Fourth Cycle, Year 27. The Year of Deep Wells

DIARY

THE YEAR of the SYNCHOPATED SAILOR ends on

1. DES'REE. Kissing You.

After proposing to Jessica in the summer sunlight the dim windowlessness and office oppression of Neurosurgery seemed stifling; a thing beneath me. I counted down the days til my assignment was done, because I felt the resentment on my back wherever I walked, and I there were several conflicts.
On the night after I rang out the year of the Synchopated Sailer, however, I went on an ambitious nightwalk aimed for Joliet from downtown Chicago. I walked out through the Loop, the Medical Corridor and Lawndale, along Route 66 the whole way, through the suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn and into McCook, through an abandoned industrial district and a road boarded off, and isthmus between quarries. I got out half way and turned back. I missed Jessica, and while it was a wretched adventure with tears meeting up, I was happy to be back with her again.

A week later I finished with Neurosurgery. The Dumb Waiter and Hunter and the Bird, the final moments of the Nocturnal had also flown. With both Neurosurgury and Nocturnal the putting to rest had been taxing, but I felt like I was gradually shedding constraints with difficulty.


2. EMINEM. Sing for the moment.

These moments were intense in their difficulty. With Neurosurgery, I said goodbye to Evelyn and Lola and Linda and Alicia, and I had misgivings all the way. With the Nocturnal, as I drank beer with Lisa and Jessica and Evan and Maggy, we felt weary and relieved, and happy together, but I still ached at the sense of my failure, to them and myself.

Still, I was engaged.

Just afterward, I went to the Hyde Park Borders and drew up a plan for this Great Year. Year 28. I'd get married of course; major plans. Why not kick my life out of stalled failure? No more weak theater groups or wispy clinging to past triumphs. No more pining for Flint summers through Chicago three-quarters. No. I'd forge a future for Jessica: work hard and save for the future. Make the future. Get into grad school. Get going. Write manifestos and make them happen. I wouldn't compromise this year. I'd run until my muscles were raw.

I started on a simple Saturday, but I think it was an omen. I met Lisa and we went up north, to Edgewater, where I'd live soon, and ate at Kopi Cafe and talked about plans for our funding and for the Occlusion. Looking back now, 15 months later, I realize that we did absolutely everything we set out to do, though often without funding and often without using the Occlusion Group.

We went to see Fahrenheit 911 with Jess and Meridith and Matt, and talked about it, and Lisa drove me back to McKinley Park through Chinatown, and I got drunk and wrote passionate pleas to Michael Moore. Sent them out by email. This was a distant suggestion at what has become the happiest year of my adult life so far.


3. THE SMASHING PUMPKINS. Tonight Tonight.

For another week I was allowed to rush out the adrenaline high. I took a nightwalk that led me through Pilsen and then way up through Wicker Park to Lakeview. I planned Castlevania fanfiction. I got incredibly sunburned at the point, and started reading Red Dragon in preparation to revise my novella. Jess shared an apartment with Meridith and Mary and I spent most of my summer over with them. As June ended and July began I reluctantly accepted an assignment at Northwestern with the Department of Orthopoedics.

I had one weekend left, however, the Fourth of July weekend, and Jess and I celebrated first by attending the fireworks and watching from Adler as bright clouds blossomed out over the lake, before the skyline. The next day, the actual fourth, Monday, we attended a barbecue at Colin's, and then riding back to McKinley Park through a bombardment of fireworks on either side, we lived out a scene from a movie: perfect exploding technicolor.

After awhile at my place, Jess left. And I was alone. And lonely again. High and lows would continue as long as I lived alone, way out there, alone.


4. RADIOHEAD. Where I End and You Begin.

The next two weeks planted frustration and anxiety in my head. It swapped out... swamped out... the terror of Neurosurg and Nocturnum and swammpped in fractured terror. The was work like I had never seen before. Work without knowledge, in blindness, with blind speed, and with consequences. In the fastest, most desperate week I've ever worked I got written up and faced the prospect of a $10,000 fine.

And I wasn't helping myself, either. After work I read the Jungle by Sinclair and Red Dragon by Harris... for my novella. But it sure killed the mood. I'd drink and veg out and count down until sleep, because I knew as soon as I'd wake up I'd be running off again. The next morning.

