lyke OMG!

makeover!

why i like music

"i'm just something else he tried
a catalogue of interests
in a catalogue of lives.
i hid myself from him
i wouldn't say it was a lie
but hiding worked its way
into the way we lived our lives"

oh hey, you

Well, I'm alone for the night and that's usually when I get my worst ideas. Nothing drastic, mind you--just your typical calling-the-wrong-person, eating-an-entire-pint-of-ice-cream, sitting-through-all-of-Dumb-and-Dumberer stuff. It's borne of night-loneliness, which is why I should never live all by myself.

Anyway, I've thought of a fun exercise to release my communication skills without any of the consequences! I shall, right on this very blog, construct a dozen or more anonymous letters to people as close as family and distant as my 3rd-grade gym teacher, but without identifying when I've switched to a new person and when I may have whimsically backtracked to an already addressed individual.

It will be honest! It will be freeing! oh, the drama.

Dear...

You would get more girls if you actually paid attention to them. Personality can stain good looks. I wish we spent more time together, even though that's sort of impossible because of location & age. I hope someday we end up talking on the phone a lot. You're the most beautiful person I've ever met; how inconvenient. Sometimes I can see kissing you but other than that we don't really make any sense. When I'm around you I think much more rationally--you manage to be balanced and not boring and I think soon someone will fall madly for you.

You're not quite human--I think you're part star. You lied but that's OK because sometimes I lie too. As time goes by your faults become clearer but you still bring me so much comfort. I think the faults are harmless. I haven't seen you since I was ten and we never actually talked and I can't remember what you look like but I still think about you sometimes.

I used to be so angry at you but now I'm not sure what to make of you, which is better I guess. You're in a relationship now and it makes me really happy to think about it. There's more to me than I'll ever be able to make you appreciate. You're a better friend than me.

You might be my only adult friend and your strength is impressive. You're always more understanding than I expect: thank you. I wonder much of the time which of what you said was true, though it can't be much. I love how unselfish you are; I like being around you. There must be a lot in your head that you don't say, and I wish I'd think of you more often or even call you once in a while.

It's weird that we were friends, we couldn't really talk about anything. I wonder what I based infatuation on before I knew you. You were wonderful and I could tell even though I never knew what you were saying.

I think you suck as a person, and I'm glad I think of you as little as I do... it's funny I even thought of you now.

All I ask is that you see me and think that I'm better than you. More respectable, smarter, anything really--that's my dirty little wish.

I talked to you for only a few minutes but I'm glad you were there to make me talk. I think you're a hypocrite and confused and if I could boggle your mind and make you see how elegantly I can identify that, I'd feel so empowered for a few minutes.. I WANT TO SEE YOU CLEARLY.

I'm wearing your shirt right now; it's real comfy and smells like you.

You're kind of a shitty friend.

I think you analyze even more than I do, or maybe I analyze less than I used to. I used to show you the stupidest poems and for that I'm sorry and embarrassed. You're way prettier than you think and I like that you don't spend much time on your appearance. You don't get me, but worse, you don't care to and I'm not sure you ever really did--a shame, that.

I love you.

Sincerely,

me.

sicknesses

I shouldn't be here in Chicago; I should be in New York. But I have an eye infection, which for some reason feels like a bigger deal than it is. When I went to the eye doctor yesterday morning I missed my flight so I could figure out what was wrong. They poked my eye a lot and then I started to cry, and the doctors argued over cellulitis or allergy. Then they gave me a prescription for antibiotics and I left and started to sob. I fumbled with insurance information at the pharmacy counter for maybe twenty minutes, all the while dabbing at myself with squares from a roll of toilet paper I'd taken along in my bag. After I got my antibiotics, I walked back across the hall to the doctor to see if they'd prescribe pain medication; they wouldn't. So I walked home haphazardly, as it was sunny and my eyes were dialated and puffy.

It was really just intensely pathetic.

I feel better now, medically speaking. I'm 4/28 tablets through my antibiotics and I imagine the infection as strange white spots on the inside of my eyelid, slowly shrinking. I'm keeping my eye closed, so it doesn't really hurt much now. I'm sleeping a lot, but I keep having nightmares, which I almost never have. Also dreams that feel like nightmares but for reasons I can't identify.

I watched a lot of TV today via the internet. Episodes of Friends, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Scrubs, and then A. and I finished The Godfather. I practiced Hindi for a little while.. I like writing certain things. Like "Indian" (hindustani). I'm almost through the first chapter of "Teach Yourself Hindi", and it's a relief compared to Mandarin. It's so logical.

Ach, I wish there were a few more people around. And I was a little more functional. Being even a little sick, in a way that requires one to take care of oneself, feels unnervingly reminiscent of being old or being a little dead. It's too much sleeping and being inside and not being hungry.

[Admittedly depressing segue:]

I get really terrified sometimes, about the future. Not my future ("what will I be?") but the future in general. I've written about it in posts before but I usually delete them within a 24-hour period because I feel they're too depressing and don't make fit well with my normally-upbeat-or-at-least-containably-sensitive writing. Fear about the future is a bigger ballgame. More serious and expansive. Overwhelming, really, as a worry. It's about a lack of context. I had a dream a few months ago, in which I was in a perfectly normal and banal situation and suddenly the law of gravity began to disappear. Everyone started to lift from the ground and drift away. If you just picture it, it seems more interesting, but if you actually try to feel yourself into that position, imagine the feeling of context entirely disappearing--that's the horror of it. The depth of the fear, I guess. It's really hard to see it if you don't believe for at least a second or two that it's happening.

It happens to me every so often, maybe an hour or so a week if I'm really concentrating on things bigger than my life. Not nearly that often when I'm focusing on me, food, happiness, sunsets, history, paychecks, my future. I feel like it's something universal though, or at least now universal for my generation. Something not just about being 19, but about being 19 right now, at this time, in this world. With all of these things bearing down and cynicism and selfishness being prominent cultural institutions.

It's freaky.

