co-evolution

highlights from a wide-ranging and interesting conversation, laid on the table without pretense.

* Philosophers are after the Truth [capital T], but they, like composers, are merely the articulators of a moment, making the Zeitgeist palpable/lisible/audible, orating from the mountaintop their own personal truth. The successful truths find resonance with the people of the time (or the time just after).

That is, Nietzsche wasn't so much calling for the death of God as much as proclaiming it. The messenger not the executioner.

* We live in a predominantly capitalist pseudo-democracy for a good reason: competition, survival of the fittest. Societies evolve like species. Religions, too. Myriad economic systems, myriad insignificant religions, have attempted to win over the hearts of people, but only a few have succeeded. Christianity succeeded in the West *because* it declared Jesus was the one and only son of God. While that rings false to me in the 21st century, it is perhaps the one decision that allowed me to hear about him at all.

Capitalism was just one possible system—of the 10,000 we tried—but was not so much chosen as it was proven to be effective. The reason why it won out is a big question. It's not the fairest system, it's probably not even the most efficient system, but it is dominating right now.

Maybe societies succeed or fail not because of what they give people but based on what people give them. Society creates its own needs, people fill them. Ultimately, when people have a role in society, when they are giving back, they feel a part of it.

* People created societies based on their fear of the unknown in order to stabilize food availability and weather. Thus, we needed to dominate nature to provide stability. Domination is always inherent, unavoidable.

We all need a different mix of certainty and uncertainty. I'm an uncertainty freak and so don't feel compelled to relinquish options in the name of stability. As such I neither join nor create many organizations. [Somehow, being on a bike team is the only one that makes sense.] But, still, I depend on organizations that others have created to give a modicum of stability to our chaotic lives.

Bigger organizations are more stable. More stability means less individual freedom. How do we balance these? We don't. We let the market decide. We let the powerful—the organization leaders—get away with more and more until the unfairness becomes excessive, then we stage protests and occupy shit.

We need organizations, but when there are organizations who have been organized to organized other organizations, it gets a little too meta for real life.

We seem to be living in the most stable time for the most number of people ever in history. There's a lot of evil still in the world, but we need to acknowledge how far we've come lest we pale at the sight of how far is left to go.

The Shape of the Sword

Last night before bed, I read The Shape of the Sword by Borges.

I have it in a book, legitimately bought from a bookstore.

As far as a plot archetype, it's more of a Keyser Söze story than anything. It's a short story, hard to really develop the characters.

It's also a story within a story, so it's hard to tell who the main character is.

If anything, it's the Outlaw Myth: the hero has stumbled and fallen and is using his one virtue to find redemption. Except there is no redemption nor any attempt to obtain it.

Turns out, you can read it online.

It's a story almost devoid of plot, entirely based on fleshing out a single character and then twisting the plot. It's fine for a short story, but for a feature-length movie, a little thin.

Would make a good short, maybe.

bongiorno

Finally, it's on Netflix streaming—but not for long.

Breaking Away.

Yes, one of the few bike racing movies, one that I should probably own (if I still believed in owning CDs and DVDs) that was shown in Grant Park earlier this year to kick off bike-to-work week.

I was loathe to attribute it to an archetype, as if they were even avoidable. A real story about real characters, the movie is a far cry from Shutter Island, a plot device wrapped in clichés.

It's about 4 recently graduated high school friends who have nothing to show for their first summer out. No jobs, no aspirations, only feelings of inadequacy for being townies in a college town. Sons of stonecutters, quarrymen, they're called cutters. And you can see the word impale itself in their flesh each time it's leveled at them—like a knife.

Dave stands out. Having won an Italian bike, he's been obsessed with bikes and Italy, speaking either Italian or broken English with an affected accent. He's blissed out living in his delusion while his friends and father are downtrodden realists, even pessimists.

Dave meets a girl in this state who believes him to be an Italian exchange student, presumably studying at the University. Double lie.

But he's so happy, albeit due explicitly to his idealism and naïveté.

He reminds me of myself for a few months in the Fall of '07.

And naïve idealism is precisely what makes his fall so hard. The Italians come to town for a race; Dave participates, spends the first half of the race catching up to them; he tries to hang with them, riding with them, speaking Italian; they [take offense to this?] stick a pipe in his spokes and crash him out of the race. [Were they earnestly worried about losing to him?]

In Dave's case, his idealism was shattered, his flesh bruised. He stops speaking Italian, even to his girl [who dumps him], and he suddenly resembles any one of his dejected friends. His father finally recognizes him, content that he's finally acting "normal" again. Or just real?

His father had been highly put out by the Italian act, and though he probably didn't realize, maybe deep down he was just concerned that his son's idealized delusion would turn around to cause him pain. Was he just being (subconsciously) protective or just miffed that his son could be so namby-pamby happy?

Then there's the big race. The Little 500. It goes as you might expect, and we feel the requisite joy at the end.

As for an archetype, I had forgotten about the "Rags to Riches" type, one that includes a "Coming of Age" type. Each of the 4 high school friends develops as the story progresses, leaving behind their insecurities and stepping boldly into new terrain. And the hero, the main character Dave, experiences the "False Ending" in which the bad guys win and it looks bleak. But that makes the triumph at the end all the greater.

Win.

bettering morning coffee

There are some friends who you have friend-dates with, and then there are those to whose house you bring a bike pump to fill their tires and eat some bread. And then maybe watch them do their hair and put their makeup on.

It's nice when they live close by.

And sometimes you can trigger deep truths from within that erupt unexpectedly; sometimes you learn things about coffee.

The friend in question used to work at a swank coffee shop in Brooklyn—Oslo—who, to my taste buds roasts the best coffee in the world. Try Freya.

[Shameless attempt at promotional support? Or simply earnest?]

One new hot thing in the world of coffee is Chemex: a glass carafe with a filter for the beans on top. Sounds too simple to be good, but it's the new big thing. And apparently there's a right way and a righter way to pour.

The trick, apparently, is to do an initial pour that soaks the beans and releases the bitter aromas. Then it's time for a long slow pour in a spiral, starting from the outside.

I tried the first trick on our standard drip coffee maker, and it worked.

It requires you making some hot water first, but pour it over the beans and let them steam for a few seconds before starting the pot. Turns cheap Trader Joe's coffee into acid-free B+ coffee.

RWG

While walking this morning—my new habit, going through my listening list on Spotify—I saw a paradox. A man came up to me and said "I am lying to you like you lie to yourself."

Like a canary in a coal mine he was a warning sign of things to come.

It was cold out this morning, so I was bundled up; I realized that, inside, I was wrapped like a mummy, layers of bandages on top of bandages on top of wounds.

I was listening to The Woodmans—music by David Lang, a composer whom I greatly admire, but not in this case; what I was hearing was oversimplified, overly repetitious and banal. However infectious his other music, this was a disease I was not contracting.

One of my favorite pieces of his—"Cheating, Lying Stealing"—has obvious repetition, but each time a cell repeats, it's altered in some way. The inattentive listener might not even realize, but everyone will perceive its unmechanicalness—irregularly regular.

For the least initiated listeners, this is a relatively easy point of entry, all while keeping it interesting. The Woodmans sounded like film music.

Which, it turns out, it is.

Or was. Whatever tense, it was intended as the score to a film, which leaves it 2-dimensional when you give it your full attention. Now that I know, the jury is still out; now I have to think of it totally differently.