At the end of all this, I got to put all my ulcers to work for me, as Cody, Jess, Lisa, and I (four of a hoped-for seven) converged for the first Occlusion Retreat. I listened to Radiohead the whole time and revised Adrift on the Mainstream and was rewarded with the best prose I've ever set to screen.


5. PEARL JAM. Betterman.

Needing something to yank these inky coils from my brain (I didn't realize how desperate I was just then), I took a week back in Flint to "work on Urbantasm," although now I know that's not what I was working on. I walked from Flushing all the way in, then got a ride from a friend the last mile to Tom Z's downtown. I worked for five hours, then bailed on meandering, showing up at Sam's parents' at ten o'clock. I stayed there two nights, then gave up and went home.

That was when I gave up on Urbantasm for this part of my life. I wrote John a letter and told him so. He wasn't happy. Though I have been persuaded to dabble a bit here and there.

My mother took me out to look at wedding flowers, and Advanced Personnel called... Ortho wanted me back. I accepted, reluctantly, but feeling like I'd dropped another dragging anchor in Urbantasm. Lisa gave me a ride back to Chicago and Jessica... back toward Ortho and headaches. I won't lie. It was a poignant evening.


6. LINKIN PARK. Place 4 My Head.

While I was in Flint, I'd been solicited for a submission for a drama contest, so when I got back to Chicago I took up Canaryville Blues, and spent the next week, after the Hell of Ortho (where they really hoped I'd take a permanent position... NO WAY), in one of the city's most daunting neighborhoods. In fact, this project would haunt me and taint year 27 well into September. But I finished the play and sent it off just a little late, though I was never graced with even a rejection notice.

Hallie had agreed to help me make Ojai again, and when I left Ortho for the very last time, things began to look up in a more permanent fashion. Jess and I walked to Unique and picked up Hawai'ian shirts for California, and went to one of Armand's barbecues, and talked with Lisa a bit, and then she drove me to O'Hare and I left for LAX.


7. R.E.M. All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)

California finished the transformation. I arrived angry and determined and joyful and ready to break hearts. I had my own room this time with a splendid view of the Happy Valley. While the prior year I'd expanded out and took in the whole Conference, this year was more insular and intimate. I followed my cast with intensity and rigor, though my own responsibilities were smaller, and I got to know the interns, really still in high school, very closely. Unfortunately, I've been an awful correspondent, because I learned a lot there in the summer sun. Several times I took long walks out over the dune, and then stomped my way back. We had a reading of Canaryville Blues that confirmed my greatest fears, but there was always wine and Corona to relieve that. Kevin and Karen and Abigail were there, and I saw Joe, and in the end, I had one full day in Hollywood as a tourist. I decided I actually liked the place, and hiked Runyon Canyon.

I wasn't happy to be back in Chicago at all.


8. UNDERWORLD. Cups.

But this was the beginning, not the end, of wonderful. As I applied for jobs but didn't get any interviews, my lease was up and I'd somehow persuaded Sam to move to Chicago and be my roommate. Now I was pulling out all of the stops; we'd live on the North Side, Edgewater, where the water glistens like jewels and the condos erupt from the lake in Miami Vice dreams. Miami Beach. We'd be in Edgewater Beach. I started playing with the words "gothic" and "funk" but I quickly realized I wasn't completely kidding with them.

There was an interlude; on one fine day, Jess and I met up with Lisa at the Medici and Michael seated us on the patio. We later went downtown and saw OutFoxed about the abuses of the Fox News Network, and walked about Millennium Park. Somehow it seemed to bracket the political and personal nature of that summer, when I was first engaged, between two documentaries... documentaries that bracketed fireworks and Flint and Canaryville, McKinley Park and Ojai.

Sam came to town on one of my last days in the McKinley Park apartment. We had a party up there, and when everyone had gone home, we started casting about and quickly settled at 5820 N. Kenmore, 1 block from the lack, from the Red Line, from Broadway. It was perfect. Perfect and beautiful. Except for the roaches.

The next day we applied for jobs downtown and Near North. Sam actually got two; one at Lego and one on a local cruise. I didn't, but I'm not as marketable as he is, and I don't have the poise in chance encounters. So there.

