.  Dean loves vocal pop and he’s really good at picking songs that sound cheerful but have a bite to their lyrics—stuff like “Angel Eyes” with its world weary refrain of “the drinks and the laughs are on me”.  

 

The first half of his set was stripped down, just Dean and a pianist.  The second half was mostly material from the CD he’s been working on for the last decade or so—a collection of songs about cities called King of the Road.  This time he was accompanied by his producer, who I can’t help thinking leans a little towards over production.  Some of his arrangements take the focus off Dean’s voice.  Still, I was really pleased with his rendition of “By the Time I Got to Phoenix” which is probably my favorite Burt Bacharach song. 

 

There were quite a few people I knew at the show-- parents from my niece and nephews’ school (which it was a fund raiser for), Dean’s family and some of his friends including Nick, who I had a disastrous one night stand with when I first came to Chicago after which he completely blew me off.  Malicious little bitch that I am I was pleased to note that he was looking bloated, middle-aged and burned out.  I found him not at all attractive.

 

Not that I was feeling very attractive myself even though I was all dressed up in my fishnets stockings and a black and red slip dress.  I was actually thinking that my huge fleshly legs probably looked ridiculous in the stockings but then during intermission Dean’s Aunt came up and said “You’re a very beautiful woman” which was completely unexpected and really made me feel good. 

 

During the show, I did order a glass of wine.  I only ended up drinking about half of it.  That was enough to make me feel relaxed but not too much so.   It was my first time drinking since last July and I feel like I handled it pretty well.

The program cover for Dean's concert-- the photo is by my sister Vienna

Given that it has not been so terribly long since my complete physical and mental collapse I probably haven’t been taking the best care of myself the past couple days.  Sunday and Monday my schedule was as follows—Wake up at 6:30 a.m. and be to Biff’s office by 7:30 or quarter of eight.  Work there till noon, go home and get in a fifty minute workout before heading to work at the market till closing.  Yesterday I didn’t work at Biff’s at all but I had a long shift at the market and I ended up being so tired I didn’t work out.  I tell myself that this is okay.  Most people do not workout everyday.  My sister-in-law works out four or five days a week and it doesn’t seem to have affected her ability to run marathons so I’m going to try not to worry about it too much. 

Today was my day off but I had to go for training at the North Halsted store (which is actually only a couple of blocks away from my home store).  We’re getting new registers put in next week and had to learn the basics.  It wasn’t too bad though I always get a little rattled when faced with any kind of new method of doing something I’m used to doing a certain way.  Still, I think I can handle it.  It’ll be tough going at first, I’ll actually have to concentrate to do things I’m used to doing automatically but after a few days the new way will be automatic and I think it’ll actually be easier to do a lot of things and save time during cash up. 

It was cool to finally see the North Halsted store.  It opened in July but I’d never been there before.  It has more room than the Lakeview store where I regularly work and seemed fairly quite and slow paced.  Of course the thing that appeals to me the most about this particular branch of Whole Foods is that it’s located smack dab in the heart of teh gay.  It’s in the same building as the Howard Brown GLBT Health Center and Biff tells me it’s a very popular cruising spot.* I spent the training scanning the aisles for lesbilious ladies but it seemed like most of the shoppers were women with kids, not unlike at the Lakeview store. 

Of course having children in tow doesn’t automatically rule someone out as gay—I’ve mentioned Biff and his partner Jorge are going to have a baby.  A sonogram was done on the 15^th and they know for sure now it’s going to be a little boy!  Very exciting.  I’m going to start campaigning for Biff to name him after a Dr. Who character.  Not that I’ve ever watched Dr. Who mind you but Biff has a Dr. Who obsession that goes back about 25 years so I think it would be cool for him to name the baby after a Dr. Who character. 

I’m sure this is the sort of thing only a safely single, non-parent would think.  I’m still a little disappointed that my brother-in-law prevailed on my sister not to name my niece Calliope after her favorite Days of Our Lives character from the 80’s. 

After the training I went to Brown Elephant, the thrift store run by the Howard Brown Health Center which is right across the street from the North Halsted Whole Foods.  I bought a knitted pink hoodie which miraculously fit me despite being a small (no matter how thin I get I will never be a small person) and an armload of books.  I got copies of Slow River by Nicola Griffith and the poems of William Butler Yeats to replace the one I left at my parents in Upstate New York,  as well as a couple anthologies of erotica to help me with my writing, an oversized Spanish language comic book adaptation of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, a book on Goddesses by comic book artist and historian Trina Robbins,  Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forester, The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit (which I’ve long wanted to read) and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (which somehow I’ve never read). 