The point of this post, however, is not my new habit of walking in the morning, at the end of night—the easiest way to stay healthy (in the bike racing off-season)—but tools for creativity, specifically the Random Word Generator. Hence all the underlined words.

xmas 2011

in the days leading up to christmas, i learned that i'm nearing the end of my money.

i'm never quite sure how that happens, but it happens every winter, usually not till late february or march.

this year, sooner. was it the bike racing? i did more bike racing this year which means 20-30 dollar entry fees and gas for getting to the races.

or was i just living an unsustainable lifestyle? not that i'm prone to excess, but i feel surrounded by people who don't have to be as careful with money. easy to get sucked along.

fortunately, i had already bought most of the presents for my family, so i didn't have to think about it too much while shopping.

i'm usually a terrible gift-giver, relying heavily on the "thought-that-counts". this year, however, i think i did alright. for my mom, the poetess, i got an international journal of poetry and the granta issue on chicago. for my dad... well, his present started off as something mysterious and impractical and ended up as something practical: roku. not without an air of mystery, the roku streams movies and such (pandora) to your tv. it's how some of my friends watch netflix. for my brother-in-law, the fixins for old fashioneds (whisky and bitters). for my sister, an illustrated history of graphic design in america. and for the kids, books.

the whole weekend, i tried to keep my caloric intake the right side of total bacchanalia but still felt overfull, oversugared, and overserved. every year i think it would be a lot better if i could just do a 3-hour bike ride at some point. but i never do.

christmas day night, i had an insight that i hope to elaborate on later. suffice it to say that i poked around on the internet to find the basic plot archetypes. i found a book that described the 7 basic forms. it looks a little long to read, but there are some good dissections, summaries, and reactions out there on the net.

but let's get to the good part, the result of which is a busted up nose and an emptiness in my belly.

i started to feel nauseous midday boxing day. i thought i was just over-caffeinated or overstuffed on holiday treats but it turned out to be more sinister.

i felt ill on the drive back to the city, where i dropped off my stuff at home and got on my bike. moving, circulating the blood made me feel better. i joined my family at RJ Grunts, the historic restaurant at the edge of Lincoln Park and the only decent family place within walking distance of the zoo. the real zoo, though was inside. hoards of families were stuffed into the 70s-themed tavern, and the possibility of getting a table was in serious question.

we got seated, though, at 2 separate tables on opposite ends of the restaurant. i was back to feeling sickly and deliberated on which table to join. the one, my sister, mom, and my baby niece lily; the other, my dad, my brother-in-law, and my toddler nephew lincoln. i chose the man-table and then had to deliberate on which deep-fried, greasy meat i'd be able to digest.

my choice raised eye-brows: tuna melt. [i never found out if it was good; it's still in my fridge.]

i rode slowly on the way home, not having the energy nor the intestinal fortitude to go fast, choosing low-traffic streets both for safety and quietude.

i considered stopping at the river to unleash the demons in my stomach, but the moment passed too quickly.

getting sick moves in a spiral. you feel on the verge of being sick but then it passes. when it comes back, it's worse but it passes. all the way until you are dozing on the couch, shivering under a warm blanket, concentrating on keeping your lunch inside where it belongs.

when the sweat comes, you know it's over.

made it to the bathroom, calmly took off my christmas-present-flannel, and was nearly ready for the onslaught. only the toilet seat was in my way, which i threw open with such urgency that it bounced, whacking the bridge of my nose on the way down.

it still hurts a little to wear glasses.

i felt so much better. not only was something malevolent inside but i was just full on excess. i felt depleted but ready to start over. not quite ready-ready—i still could only stomach glasses of water—but i knew i was on the mend.

so far today, i've had mostly bread and honey, some weak coffee with milk, and yogurt—starting slowly.

might need to take a nap...

Narrative Arc

Christmas day evening, I was alone in my room-room at home-home and, perhaps through the mysterious interconnectivity of the internet, I got turned on to the basic plot archetypes.

There's a book that came out I'll never read—too many pages—but there are several good summaries and reactions to it on the internet.

For as much as the Romantic Hero wants to be a unique individual, s/he still needs to feel a part of something.

"Yes, we're all individuals!"

Sometimes you're a camel in a caravan; sometimes you're just a camel in the desert.

Sometimes the path gets lost in the shifting sands.

I am both the driver of the caravan and the camels; being your own boss is de rigueur these days, especially if you're trying to do creative things.

And the question has remained unanswered—indeed, unasked: what's my archetype? Hero, Outlaw, Messiah, Vengeful Messiah, Blithe Angel?

Lately, I've felt more like an Outlaw. Potential, however, for a Hero. The Messiah would then go further and transform the world.

I'm not so much into vengeance: lucky for you. The Blithe Angel sounds more and more attractive.

I may be essentially one or all of these things in my core, but I have the freedom to try them all out, to avoid decision.

Indecision is a freedom. And a tiresome state.

Remembering where we've come from helps us see the arc, the trajectory of where we're going.

motherboards

On a whim, in a stupor induced by headcold, finding myself thinking clearly but simply, even more distracted than usual, I got interested in electronics.

It started with the annual winter yen to build a Theremin. Followed closely by the thought: how hard could it be?

Theremins are the electronic instruments from 1950s horror movies, an electronic, hands-free instrument that produces sound based on the performers hands interacting with electrical fields surrounding antennas.

Read about its basic operating principles per wikipedia.

It's one thing to know about Theremins, it's another to know how they work. I want to build one; I want to know how they work.

Which requires a serious dredging up of lost knowledge regarding electronics.

Actually, I never knew much about electronics, though I did well on the EM section of the Physics AP exam.

It's been that long.

Granted we built a robot, but I never got a good understanding of circuits beyond basic principles and simple schematics. A Theremin, it turns out, is pretty advanced.

So I decided to start small. A visit to American Science and Surplus (a wonderland of strangeness) resulted in me being the proud owner of a "My First Strobe Kit", a DIY electronic circuit that requires soldering ("sottering") and whatnot.

The more I think about electronic circuits, the more I don't understand them. How does information flow through them? I'm learning, of course, about resistors, potentiometers, capacitors, and whatever else. Lots to keep track of.

So I started with a problem, how to build a Theremin, which turned out to be too complicated, so I broke it down, and broke it down, and broke it down. Electricity is still pretty complicated, but with this Strobe kit I can at least start learning by doing.

[As if I needed another hobby.]

But maybe this is just a rhythm of thought, a wavelength, that I've been fostering, against all odds: trying to figure out how things work. It begins with identifying the problem and ends with breaking it down into the simplest components. Whether or not I put the parts back together remains to be seen.

Deconstruct first; reconstruct second.

Through this process, I've realized that I don't actually believe in anything. Or the opposite. I believe in too many things, contradictory things, that render them un-possible.

["Me fail English? That's unpossible!"]

For instance, it doesn't happen too often, but there was at least one time on the bike tour that someone asked me about my religious beliefs. I don't know how, but I realized that I both believe in God and in the death of God. I both believe in reincarnation and don't. I both believe in good and evil and don't.

It's like, when I get down to the electronic circuit of my mind, there's all these switches that allow both 1's and 0's.

Which coincides with this book that I'm reading: Erring by Mark C Taylor.

"There is a large, and I believe growing, number of people who find themselves in the middle of such extremes. Suspended between the loss of old certainties and the discovery of new beliefs, these marginal people constantly live on the border that both joins and separates belief and unbelief. They look but do not find, search but do not discover."

So I'm not so unusual. There's always consolation in that.

throwing things into other things

I've been storing up these stories, awaiting the completion of a trilogy. The other day, completion; here they are.

1) It's no secret that I go to Kuma's Corner maybe once a week. Meat, it's good. It's maybe a secret that I used to be vegetarian and, for this reason, have little sympathy for veggies, thinking that that was a phase that I went through and thought better of. Glad I did it though.

Generally what happens is this: I eat something for dinner - neither a mere snack nor a feast - and feel pretty satisfied until one or another of my roommates sends me a text: "House meeting." This, of course, means Kuma's, and it's almost always after 10:30, sometimes 11.