We heard that we had gotten our apartment, so we spent the next several days unloading and loading his little coupe and dragging all my stuff, my books and boxes, up to Edgewater. On the last night, as if the neighborhood was pissed off that I was going, the smell from the stockyards district went from baked cookies to wet meat. Sam and I ate at the New Archview; my last time, and went home and to bed. I'd have to make a few return trips to finish clearing the place, but Jerry later said, as he returned my deposit, that he was sorry to see me go. I was sorry to leave, but I know now that I needed to leave.

I left too much baggage in that little place.

I had to start fresh so that year could become the translucent winged thing it was aiming toward.

Racing. Racing. Racing. Race down the road. The skyline came into view many times that year. The John Hancock moving along the edge, with the North Ave. walkway straining across it. And gone. The Chicago Skyline's that wall, the monolithic plinth of buildings that soars out of the flat gray of the lake. There's nothing like it in any city anywhere, and when it's the end of the warm days of the year, and you're careening towards or away with the windows down, that's its own species of exhileration.


9. MARILYN MANSON. Chryptorchid.

I don't have this song... so I will have to imagine it. It really is the first Marilyn Manson song I've liked since Kiddie Grinder remix, but I like it a lot.

When Sam and I first moved into our new place, we didn't have beds or other decor. We had a lot of boxes. But Sam set up our computers by the bay windows that looked out over the lake and Edgewater skyline and we played Worms. It was the only time that year we'd play Worms, but between stomping roaches, as we'd aim our WMD from one worm to another and try to obliterate all on the screen, the night fell. Something about the static singe of those screens mingling with the rush of cars on the Drive and the crush of waves on the beach, and the lingering sour sting of Raid. It was comforting.

Those days, we put the Thorn Sojourn campaign to rest. It was another anchor shed.

"The angel has spread its wings; the time has come for bigger things."


10. APHEX TWIN. Fingerbib.

As Sam and I slowly settled in (and it was a slow process, involving many milk crates and trips to others' dumping spots in the alleys, Craigs Listing and carrying our finds for many blocks), another reckoning was on its way.

Jess and Lisa and I took a trip to Michigan for the Michigan Renaissance Festival, which we attended with my sister. After a day staggered by the impact of memories from that place but the general lack of familiar faces, I was roped in by friends at the closing moments. Our the way home, we four stopped for pop in Grand Blanc. Later, I drove out to Camp Jellystone, while some spoke disparagingly of me, and listened to them sing songs, and watched the fire eaters, and jumped over the first myself. I remember the enchantment, the promise of magic and sex at the ren fest, and I kept eyeballing my projects to this time. I think it was then that I realized "gothic" and "funk" was not such a joke after all.

When I got back into Chicago, and I was flushed from that whole experience, I hosted a housewarming party that went most of the night and empties many beers. Not long after that at all, I wrote the first Gothic Funk manifesto.

And was granted an interview at Northwestern.


11. MILK, INC. Boy Meets Girl.

In those days Sam and I didn't have internet access, so I used the Nigerian cafe on Thorndale. Sam's friend Sky came down to stay with us for his own interview, but Sam was gone that weekend, and I found myself in a dense conversation with Sky. I'd known Sky from a couple parties up North, and I felt a little awkward having to bear the burden of hospitality and talking all on my own. Soon, Sky would become another of my best friends. We both interviewed. He got his job. I did not. I would eventually return to Northwestern, yet again, through Advanced.

I started getting hate mail from Canaryville residents incensed by what the had read about my play online. It's a sort of hateful criticism that turned me inside out. It kept me up at nights, literally. It started up early September, and died by the end.

Meanwhile, I was circulating rumors of Gothic Funk, and our new, shifting and expanding, nebulous circle of friends started meeting at my place or Colin's to watch debates as the presidential race heated up. We were so passionate. We had much invested in this.

Sam's dad visited and took us out for Ethiopian food on Broadway, and we walked up to Loyola and scrambled down and up the rock with the spiders. It was still warm that night, and cool and dark in our apartment. Jessica came and picked me up later, and took me back to Hyde Park.


12. ORBITAL. Halcyon and On (and On and On)

We're starting to talk October now, and I was sufficiently politically fired to take a Sunday bus to Skokie to hear Senator Bieden speak in support of John Kerry and to sign up for this or that. In the end, it wasn't my crowd. I did some mobility through my blog, through letters to the editor, but I suspect the impact was minimal.