 

*It should be noted that Biff and his husband have been together since the mid 90’s so he probably has about as much clue as I do about popular cruising spots.

It snowed on Tuesday night.  The first real snow of the year, everything blanketed in white.  I don’t like digging out my car or having to wear trekking around in boots but I’m still happy to have the snow, it makes it really feel like Christmas is coming. 

 

Mum stayed with my sister from Thursday until Sunday.  It was good to see her, but rather painful—she does push.  The minute she had me alone she started talking about how I should move back to upstate New York.  I could go back to work for the County and have health insurance that covered psychiatrist visits so I could have my medication monitored.  I could start a catering business using all the pots and pans she’s picked up at lawn sales and auctions.  At the very least I should quit my job at the market so I could come home over Christmas. 

 

I can’t help thinking that if I really meant as much to her as she says I do she’d accept my choice to live on my own in Chicago and not pressure me to move back home every time I saw her.  It’s very difficult for me to say no and I hate disappointing anyone but I have no intention of returning to my parents’ house. 

 

In fact, over the course of Mum’s visit she really reminded me why moving back is not an option.  She called and e-mailed from my sister’s constantly to make sure I was all right or just to inform me of what she was doing.  When I left my sister’s to return to my apartment she wanted me to call as soon as I got home.  When it rained on Saturday night she called several times to caution me to drive carefully.  On Saturday my sister’s family was taking her downtown to visit American Girl Place and have brunch with Ava, my brother-in-law’s mother.  I wasn’t planning on going because I had work later on and we’d discussed this but Mum still called early on Saturday trying to get me to come along and badgering until I had to say right out that I didn’t’ want to come because I haven’t been planning to come and I needed time to myself before work. 

 

This makes me feel inflexible and selfish, which I sort of am.  I realize that Mum feels persecuted and misunderstood by my father in New York and my sister in Chicago.  I’m very passive so I’ve always served as her ally, someone who will more or less go along with whatever she wants.  I don’t want to play this role but I don’t want to leave her on her own alone either, though in the end she’s going to have to work things out on her own.  That sounds harsh but I can’t sacrifice myself to appease her, which is what she expects from me.  

 

Not that her visit was unpleasant.  It was raining and my nephew was ill on Sunday so we didn’t go to see the windows on State Street as planned.  However we were able to go to some of the shops around the Damen/Division intersection with my sister which was fun.  Dozens of new shops have sprung up recently ranging from the super posh (Coco Rouge a high end chocolatier with a gorgeous décor combining red curtains and industrial design)  to the more accessible (Renegade Handmade, a shop put together by vendors from the Renegade Craft Fair).  I’ve started looking for Christmas gifts for people.  It’s not going to be easy on my budget but hopefully I can get small presents or make something for everyone. 

On Wednesday night I went to see a reading by Lydia Lunch at Quimbys (an underground book/comic book/zine shop on North Avenue).  I was a little hesitant to go because I’ve been feeling off lately and really don’t want to do much but stay home and watch movies. 

 

Lydia Lunch looms large in my personal pop culture hierarchy.  She was one of the women featured in Re/Search’s Angry Women anthology, a book that went a long way towards shaping my feminist sensibilities.  She was also one of the first American women in punk rock and her scary, sexy little girl persona would be a huge influence on Courtney Love’s archetypical  kinderwhore persona.  Despite this impressive resume, I’ve never really been a fan of Lydia Lunch’s work.  Her music never really impressed me and I found her writing ugly, extreme and disturbing without being illuminating.   Also I’m a little scared of her. 

 

Still, I decided to attend the reading.  Lunch turned out to be one of three authors reading that night, the others were Arthur Neresian and local boy Joe Meno. 

 

Neresian started off with an excerpt from his novel Swing Voter of Staten Island.  It was a sort of science fiction action adventure crossed political parody.   Something about tying Ann Coulter to the roof of his car like a deer.  It was juvenile and very violent and not nearly as funny as it should have been. 