If we happen to be in person, one of us will say: "Yeah, I could wrap my dick around that" which somehow translates to "I'm in." [I'm in = I'm down = I'm up for it... etc.]

So one time a week or two ago, the crazy roommate and the aborted-baby-daddy suddenly said they were going, but I had just opened a beer. Dilemma! I was on the ram's horns, wanting to sit and finish my beer (waste not!) but also wanting to go get some meat.

Solution: bike with beer.

It's not legal per se, but it's not exactly immoral. I draw the line at immoral. Or at least just a little past.

So I'm biking one-handed on the fixie, left hand poised on the brake [safety first!], when, about half-way there [it's a 7-minute ride], I finish my beer and feel an immediate desire to dispose of the empty bottle. I'm feeling fractious and have an urge to just throw it, devil may care. But then, golden opportunity: a dumpster on the other side of the street. Almost like a reflex, I hook-shotted the bottle in an arc over my head.

Draino.

It couldn't have gone any better.

2) My crazy roommate had gone to Florida and come back, was forbidden to come back to the house, and was spending the weekend in a padded room. [At least that's how I picture it.] The day after her institutionalization was C's birthday party. He had a keg of good beer [that still has some left in it] and a barrel for a hobo-fire.

So, now that we all know what a hobo fire is, let's carry on. [We didn't use a blowtorch to make the holes, rather a drill with some hole-cutting attachment.]

Picture this. The fire is burning and people are showing up. I showed up after a concert that was pretty terrible and had drank 2 G&Ts at the post-concert reception. [I ended up way drunker that night and ended up missing my cross race the next day.]

So things are happening, I turn on the music, it's a party.

At some point, we were going to burn this small wicker ottoman that was taking up space in the living room. In honor of clean-space-clean-mind, I'm getting rid of the random junk in our apartment.

Somehow, I decided to try to throw it from the balcony [2nd floor] into the hobo fire 30 feet away. It seemed unlikely to work, but the greatest rewards come from the highest risk. And the best risks are the one you're not attached to (or are ignoring).

First throw! Miss. Just wide. No can, no fire. Close but no cigar.

C throws the ottoman back up to me (wicker is pretty light), I catch (amazing!), and throw again.

No real thought, just a vague amount of preparation.

Draino. Right in. There were only a few orientations that the stool could even fit into the can, and it happened to find it just as it went in.

Someone came up to me afterwards and said: "If that was on Youtube I'd think it a fake."

Not a fake, just being awesome.

3) On Sunday, my chef-friend and I are driving to a bike race (I've learned my lesson about drinking too much the night before and have made it to *all* subsequent races), and we stop at a gas station for some 5-hour energy and coffee.

But I have this cup from last week still in the cup holder and don't have room for my coffee. What to do?! Dilemma!

So I look around for a drive-up trash can. Nothing.

I find one right in front of the cashier but that's 4 feet away from the curb. I drive up and ask him: "think I can make it?" He laughs, I aim and shoot...

Way way too high, like 3 feet. Hit the window right by the cashier and sort of exploded with melted ice from last week's post-race soda. Missed the can.

So I take my foot off the clutch [LURCH, stall...] and go throw it away. Total fail. The lurch even spilled my coffee [a little] in the car.

Then driving away, he's still laughing in fits, I'm trying to drink the coffee. He gets me laughing right as I'm drinking, and I inhale it. Really. Inhale. Not just choking on it, the coffee enters my lungs and I feel this strange sensation like I'm freebasing coffee, the caffeine entering straight into my blood stream.

I managed to cough most of it out before the race and like to think that it was to blame for my 8th place finish in the race. Not too shabby but would have liked to do better.

Trilogy complete.

coincidences

I think I am done talking about the ex-roommate. Then again, that's exactly what I thought about a million times already and, really, after the thousand-and-first time, I started writing about it. So, sometimes excess is for the win.

We had 2 girls over last week to fill the vacancy. One of my roommates had said "No girls." after the last one, but we assured him that not all women are prone to insanity.

Neither of the 2 who came over seemed borderline anything, and we approved of both. The girl interested in a long-term living situation flaked out, and we went with the short-term Scottish girl who's in town for a semester at the SAIC, something about sculptural installation art.

When she was by the house, she told us a sob story about why she had to leave her current place on short notice and under duress. She was subletting from some folks, had given them a security deposit, and they went to Détroit. Then, mid-October, the landlord comes by and says that the folks who skipped town owed a month or two in rent. For some reason, this poor Scottish lass was on the hook for it. So she was being asked to leave. Shitty sitch.

W heard all this and asked for clarification: where exactly was this house she was living in?

Turns out, he knows the people who live on the other half of the house - good friends of his - and he knew more about the sitch.

One of the people who left earned the nickname "The Step-Shitter" due to an unfortunate mess that he left on the steps leading up to the house, probably while on drugs.

That was another thing W heard about the folks who left: junkies. So somehow, through the magic of the internet, this girl ended up at our place.

W thought all this was very funny when he met her, for, he too was on drugs, though nothing so deleterious as heroin. Just hard enough, however, for him to bring up, multiple times, how insanely coincidental it was that she lived with the step-shitter.

So now she lives with us and made dinner last night. Real food! Yum.

In other news, I had a SLEEP burger the other day. Fuck yeah.

finding is the new losing

New day, same topic.

I thought we had moved on. I would have thought the hospital would have figured out her brand of crazy and tweezed it out.

No communication for a while, followed by a rumor that she had stopped by the house. Something about being drunk and talking to C.

Sure enough, it happened. But no one seemed to want to talk about it.

Then I get a text from my friend, the one who set her up with us. (That is, her ex.)

"Did she leave her phone at her house?"

I told him I was sure she didn't come in the house and haven't seen it.

More texts, more insistent, and it comes out that she was, in fact, at our place, inside, and had possibly left her phone.

And by "left", I mean "threw".

No visual proof, but it sounds like, after a heated confrontation with C, she flipped out and, on the way out, threw her phone somewhere in our apartment.

In order to have a reason to come back?

I was set to ignore it, not caring what happens. I have sympathy for everyone - up to a point. Once it's gone, it takes a long time to grow back. Her account is bankrupt.

But today, I was tearing apart the living room in search of her phone.

And then I got into it, moving couches, dusting, wiping the floor in the dark corner where clutter accumulates, and rearranging the furniture situation.

It was, in fact, on my list to do some cleaning/organizing today. I didn't get to my space, but made a good dent in the common space.

And then, after having forgotten the original impetus for cleaning, her phone turned up. The rumors and theories were true: she was over and planted her phone in a fit of drunken rage at random in our house.

She's burned through her allotment of sympathy and now is accruing ire. I'll get her her phone back but she'd better stay away while we forget (and block out) her very existence.

A microcosm of a small world

We had 2 potential roommates come over yesterday to drink some keg beer (left over from C's b-day rampage) and hang out on the back porch as the lightning flashed through the drizzle.

Double-Dub was skeptical, still scarred from our last roommate experience: "No girls." Not that we're not scarred in some way, but Cee and I agree that a stable girl would bring balance to the house-force.

The first knew a friend of Dub's, a fact apparently disclosed as I was letting the second one in. A little overlap makes for a little awkwardness, a good test of how borderline-psycho they are.

The second lived over by Doble-Dub's friends, a fact discovered by Sea; he tried to ask if she'd seen them around, describing them as "guys who wear black shirts a lot. Not scary, just like punks."

She was moving because the people she was subletting with skipped town owing the landlord rent, having taken a security deposit from her. Poor lass, she is only in Chicago for a semester at the SAIC before returning to Glasgow to install more site-specific art.