Not to depress anyone reading this... I just had to express that, as the feeling struck. I hope it's an extreme, as I usually manage to convince myself. It's such a broad, modern topic.. but hope isn't terribly far away. Sometimes it's comforting to know the human race is "in it together." You hug someone and you're melding, you're made from the same stuff. As much as people feel isolated and lonely, maybe we do understand each other. Maybe we just can't communicate it.

One apartment over, my neighbors are singing "American Pie" and laughing. I don't really know them, but they're profoundly comforting.

Yeeah, I probably wouldn't have been much fun in New York this weekend anyway.

ew, dreaming.

I don't really like dreams all that much. They're so, for lack of a more descriptive word: powerful.

And therefore capable of deeply regressing one's emotional progress. You've moved to a new city and started a new phase of your life, you're feeling productive, and then you dream of bad nostalgia. You think you've stopped thinking about someone and that's when you have a beautiful, wrenching kind of dream about that person. Someone died a year ago and you've stopped crying? Time for a surreal re-enactment!

So there you go. I hate dreams.

Here's to waking life, reality. It's not so overrated, really.

save the point

I found the perfect beach yesterday.

I rank this beach up in my Top Ten Beaches - not that I'm a real beach afficionado, and not that I have a Top Ten Beaches. But this one had everything a good beach needs. Completely smooth, sandy bottom. Very deep within fifty ft of shore, for optimal swimming. Lovely view of downtown. And... barely any people.

I found this beach not on the well-dressed shores of the North Side, but rather in my very own Hyde Park, out at the Point. People, myself included, have made the mistake of colonizing the sand of the 57th Street Beach due to what must be lack of knowledge. That beach is loud about its beachiness. It features a long expanse of sand, and a building for changing and showers. It also features, on any beautiful summer day, a miserably large crowd of Hyde Parkers desperate for heat relief slash tan skin.

Nameless Amazing Beach, on the other hand, is discreet. It doesn't advertise itself with sand, or showers, or its own changing building (clearly, just use the old Point building... where on any given day one can walk into a wedding reception and change in a stall with a giant purple bow wrapped around it and wash one's hands with lavender-scented soap provided by said reception's decorator.) In fact, the only way you can tell NAB is a beach is due to the four or five No-Boating buoys anchored a considerable distance from shore, and the four or five quiet college students who figured it out before you (but don't worry, there's plenty of room.)

My swim yesterday with H. was so good it gave me a bit of an epiphany: this is summer. It can be easy to forget when you're paid to spend 7.5 hours a day in a building so air-conditioned it gives you goosebumps. And when you wake up at 7AM in order to do that. And when things consequently are somehow even more routine than they were during the school year. Swimming, though, is like campfire--something very simple with a profoundly blissful effect.

Last week, in my dark room and with brilliant aim, I stepped on my laptop, cracking an enormous spiderweb into the screen and rendering it not usable. I was overcome with panic, and with something worse than panic, something really heavy and frightening and big. It was as though, damaging my computer and witnessing my resulting fear, I felt that my life was sort of small and meaningless. Even to myself. It took me a while to figure out what that feeling was.

People can be so silly.

move on, move on

I bought two shirts the other day.

I know, I know, my whole simplify philosophy. My whole "I'm poor" thing.

Well, I still stand by it to a degree. They were cheap shirts, for example. And I'm going to bring a box of things I never wear to a thift shop or Goodwill soon, so I guess it's more of an exchange.

But yeah, I didn't buy them because I needed them. I bought them because they were very sweet in a 1960's babydoll kind of way, and I'm tired of wearing uninteresting things. I'm tired of feeling plain.

And, quite frankly, I'm a bit tired of myself. I want change. I want it now.

I'm growing out my hair, not cutting it again. I'm also thinking (somewhat seriously) about getting my nostril pierced. Because a) I like how it looks (obviously) and b) people would be surprised. (Any thoughts?)

I'm hoping this desire to change my appearance is due to a certain personal funk I'm in, wherein I feel myself inwardly changing, rather than a possible inadequacy crisis. But I think I've been wanting to do this for a while. If I got a tattoo, which I sincerely don't want, I might have reason to worry.

I want to be forceful about who I am, and the easiest way to do that is through physical change. I will not be predictable or rigid. I am whimsical, my friends.

Oh, and I smoked my first cigarette last night. Laugh, but I've just never had the desire before. And you know what? It wasn't bad. It also wasn't worthy of the sophistication and snobbery most smokers assume in the face of never-having-smoked-ers. It was tobacco rolled up in paper, placed between my lips and the smoke thereupon inhaled and then exhaled. Simple. Silly. Not amazing. Not bad.

A relief.

the apartment children.

I didn't go to work today, simply because I didn't feel like it. And my job allows me to make this sort of decision in a quick and guilt-free way. And it's summer. And I was tired.

Instead, I slept until 9, read for a little while, and then went with A. to the Med bakery where I joyously consumed an apple croissant and an iced coffee, for less than $5. I figure someday I'll really like coffee, and very soon I'll definitely need coffee, so it's a good idea to start drinking it now. Going out for breakfast is maybe the nicest way to start a Day Off, and A. and I discussed angry mothers and also Harry Potter, which we're going to go see tomorrow night.

Then she went to Oak Park, and I walked back, looked at our messy kitchen, and made the very domestic decision to clean...

When I was in the second grade, I loved the Boxcar Children books. In said books, the four orphaned siblings -Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny (shocking how effortlessly that just came back) - are homeless and poor until they find this old, abandoned boxcar in the woods. Deciding this would be the perfect place to live, they make literally everything they use from materials they find in the area (sleeping on pine needles, for example) and I think the two older children work doing chores and babysitting in a neighborhood nearby. Then they buy food - mainly bread and milk, if I remember - bring it back to the boxcar, feed everyone, and, I don't know, I forget. They probably do something heartwarming before they go to bed. (Also, they eventually build this kickass swimming hole, but that's really not the point.)