I was also ready to delve deepr into this gothic funk. By Blues N' Ribs I had conceived of a party as an articulation of the ideal; a party that is unambiguously that, a party, but with higher stakes, with artistic ambitions. A party people would attend not to observe, but to drink, flirt, talk, and dance, and through doing so, with implicit observation, communicate and absorb and emit and connote the nuances of their own informed perspective. If we gothic-funkified it properl, the effects would melt them.

I wanted to learn, so I read the Castle of Otranto, and the most daunting Mysteries of Udolpho. And I loved it.

I got an assignment with Advanced to the hospital's Department of Ophthalmology, specifically for the Laser Vision Center, but I would enjoy this position, and take on more responsibility through it, than any other I'd encountered so far. It was, at least, a fitting way to end my neverending tenure with Advanced Resources. And at the end of only the first week on the job, I was off to Michigan for some particular reason, taking the train and taking in the gorgeous autumn colors.

Somewhere around here I went for the autumn nightwalk, and it was one of the most beautiful and memorable moments of this year. I started along the lake, and it was a wild, bitter night, icy cold at first, with the sky wretching down rain on me like mote. The waves were huge, and just as the sun set, the buoys plummeted and plunged up and down in the distance. I walked down to Wilson, over to Broadway and the Borders and looked in vain for scholarships, and decided instead (only for a week) that maybe I'd better look into Law School as well. Then, out through the throngs from the Chicago Film Festival, out to Clark through the cemetery, up through Andersonville and Rogers Park and Evanston to the Burger King where I read Udolpho until three, and on up, wending, until I came to the Ba'hai temple, and walked about the floodlighted marble stairs and gardens. It was raining and I was basking in the lamplit solitude. It was magnificent! And I walked back south through it all, through Northwestern across the lagoon, and stomped on down Rogers Park as the milky wet sky went from black to blue to gray, and went inside and to bed as the sun was presumably rising behind the clouds.


13. EMINEM. Mosh.


As the election approached I was editorialized as fast as I could, but I missed an important part of the equation; I missed my first application to the University of British Columbia. I was in despair over these applications; everything, the Letters of Recommendation (who would write them?), the GRE scores (how do I take these?), the whole damn process was such maintenance, and I couldn't conceive how I'd tget anything done.

When I knew I was late, I asked if I could send in the Application a day late. No reply. Until two weeks later, when they said they hadn't received it, and to not bother. Well, I didn't.

Two days before Halloween I was beaten up by three kids on 63rd Street. They took my wallet. I was finishing Udolpho. I walked to Armands in my GF getup, and tried to enjoy the party.

The night before the election, there was a party at Amber's in Blue Island. I watched the Mosh video and it stirred me. The next day, in frustration, anxiety, despair... I was supposed to be doing something... canvassing, something, but all the trips were to Wisconsin and I was bound to go to Jess' election night party in Hyde Park. So I sat and watched that infinitely brown-mud-gray rain fall on the city and then I rode down to Hyde Park with Sam, where we and our friends sat for hours, and gradually came to realize that what we'd feared for several years had come about.

It made me miserable. The next day, I went back to work, and bought R.E.M.'s Around the Sun.


14. R.E.M. I Wanted to be Wrong.

I ended up crying for myself, my friends, my city, my nation... it's not a small thing when applied to single people. It's a big thing, an overwhelming thing that swallows us, when we contemplate that just like every other civilization, ever, our's will fail someday.

There is nothing in this world that is beautiful that does not come to an end.

That week I woke up a moment out of sleep into the buzz of R.E.M.'s I Wanted to be Wrong, and it said everything I wanted in the deepest shuddering breath coiled, wounded, and recalsetrant at the bottom of my lungs.

That weekend we threw Gothic Funk Party #1. It was sparsely attended, but a beautiful mix of odd and wonderful people; wonderous assortments solving mysteris, in the kitchen with projections of graffiti or the living room with blue lights from the floor, green from computer screens, and all those glimmering Chicago windows on Kenmore, on Sheridan.

It was a tragic week for us, and in its tragedy, it was a luminescently beautiful week.