She also describes her current place as rat-infested, as in there are many rats in the yard when she gets home and scares them off. But not all the way off.

Dub comes back out, probably high on something or another, and puts two and two together; she lives on the other side of the house his friends live in.

He knows about the drama with the absconders - apparently one of them took a shit on the stairs, a fact that gets repeated a lot - and offers his sympathy: sounds like a bad-bad situation.

[Apparently the shit incident was induced by heroin?]

So apparently, while I still don't know anyone personally who does heroin, I know people who know people who used to live next to people who do it. Close enough.

Dub even called it a shitshow without realizing how literally true that figure of speech was. And then went on to bring up how crazy it was that she was living there. And that he knew the situation. And how bad the situation was. And how he doesn't blame her for getting out.

Maybe to our place...?

[Sidenote: anyone know where "Shitshow" first appeared?]

Small world.

Unlock the Door

The ex-roommate has been in the hospital all weekend. The whole situation has been a lesson in "just-when-you-think-it's-over-it's-not" and "just-when-you-are-resigned-to-it-going-on-forever-it-may-just-come-to-an-end."

Either way, a total chick-flick-turned-horror-movie.

So after she spent almost 12 hours in her hometown, full of people who would presumably be able to take care of her but didn't, she came back to Chicago, was refused re-entry to the house and wandered the streets. Finally, other roommate picked her up at a neutral meeting place and she acquiesced to being hospitalized.

My mom read the saga and sent two very nice emails of support, the latter describing the ex-roomie's condition and giving it a name: Borderline Personality Disorder.

Really, I think it should be called Borderline Psychosis, and it seems that that's the origin of the label.

According to wikipedia, it involves deep and variable moods, black/white thinking, and the propensity to idealize and demonize (others, etc.).

Something that always bothered me about the former roommate was her black/white thinking. I always attributed it to her living a relatively sheltered life, primarily experiencing life through her Orlando-colored sunglasses.

Maybe living in Chicago shattered her idealized vision of the world.

In the last conversation that I had with her (possibly forever), she admitted, finally, that one of the big reasons why she moved to Chicago was to pursue a relationship with her ex, my co-worker who set us up on this blind-roommate-date in the first place.

She describes them as having a long-distance relationship for the 2 years that he's been her. Unclear how long they'd been together before. She complained that he only called her 22 times in 2 years. I think that was the number; she seemed pretty clear on exactly how many.

He says he clearly broke it off when he left Florida.

Turns out, she had this idealized notion of him and was unwilling/unable to let go of it.

I feel like I did that once, went a little crazy. But only a little.

Yet another proof that reality is determined by what you are able/willing to believe. What you believe is truth. Even if you can *think* something different, you are limited by your ability to *believe*.

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said 'one can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Clearly we are able to believe impossible things, unreal things: that the Earth is flat, that Jesus rose from the dead, and especially love.

rom com / drama / horror

Somehow the last few months have encompassed every genre. And it was all because of one person, admittedly with a flair for the dramatic, an actor.

We were looking for a roommate, so I posted a note on facebook. Within an hour, I was talking to a girl, the friend of a co-worker (really, the ex of a friend) moving to Chicago to pursue improv comedy.

Yes, improv comedians can have a lot of energy; yes, she was only 22; yes, she was from Florida and had never seen snow. And, sight unseen, we approved her. It seemed to work out too well, like the stars had aligned. And when I say "we" approved her, I mean I did - along with the outmoving girl.

The Princess moved in - and I don't mean princess in the entitled way, rather Disney - and we started off in our little romantic comedy.

Not that there was real romance, but there was always the threat lurking under the surface. She's a flirt. She likes people to like her, in need of constant approval. A typical actor. She lies for a living.

She spent her days working retail, her nights gigging or taking improv classes. And somehow still had time to spend with her ex, maybe in an effort to manipulate him back in love with her.

When that fell apart, the wheels started to come off the bus. And yet, finally, with all the wheels off, the bus kept hurtling through space, losing pieces until it was just the driver's seat on fire, sliding down the road, no driver to be seen.

It came out that she had body image issues. I had never really met anyone with an eating disorder, so that was novel for me. And confusing. And I really didn't want to understand what was going through her head. To me, it was so wrong, that I didn't want to understand how someone could do it. It's one of those topics that doesn't get explored too much in literature, leaving us unprepared. We have put ourselves in the minds of the killers, the victims, the lovers, and all the rest. Even suicide victims. But this, this is the silent soul stealer that remains totally incomprehensible.

And she drank. But she didn't have a problem. But it was a problem.

She could go a couple nights without drinking, but it was clearly her method of dealing with whatever was going wrong, and when she hit the sauce, she hit it hard. Sometimes for days.

Like a pendulum filmed in reverse, she oscillated slowly at first but got wilder and wilder. Her mom was bi-polar. I don't know if she, herself, was quite there, but she was definitely bi-curious-polar.

It's amazing what people can get away with if they're attractive and confident.

She started sleeping with people in the house. Another coping mechanism? It's a lot easier for a woman to seduce a man. That statement is so cliché that I'm just going to leave it. Masochism.

At some point, the sex stopped between her and one of the guys. Or rather, he tried to stop it. A few days later, there was a dramatic falling out between them at the bar. And the next day she was preggers.

Or was she?

I'm guessing she was, which would make the visit to Planned Parenthood less than a charade. If there's anyone in this world who should not be bringing a child into this world, it's this girl. Her mom had 6 still-borns; nature was trying to tell this gene pool that breeding is not the best idea.

The oscillations became wilder.

After the supposed abortion, there was a 3-day period where she was so drunk that she didn't even feel drunk any more. Mostly hard stuff, a couple 6-packs of Mothership Wit (per day).

And throughout all this, she kept promising to leave. Kept going back and forth. It felt almost tidal: a rush of hope that this saga would end, a crash of disappointment that it kept dragging on.

All I ever wanted was my rug back. And by rug, I mean stability.

It takes a lot of energy to be around someone who is so volatile. It prevents you from living your own life. And she had collapsed so far into the black hole of a soul that it was getting harder to escape her gravity. She, herself, had no idea how much her actions were affecting those around her. [Then again, do any of us?]

It was getting to the point that we were going to have to ask her to leave. Her preemptive promises to vacate were only prolonging the inevitable. She had a few moments of clarity, during which I was tempted to tell her that she could stay or go, but that she'd have to leave the booze at the door.

On Wednesday, I came home to cops and firefighters in the apartment waiting for her to get her things. She apparently was drunk (er than usual) and was talking about suicide. I thought this would get her the help she needed.

But, like a professional liar, she convinced them she was sane and was back home in 3 hours. [It took her that long to walk home from the hospital. No phone and no money meant that she walked back in the rain.]

The next day, more lucidity. And then, out of nowhere: "help me to go back to Florida." Denial is the hardest hurdle; once over it, we weren't about to waste any time.

Finally, put to rest, left behind us.

She sent some optimistic texts when she got back to Florida. And I closed that door in my head. Closure.

Until the next morning. Roommate got some 3am texts: "Sleeping on the floor in a pile of cat hair." "The haven that I thought I had isn't here." "I'm coming back to Chicago, be there by noon."

We put her on the first flight out of Chicago, and she took the first flight back in.

Or did she?

Was this a hoax? Or, did she ever leave?

Were the texts coming from IN the apartment?!?!?

Our best guess is no. That she really made it to Florida. Panicked. Couldn't find friends willing to put her up (let alone family) and thought she was still welcome in Chicago.

She thought wrong.

We sent her some texts to indicate that this was a bad idea, but she had either turned her phone off or was really on a plane. Got some texts at 9:30. First plane from Orlando to Chicago was at 7:30, landed at 9:20.