The point is that simple living is in many ways far more attractive than the complicated living the modern adult in a capitalist society is inevitably drawn toward. Having more money usually amounts to having more objects, preferably ugly, hulky, plastic objects, that collect dust and are utterly unnecessary. Just watch the 2-in-the-morning infomercials. Buy a REALLY CONVENIENT can opener for $19.95, and they'll throw in four other ugly, plastic, unnecessary objects for free! ...because you still have some unused closet space.

At home, I was surrounded by Stuff. We weren't rich, but we never got rid of anything either, which meant we had about 5 billion of everything - 5 billion dish towels, 5 billion bathroom towels, 5 billion Tupperware containers, 5 billion magazines. There are so many drawers in my parent's house that you literally can't close, because they're bursting with things that never get used. Why do they keep acquiring? Because they keep making money.

Here in my apartment, we aren't Boxcar Children poor, but we are College Student poor with Chicago-style rent. So that's where the money goes. It's all very simple and practical, and I like it that way. We save most of what is left, and spend the rest on food. Lentils are 89 cents. Pasta and sauce can be less than $2. We buy rice in bulk, and T. brings home unsold French bread everyday from the bakery. When there's too much bread, we put some in the freezer, and let some dry out to use for bread crumbs.

And so I channeled the Boxcar Children today as I rinsed out aluminum cans to recycle, and boiled water on the stove, using a gallon-jug from store-bought tea for newly made iced tea, and washed dishes and dried them.

We turn off the lights and leave unused appliances unplugged and take short showers. I haven't purchased new clothing in half a year, because I have enough clothing. We suffer through heat without air conditioning, old-fashioned style. That way, it feels genuinely hot. It gives me real reason to complain. It makes me appreciate today, which is much cooler. It makes me appreciate, and notice, difference.

I'm so glad I have no television for my mind to be colonized by MTV, I'm so glad I'm sitting in a perfectly good chair that someone else wanted to throw away, and I'm so glad I get to deal with inconvenience.

Having just enough money is wonderful. A really big part of me hopes I'll always be a little bit poor.

you weren't meant for me.

Because our apartment has a guitar, it also has a theme song. The song changes weekly, and is always according to T.'s interest at the moment. Once he's zeroed in on something, he looks up the chords and works at it until he can recreate it for the purposes of this home.

(It started back in the dorm as a sort of player-listener relationship - with him teaching himself Portuguese songs and me pressing him to play them - but has now progressed into something more interactive. I have learned four chords to clumsily strum along to a very short Italian celebration song. I have been shown rough diagrams of the mouth and T. has explained how the air resounds on the roof of the mouth. I have sung along, and timidly alone.)

Sometime last week, T. decided to give Jewel a try, old-school and hippie-ish of course, before her albums were dotted with "u" and "r" and likely "w/e" and "lol." "Who Will Save Your Soul?" was the first to get strummed, and it lasted for a couple days. Strangely, however, it was "You Were Meant For Me" that won the round, and for several days now it's all any of us can sing.

Back when I went through a Jewel thing for a couple weeks at about 16, I never really gave this song the attention I find myself paying it now. I am surprised by my own sincerity as I wash the dishes and cry with increasing volume, "Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line?"

The theme song always reflects my mood, T. is mysterious that way. What would I say? It's a good thing people move, thereby changing their numbers and protecting those without any sense.

"Don't Worry, Be Happy" just wouldn't cut it right now.

i am a troubled man

So, Audrey recently showed me a clip so catchy, so fantastic, that I can't get it out of my head.

The Rules of the House is a song from a homemade movie called Family Business, created by two guys that went to school with a friend of Audrey's. The movie is around three hours long, poorly edited and shot, and utterly bizarre and nonsensical. But the comedy of it is spot-on.

It was apparently shown to the school, or a sizable portion of it. Their goal, A. informs me, was to make it creepy enough that nobody would talk to them afterward. By the end of the showing, almost no one (save for A.'s friend) was still watching.

High school.

I want to meet them. Le sigh.

ennui and ravioli

I am not sure how I feel about regret. It is true that it's a waste of time, and also seemingly counterproductive. It makes more sense to turn an experience into some positive lesson. Usually I'm good at that--I'm ridiculously optimistic enough to manipulate a personally bad situation into something character-building. But now, at the end of my rope, I feel regret.

It would be nice if logic played a larger part in how one felt. For once in my life, I think, I could use the detachment.

Ah, well. Enough of my summer despair.

Instead, I will display the beautiful ravioli my roomie and I made from from scratch last night.


...followed by dessert, guitar, and good company. Food heals.

Maybe I should become a chef.

South Side representin'

I have never before considered myself to be a squeamish individual. Spiders never bothered me; in fact, whenever I used to find them in the house, I would scoop them up on a makeshift scooper and place them gently outside. The other insects that managed to get into our house in Michigan--I was capable of handling.

That was before the cockroaches. We have cockroaches. How many? "Just remember, if you have one, you have a lot more," everyone cheerfully explains. So far, we've become acquainted with three--Mitch, Pete, and Larry. We've decided to name them all potential-barfly names, and we've apparently also decided they're all men. Mitch was a casualty in a battle with a broom (fought victoriously by Ty), Pete was poisoned ruthlessly with dish soap by a conveniently-visiting neighbor (at my directive), and Larry managed to get away, where he's likely conversing with their leader and organizing the next initiative.

I see this as a war. These creatures have infiltrated our building along with Chicago's South Side, and meeting one in your kitchen is about as horrifying as seeing an actual intruder. I met Pete when I was going to wash the dishes, and as I picked up the dish towel on the counter, I saw out of the corner of my eye a giant black thing running, literally running in the other direction. It was so fast.

The wildlife in the South Side is surprising. A few days after we first moved in, we watched from our third floor balcony as two raccoons scaled the tangle of wooden posts and stairs that creates several neighbors' back porches, from the third floor all the way to the ground. We saw raccoons literally scaling poles. Raccoons! In Chicago!

