Is This Desire? (To Bring You My Love)

There are days when I remember and rekindle my love of PJ Harvey. Today is one of those for a few reasons:

1. It is grey. It is cold. The wind is back and reminding me that I am an idiot for not locating my gloves yet. And above all, it is full-on dark at 5.45pm. Has been for nearly an hour.

2. I am in the library. I approach the library with mixed feelings, and debate giving this its own post. Right now, I am in my own private cubby, sitting on my feet of course and propped up enough to glimpse lights out the window next to this cubby. On my immediate right, the stacks. I look at these stacks and feel oddly comforted. On the other hand, behind me, two boys are debating the correct way to break down 3 x 4/3(pi). Even as I am thrust back to the comfort of my undergrad experience by the stacks, I am relieved by my exemption from it, from a world of boys who talk loudly in the library.

3. I am researching revision. If there were no PJ Harvey, I would be sleeping right now. Seriously, forcibly put to sleep by journals like "College English" and "Computers and Composition."

PJ Harvey is a little dark, a little soothing and a little scary all at the same time. She is pissed off and also condescending. She is, above all, in total control. So here I am, surrounded by too much work and not enough desire or time to finish it all. But it doesn't matter. Does PJ Harvey ever get the guy? Does he ever send his love to her? Probably not. But who cares?

Brush with Fame/Destiny/Bliss

Last Friday began, bright and sunny, to an alarm at an early hour. My days have lately taken on a routine: wake to alarm, ready self for work, call the temp agency, hear that they have no last-minute appointments, then wait for them to call back with that last-minute work that will help me pay the gas bill AND still be able to go out to dinner. Though Friday was no exception to this pattern, ending with no call, a part of me was secretly thrilled.

You see, on Friday, I had an alternate plan. My friend, a nanny, had charge of one baby instead of two. This meant she could move about town freely, and I could join her. We both found ourselves in the sad state of never having seen our beautiful city by boat, so an architectural boat tour it must be! After a few hours of reading and an episode of the Daily Show online, I dressed to meet my friend downtown. For some reason I felt festive, and dressed to the nines. I bounced out of the house and enjoyed every minute of my walk to the El, ipod and all.

I waited on the Damen platform in the sun, basking in the fall that was due to us through all of September's heat. A train came shortly, and I made my way to a standing perch halfway down an aisle.

I soon began the business of observing people and trying to avoid being observed doing this. The fellow in the seat in front of me, dressed in fatigues, was my first subject, on account of his terrible gum smacking. Ugh. Next I scanned the ads on the slopes of the car's ceiling, then looked down the aisle at the lucky few who had scored standing room in the coveted spots by the doors. A guy with a large backpack, a very hipster looking girl, and... the bassist from Wilco.

Fuck. It's John Stirratt. John Stirratt is on my train. Though I haven't seen Wilco an obsessive number of times, I've seen them a few different places. I also may or may not have seen and loved "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart." Stirratt always sticks out to me, because he looks like a kid I went to college with. Wilco has held a special place in my heart since September 2005, the first time I saw them and the first moment I remember feeling good in my haze of post-graduation depression that summer of 2005.

I feel my eyes grow in circumference and my mouth fall open an inch or so. I quickly look away and immediately begin sweating. I mean, sweating. I think for a second I may faint in this hot train car, which has by now made its way underground en route to downtown. My hand slips and slides its sweaty way down the pole. "Pull it together Beth." I take a big breath and will myself to calm down. It works a little.

I sneak another glance, because maybe it's not him. Oh no, oh yes, it's him. It's definitely him. I inch my way down the aisle, an easy task because for some reason Fatigues Gum Smacker has left his seat and is crowding me all the way down to the area by the doors. I have the distinct feeling he's trying to graze my ass with his hand, with his backpack, with anything at his disposal. I squirm around and find myself not six inches from Stirratt. I put both slippery hands on the pole and try for some subtle observation. He is wearing nice jeans, camel-colored suede shoes that look pretty comfy, and a jean jacket over a tshirt of unremembered color. He looks pretty tan, and up close he is older than I expected, closer to my parents' age than mine.