Maybe she only lies about the small stuff. The big stuff is really too crazy to make up. No one would ever believe it.

And here we are, wondering what comes next. The doors are locked, and we have her keys.

constant maintenance

I am getting awesomer and awesomer at certain things, worser and worser at others. Your attention begets your intentions, and mine are sporadic and chaotic, governed by a mind warped by the internet unable to listen to an entire mp3 from start to finish without seeing what else might be better.

Listening to records, strangely, is the opposite. Maybe the effort required to skip around - getting up, physically moving the needle - is enough to allow me to enjoy whatever's on as good-enough-for-right-now.

So today, I was pleased with myself that I could maintain a task for a better part of the day, even if the task was only tangentially related to my overall ambitions and goals for this lifetime. I fixed my bikes.

Yes, bikes. My racing bike needed truer wheels (unwobbly), and my get-around-town-bike, my old 10-speed that I converted to a fixie (très hip) needed a lot of shit. The bearings in the wheels gristed too much, too much grit, not enough grease. Actually, that's all. But both wheels needed it, and each one had a different style of bearings.

The rear wheel, the one that I'm going to use on my new track racing bike, had sealed cartridges - reminding me today, for the first time, of the skateboard wheel bearings we used to use - and the seals were broken and rusty grease was leaking out. I had never changed such bearings before; thought it was much more difficult.

So I traipsed over the boulevard to my LBS (local bike shop) and pestered them. I made them true my wheels - in exchange for money - and picked their brain about the feasibility of me reinserting the bearings into the hub without fucking it up. He made it seem manageable, so I took my $16 worth of bearings and traipsed back home. Tra-la-la-dee.

Carefully, I hammered the cartridge in, making sure that it was going straight in lest it damage the hub. No damage and 20 minutes later...

I got distracted by fixing the other hub. I went to use it as a reference but, as it turns out, it's not a cartridge but a loose set of bearings. It, too, was rusty and gristy, so I took it apart and cleaned and degreased and cleaned and degreased. Almost lost a bearing down the sink but saved it in the nick of time. The nick!

Finished that one in about 1/2 hour and finally banged the last cartridge in the first one. Success! Two functioning wheels.

Almost time for food - [I was starving at this point] - but no: I felt I should change some tires around. No food till the work is done.

Finally, time to eat. And write this post about how I don't write enough posts. Looks like it got hijacked by bike talk, which is sort of fitting, since that's how my life has been this summer. #extendedmetaphor

Actually, the whole morning started with a piano lesson followed by a text from my roommate W offering to take me to Kuma's if I could fix his bike. That was the easiest fix but the one that got my hands greasy and my mind into a mechanical rut.

I actually sat down to write a post on Beyond Words about how much I loathe Classical music. Actually, it's not the music, it's the people. The music itself is nice and worth listening to from time to time. For some people, it's essential, but for most people today, there is nothing essential about Classical music. It's hardly pertinent and borders on irrelevance. And that's fine.

The real problem is that we are still subjected to the mediocre music from the past. For instance, Haydn doesn't have anything important to say to modern audiences. The gist of his music is how he uses and abuses the forms and styles of the time, of which we have less and less knowledge. His music should reside solely in specialty concerts. Much of Mozart is the same but there are some pieces whose musical content is interesting regardless of form or style.

Haydn's music is far too much form with no content; Mozart achieved somewhat of a balance; Beethoven was content-driven, and so therefore maintains more relevance.

The Romantic period is more content-driven, so has more potential to be relevant. There's still plenty of music, though, that has inconsequential content and so can be left by the wayside.

There's so much music out there, there's no need to dwell on mediocre pieces from the past. And yet we do because programmers have a personal attachment to a piece, inventing objective reasons for its significance. Sure, every piece is important in some way. Much of my music stirs my soul - even still! after all these years - but that doesn't make it essential.

If they were to make an episode of Hoarders about Classical music, I would love to go through these crusty curmudgeons' attics and throw out all their Kleiber recordings. I'll bet they would squirm just like the packrats on the show. From what I've seen of the show in my imagination.

blank

I'm concerned about the lack of thoughts in my head. I'm not sure where they've gone, hopefully on vacation to an exotic locale, but I'd like them to come back refreshed and abuzz with possibilities.

It seems almost unfathomable, but I think I'm tired of communication. I'm tired of expressing both the easily expressible and the ineffable. Other people should just know what I know without all the effort.

A coworker told me the other day about this article that finds a correlation between monkey brain size and the size of their social circles. It's really helped me to organize people in my mind. While I dislike the inherent dehumanization involved in this, I find my current strategy - or lack there of - to be unsustainable. As it is, I try to recognize everyone's humanity, which reduces everyone to a 1-bit character. Or somewhere in between 1 and 2 bits.

So by totally ignoring the humanity of the vast majority of people I meet, I can save my limited resources for people who are important.

Instead of everyone being an equal friend on Facebook, from Mom and Dad to former and future girlfriends to that guy from 7th period English class, I am falling down the rabbit hole that is Google+, organizing people into circles.

The problem, of course, is the bike tour, where I get paid - and get paid more - to recognize people's humanity. The more I know about someone, the more customized I can make the tour, which leads to more financial rewards. Which especially sucks when I work hard to recognize someone's humanity and then get stiffed.

Then there are tragedies like Norway. I know cerebrally how terrible it is but keep it from really sinking in. I don't think most people have the capacity to process such savagery from around the world on a daily basis. 80 people is already half way to 150, the theoretical max for our social circle - our Monkeysphere. I hesitate but want to call it a "tribe".

I also liked that the article talked about "grooming cliques," which are only a couple of monkeys. I would like a grooming clique of a handful of people with whom I'm really close. Not all physical affection has to be sexual. I think our society has this black and white attitude - sex or non-physical - and it creates this arbitrary distance between people.

I started this post to tell you how there's nothing in my head these days, but then all this came out - granted it's not very well organized or particularly interesting. At least I tapped into something; I'm just terribly out of practice.

Le Grand Boucle

They call the Tour de France Le Grand Boucle, The Big Loop, and yet it rarely ever looks like a continuous loop around the country. In this year's race, there's a day near the end where they hop on a train to race the next day around Paris. I'm sure it's a difficult race to organize - year in, year out - but they seem to be missing the point.

Or maybe I am.

Regardless of everything, it's an amazing feat: a physical feat, a logistical feat, a cultural feat.

Yes, maybe even a medical feat.

This year's Tour started with 378 feet, belonging to 189 riders on 21 teams. I don't know why they vary the # of riders every year, but this is one of the biggest fields.

Perhaps because of that, perhaps due to myriad extraneous reasons, it's been a total shitshow: every day there are crashes, and often the crashes end a rider's tour, forcing him to "abandon."

It's been all the talk, perhaps because many of the bigger name riders have been forced to abandon.

One British announcer was near tears when British star Bradley Wiggins broke a collar bone. I cried a little today, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Chris Horner's condition got to me. After a brutal crash, he was lying motionless, unconscious on the side of the road. He had had a concussion and somehow came with enough clarity to ride the 20 remaining miles. At the finish though, he couldn't seem to figure out why he was 16 minutes behind everyone else. [Watch it]

Then today, Alexander Vinokourov broke his leg in a massive pile-up that affected so many riders that the peloton waited around for 5 minutes to allow everyone to get back on.

Vino is a total badass riding in his last Tour - monumental misfortune.

[When I first read about it, the news headline said that his crash was "career-ending", which alluded to something even more serious than a broken leg. It just happens to be career-ending because he's at the end of his career.]

And then the nightmare.