Apart from the sudden animal rivalries, other problems spring up as well. After moving in, we stored our bikes in the front area on the first floor, clearly visible from outside. A few days went by without a problem, until one day a couple of girls - our neighbors - knocked on our door and asked if the bikes were ours. After replying that they were, they told us that several people were gathered outside, trying to figure out a way to get in and take them.

When Audrey and I went downstairs, we came upon the Argentinian lady that lives on the first floor and speaks Spanish exclusively. She was watching the door like a hawk while a small, adorably bonneted little girl entertained herself. Outside, two or three sketchy-looking teenage boys floated around the street, looking toward the apartment and talking on phones. I stood in front of the glass door and glared at them.

When the lady saw us, she erupted into a frenzy of Spanish, explaining, explaining, explaining, as I stood by clueless and Audrey struggled to understand. After a while, Audrey told me we had to take our bikes upstairs. The third bike, which wasn't ours, we put on this woman's back porch. We wrote a note to whoever the owner was, placing it on the wall in the hallway. Coming back up the stairs, Audrey explained that the woman has lived here for many years, and has seen a lot of bicycles stolen this way. "They wait, she just kept saying," A. said, repeating it in Spanish.

Make no mistake, this city is wild.

oh what a world

The past week has been fatiguing. I have experienced a myriad of emotional and physical sensations.

I have felt nothing like myself. I have been silent. I have drunk way too much red wine. I have consequently vomited. I have been on an airplane. I have walked in the Pacific. I had been sunburned, twice. I have felt hideously ugly and uncharacteristically withdrawn. I have been talked at for several hours by complete strangers as I sat and thought. I have lied. I have willingly paid for and walked through a wax museum. I have been utterly drenched by a sudden rainstorm. I have helped make gnocchi from scratch. I have watched someone get his ears pierced, and chosen the color of his studs. I have eaten a crepe. I have walked through a Japanese zen garden, drunk Turkish coffee, and felt oddly and desperately comforted by a 7-11. I have watched a movie in 3-D, learned the capital of Sierra Leone, and eaten bowl upon bowl of ice cream without hesitation. I have followed barking until I saw sea lions.

I feel better now. Life is strange. Experience is good. I have things to do.

my bipedal lover

I have nothing due tomorrow, and I've been feeling very burnt out lately, so I didn't do homework today. Instead, I started reading The Origin of Humankind.

Yes, it's sort of a strange choice for pleasure reading, but my soc class this year has gotten me very interested in early people. I mean early, early people. People who'd just barely got out of the trees, and sat around and ate and shat and shagged. And walked.

Walking was the distinctive feature of the first humans, and even though the hunting and gathering and increase in brain size and invention of tools all came later, Mr. Richard Leakey has chosen the act of walking as the major distinctive milestone capable of earning our ancestors the (coveted) title "human". It was just that crazy, requiring drastic anatomical changes--of an unmitigated variety. But these apey people were still very apey. For a long, long time.

Anyway, not that this information is particularly revolutionary. My interest is more engulfed in the people that stopped being so apey and started being more human. Making crap, setting things on fire. I'd like to go back and see an early, Mesopotamian sort of society. Not to see what they're doing, but to watch them interact. I want to watch early interacting people. I want to see people start becoming confused about love, without generations of previous love stories to tell them what's happening. I want to watch them begin to develop poetry... when instinct and society began to give way to intense emotional terrain.

I sometimes have daydreams, as all people must, about interacting with ancient people. My most frequent scenario involves taking an ancient person, or maybe an ancestor from a time not so far back, like Roman times, and playing music. Beautiful music. Strange music. Modern music.

Of course, my intended outcome would surely not happen.. rather than this person's eyes widening in awe, and proclamations of love spilling forth, I think it is more likely that their eyebrows would furrow, and this person would ask what all the noise is about. Modern music is a bit more complex, and noisy. It might sound more like a chaotic scene in the market than a beautiful arrangement of instrumentation.

Not that I'm killing off that daydream. I find it far too pleasant. Sort of like the one where I take my great-great-great-grandfather, William Henry Wheeler, the civil war soldier who died in battle five days before the war ended, somewhere in Virginia...and drive him around in a car, much to his terror.

oh, for the love of cheese.

For the past week or so, I have been craving fresh mozzarella.

It started mildly, but over the past few days I've been indulging in all-out fantasies: I see myself going to the Co-Op, walking through the chilled aisles, and stopping in front of the cheese. I pick up the ball of fresh mozzarella from its countryesque picnic basket, among the other cheeses. On the way back to my apartment, I stop at the Bonjour bakery and select a loaf of French bread. Now I see myself at the kitchen table, which I, of course, imagine into place (as we don't have one yet)... slicing the bread, dousing each slice with olive oil, adding a basil leaf, and topping with a slice of tomato, and an equally thick slice of fresh mozzarella. It is beautiful, undeniable food.

My fixation may have started with the capriccio I had at Artopolis something like a month ago, when some friends and I decided to just eat, and not think about money. This was after spending all day in Belmont, and having eaten dinner already at the Chicago Diner (very good vegetarian restaurant, with surprisingly good seitan gyros). Now, two or three hours later, we were eating again. I began with a bowl of lentil soup--one of the most comforting things in the world. This was served with an continuous supply of (freshly-baked) bread. Then came the capriccio. Finally I ordered an absolutely beautiful chocolate mousse, held in cake-like shape by a chocolate coating. I could only get half-way through it, having reached my breaking point, and I brought the rest back for Upekha. But I'm here this summer, and I will finish that chocolate mousse.

Whatever happens with men in my life, the love of food lives on.

On Being That Dreaded V-Word

No, not virgin.

"Emmy has become a vegetarian," my mother explains from across the dinner table, as she points to the broccoli quiche. She says this like I have become a butterfly.

"Oh," my grandmother says and nods. She acknowledges this like I have become a butterfly.

Somewhere around 3 months in, it became comfortable to refer to myself as a vegetarian. Less time than that just seemed pretentious, especially since it started from a New Years Eve resolutionesque whim with my sister. We decided on a year, and left some things unspecified.