What to do? My brain runs circles, but the one thing I know is that I will never stop regretting it if I don't say anything. I look at my fellow passengers and wonder a) why the hell they don't recognize this ROCK STAR on our train, and b) how badly I'll be embarrassed if these people hear me geeking out over this unassuming man who is just trying to live his Friday.

I formulate a plan. When we get to my stop, at Clark and Lake streets, there is a likelihood that he'll exit the train. There are always a lot of people who do. I will step off the car slightly behind him, catch up to him, and try to gush without looking like a creepy stalker. I will tell him that I love Wilco, and I love Chicago. But then we come to Clark and Lake, and he makes no sign of leaving the train. I take advantage of our slow approach to dive in before I can overthink it.

"Hi." I smile in my nicest, least creepy way.
"Hi," he smiles back, friendly as all get out, and looks away.
"I'm sorry, but are you...?" I trail off, not wanting to mispronounce his name.
"Oh, yeah. Yes, I'm in Wilco." He sees that he is not going to get away with so little conversation. "How are you?" He smiles again.
"I'm great, how are you?" I'm beaming.
"Good, thanks. Thanks for listening."
"Oh, I just... nice work!" Oh lord. I pause, looking for something, anything, better than 'Nice work.' "So, do you live in the city year-round?"
He is the nicest person alive. "Yes, I'm just up in Logan Square."
"Oh cool! How fun! I just moved to Bucktown." I'm blowing it and I don't even care. We've come to my stop, and I have to jump out before the doors close. "Go Blue Line! Have a good day!" is all I can manage before leaping out the doors, smiling smiling smiling. I walk to the exit, ride the escalator up to street level, smiling smiling.

I'm smiling, even though my head is saying, "Go Blue Line?" (I'm reminded of a time-honored tradition in girl world - "I carried a watermelon?") I reach the street, phone in my shaking hand, and call the friend that I know will appreciate this best in the world. "Beth," he says about two minutes into my mad recounting, "I can't understand a word you're saying." I suppose shrill doesn't translate well to the phone. I meet my girlfriend on the river, dance around her and the stroller, telling and retelling her about my new favorite Chicago moment.

Saint Mary of the Angels

September has, once again, proven to keep me busy. Most of the month's preoccupations have been centered on our new apartment, and most happily. After a few weeks of house-arranging flurry, we finally got ourselves to the good part: a housewarming party. I must say, with all due modesty, that it was quite the event. With three roommates, and our powers combined, we drew a fabulous crowd. A packed house, a lot of booze, and even a love connection or two amongst our guests made us all very pleased with ourselves both during the party and in these days following.

Hosting parties is something that brings me enormous pleasure, and I've often wondered why. I think probably the combination of the stimulus and the constant attention is a pleasing one for me. I've come to realize that I really do love working a room; bouncing from person to person and feeling that I have something to say to each. When you're hosting, you never get stuck too long in the corner with the person who wants to talk about his rock collection, or the ex-boyfriend that she is just better off without. There's always the next guest you have to greet, the music crisis to be solved, the corkscrew that only you can find. It's a big cocoon of people who came to see you and talk to you and have fun with you. Loud, alcohol-soaked fun.

The fun does wear off a little when it's 4am and you're pushing that last group of dudes, friends of a friend's friend, out the door. But then there are stories to be told, cans to be picked up, and all of Saturday to sleep and loll around and repeat all the funny stories over and over again. My college roommate came to visit this weekend, and she woke up exclaiming about how fun Chicago is. Even Saturday's trip to the super-hip dance club felt a little anti-climatic after all of Friday's hullaballoo.

But today is Sunday. The house is mostly clean, the fridge almost devoid of beer, and homework waits to my left. Friday's Indian Summer heat finally left and we didn't break 70 today. It's fall - it smells like leaves and everything feels cozier. The guests are gone, and KC and I had a nice "reading time" (read: nap time) on the couch before an impromptu beer in the hood.

Our new neighborhood, in addition to having several most interesting bars, is home to a gorgeous old church. I have walked past it a few times, and ascertained that it is indeed Catholic. So tonight, after the fortifying beer, I walked up the somewhat imposing stairs and found a seat for the 7:15 Mass. The church proved as beautiful on the inside as on the outside, though not as quiet.