 

Lunch was next.  I was sort of relieved by her physical presence.  She’s not very big which made her a little less frightening to me (she and illustrator Bob Fingerman did a comic book called Bloodsucker a few years ago that featured a character that looked like Lunch performing acts of sexual vampirism.  I know you shouldn’t confuse authors and their characters but I guess I sort of see Lunch as the Bloodsucker character).  She read from Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary which was written a decade ago but only recently published in the united states.  Before she started reading a stoned out young kid, maybe about 19 or 20, with a fresh, vacant face came up and sat at her feet then kissed her shoe.  Careful what you wish for, silly boy.  After all, this is the woman who sent Nick Cave scampering.

 

The excerpt Lunch read (which she assured the audience was all true) was about her experiences as a teenaged runaway in New York City in the 1970’s, basically living by stealing, turning tricks and occasionally stripping.  A potentially terrifying situation but Lunch denies fear, presenting us instead with a seventeen year old heroine who is the most dangerous creature on the streets, out of exploit everyone she encounters, a sort of a reversal of Sade’s hapless Justine.  From what Lunch read, Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary does seem to take a very Sadian worldview where everything, especially sex, is really about power, about using, about fucking someone else over. 

 

Lunch may be a predator but I’ve always considered myself prey, so I have a hard time identifying with her writing.  Maybe it’s because I am at heart hopelessly Christian and middle-class but I’m not sure if I believe in her brand of fearless amorality and not sure if I want to.  Still, her performance did a lot to enhance the material.  She brought a lot of humor and bravado to her reading and was quite engaging all things considered. 

 

Joe Meno was the final reader, following Lunch.  Quite a few people in the audience left after she finished, which I thought was sort of rude.  How hard is it to stick around for fifteen more minutes to support a local writer?  Of course I have a soft spot for Joe Meno.  I’ve haven’t gotten around to reading any of his books (Hairstyles of the Damned, How the Hula Girl Sings, Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir) but I’ve seen him read about half a dozen times at various venues around the city.  He’s an expressive reader and real cute to boot.  He looks like a nice little boy (even though he’s in his 30’s—33 to be exact, two years younger than me and all those books published.  Sigh.) then you notice the sailor tattoos.  I actually found the piece he read, from his first book Tender As Hellfire which was just put out in paperback, quite engaging.  It was narrated by a twelve-year old kid, all about a haunted barn, taxidermy eyes and an annoying girl, and was really funny and actually made me wonder what the rest of the book was like.  I’d actually seen a copy of it at the library just a few days before. 

I though I might have been being a bit of a hypochondriac calling in sick on Thursday but today I’m feeling so much better I realize I was pretty sick.  I probably should have taken yesterday off as well because I felt very poorly for most of my shift and my level of customer service probably dropped to an all time low.  It’s hard to be pleasant when you’re wondering if you’re going to pass out.  Today I really felt like I was myself again, no cold sweats, sensations of spinning or shaking.  I was actually in quite high spirits.  It was a beautiful, perfect fall day and market was hosting a “Halloween Freak Out” which included people form a local arts center making masks and students from the Paul Green School of Rock (which is just down the street) playing Black Sabbath songs.  All this was out in the parking lot but you could hear the music inside and it was fun.  I’m not exactly a Black Sabbath fan but I love Halloween and I thought it was a cool idea in general. 

 

I finished Good Omens which I really liked.  I don’t read a lot of humor or watch many comedies but I’m beginning to think maybe I should because I always seem to end up really loving the things I do watch/read.  One of my all time favorite films in The Life of Brian and probably the best movies I saw last year were the only two comedies I went to, Strangers With Candy and Little Miss Sunshine.  Still, I tend to be very wary of comedy and humor.  I don’t quite trust it.  Too often there’s cruelty at its heart.  I’m guilty of this myself.  I can be viciously funny, usually at someone else’s expense, if I don’t watch myself.  Also I think humor is often misused to create a smokescreen and avoid dealing with something that needs to be addressed. 

For some reason I can not begin to fathom I was paid on September 29, then one week later (October 5) got a pay check for one week.  I will get my next check on September 19.  I can’t figure out if this is a good thing (getting a check after only one week) or a bad thing (living two weeks on a one week paycheck—though of course I still had part of the last paycheck left over.)  Either way it messes up my budgeting, which I have a certain way that doesn’t account for random one week pay periods.