A French TV car was passing a group of riders at grande vitesse - too fast - and had to swerve to avoid a tree, clipping a rider and causing another to do a double somersault in the air before landing backside first on a barbed wire fence. [Watch it]

It was just so ghastly. Every cyclist's worst nightmare. And the car, with its smug, unchanging expression, seemed so unapologetic, like it did it on purpose.

Which would be the case if it happened to me on Chicago roads.

It's getting to the point that I don't even care who wins and loses, hoping instead that everyone stays safe. In the Italian version of the Tour de France earlier this year, a rider died from head injuries sustained during a crash. It happens and it's scary. Or maybe it's scary because it happens.

see: Wouter Weylandt

Ignore the struggle

I've been struggling to struggle but have been mostly struggling to get by. I haven't had the strength to embody the struggle, instead ignoring it, cursing and suppressing it.

At the end of a long day, the last thing I want to do is open myself to scrutiny.

And the days are getting longer as the temperatures soar, and it's the point in the bike tour season that I'd be happy to get paid to do something inside for a few days.

And right smack dab in the middle of the summer, crisis cum opportunity rears its ugly head.

As the people come and go in our lives it changes the balance of the mixture; the chemical reactions speed up or slow down with the change in pH.

In this case, things have slowed down precipitously with a sudden exit stage left.

When relationships start and end, we catch a glimpse into the very reasons we pursue or eschew them. For me, at least, there's a glimpse of a glimpse but I'm still unclear on the nature of the concept.

What do I get out of people and why aren't I getting it any more?

At the very time that I have lost most desire to meet new people, I am being surrounded by people with opposite problem: an addiction to hanging out.

The porch dwellers - a depressed, nicotine-fueled band of drunks - hang out for the sake of not being alone. It smacks of pathetic desperation - a harsh judgement whose relevance is highly suspect.

To be fair, these folks don't have a job that forces them to be pleasant and interactive with strangers all day.

I'm getting tired of validating people, but they're the ones who pay the bills.

#betweenarockandahardplace

The way out is the opposite of the way in.

Being bombarded with social situations wears me out; batteries are recharged in isolation.

What I'm doing now, in fact, writing this post, is part of the solution.

I think.

whom shall i say is calling

i'm carrying around a mystery box, in which i keep all my most prized possessions.

its contents, are, as you should assume, a mystery, but that doesn't stop me from making you guess.

i don't look inside all that often; it takes a lot of effort to pry it open and handle the contents with the care usually afforded to radioactive waste.

behind each object is a secret, and the objects themselves are mysteries, so it's an impossible game to win, or even play.

for as much as i think i understand the rules - and most of that understanding is based on coming to terms with never truly understanding - there really are no rules. nevertheless, this doesn't stop people from guessing: few have ever won, most have lost, and the largest number have never really played.

the objects in question are less matter and more clouds of possibility. Heisenberg should have been a psychologist. like genes, they are tendencies and get activated by the environment.

mostly though, they stay locked away in the box.

and on the outside of the box, i draw pictures that are fun and friendly, inviting and endearing, comforting and comfortable. it's an image, a surface. Artifice.

the images are taking on a life of their own; the box stays closed for longer and longer. the shadows are growing longer, while the sun continues to set.

but the shadows aren't real, just an eclipse of the light.

at the heart, it's definition and the act of defining that make me feel claustrophobic, like I am entirely trapped within the box. but i mostly experience life as a set of possibilities, perpetually expanding and evolving.

this makes some things difficult and others more amazing. at the very least, it puts me at odds with the concrete, American world of business which requires a firmer footing.

maybe it's my own fault. i forget too easily and often about what's really important and find myself getting caught up in the surface details. which is unlike anyone else i know.

but then i don't have structures in place - people, places, or moments - to call me to attention. so i drift.

define me, if you must, as someone who eschews definition. but know that i will give into definition when it suits my fancy. and my fancy is fancy.

for, for as much as definition makes me uncomfortable, it is a nice counterbalance to a world of greying confusion which can overwhelm us with complexity, confusing us with its sublime nuance.

Wine

I got 2 Groupons to buy some wine online. I dabble in wine, whereas I have a deeper investigation of beer. Beer is cheap and can be local. Wine is expensive and comes from exotic locations like Chile and California. But the Groupons gave me an entrée, ou bien, une rentrée into this lush, red-velvet world.

[The only wine worth the effort is red. I don't dislike white, but I'd rather drink beer.]

Now, after having drunk 2 bottles from this order ($25 for $75 not including shipping), I am excited - re-excited - about wine.

The first wine in this whole process was actually at a bar: a 2008 Cab from the Libery School winery in the Pablo Robles region of California. Delectable. Never mind the fact that I paid $10 for a glass and found out today that you can buy an entire bottle for as much. Such is markup in downtown upper-middle class restaurants.

Later that evening, after COT's He/She, my ladyfriend and I killed a bottle of Vinum Africa from 2007. Another Cab, this one is from, you guessed it, South Africa. See? Exotic. And really good.

Finally, for Mother's Day, I brought a bottle from my Groupon order (from Barclay's) of Roza Ridge from 2005 - another Cab. This one, from Rattlesnake Hills, WA, was also totally worth the effort and money, giving me a reason to reach for it over beer.

I cannot abide by 3-buck Chuck. Tastes like the poison alcohol pretends not to be. 3-buck chuck is about $.75 per glass, which does work out to be less than most beers. The cheapest beer I can bring myself to buy is $9 for a 6-pack, about a buck-and-a-half per bottle. This wine, at full price, is about $15, so $3.75 per glass. And you wonder why wine is so expensive by the glass!

All 3 of these wines were worth it, regardless of whatever notes of this and that try to assert themselves irrelevantly on my palate. I prefer to taste the goodness and leave the notes to the mystery. It is, after all, just grapes transformed by time.

all the world's a stage

This started as a minor annoyance and grew to something worth writing about.

I live in a mansion. We call it the Kedzie Castle, because it's on Kedzie Ave and looks like, well, a castle. Not a super-fortified mofo from the before times, but something in ornate limestone. Like Neuschwanstein if it were made 200 years earlier by an anarcho-syndicalist band of itinerant farmers.

Like attracts like, I guess. While most of my housemates aren't tilling the earth, per se, they would gladly start growing a certain ilk of plants indoors, using sunlamps and what not - if it were legal.

I get along pretty well with most of them, but there's always one...

Let's call him Stan - a pathetic attempt to dissemble his identity.

Most "discussions" I have had with him - there have been about 3 or 4 I can firmly recall - end up with him pontificating passionately, a tirade of fuzzy logic and empty statements. They start out innocent enough - I'm a sucker for debate, especially when someone says something that needs to be challenged - but then quickly become one-sided, vapid, foaming-at-the-mouth statements of fact like "Everything is language!"

Yes, usually fueled by alcohol, though I never think he's drunk enough to just excuse it like that.

While trying to watch the Bulls and Hawks games - the end of one, beginning of other, simultaneously at the bar - he launched into it. It started innocently enough; he comes up and says "rrr-rrr-rrr" [grumble] and then "tee-hee" [giggle], and then says "ha, it's all the same."

I was confused. Whence grumble? Whence giggle? Wherefore equation of the two?

I said: "Context?" A simple word, a simple question, a request to which most would comply. Not Stan. "No. No context. You shouldn't need a context. [grumble], [giggle], it's all the same. You wouldn't need context if you read more Jane Austin. Charles Dickens."

Me: "I don't read Jane Austin. I would consider Charles Dickens."

Stan: "Wha? No Jane Austin? That's a crime. It may be a hundred years old but people are the same." And then something about class conflicts and people saying one thing and meaning another - totally profound.