I wish I could say something about connecting with Mass, but the service was overly traditional for my tastes. I can say, though, that the hour was not a wasted one. After all these years of neglect, there's still something comforting for me in a Catholic Mass. Though I usually don't get much out of the actual content, the ritual of the thing is familiar, and in putting me on autopilot it lets me get some good thinking done. An interesting cap to a standout weekend, if nothing else. After all the performing, all the talking, and laughing and dancing, it was certainly a relief to sit anonymously, with no one to please but myself. I guess they can't all be parties.

This time of year

I generally keep track of time by summers. This was the summer I went to that place, the other the summer I turned 21, the next the one where I dated that friend of this guy.

I'm packing for a trip today, which involves quite a feat of precision. In scanning my tank tops, I saw one I remembered buying before a particular summer trip to the left coast. The shirt and the memories immediately threw me back to that trip, but I won't bore the reader with those emotional details. Instead, the shirt brings another kind of revelation - so many summers have passed in a certain adult/pre-adult period of my life that I cannot keep them separate.

Let me explain. The trip from which the shirt originated took place in Summer 2006. In packing for my trip now, Summer 2008, it took several steps to uncover the right date for this fated shirt's trip. It feels like too many people overlap, like I spent too many summers with too many of the same thoughts, and now they've grown to a blur.

I've been out of college for over three years. (This is another handy measure of my time - how long has it been since the safe haven of college?) When that gap was only two, it was easy to pick tiny details from their appropriate year. Now the years are three, and it still seems I spent them loving the same person, taking the same trip in two variations, waiting in the same sweltering months for the same visits over and over.

Likewise, the years in college take on more of a graininess. Instead of taking that trip to NY the summer after my junior year, it simply becomes a trip I took one summer in college. Lake trips are virtually indistinguishable, and trying to place the night I saw Wilco or Regina Spektor or (hehehe) Tom Petty in the sweltering heat becomes a certain impossibility.

I read a short story last night in which a character has a total recall that makes every "memory" a part of her very real present. Here's a bit from author Deborah Eisenberg:

"No act of mind or the psyche was needed for Sharon to reclaim anything, because nothing in her brain ever sifted down out of precedence. The passage of time failed to distance, blur, or diminish her experiences. The nacreous layers that formed around the events in one's history to smoothe, distinguish, and beautify them never materialized around Sharon's; her history skittered here and there in its original sharp grains on a depthless plane that resembled neither calendar nor clock."

First of all, this is gorgeous, and I'm realizing now that it must have stuck with me and catalyzed this train of thought without my recognizing it til halfway through. I'm finding a lot of comfort from this passage, and its ability to paint this recall as sharp and painful. At the same time, it's a punch in the stomach. How does our brain decide that it's time to smooth, to beautify, to forget? Why does summer ever have to end?

Blog Project Extraordinaire

Here's the assignment: To write a short essay about something that happened to you in a very specific place. The goal was to make the essay more about the intrinsic connection to the physical place than about what actually occurred there. (And yes, mine doesn't quite cotton to the rules - I'm sorry Ryan!)

Here are the players: Bryan, Emily, Mandy, Meredith, Ryan, Stacy, and Tom

And here, because I'm a procrastinator, is "Via Chicago" (love on that Wilco, yall)

When I first came to this city, I noticed the doors, but not in that cheesy, entry hall poster kind of way. (Didn’t everyone have those when we were kids? The doors of Ireland, the doors of Kansas City, red and yellow and purple doors that looked the same in every town.) I took the train into the city from Midway airport, and I noticed that the doors of the train close to leave a small gap where their bottoms meet.

I came to Chicago to visit friends and hear music. Literally – we went to a music fest all weekend. My first experience with sight-seeing came from a glimpse of Millennium Park via bus windows, and ended with the skyline framing a Wilco concert. In the meantime, we drank. I was mystified by my friends’ buzzer and security doors. I didn’t know how to keep the bus doors from banging me on the way off. I loved the way the lake looked like it never ended.