 

On Friday I went to Andersonville (a neighborhood quite a ways to the northeast of where I live) to meet with one of the editors of a website interested in local journalism.  They’d contacted me back in August and I submitted a piece to them last month, an article about the Bucktown Arts Festival adapted from my journal.  They seemed interested in having me do more stuff for them but I sort of wanted to find out more about the site and what they were looking for just because it seemed rather sports heavy and also because with my two jobs I’m probably not going to be able to do articles very often. 

 

I got an idea of what the website is after—community based journalism about events that aren’t really being covered by larger news sources.  The editor said that it would be okay for me to write for them where I could, that they wouldn’t require weekly pieces or anything like that.  It’s okay to only write for them when something I’m interested in comes up and I have the time

 

They don’t pay, so I really don’t have the luxury of going out of my way to cover things for them but I would like to do some writing for the site.  It’s a good excuse to talk to people and since a lot of my co-workers at the market are artists, musicians or activists of various kinds it could also give me an opportunity to help them out with a bit of publicity. 

 

The meeting went well, but directly before it I had a rather upsetting (at least to me) incident.  The editor I was meeting was going to be out of the office and couldn’t get back till 3:30 p.m. and because the buzzer was broken he asked me to meet him outside.  I showed up early as usual and was standing by the door reading Mishama and minding my own business when a woman dragging along a huge suitcase came up and started talking at me. 

 

I really would have preferred to have kept reading my nice little book about fascism and homosexuality but I thought it would be simple common courtesy, one human being to another, to at least acknowledge this woman was standing there talking and not just tune her out or tell her to please fuck off.  So she spent about five minutes going on about how she was an educated woman and a word processing specialist and her sister and a EKG machine and how she was in an intensive outpatient program.  Eventually she finally got to the part where she asked for money.  I didn’t have any cash on me so I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash.”  She snapped back, “I’m sorry you wasted my time.”   So much for human courtesy, I guess the proper etiquette would have been to ignore her or tell her to go away. 

 

The office where I had my meeting was right next to the Andersonville Brown Elephant.  Brown Elephant’s are a series of thrift shops in Chicago run by the Howard Brown Heath Center, a GLBT health organization, so after my meeting I went in and looked around.  I didn’t really find anything I liked.  There was a book of zodiac images by the retro hipster artist Shag I wouldn’t have minded getting but it was fifty cents and the credit card limit was $10 and I really wasn’t lying when I told the lady I didn’t have any cash.  When I was there, it was mostly quite but when I was about to leave this old Billy Bragg song “Richard” started playing really loud. 

 

This is a song that fascinated me when I was in college because it seems to precise and detailed, as if it must be talking about an actual situation but I never could figure out what that situation was.  Like an overheard fragment of conversation, a window into someone’s life but you have no idea what you’re looking at.  I remember I actually wrote a story based on this song, trying to create a context for the lyrics. 

 

Hearing it again, echoing in the warehouse space of the Brown Elephant was a sort of odd experience.  It was so familiar and yet it’s been years since I’d listened to it.  I’d always been so focused on the lyrics I never realized that Billy Bragg does a lot of really strange things with his voice during the song, there are some very odd vocal inflections going on not to mention harsh guitar riffs.  Still, it’s the lyrics that really get to me.  My favorite lines-- “You helped me make this bed, but you won’t help me sleep in it.”  “Our Titanic love affair sails on the morning tide.” and “Do you think I only love you ‘cuz you sleep with other boys?” 

 

 

Maybe because I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again last week, when I heard the song this time the line about sleeping with other boys sort of reminded me of how Joel thinks that Clementine is unfaithful and promiscuous.  She denies it and both times I’ve watched the film I found myself believing her.  It always seemed to me like part of his fantasy of her as someone free in ways he will never be and also as someone he can be resentful towards. 

I did a fairly unprecedented amount of socializing over the weekend. 

 

On Friday night after work I ended up hanging out with some other cashiers at a bar down and street and then on Sunday afternoon I went to a party at a co-worker’s apartment.  Keeping to my decision to avoid alcohol I didn’t have anything to drink, though I did smoke a bit of pot at the party.  I haven’t touched marijuana since I was a senior in college (circa 1993 or 1994).  I don’t have anything against it per say; I just dislike the physical act of smoking.  Also it’s illegal and even stupid laws can get you in trouble. 

 

I did two hits and I didn’t really get enough to affect me  (my technique being somewhat rusty).  Since I didn’t feel a pressing need to get high I left it at that though I could have had more.  That’s something I never seem to be able to do with alcohol. 