15. GARY JULES. Mad World.

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, Worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, Going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, No expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrows
No tomorrow, No tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
These dreams in which I'm dying, Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very very
Mad World, Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And they feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, Sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, No one knew me
Hello teacher tell me whats my lesson
Look right through me, Look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which i'm dying, Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very very
Mad World, Mad World
Enlargen your world
Mad World

16. R.E.M. Man on the Moon.

It can't be so great always... the next several weeks blended into each other. I was trying, and failing, at my NaNo novel. I was listening to a lot of Eminem, and playing a lot of video games. with futility. I beat Ninja Gaidens one through three, through extensive cheating. For Thanksgiving, I went to Michigan with Jess and Jess went dress shopping with my mom. I went out and took pictures of the Fisher Body Plants to be demolished. I was going to go to Detroit to reseach YGB, but I went to the Atlas, and got my hair cut, instead. Back in Chicago, I took my GREs and did exceptionally well, though no school that required GREs would accept me. Only one school would accept me... and in Chicago, friends came over, like Jessica Johnson, and she'd talk with Sam and I of people back in Central, some I knew, some I did not.

And we celebrated Andy Kaufman day, by reading aloud from the Great Gatsby.

There was a second Gothci Funk party, in Hyde Park, with Dress Up and Tarot Card readings and drawings and cakes and mysteries. And an office party with my beloved Department of Ophthalmology, at which I got so schnockered that I fell asleep on the El and had to be tapped awake at Howard Street by the attendant. Jess threw her own Christmas party before leaving for Ohio and we sat in the dim light and talked. I had a sick eye, infected, and it crusted over. I was doing Biblical readings for Advent. And on the night of the Solstice, I planned my extensive Nightwalk, but called it short to go back home, and visit with Sam, and Jessica, and Skylar. I outlasted them all. I didn't sleep until after four.


17. POSTAL SERVICE. We Will Become Silhouettes.

During the last couple days of work, the jobs thinned out, and we exchanged gifts and went home early. I had a visit with Tom before leaving. On the last night in Chicago, Sam gave me a ride home, and introduced me to Postal Service and we talked about serious things the whole ride there. After shopping and the Christmas Eve Vigil, I talked to Father Osbourn at St. John Vianny and said I appreciated his blessing that past June; "she said yes." He said he'd mentioned me in his homily. After that, I stopped by the Crawfords and we sat up until late in the night, with a reunion that we hadn't had in years... Lindsay, Sam, me, Annie, Sarah, Amanda, John and Carol. Christmas was honeyed and we were at gradmas until very late. Before all of my friends flew from the county, we got together one more time and went to the White Horse and danced in the Ramsey basement. I worked on my applicaitons for most of the break. The wedding was still a long way off... my mom and I went to see Meet the Fockers. We had an energetic meeting with the DeVoes. I saw Lindsay one last morning with lots of coffee. We returned to Ohio. I rushed through my applications. On New Years Eve, we celebrated with Jeff J. Mr. Jalbrzikowski was in the hospital. These breaks always seem to get shorter each year... I didn't get sick this time, but I felt acutely that there wasn't enough time... that I just wasn't holding down quite hard enough.


18. POSTAL SERVICE. Clark Gable.

And of course the tsunami happened. I beame obsessed with the tsunami, not watching, rarely watching, but reading on it, thinking, and writing pages and pages of upset babble in my blog.

Work had gotten crazy; never nearly as crazy as Ortho, but the busiest I'd seen it. On one occasion, I worked over twelve hours without a bathroom break, and was so relieved that Jess and I rushed down in the snow to Hyde Park, and I bought us dinner at Calypso.

We began early Scavhunt meetings, and I asked Jen if Thalia would be our Flower Girl.

Gothic Funk #3, maybe my favorite of the bunch, was less involved and prepared than the others, but drew a crowd of thirty, and ultimately a mariachi band. Many danced who are not accustomed to dance, and there was not excessive drunkeness and the wonders went on almost until the sun came up. Somewhere about here we estabilshed our tradition of post-party breakfasts at the corner restaurant of Broadway and Thorndale. Here we'd have Sam, Jess, myself, Amber or Lisa, Sky or Bill, Coral, and we'd all go out to eat.