One year later, I found myself readying to move. Two years later, I’m sweating through my first summer in the city – the first I’ve spent without central air for many, many years. On the way home from work today, I had a tremendous headache. It came and went in paralyzing waves and I tried to convince myself I was breathing them down.

I boarded an elevated train and scurried about, looking for a seat. I found one next to a good-sized man and his good-sized bag, but at rush hour you don’t complain about seats. I watched the doors close as the stragglers behind me filtered into the train’s dirty aisles.

That gap is still there, at the rubbery base where the train’s two sliding doors meet. I see it every time and think how can they have left that? In my seat today, I watched the train’s air-conditioned air get sucked through the hole no bigger than a silver dollar, imagining its trajectory over the brick buildings and ancient tracks below.

The hole makes me flash back to winter, to the mental blocks I put in those gaps when riding to and from school or work. My friends and I exhaust ourselves enjoying every moment of this summer, working hard to visit every park, catch every free concert and buy food from every street vendor we can. They told me all winter it would come to this, these throngs of happy people and bumbling tourists and DRUNK Cubs fans, but I had to see such a transformation to believe it. What kind of a place stores up its happiness for three short months?

Chicago fits me, because I’m forgetful. I remember winter’s cold, unforgiving gaps but I’ve forgotten the mystery of a good scarf. I’ve forgotten the camaraderie of a bus stop full of freezing, angry people who somehow realize that the only way to get through it is to wallow in one another’s frustration. I’ve forgotten how stylish I feel in boots, in all boots, even if they are caked in slush. In those days, the closing doors of the train are a welcome sight, hole or no hole. There is happiness to be had, even if the bars’ patios are all closed. But for now, I get to wallow in my forgetfulness. I get to pretend it will never be winter again and there will be concerts and visitors and boys and bars every single weekend.

The headache kept interrupting my enjoyment today, the jolting of each stop crushing my brains and forcing my eyes to uncomfortable places in their sockets. I marveled at the relative lack of crazies on the train, and kept my eyes focused on the doors. Eventually, they opened to a person-sized gap instead of a small, forgotten one. I got out and walked down the streets, full of people and noise, and breathed my headache out with the train’s stale air.

The Green Line Stops are Few and Far Between

One of my favorite things about living in Chicago is my access to live music. There are big names, and little guys, and the guitarist from that one band's band. I'm lucky to have friends with similar musical tastes and similar thirsts to see and be seen at the small and and fabulous venues of Chicago. Even in the cold of Chicago winter, we made it to some choice shows. (Yelle at prom, I mean Logan Square Auditorium, anyone?)

But now summer reigns supreme and that means one thing: festivals. At the beginning of May, someone sent me a list of all the summer festivals one could find in our fair city. Pizza fests, jazz fests, rib fests, neighborhood fests, even cheese fests!! Obviously, there's just not enough Beth to get to all of these. But last weekend, I did make some time for the Pitchfork Music Fest in Union Park. Overheard after the fest? "It was the bestest time ever!"

I know, I know, Pitchfork is a total scenester scene. So we put on our best 80s sunglasses and hit the town! For 50 bucks, Saturday and Sunday presented quite the bang. Despite a little mud and some sweet humidity, the music killed. The food vendors were plenty, and they had Chicago microbrew for only $4 a beer! Being Pitchfork, the site has reviewed its own fest, so you can read that here. My personal highlights were: Bon Iver (duh), M. Ward, The Hold Steady (sorry KC), and the bits and pieces we caught of Fleet Foxes and Apples in Stereo (not together).

But the real story is, of course, behind the music. After Spoon finished the thing up on Sunday night, we made a beeline for the train stop located conveniently outside the park's boundaries. We thought we might beat the crowds by leaving before the encore finished, but when we got to the lines reaching from the El platform all the way down to the street, it was clear how wrong we'd been.

Instead of waiting with all those smelly unwashed hipsters, we decided to head west along the train tracks to pick up a Green line train at the stop BEFORE the festival's Ashland stop. We're pretty tricky like that. We made sure to ask some fellow music fans about the location of a station ("Oh yeah, if not at Damen then at Western) and trudged off down the increasingly abandoned street below the tracks. In the social geography of Chicago, we were heading toward a questionable part of town, but we weren't worried because a stop would come along any minute.