 

It was a pleasant little party and the after work get together was also fun so overall I feel quite good about them both.  It’s nice to know that I can be around people and even participate a little without getting totally fucked-up. 

 

Saturday I went to the 4th annual Renegade Craft Show (my sister and I actually participated in the first right after I got to Chicago).  It’s been in Wicker Park that past three years but this time it was a little to the South an Division just East of Damen.  And it was huge, tons of venders, heaps of nifty stuff.  I could have easily spent several hundred dollars but since I couldn’t I limited my purchases to a t-shirt with a pink squid silk-screened over orangey-pink and cream stripes.  I ran into my sister and she’d bought a vintage slip silk-screened with an octopus print.  They were from totally different vendors.  Apparently multi-armed aquatic creature motifs are popular amongst D.I.Y crafters.  I also picked up a ton of free cards, stickers and buttons.  My favorite little button that said “Brown Loves Pink”.  It was by a designer who used a lot of pink and brown in her work but I’m going to wear it as my final statement on Reservoir Dogs.

Pa-Daddy was in town from Friday morning until Tuesday evening.  He stayed at my sisters and I was working the whole time except for Tuesday but I managed to see him for at least a little bit each day. 

 

On Saturday I met Pa, my sister Vienna, her husband and the kids at the Bucktown Arts Festival at the rather undynamically named Senior Citizens Park.  I’ve gone to the Bucktown Arts Fest almost every year since I moved to Chicago four years ago and my sister has been making it a point to go there for even longer.  Overall it’s a really high quality show with some truly excellent artists showing.

 

Robert Snell is a favorite of both my sister and I.  He’s a soft-spoken blonde man who hardly looks older then a teenager and makes amazing, intricate little drawings with ballpoint pens, markers, maybe a little paint here and there.  These drawings are only a couple inches in size but are dense in layers of line lines.  Matted and framed they seem like illustrations or panels from a film noir/horror/science fiction comic book.  There’s a Tim Burton quality to Snell’s drawings.  They’re equally cute and frightening, dark and bright.  They aren’t very expensive either, just $50 each for the original drawings.  Because the prices are so low, my sister is usually able to pick up a couple at every show she sees him at (he also does Around the Coyote) and has amassed a fairly large collection.  She also gives them as gifts so I have two myself.  I wasn’t able to afford an original drawing but I did get a $15 print of a blue girl before a window with fishnet tights and spider eyes of empty darkness.  I’m going to try and write a story about her. 

( my print )

Another artist I really like who was there was Kass Copeland.  She does collages of old fashioned looking images juxtaposed with leaves, flowers and birds.  Most of them are mounted on wooden blocks making them seem like fantastic relics of a 19^th century where strange little girls with fairy wings an antenna posed from tintype photos. 

 

Another artist that really stood out for me was Amy Arnold, who makes felted wool stuffed toys that are really cute and crazy.  I would have dearly loved to take an armload of them home with me but sadly they were well beyond my price range (in the range of $150 to $200 a piece). 

 

And of course one of the most innovative artists at the show was a gentleman in a red fez and bowtie who goes by the name of Smarty Pants who works with balloons.   I’m not kidding, this guy was brilliant.  Easily the coolest balloon twister ever.  He took one look at my 5 year old nephew and made him a red and blue hat that actually looked like Spiderman and then proceeded to make him a webslinger—it looked sort of like a red gun with grey and black twisted balloons coming out of it as webs.  He made a little girl a Little Mermaid hat and another pink flamingo hat.  He made pirate hats with skulls and crossbones.  The guy was just miles beyond any balloon twister I’ve ever seen.  There was a woman with him named Miss Dena who was dressed as a fairy princess and did face painting.  She was also really good and could pretty much paint anything on a kid.  I was very impressed which is saying a lot because I’m dour and sour and  have no love for clowns or mimes or birthday party fun or anything like that.  My little nephew and niece were more or less beside themselves with delight. 

After my bike ride this morning I stopped at No Friction, a little coffee shop near California and Armitage that I’ve been meaning to go in for a while.  I don’t go to coffee shops and cafes very often because of my various money and food issues but sometimes it’s nice to be in a public place and just have a drink and read.  The last time I did this, a couple of weeks ago, I went to the Starbucks at California and Logan because it was a gorgeous day and they have a really lovely outdoor seating/garden area but overall I  prefer to support independently owned places as much as possible cuz I’d hate to see them go away. 