Oh man, it wouldn't end. From class conflicts, it turned to sports, which was all around us on 3 big screens, to which most of the eyes in the packed bar were glued. He said something about wanting to play hockey and/or basketball but not watch them.

I can appreciate that, but he missed my point about why people really watch sports. It's not necessarily about gladiators galavanting for our amusement; it's about building community around a team.

But it was only later that I really understood his point: he doesn't like to spectate, preferring to be the center of attention. He doesn't like to listen but likes to be heard. He also happens to be an actor, working in the theater. So was it all just a big, lip-flapping performance? [And by "lips", I mean "anus."]

Certainly, ass-flapping. [And by "ass" I mean "donkey."] But I think he really meant it when he said: "Language is everything, and music is language. And it's not what you're saying but what you aren't saying." I think he was leaving out too much.

The people around us at the bar were either really impressed that we were having such a deep discussion or completely annoyed at how redundant it was getting. I felt really self-conscious and embarrassed to even be a part of it.

I finally found an out and went to a different bar, Revolution, to watch the rest of the hockey game.

Happiness is not killing yourself

On the cover of Wired, there's a statistic that gave me pause: "1 Million Workers, 90 Million iPhones, 17 suicides. Who's to blame?"

What about making our gadgets is causing these Chinese workers to end their current incarnation?

Should we feel responsible? Should we demand that Apple and other outsourcing companies have higher regard for their employees well-being.

17 suicides is a peculiar number. It's not an insignificant number, but it's not unimaginably large. You can almost imagine each individual and the impact their sudden departure made on their families.

But then I thought, really, for a million workers, 17 seems below average. I found the following statistics.d

• Highest rates:
  • American Indian and Alaska Natives — 14.3 per 100,000
  • Non-Hispanic Whites — 13.5 per 100,000
• Lowest rates:
• Hispanics — 6.0 per 100,000
• Non-Hispanic Blacks — 5.1 per 100,000
• Asian and Pacific Islanders — 6.2 per 100,000

First, it's interesting that non-hispanic whites are almost as prone to suicide as American Indian. Second, the lowest suicide rate is non-hispanic blacks, which, if mathemagically converted, is 51 suicides per million.

So, while the working conditions still may not be ideal, this should sound more of a domestic alarm about the suicide rate.

Top 10 of '10 #4.3

4.3) #1 travel partner: Sietske

I was going to a town near Munich to visit Laura, a girl I met on the bike tour in Chicago. We worked out a plan through Facebook to find a time that would work with her schedule. My schedule was pretty flexible (at the beginning of my trip) but got less so as I went, but we managed to find a couple days that worked. At some point just before I arrived (at something like 5pm on a Friday after a long day of carsharing and trainriding) she said I could only stay one night. I was a little annoyed since I didn't have any other plans lined up, but I accepted my fate and made the best of it. She wanted to go to this "film in the square" which happened to be The Blues Brothers, which was a strange mix of foreign and familiar. To make it worse (better?), it was dubbed in German, but, through some glitch in the DVD player, it would randomly switch to English with subtitles. Bizarre. The next day we rode bikes for a couple hours along a river, stopping at the most authentic Biergarten I have ever been to. And really good food. Then, to Munich with no plans for anywhere to stay. Found some wifi at a coffee shop near the station, found no couchsurfing hosts, and, just before I went to wander around to maybe find a cheap hotel, I saw a post from a fellow traveler who was stuck at the train station. She was looking for a host or a travel buddy and ended up finding both. Sietske was from Holland and spoke such good English that I could forget that she was foreign except for subtle cultural differences. We ended up couchsurfing 2 nights in Munich, finding bikes to ride around (mine died just before we left), eating vagabond squatter food, and hitchhiking to the Czech Republic.

On the way to CZ, we had a German guy give us a ride, make slightly inappropriate comments about our physical relationship, and then give us 1000 Czech crowns.* And then a Japanese guy who didn't speak much English or German. And then a Romanian truck driver who spoke better German than English (though broken as hell). And then we were stuck for a long time in Austria near Linz. We finally got a ride to the train station in Linz and took the train to the Czech Republic. But the train didn't actually go all the way; it stopped at Summerau--still in Austria but near the border. It's getting complicated, here's a map. So we got off the train at Summerau and had a half-baked vision of a plan: ask people getting off the train where we could stay, like a hostel or hotel and then see. But there were hardly any people getting off the train. We saw one other backpacker and asked him where his hostel was. His response was totally unexpected: not staying at a hostel, getting picked up to go work at a hotel for the summer. The hotel, it turns out, was somewhere just over the border in the CzRep on the way to Cesky Krumlov (our ultimate destination). The backpacker, it turns out, as well as most of the people who owned the hotel, were Dutch--just like my travel partner. The guys' ride showed up and there was a lot of excited Dutch being spoken that somehow resulted in us going along for the ride and staying at the hotel for something like 20 Euro. It felt like the highest-class resort compared to what I had seen: clean sheets, chickens, goats, a huge breakfast spread, and Budweiser beer--the original. [Looking back on it, this is one of those moments that make you think that you are in the right place at the right time, like the Universe is unfolding as it should; everything in its right place.]

The next day, we continued on and stayed 2 nights in Cesky Krumlov, which, although being a sort of Disnification of a medieval Czech town, was quaint and pleasant. The hoards of tourists were the biggest downfall, but, to be fair, they were nothing like they would be in Bruges or that city in Germany that Russ liked (because they brought in beers from all over Germany, not just one region). After a couple days, I continued on, hitchhiking to Pilsen and then Prague and Sietske went camping and then met up with her friend to go to a Rainbow gathering. It was just a moment, but through the magic of traveling, it seemed like an eternity--in a good way.

* Nothing happened; we each had commitments elsewhere. But now that I think about it, I was aware of some nearly subliminal sexual tension that seemed to start after we left Munich but before we got to the Czech Republic. And it feels like it came from that ride with the German guy, whose suggestion got the ball rolling.

Top 10 of '10 #4

4) #1 Movie: Wristcutters: A Love Story

Netflix was my social life last year when I was living in the cabin in Michigan. I would work all day--fairly productively--and then at 6, 7, or sometimes even 8 or 9, I would sit down with my laptop and watch some foreign movie, documentary, or, well, Lost.

This year, everyone I know has Netflix and I hardly use my account. My roommate has it hooked up to the Wii and there is often a movie streaming in during the evenings--sometimes 2 or 3 in a row. I don't have as much patience for movies and so don't embark on every journey with them; I fortunately missed most of Repo: the Genetic Opera. But sometimes it works out and we all agree on something mind-bending, quirky, rom-com, or doc.

This movie may not actually be the best I saw of 2010, but it was certainly one of the biggest surprises. With a title like that, it seems juvenile, crass, or goth, but it turned out to be endearing, melancholic, and, ultimately, uplifting. It really is a love story.

It begins with a death, self-inflicted, of this guy Zia, distraught over a breakup. He was pretty hung up on this girl, even in the afterlife--a hang up I've been through at least once, probably more...well, once for sure...for real. His afterlife was a bleached out version of some southwestern state: some mountains in the distance, mostly flat desert with highways disappearing into the horizon. And worst of all, in this post-suicide afterlife, you still have to work.

Zia and this other guy drive around in a car looking for stuff: Zia for his ex-girlfriend (who they find out also "offed") and this other guy for other stuff. They keep losing stuff in a very literal vortex into another dimension that exists beneath the passenger seat. They meet this girl who shouldn't be there, for her OD was accidental. And then they meet Tom Waits. And Gob, from Arrested Development. Interestingly, he's a magician of sorts, trying to perform some dimension-bending escape trick: like if Houdini were wrapped in chains at the bottom of a pond, but instead of chains it was reality itself, and instead of a pond, it was the mind of god. I don't know what kind of success he had; seemed like a failed illusion.

