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.