 

No Friction seemed really pleasant, cool and quite, lots of texture, some interesting art on display.  They had a community book shelf where you can bring books you don’t want, which I ought to do.  I have a few things I’ve read and didn’t care for or am never going to read or have multiple copies of that I may as well pass along. 

 

While I was drinking my iced-tea, I looked through a copy of The Chicago Tribune someone had left on the table.  In the “At Play” section there was a big article on the Chicago Craft Mafia and the whole DIY crafts scene.  My sister, Vienna, who made strange and amazing stuffed animals called Poog-goos, was fairly active in Chicago’s DIY craft scene a couple of years ago and I was marginally involved.  We participated in shows like Renegade Craft Fair, the DIY Truck show and Dept-Ment and she sold her stuffed Poog-goos in a couple of shops including the nifty but now defunct Monkey Business at Chicago and Damen and at Quimby’s on North Avenue.  I think she got discouraged because it took so much effort for her to make Poog-goos and they sold slowly.  Also even though the focus on DIY is supposed to be that things are handmade and unique but the Poog-goos individuality actually seemed to work against them and crafters who made things with a more assembly line feel to them were much more popular.  Also of course when she’d started out she had one child was very young and portable.  Having two active, mobile children made it a lot harder to make Poog-goos or do shows.  As for me between my job, depression and my increased focus on writing I went from being fairly prolific at knocking out dozens of nifty little figurines and paintings to being lucky if I can do a few drawings a month.   

 

So for the time being, both Vienna and I limit our participation in the DIY scene to occasionally attending the shows.  According to the article, there are quite a few coming up (all of these are in Chicago, IL)—

 

Renegade Craft Fair
Wicker Park
Noon to 10 p.m.
September 15-16
renegadecraft.com

 

DIY Trunk Show
Pulaski Park Auditorium
1419 W Blackhawk St.
10 a.m.-6 p.m.
November 17
diytruckshow.com

 

Chicago Craft Mafia Racket
Uncommon Ground
3800 N Clark St.
6-9 pm
September 26
chicagocraftmafia.com

 

I’m gonna try and go to all of these.  Maybe I’ll be inspired. 

 

I’m not someone who puts much stock in astrology but as I was continuing to read the paper I glanced at my horoscope--

 

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Today is a 7. There's a thin line between garbage, recyclables and priceless antique treasures. Sometimes they're all piled in together. Take extra care sorting.

 

I thought that was surprisingly apt in light of my thoughts regarding the my artwork as well as the community book shelf and also because my downstairs neighbors are moving out today and I’m planning on scoping the alley after they’re gone to see if they abandoned anything I can use. 

I hadn’t mentioned it before because it shows how psychosomatic/lazy I am but I was so worked up about my impending court case on Wednesday that I ended up calling in sick to work on Tuesday.  Since this is my third absence in less than 90 days it means I’m going to get a counseling statement and that if I call in again between now and October 12 (when the 90 days since my first absence ends) I’ll get an unsatisfactory work warning so I really need to stay semi-healthy for a while.  Though I have to admit, when I went into work yesterday after three days (I was legitimately scheduled not to work on Wednesday and Thursday) I felt much better than I have in a long time.  No nausea or dizzy spells, my legs didn’t ache the way they have been and I wasn’t nearly as tired or irritable as I have been so I do think the extra time off did me good. 

 

Wednesday of course I had court which turned out to be no big deal.  I waited around for about half an hour while some other cases were heard and while some lawyers argued about whether or not a case should be heard in traffic court of “on the fourth floor” whatever that means.  Then my case was called.  No one showed up from Chicago Transit Authority so the ticket was dismissed and I got my license back.  It took a grand total of two minutes.  I didn’t even get yelled at or called irresponsible or asked if I’d learned my lesson any of the things of that nature I was expecting.  Also I didn’t have to plead guilty, which is good for my insurance case (which I have a bunch of paperwork I need to do for and a couple of phone calls which I can’t make until Monday when the offices are open). 