(DIGRESSION:
Seafood, for instance. I used it as a tentative crutch, making the transfer to tofu and seitan easier. Of course, now that the rest of the meat is gone, the few times I do end up eating seafood leave me feeling weird. Now, having read about the environmental problems with gathering seafood, I can start phasing it out completely. Did you know it's been predicted that we'll run out of certain types of seafood within our lifetime, due to such extensive farming? So I read.)

Having such a label on you is interesting. Because, of course, the connotation goes far beyond a simple dietary abstinence. As one journeys into this world of new eating rules, one also unwittingly picks up an assemblage of assumptions that tack on to one's meat-free plate.

Hippie! Tree-Hugger! Extremist Terrorist-Coddling Pot-Smoking Most-Likely-Gay God-Hating Liberal!*

Of course, people don't really say these things--not usually, anyway. But it doesn't mean you don't see it in their eyes when they pull it out of you, as many people will. Ordering the fettuccine alfredo and trying as inconspicuously as possible to ask for no chicken, you smile tepidly and look out the window, but then it happens, as you knew it would:

"Are you a vegetarian?"

"Oh," you say. "Uh, yeah."

"Oh," they say. Because you're the kid the city changed. You've metamorphosed. Into a butterfly. Or maybe a moth.

I don't blame these reactions, really. I used to do the same thing, have the same flash of thoughts. But on the other side of the equation, it looks different. I'm not going home at night to burn American flags. I'm just not eating turkey anymore.

Of course, there's also the pugnacious fringe population of non-vegetarians, the militants who look both enthusiastic and wild when they see your plate is free of chicken. "So," they begin, "I see you're a vegetarian. Why?" This question is electrically charged, and it makes me groan inwardly. Not because I find the debate useless, but because someone has just tagged me as the enemy, and the goal is now to win the ensuing argument. This person doesn't honestly want to understand my position - this person wants to skewer me with counterarguments.

There is usually such a feeling of active hostility mixed with enjoyment in that question - "Why?" - that I can't help but feel offensive by not making them more comfortable. I am so careful that I'm likely to pad my explanation with "Well-You-Know"s and "I-Mean.."s.

What if I'm a vegetarian because I'm looking out for my heart? Or I don't eat enough vegetables to begin with? It seems so illogical to be feisty with someone who's abstaining from something. Imagine saying, "So, you're a virgin. Why's that?" or "That last piece of chocolate cake - I see you're not eating it. Are you trying to call me fat? Don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to drink hot chocolate and not eat chocolate cake?"

Of course, my persuasion does lean a bit toward a source of ethics. I like the idea of ending as few lives as possible in order to sustain my own. If I can eat tofu instead of beef, all the better. I can also point you toward the health benefits and the environmental costs. I can do all of these things. But more than likely I'll just be eating my broccoli quiche in silence. So how did you, my friend, get to be so offended?

...

Oh, hell. Maybe I just ought to go all out. Next dinner I go to, I'm bringing charts and graphs.


*I'm sure Bill O'Reilly has said this at some point.

the country mouse and the city mouse

When we're young, we all hear some variant of that familiar tale of the country person and the city person. For me, it was the country mouse and the city mouse. Longing for excitement, the country mouse decides to spend a day in the big city. The city mouse, likewise, heads into the country for a peaceful day of relaxation outside of the daily bustle.

I don't really remember what happens. I think a hawk tries to eat the city mouse. A carriage probably almost runs over the country mouse. At the end, both return to their respective dwellings and heave little mouse-sighs of relief.

In short, the lesson the reader learns is this: Stay where you are.

After a period of about 9 short months, I think I may now be a bona fide City Mouse.

I almost lost my mind on the train yesterday.

I thought getting a Good Seat just meant window seat. I like to look out the window, that's it. I don't need to be anywhere in particular - the front of the train or the back, the left side or right. Just give me a window, and I will have a good seat. Or so I thought... before I met the guy behind me.

Strictly speaking, we didn't actually meet. I don't know his name. So let's call him Big Fat iPod Guy.

The trip started out fine--I didn't even notice Big Fat iPod Guy. I did notice Happy Redhead Guy, who immediately shoved a Diet Coke in front of my face. "Want a pop?" he asked. "Oh," I said, "No thanks."

"Are you sure?" He held it ever closer.

But Happy Redhead Guy was fine with me, because after he downed two bags of Peanut M&Ms and his "pop" (Is my rural-Midwestern sensibility really so destroyed that the word "pop" makes me squirm?), he and his trusty copy of "Awakening the Buddha Within" hit the snack car.

And at least he offered some of his nutritive stash, which falls into the category of Socially Acceptable. Big Fat iPod Guy, well... he didn't offer anything, nor did he disappear quite so conveniently. His presence became known to me just a few pages into the book I was reading. It became known because he sang. If that's what you want to call it. I prefer "caterwauled".

This sort of thing is amusing. For 5 minutes. After an hour, it's Really Annoying. Two hours in, you're really starting to feel unhinged. After three hours, you're ready to gauge out your eyes. You're envisioning all kinds of ways to hurt BFiPG. You see yourself with a lead pipe, Clue-style, and you hear the satisfying noise it elicits as it makes contact with his head. But that's not enough. You want to make him sorry. Really sorry.

As the four-hour mark came and went, I found myself curled in the fetal position, taking over where HRG would have been sitting, clenching my teeth.

A more seasoned City Mouse might have leaned over and politely--no, impolitely--asked BFiPG to discontinue his musical interpretations of Nas and P. Diddy. I, however, am fiercely non-confrontational. BFiPG will drive me crazy, but he will do so in my own mind. I will die resisting the need to make him stop. So I almost do. I curl fetally, sweating and clutching the opposite sides of my shirt, needing to hurt him and not letting myself.

Every so often, BFiPG would raise my hopes cruelly by stopping. He would let seconds, sometimes even minutes slip by untainted. Then he would start again. "I have to tell yooo-oo-oou, when you wear that, it turns me oonnn, it turns me oonnnnn."