19. TORI AMOS. Horses.

And it was about now that I discovered the #147. Instead of shuddering under the head lamps of the grimy platform and wait for a hollow train to whisk me underground, I could stand in the sparkling dust of Sheridan and wait for a clean and fast bus to sweep me along the Drive, downtown, to work, in the lightening sun of lengthening days, in twenty minutes maybe. It transformed my mornings.

I drank tea. I read the Qur'an and Hadiths for Lent. It was a lot of work. I tried to throw a "vodka chess on the roof" party, but it was cold and we hung out downstairs and talked instead. January melted into February.

Gothic Funk #4, "Vendredi Gras" descended upon us, starting on Rush Street and bolting north for Edgewater Beach. Paul came and held his composure better than anyone else. There were lots of beads and drinks, and things got roucous for some of us. It evoked the spirit, however. And was sharp. I spent the next day with Paul, and we crossed all over the neighborhood, talking, before it got late and he had to get back to Milwaukee, to his job...


20. TORI AMOS. Father Lucifer

After this happened, I got sick and miserable for a week. Mr. Jalbrzikowski died. I still remember the night before, when Jess needed me, standing in the single-digit for fifty minutes waiting for the bus. It took over two hours to make Hyde Park. And one night earlier, I visited with Lisa and Sam over okra, and Lisa gave me a ride to Hyde Park to be with Jess. Jess and I went to Ohio for the funeral. People were together on the outside, but the ceremony reminds us that large families often discover themselves through losses.

Jess and I celebrated Valentines Day belatedly at an Italian restaurant.

Gothic Funk #5 was the largest by far, with hundreds, on a Friday in Lent when we ate with Tom and Michael. There was a lot of drinking, but delicious cookies and candies, and Sky walking about with a painted chest. Newly liberated, Bill sang the bachelor song. We all talked. After #4, it was serenely roucous.

We went to Chinatown to take pictures on a bittercold day, Meridith and Lisa and her friend and I (and soon, Skylar). But we sat in the restaurant and talked instead.

I ate a lot of fish and rice and veggies that year. Down on the Ramen soup. I watched Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, and Sam and my friends would come over in the evenings and we'd visit with them.


21. SMASHING PUMPKINS. Cherry.

One night when Sam was out at a techno concert, I had a horrid nightmare that someone was being murdered in the apartment across the hall, but my door was open and I felt that if I called 911 I'd alert the murderer to my presence and so be murdered myself. So I imagined that I huddled at the foot of my bed and shook.

It woke me up.

I reflected, in that moment, that all was all right, because Sam was there if I needed any help.

I didn't know at the time, but Sam didn't come home at all that night. I was alone all night.

But just like every night in McKinley Park.

I went to Marshall Fields of the green and alabaster walls. I started role-playing through Phil's campaign. I started meeting Gemma and friends for Harry Potter discussions at Jimmy's. Anchors, but small ones. Jess managed to catch me up in Monk just as I started to drift out of Desperate Housewives, as I'd drifted out of Gilmour Girls. We watched VH1 programming.


22. SMASHING PUMPKINS. Set the Ray to Jerry.

Lisa starred in a show at the United Center; Carmina Burana. We watched her, then went to Ivo's to celebrate for most the rest of the night. Ivo would rotate in during the next several months. Our scavhunt meetings continued. I went to the St. Pat's day parade downtown with my brother. I went to the South Side St. Pat's day parade alone. It was beautiful. I got into New School. A watershed... despite all odds and expectations, a school had accepted me, and so, another party in celebration. Then we threw a St. Patrick's day party, and it was one of my favorites. There was good food and a lot of drinking, and great celebrations. The next day, a breakfast at the Corner Restaurant. It melted into Palm Sunday.

On Vernaltide I got Sky to walk with me as far as Thorndale, then I continued up to the icy brinks at Loyola and took pictures in the darkness, and returned home, windbitten, just over an hour later.


23. THE VERVE. Bittersweet Symphony.

I followed through Holy Weekend as usual, and after the Easter Vigil, Jess and I sat up with Tom and Michael over dessert for hours, then saw a rabbit on our way home. We worked on the wedding all Easter. And during the next weeks, the weather turned from that very sharp, angry, and crystalline dry winter toward a dry and muted spring. Terri Shiavo and popes passed. I returned to Armour Square and took five hundred pictures, from Wentworth Gardens to Chinatown.