 

After court I walked around downtown Chicago a bit.  I looked at an exhibit of Contemporary Art from India at the Cultural Center then walked around Millennium Park.  There were some ballet dancers rehearsing in Pritzer Pavilion who I watched for quite a while.  As someone who has absolutely no coordination I am always amazes by what real dancers are capable of.  Then of course I went to my favorite Borders at Randolph and State where I browsed for an ungodly amount of time and looked at all the pretty books I’d buy if I have a couple hundred dollars to spare.  They have a nice big selection of manga.  I noticed that the sixth volume of Loveless is out and I’ll probably pick that up at some point because I’ve sort of made the commitment to see the series through even though I have some serious problems with both the content and the manner of storytelling.  What I was really tempted to get was the first volume of a series called Venus Versus Virus, which is a science fiction story about gothic Lolita lesbians that I would very much like to read. 

 

Thursday I worked at Biff’s office and afterwards met Sunqist, a livejournal friend who lives in Chicago, at a coffee shop by the Damen Blue Line stop.  It’s the first time I’ve met one of my on-lines friends in real life and I had a really good time.  Unfortunately a very severe thunderstorm hit while we were talking and I got to ride my bike home amidst pouring rain, lightening and strong winds.  There was a big tree down at the end of my street and when I got back to my apartment, I discovered that the screen had blown off my front window and all sorts of leaves and twigs had gotten in.  Also one of my CD towers and a lamp had blown over and a couple pictures knocked off the wall.  Riding to work the next morning, there were trees and branches down all over the place.

 

Pa-daddy arrived in town yesterday morning, so after I finished work I went over to my sister’s to see him.  He had a good trip (he takes Amtrack and on Amtrack any time the train is not five hours late you consider it a good trip) and was playing with the kids and seemed pretty happy.  I don’t have work till 3:45 p.m. today so at about noon I’m going to meet everyone at the Bucktown Arts Fest.  Tomorrow I have a mid-shift so I probably won’t get to see much of Pa but I have Monday off so I’ll be able to spend the day with him then. 

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, pages must show.”

Charles Dickens
David Cooperfield

 

 

Four years ago today I packed my car with some clothes and kitchen wear, a blanket, a pillow, and all my Chicago related CD’s (Liz Phair albums, anything put out by Bloodshot records, the Chicago soundtrack and the vastly superior original Broadway cast album with Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon and Jerry Orbach) and left my parents house in Milford, NY for Chicago, IL.

 

I was 31 years old.  It was the first time I’d lived in a city, my first apartment, the first time I’d lived alone, the first time I’d ever supported myself. 

 

It hasn’t been easy.  My time here hasn’t been a total disaster but it hasn’t exactly been everything I hoped for.  More like a little of both. 

 

I haven’t had any romantic relationships in Chicago or made a lot of friends here in Chicago or much impact as an artist or writer but at least I’m still writing and drawing.  For a while there it felt like I’d never write again.  I was completely blocked from the time I arrived in Chicago until February of 2006.  My plans for graduate school don’t seem to have come to anything this year (I was turned down by School of the Art Institute and though I made the waiting list at Columbia College Chicago I’m sure the semester has started by now without me), but I do plan on reapplying for 2008. 

 

Not long after I arrived in Chicago I had a several month long recurrence of bulimia which I thought I’d overcome several years before.  It marked the start of an almost constant struggle with bouts of severe depression and disordered eating.  However being in a city gave me access to eating disorder support groups for the first time and I’ve found them enormously helpful in giving me perspective and lessening my feelings of isolation and of being cut off from the rest of the world by my obsessions and compulsions. 

 

While things were initially financially stable for me in Chicago, with a job and an apartment provided by my friend Biff, I lost both in 2006.  Still, I managed to cope.   I found a new apartment and a new job.  Things are much tighter now but I’m still limping by, supporting myself.  Even with health insurance affording my medication is a continuing problem but my brother-in-law is helping me. 

 

When I moved to Chicago my nephew, Minya, was only 16 months old.  He’ll be starting kindergarten next month.  My niece, Kitten, didn’t even exist.  I’m getting to watch them grow up, which is invaluable and even though I’m not as close to my sister and her family as I’d hoped to be for a variety of reasons (I don’t have a lot of energy when I get through with work and basic stuff like grocery shopping and paying bills, also I don’t like the idea of exposing the children or their parents for that matter to too much of my depressed self and so I tend to keep distant during the all to frequent periods when I’m feeling unstable) I’ve still been able to be a part of their lives. 

 

Overall I think I did the right thing breaking away and coming to Chicago.  I haven’t been a smashing success but I think I’m more myself then I would have been if I’d continued to live with my parents.  While not quite strong, independent and brave I am stronger, more independent and less fearful than I was.