It was the worst R&B ever. Or maybe it was just typical R&B.

When the train finally made it to Battle Creek, an hour and a half late, after several stops on the tracks for every conceivable reason, I felt like I'd never undergone such torture.

As a City Mouse, you forget that sometimes you have to be stuck in situations you cannot flee from. The city makes fleeing an endlessly available opportunity. The El runs quickly, and stops somewhere new every few minutes. People are coming, going, leaving, getting on. The longest bus ride is half an hour long.

Home sweet home.

uh

So, I just had a dream that I worked at the White House. And I was with my friend walking through the corridor, when we saw an unlikely character: Osama bin Laden. Just.. sitting there. Hanging out.

We felt like we needed to approach the situation with considerable caution. I attacked him (it made sense?).. I basically beat the crap out of him. With my fists. And he didn't fight back.

I was confused, so I stopped and watched as he gathered himself to stand back up. He looked tired.

Prepared for an ideological battle, I finally said, "So, why'd you do it?" Meaning not turn himself in, because apparently no one had discovered he was there yet (which might be my dream self speaking toward the competency of our current administration). I meant September 11.

But he answered it the first way.

"I realized," he explained, "that killing thousands of innocent people was wrong. I now believe in a god of peace."

If only.

fears

Of the things that I fear, self-delusion, or, more pertinently, the realization of years of self-delusion, tops my list.

I figure maybe writing that down might be relief enough. And maybe a cup of tea.

social appropriateness

Every day is not a good day for me to speak Mandarin.

Today, in class, my teacher chose me to translate what he was saying. I didn't notice at first, because I was deep in thought, considering the nightmare I had last night. (When I get too hopeful in my life, I like to check myself with nightmares... about 50-year-old men replacing people who are not 50-year-old men, and about sinister elevators that independently decide to drop me from dizzying heights.)

When I realized he was waiting on me, and growing slightly impatient, I asked him to repeat the phrase. Something along the lines of "San si bei.." something. In Chinese, the word for "glass" (as in, drinking glass) sounds similar to the word for "hundred". Cup is "bei" (pronounced "bay") with first tone, hundred is "bai" (pronounced "bye") with third tone.

Struggling to translate, I got confused and said something along the lines of "340? No.. 3..4..hundred?" I was obviously not confident in my answer. I had the furrowed eyebrows, the questioning tone.

The rest of the class sat and waited, as you do when someone doesn't understand, waiting for the professor to say it more slowly, explain it, or turn to someone else.

"No," someone said. I turned to look at him. His tone was a mixture of things. Disgusted, as though I should know better. Irritable, as though I was wasting valuable time. Mildly shocked, as though the phrase was so easy that mistranslation would have been impossible for anyone else.

"Okay?" I said. He correctly translated the phrase. "Three or four cups."

Later, walking back from class, I tried to figure out if I felt regret over not studying for class yesterday. Whether maybe it was better not to look like an idiot.

Every day is not a good day for me to speak Mandarin. Yesterday I burst into Tyler's room, midday, and said, "I don't want to go to China." He looked up. "Okay," he said, "Sit down. Talk." So I talked. And I don't, I don't want to go to Beijing. Beijing is gray, and steel, and industrial, and gray. It is more than that, but not where I want to be. He looked at me. "You don't have to go to China," he said. "You don't have to take Chinese. You only have to do what you want to do."

I don't regret not studying Chinese then.

Last night, I rolled up my pant legs and took my bike and rode east to the Point, then north to the wharf, alongside the downtown, as I had done the day before. I watched as the city, first distant, small, and cloaked in fog got closer and then stood tall beside me, watched as the sun went down and the buildings lit up in billions of lights. No stars, but still a kind of urban night sky.

I watched joggers and bikers buzzing past me, with things like "Motorola" scrawled across their backsides. Young couples sitting at the rocks alongside the lake, the woman standing between the man's legs, her hands on his shoulders, saying something, pointing somewhere. Amateur photographers, some girls practicing a dance, a group of well-groomed businessmen strolling near the giant yacht stationed in the marina. I breathed in the smell of dead fish, eclipsing any city smell. I watched unruffled geese and ducks walk alongside the people.

And I rode back in the darkness, thinking of how the lake makes me feel calm like nothing else can. And getting back into my room, changing my clothes, and stretching, I felt the strength in my legs.

I don't regret not studying Chinese then.

Now I write.. and I don't regret not studying Chinese now.

HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior, 54 Street)

sharing different heartbeats

much ado about the heartbeat.
epicenter that it is,
carrying Me to myself through
roads beaten down often but still
illuminated some nights

with wine. and friends
so close that, on nights spent together,
we end up crawling upon
each other and collapsing. emotionally,
then physically, like a
pile of cats.

and other nights, by myself
on a bus with noise all around but i
see myself outside walking, free from
the stains of my circumstance, and
i see another figure
taller, close behind
and that's Me too.

the light extends to mornings
walking on the midway, lilacs and
fertilizer making the atmosphere
smell like air. real air. blue air.
those mornings my legs are
different; they are curious.

the middle of me, at times
clogged with the art around me
and the art elsewhere, seeks
dormancy rather than an honest
exploration of what's true:
the road is dirt, and unused.
my potential is potentially slight.

i make it to my fingertips and not
beyond. i can touch only what
touches me back, but i buy a
plane ticket and

hope that with the
power of hours spent sorting books and
shelving them, i will be able to
stand on the edge of an ocean and
have another figure,
taller, close behind,
and that will be Me too.

i am not sure of all things, or
even many, except that i'm an animal
of considerable caution in love with
complications that reflect me as
simple.

and that i hate to be painted by
another who assigns me two dimensions
and traps me in an image. i may be
closer to a void.

and that it's 2:50 and i
will now end, not a poem,
clearly.
just a
thing.

In lieu of Freud

I already read 83 pages today, and I have decided this exceeds my current limit. Plus, I haven't done one of these things in forever.