It was bleak but comically so. I'm glad I won't be ending up there; I'd rather play the game and lose than forfeit.

I wish I could say that it was still on Netflix streaming, but, as I was just putting my account on hold (saving 10 bucks a month!) I checked: no luck. You should watch Enter the Void instead, which is, so far, my #1 movie of this year.

Top 10 of '10 #5

5) #1 TV experience: Lost

I have Darick to blame for Lost. I went along with him to a Lost watching party some time during the 5th season. Though it didn't make a lot of sense at the time, I actually remembered enough to piece some things together. Actually, very few things. The characters I met in that episode were in completely different situations up until the 5th season. But it was fun to forget about it and then feel like things were clicking in place. I watched the first 5 seasons between January and March on Netflix and then had to somehow catch up on the 6th season (with a lot of googling and bad picture quality). I got caught up and was able to watch the last 3 or 4 episodes live on tv, watching the final episode at my parents' home with my sister (another Lostie) and parents. Watching something like Lost with my dad is always an exercise in patience: he doesn't always hear or understand everything and so if ever he doesn't understand something, he wants us to explain. But what if it's meant to be ambiguous? What if we don't know yet? But it wasn't so bad, and I thought the ending provided just enough closure and unanswered questions. Now I really want to get into Twin Peaks just to see what the fuss is about.

Top 10 of '10 #6

6) #1 Meal: Birthday dinner at Longman & Eagle

I almost picked the dinner at the Gage with Lisa, which I remember being really good... but I can't remember what I actually ate there. Some sort of fish, some sort of good beer. At Longman, I had a gathered a small group (Corbett, Grace, Laura, Joe, Anna) out to celebrate the end of my 31st year, and I remember exactly what I had. Well... except for the appetizer, which was really good but fuzzy in my recollection. I had a sour beer--some sort of Belgian concoction, like a Lambic or something (something about a Duchesse, possibly from Burgundy?)--that complemented the pork belly like peanut butter complements Marshmallow Fluff®. (According to popular legend.) And I think there was dessert. Ok, so I was probably paying more attention to the group symbiosis than the food itself. In fact, in both situations, I think I was more concerned with the human energy than the tastiness of the food. Which is probably the opposite of what you or I might have assumed.

[Maybe I'm getting older (i.e., mature) but I am noticing the taste of food less and less, thinking more about how it feels and, often, how it makes me feel. That could be why I love going to Kuma's. It doesn't make me feel good, necessarily, but it tastes good and feels good going down. It completes you and gives you the ability (and the necessity) to get on the bike and ride for a couple thousand calories.]

Top 10 of '10 #7

7) #1 Hitchhiking Story:

This was a category fraught with competition. It was like watching a race between 3 or 4 stories, running around and round inside my head, when, at the last moment, a dark horse rode came out from the shadows of memory and won by a nose. It beat out the ride from the Jehovah's Witness who bought me lunch, the ride from the Private Detective in an ancient minivan on the country roads back to Paris, and the ride from the Czech truck driver who bought me a 1.5 liter water bottle filled with beer. The winner was from a time in Germany. I was trying to get from Köln to Hannover and was having no luck. I got to a gas station (Tankstelle) and asked a pretty straight-laced guy in his mid-40s if he'd give me a ride. He said it would be no problem and that he would make his kids sit in the back seat. So I made it pretty far with this Pater Familias and his two kids--a 16-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl--both of whom didn't mind relinquishing shotgun to some vagabonding American. Both of the kids had that quizzical look in their eyes that betrayed the novelty of the situation. I felt like how American tourists must feel in parts of China without the propositioning and profiteering. Unfortunately, they took a highway that got me closer but farther at the same time: slightly off course.

Then I was stuck for a good long while. I tried standing at a gas station for about an hour, but no one seemed to be going that far. Finally, I stood right at the on-ramp and after about 20 minutes got a ride from the cutest Dutch couple in a convertible VW bug--(a new one). They even had a flower in the flower holder. Unfortunately, they were exiting the highway onto another highway and there was no good place for me to "aussteigen". So I got out right on the on-ramp that connected the two highways. And after a lot of really dirty looks from the people passing, someone finally stopped. It was two blond-hair, blue-eyed men in their mid-20s, early-30s in peak physical shape, wearing sunglasses, and driving a white car with green lettering and flashing blue lights: Polizei! It was a good thing I spoke some German. First: "Was machen Sie hier?" Then: "Sie können nicht hier bleiben." Then: "[something, something] Passport." Then, he went back in the car, did some computing or some conversing (or just stalled for time to increase the suspense) and then finally came back. "Wir werden Sie mitnehmen nach die nächste ausfahrt." And then, while in the car, going nearly 200km/h: "Die nächste ausfahrt ist nicht gut für Sie. Es gibt ein Tankstelle die ist besser." So they took me about 30km down the road. I was taking this opportunity for make Smalltalk. They wanted to know if I was trampen all around Europe. And that's when I learned how to say hitchhiking in German. Finally got to the Tankstelle and I waited (and waited) und so weiter. The German vs. England World Cup game was on, so there wasn't much traffic on the road. And so it was not surprising that the people who ended up giving me a ride weren't even German but Polish. They were headed back from Holland to Poland and could take me pretty close to Hannover. Score.

Literally: score. During the whole train trip into Hannover, like my dad at the dinner table, the conductor would periodically give us a score update--usually good news for Germany. I took the train into the city and was greeted by an Insane Clown Posse of German soccer hooligans celebrating Germany's win (or England's defeat). (Can you imagine ICP doing a tour of Germany? Verdammt Magnete, wie functioniern sie?) Germans don't get to be very nationalistic any more, so any socially acceptable time and place to let it out, it ejaculates like from a firehose. All their rules and order are thrown out of the open car windows from which bare-chested males are shouting and waving flags.

Google images thought I wanted to see this:

It knows me too well.

Top 10 of '10 #8

8) #1 Bike Race: Indian Lakes

Really?  A bike race beats out Sufjan?  Maybe Sufjan is not doing what I thought he was doing; it's still great but it's not transcendental.  This bike race, my 6th this year, was the first that I got on the podium.  And my parents were there to see it.  As much as I would like to pretend like it doesn't matter to me whether or not they (or even friends) come to watch me race, it was nice to have them there.  And they got to see a good race.  The first one, I went out hard and pretty much stayed between 10th and 14th the whole race, finishing 11th.  The second, I went out like a bullet, led for the whole first lap and part of the second, was called a "sandbagger" (and sort of agreed), finally got passed by a guy who really was a sandbagger, got caught by my teammate who then fell, and ended up finishing well ahead of him: 2nd place.  I got 2nd again the next week and then fell off due to excessive Thanksgiving food consumption and a complete lack of training.

Here I am a sandbagger in the sand.

Top 10 of '10 #9

9) #1 Rock/Pop Concert: Sufjan at the Chicago Theater

I heard Sufjan was coming, forgot, remembered again, and then, right before his concert, was hanging out with a girl (3 dates, yer out!) who had tickets to the show. Not extra tickets, just tickets for her (and a friend, possibly a "friend"). I had to go. I found some tickets on the internet, paying slightly more than I would have otherwise, and went (by myself). It wasn't the concert I expected (involving a lot more new music (exclusively) and less Illinoise (limited to the encore)) but was inspired and inspiring. It was like going to a symphony concert with just a little more dancing in the aisles. (Almost like the time I saw Youssou N'Dour.) And when he finally played Chicago, John Wayne Gacy, something something UFO sighting, and probably the Decatur song, the place exploded, the almost sexual frustration boiling over and flowing out into the ether.

Sufjan infringing on Roger Ebert's trademark