So away we walked, four white-girl music fans full of microbrews. We didn't make it three blocks before our first pit stop to pop a squat (not me!) and then, not four more til our second (again, not me). Fortunately for our bladders, the street was becoming more and more abandoned. Unfortunately, this did not make us feel any safer.

After awhile we came along a Chicago first for me - a group of people congregated in the street, blasting music and lights from their cars. A street party, for lack of better words. A block party, without the children riding their bikes. A party worthy of Wichita's teen crowd, according to our resident expert. But these were NOT Wichita teens. They invited us to join them, we declined, and the night continued. (They were playing a really fun song, though. That one that goes "Do do dodododooo What about my boyfriend?")

Finally, we came to a busy street, the western-most place where we were told an El stop would be. No stop in sight, we decided to cut our losses and call a cab. The company insisted on an address, and so they were given the street address of the check cashing facility we stood in front of. [We found out later that the next stop was not for another SIX miles.]

We waited at this corner for the cab around fifteen minutes before we called them again. Our order had not been picked up yet, so we abandoned the check-cashing corner in hopes of a bus. By this time, we could officially announce to one another that our spirits had broken. After a few inquiries after our destination by a man outside McDonald's, we made our way over to Madison and prayed for an east-bound bus. One came, and we retraced our steps, ended up downtown, and took the train on home. A journey of maybe 6-10 miles took us two hours. The whole time I was carrying a rolled-up outdoor blanket that looks like something I ordered off the Stuff White People Like website.

This was an interesting experience. At no point were we lost, but at the same time, we had no control over our progression. We couldn't retrace our steps once we'd come a certain distance, but we knew that we just kept walking deeper and deeper into a muddle. Things worked out, like they always do, but the ends of some weeks feel like the end of Pitchfork: trying to choose the lesser of two evils, with a big of mess to wade through before coming to a safe end. Is the music worth it? Yes, but only if there's cheap beer.

25 means old and wise

I began my job at Initech in late January. With my low status, I was banished to a cubicle near the loud, slamming door. Every time someone goes out to lunch, goes to the restroom, runs down to Dunkin Donuts for a cup of coffee - bam. Bam. Bam. All day long.

This slamming has got nothing, however, on the Travel Agent. She's on the phone all day. She has a terrible, West Suburbs accent (exACKly). She gets mad and she slams her elbow into the desk. She lets the airlines' bad hold music play on one loud speakerphone. In short, she's the kind of woman who owns multiple jean jackets. And she sits directly across from me. One thin, non-sound-absorbing wall of partition stands between me and grammatical errors each spoken conversation.

(I'm not exaggerating about the grammar thing. This woman, in her need for superiority, answers everyone's "How are you today?" with an "I'm well, how are you?" So not only is she using "well" incorrectly - with the verb "to be," the word "well" is actually describing the subject, and not the verb. She thinks she's being smart and using an adverb, but what she really wants is "I'm DOING well." This kills me, slowly, day by day.)

Last night, I went to bed in a euphoria. It was my 25th birthday, and I felt such a great love from family and friends that I slept like a baby. I arrived at work this morning and saw the vague, jean-jacketed shape as I trudged to my desk - but I realized that it probably doesn't matter. What a waste of time to begrudge the annoyances she provides - being grateful makes me feel so much better.

So I'm grateful that so many of my friends wanted to make me feel special. I'm grateful that my parents and brother could come visit me for an extended weekend. I'm grateful that my dad installed all the window a/c units in my apartment. I'm grateful that I don't own jean jackets and that I don't have to be on the phone all day.

And if that doesn't work? I'm grateful for my headphones and KEXP Seattle.

SIDE NOTE: I'm currently reading The Perfect Man by an author named Naeem Murr. I saw him read from this book in January or February, and bought it on the spot. He's a British fellow living in Chicago, and the book is a pretty gorgeous treatment of some un-gorgeous subject matter - the stuff great literature is made of. Takes place in a small Missouri town outside STL, and finds its center in a group of adolescents in the 1950s. Though I haven't finished it yet (give me til the end of the week), I'm recommending it. Mostly to you, Mr Useted. Hurrah for summer reading!!!!!