1. How tall are you barefoot?: I think 5'5 and 3/4, last time I measured.

2. Do you wish you were shorter or taller?: No. Height is pretty low in my list of daily thoughts.

3. Do you own a gun?: Definitely not. Even just holding one sort of creeps me out.

4. Rehab?: Is this a standard number four sort of question?

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents"?: I've never met the parents.

6. What do you think of your friends?: They give me hope for humanity.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?: "What Child is This?"

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?: Hot tea.

9. Do you do push-ups?: Not regularly.

11. Are you vegetarian?: Yes.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?: That would be my aloof demeanor. Gets 'em every time.

14. Do you own a knife?: Butter and ridged. I'm a woman of variety.

15. Do you have A.D.D.?: Only in my head. (Get it?!)

16. Date Of Birth?: December 14

17. Top 3 thoughts at this exact moment: I should be reading Freud. I should be reading Freud. I should be reading Freud.

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought?: Vegetarian burrito, Honest tea, dollar shake.

19. Name five drinks you regularly drink: Tea, lemonade, water, mineral water, milk.

20. What time did you wake up today?: 7AM

21. Current hair?: Ponytail

22. Current worry?: Not getting Freud read.

23. Current hate?: Apathy.

24. Favorite place to be?: I like Lake Michigan in the summer on the top of the dunes, sort of in the shade, maybe sitting on an old dead log, burying my feet in the sand. Yeah, that's a good place.

25. Least favorite place to be?: My instinct is Hastings, but that feels a bit cruel. So, Gary, Indiana.

26. Where would you like to go?: For study abroad, I've been looking at India. There's also Beijing, but I feel like I might get less out of it. China in general, though. Asia in general. Also Vienna. And Argentina and Peru. Ireland. England. Barbados. But let's start with India.

27. Do you own slippers?: Flip-flops > slippers.

28. What do you think you'll be in 10 yrs?: I have a grandiose idea involving other cities and countries, but I also remember thinking in the 10th grade that I could get into Columbia University. So we'll see.

29. Do you burn or tan?: I feel like this is the most boring question in the world, so I refuse to answer.

30. Last thing you ate?: Half a vegetarian burrito.

31. Would you be a pirate?: No.

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?: Last Friday, I think.

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?: I never really feel a compulsion to sing in the shower. I think that gene must be similar to the thumb-sucking gene. I also didn't suck my thumb, incidentally.

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?: Zombies, actually. Which is absolutely to be blamed on a too-early introduction to that Michael Jackson video, also known as the SCARIEST THING EVER. Also, Chuckie.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?: Talking about Freud, and a professor who particularly loves Freud.

37. Best bed sheets you had as a child?: I don't know... I think they were all flowery.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?: I've never broken anything, or really done anything drastic. Um. In the last 5 years, I had to get stitches on a knuckle after I cut it deeply on a wine glass I broke while washing the dishes. Wild.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?: Our apartment will be TV-less. I think my parent's house has 2.

41. Who is your loudest friend?: Tyler, maybe. Or Connie.

42. Who is your most silent friend?: Peter.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?: Probably not.

44. Do you wish on stars?: It doesn't ever really occur to me. Also, Chicago doesn't really have stars.

45. What is your favorite book?: We the Living, Atonement, Wuthering Heights, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The Giver.

46. What is your favorite candy?: I have a bit of a weakness for Sour Patch Kids.

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?: The sad thing is I've actually thought about this. But I figure if I ever get married, maybe my husband would like some say in that too.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?: I don't know.

49. What were you doing 12AM last night?: Bonding with my roomies.

50. Do you love someone?: Yes.

51. How often do you shower?: Daily, in the morning.

52. Do you play any of your favorite musicians' songs on guitar/piano/another instrument?: No.

53. Do you have a ringtone of your favorite band's song?: I had a Guster song for a long time, but now I just use the ring. Or more accurately, most of the time it's on vibrate.

54. What was your favorite concert?: The Decemberists was particularly fantastic and inclusive. Flogging Molly was the best as far as being hyperenergetic.

56. What food do you find disgusting?: Venison, but maybe that doesn't count since I "can't" eat it anyway. Sauerkraut.

57. What does your comforter look like?: It's sort of dimpled all over, and with small yellow flowers. My down comforter, anyway. My standard one is an ugly purple.

58. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?: Upekha.

59. The first thing you notice about the opposite/preferred sex?: Eye color, I think. And hair.

60. Do you have any piercings?: No. I've had my ears pierced a bajillion times, but they always end up filling in.

61. Do you have any tattoos?: No.

62. If so, how many hours have been invested in them?: ---

63. Do you still keep in contact with your tattoo artists?: ---

64. Do you like chinese food?: Yes. I like the sticky white rice a lot. And veggie lo mein.

65. Favorite pair of shoes?: Navy blue Keds. They're so simple.

66. Who did you hug today?: Tyler, Upekha, mum, maybe some others. I've never been so affectionate in my life. And hugs medicate.

67. How long have you been at your current job?: 2 weeks? Maybe 3?

68. What's the last article of clothing you borrowed from someone?: I wore Upekha's pretty blue scarf and it's still over there, by my desk.

69. What color underwear are you wearing?: Red and white horizontal stripes. Extremely comfortable.

70. Where is your phone?: On my desk.

71. When did you last buy a new pair of jeans?: A little over a year ago, I think.

72. When were you last at school?: Chinese this morning, 10:30-11:20.

73. When did you last burn a candle?: Sometime last week, a bunch of tea candles. Those suckers burn out so quickly.

74. How old is your car?: CTA 4 lyfe.

75. What do you remember about graduating?: It was incredibly hot, I kept zoning out, I wasn't actually all that excited about the ceremony itself, and Kay and I exchanged comments throughout.

76. How much time do you spend on the phone?: Many times a day, but always for very short periods of time. Altogether maybe half an hour a day or less.

77. Can you make change for a dollar right now?: No, but I can do my laundry with my handy dandy school ID.

78. What jewelry do you never take off?: I've been pretty unadorned for quite a while.

79. What are you listening to right now?: "Happy Phantom" by Tori Amos.

80. What kind of shampoo do you use?: Something Audrey gave me because I ran out. Silk-ing, or something. It works well.

81. Do you have any pets?: I had two cats. Now I have one cat. She lives at home and works on her fat production. She's doing well.

82. What do you eat for breakfast?: Kashi, with "crunchy fiber twigs, soy protein grahams, and honey puffs." Actually very tasty.

83. Where did you get the shirt you're wearing?: Shirt A at Sufjan Stevens concert, shirt B at Aeropostale last year (but no label emblazoned across the front or ducks or monkeys--just a relatively simple hoodie).

84. Are you shy?: Nope.

85. Do you get headaches?: Yes, I get tension headaches occasionally. Usually all together and then none for a while. Lots of headaching this week, though. It's been a weird week. I always say that, but it's always true.

86. Have you had an eating disorder?: No, unless you count a very strong inability to avoid sugar. Carrot cake makes me weak and powerless.

87. How often do you eat sushi?: I sometimes sample Ty's and/or Upekha's. Was craving California Rolls today, but unfortunately didn't see them until after I settled for the burrito.

88. Do you follow your horoscope?: Follow, no. I read it sometimes. It rarely strikes a chord, although the general Sagettarian (?) description fits me well enough. My Chinese zodiac is totally off-base, though. No way I'm a rabbit.

89. What are you doing for summer break?: Working for an environmental campaign here in Chicago as a field manager/canvasser.

90. What is your hometown like?: Dry, tired, boring, sterile, afraid.

91. Did you ever go to work with your parents?: I went with my dad sometimes... when I was little and I had to go there I'd sit in this room and watch all of these anti-drug videos for teenagers. Unexpectedly entertaining, they were.

92. Seven states you have been to?: Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, New York, Georgia, Florida, Colorado

93. What is your cell phone like?: Recently hateful. Whether or not you'll hear me depends on its mood. Which leads to the following conversation frequently: "Hello?...Hey, I was justing wonderin-Hellooo?"

95. Do you consider yourself to be creative?: In some respects.

96. Have you ever had detention?: No, actually.

97. What's your favorite radio station?: I like to listen to NPR at night sometimes when I do Chinese homework. It has a strange, pacifying effect on me. Like I remember one night over winter break at home, I started panicking, and then I listened to NPR (late night, so BBC) and made Chinese flash cards and it calmed me down.

98. Who were you named after?: My sister's classmate, I think. My sister named me. She was 8. But the "ie" was upon my grandmother's assistance, a sort of nod to our French heritage. My dad picked my middle name, Claire, because he thought it sounded "regal". My mom was no longer considered a credible resource after she produced the terrifying "Oriana".

99. Have you ever played poker?: No. But I can play War!

chaiyya chaiyya.

I haven't said much of anything pertaining to my life for a while, so here's a brief update: I went to Colorado. I decided (tentatively?) on a major (excuse me, concentration). I came back from Colorado. I cut my hair. I got a job. I'm staying in Chicago over the summer. I started writing for the newspaper, sort of. I thought I would read more--I read less. I need to apply for financial aid. I got an apartment. And I'm going to dinner in Greektown tonight.

Really, I guess that's kind of a lot.

Since I came to college, I realize I look back on high school differently from almost everybody else. With most people, it's with a placid nostalgia. The things that invoke my placid nostalgia usually involve other cities, other states (even other countries)... that dumpy town in central Michigan that one hot summer, when we camped on a lake and found an amazing rope swing on a bank. I was maybe 14. I thought the college guy one site over was cute. Or trying on those brown corduroy pants in Amsterdam, the night it was raining like crazy and we bought a new, colorful umbrella. I was 12.

Point is, my small hometown itself, the feeling it most strongly brings to mind is... stale. To me, it feels stale, dead, and stagnant. I felt it when I was living there, but now even more. I love Chicago... there's an appreciation for solitude you can find in the city. You can go to a movie alone, or eat dinner alone. People usually don't feel the need to ask questions, and you can do what you want. You can come here and start again. You can be a vegetarian. You can wear what you want. You can talk, and there's always someone who knows what you're saying.

And now that I'm here, I think I may have found what I needed. Maybe this is what it took for me to be comfortable in my own skin--escape, college, and the city. UChicago itself is an important aspect, I think... there are times I'll be downtown and overhear a group of frat boys from another school, reminding me exactly why I came here, reassuring me when I come back to a school with a nerdy persuasion and the group of friends I have. Not video games and sci-fi, but tea snobbery and language love. I needed to find people like me to realize what I'm like.

...it'll take a long time for me to understand where I'm from, and even longer to appreciate it.

state of the union

I'm feeling particularly sobered up right now.

I'm terrified of the power of the current president, and his stupidity. But what scares me most, far beyond this administration's incompetency, is the indifference of the American people. War, climate change, torture? I admit I haven't led any protests, but it's chilling to see headlines like "Speculations of Military Use of Torture" and "U.S., China Got Climate Change Warnings Toned Down" and not see a truly revolutionary change in American society. To go to the grocery store and do homework and go to movies and museums as though we don't know terrible things are going on, as though even disinterested high school students can't dissect Bush's tired, platitudinal rhetoric.

I feel like I'm on a ship that I know is being steered in the wrong direction, but I'm down below deck downing Manhattans and trying to forget with bad 80s music. And everyone else is with me. Except for those 30-something percent, who are with the captain, cheering him on, applauding too quickly in front of their face to look out the window and survey the damage.

The saddest part is that we're suffering the least. We'll probably be leaving a massive mess when we get out of Iraq--but the land here is still in tact. And India and Central America will most strongly get to feel the effects of our giant SUVs.

It's so disparaging.

Silver lining: Sometime (too far) in the future, there will be another election. Obama is running. He's sane. He's not accepting money from lobbyists. Please vote for him.