One weeknight, after I'd helped Steve cover for Andrea, he took Jess and I to a steak place in River North, and we rode home in the thick rain. The rain stopped. It would be a dry spring and summer.

On another rare misty, rainy night, Bill and Sam and Coral and I raced to meet Sky at the Thorndale stop. We were going to the Hearland to hear Jazz. But Coral fell and cut open her hand, and I started laughing before I realized she was hurt. I felt bad for the next month.

The Jazz, however was sweet, and we didn't get back until almost three. I was the first to go to sleep. I always regret when I am the first to go to sleep.

The next day, Sky, Coral, Sam and I ate at Kopi. Sky, Sam, and I argued about the plausibility of free energy, and Coral tolerated us. As scavhunt approached, Jess and I heard Animate on the North Side.


24. TORI AMOS. Marianne.

There, in the thick of April, I knew what I wanted for my website, so Lisa flew Sam and I down to Saginaw and lent us her car, and we raced through the spring gloom to Flint. Sam dropped me in Flushing. The next day, I drove about and shot pool with dad at Skips and took a nap, and basically spent a Saturday as I might have in high school. I made my parents dinner.

At night, Lisa and Sam and I... we were all lonely, so we took a long drive down from Saginaw, and met Sam, and met at the Starlight, and nibbled on out coneys, drank our wet coffee in the dim light of that place. Starlight is perfect for sad neglect feelings because it feels sad and neglected.

On Sunday, the mission. We photographed Hall's Flats extensively, and explored, and Lisa and I ate and talked at Atlas, where we'd first met, and we drove back to Chicago, and talked about serious things on the way.

This is my April is my most favorite of months, most of the time.


25. TROI AMOS. Power of Orange Knickers.

One morning around here, I woke up to a song so moving that it pinched me gently on the neck, and at once I crumpled up and wept like someone's discarded tissue.

We drove through the UP and around Traverse City to plan the Scavhunt Roadtrip, and then, after last minute meetings, we had the Scavhunt itself.

And it was magic.

Of course!

It's always magic.

In some ways this time was more subdued than others, a bit more... not relaxed... contrite? More shivering. And anyway, I don't know where I ended up on Friday night. But it worked out well, and on the last night, at Steve Cicala's behest, we wound up on sand ridges at the 57th Street beach with beer and potato cannons.

And slowly, like always, the Hunt wound up. We had our postmortem, and then Jess and I went to see Revenge of the Sith, and it was okay, I suppose, but it doesn't really compare with the scavhunt.

Sit n' spin n' run n' hug.

About now I also finished Joe Loya's book.


26. PROFESSOR LONGHAIR. Tipitina.

Now I haven't made a big production of it, but this whole time I'd been stepping up my Blues commitment, and had attended Blues at several joints around the city.

As May crawled toward June, Colin hosted the Scav party, which was full of a somewhat different crowd (though not all all), and the same lechery you'd expect from the Gothic Funk crowd. We went out to the Point in the dewiness for more sit n' spin, and I schooled a kid in a freestyle rap. Jess and I made it home late, but not too late to make Sara's party at the point the next day.


27. JANE'S ADDICTION. Jane Says.

And after that, we moved on to Cate's birthday party. I stayed for four hours, talking and swapping stories. I saw My So-Called Life DVDs on the shelf, but was leaving early, so I felt too self-conscious to ask to borrow them. Jess stayed after I headed home. When she got back, she'd brought them. We hadn't communicated on this.

The next day, I went to Lisa's recital at the Lutheran Seminary, and we met with Jess and Lisa took our pictures for our engagement notice.

That last week of may, I fanatically stalked the beaches and streets of Edgewater Beach, trying to capture everything. I caught 700 pictures, and moved on to other parts of the neighborhood: Edgewater Glen, Magnolia Glen, and Lakewood-Balmoral. I never did catch Andersonville or Edgewater itself...

One night, Sam and I went to B.L.U.E.S., but we got there late, and Sam was tired, so he left soon. I sat in the dark and watched them strum. I was sitting amongst the yuppies.

On Memorial Day weekend, Jess and I went to Ohio to finalize wedding plans, and the weekend following, Cody visited with Jun. We took them out to the Hot House and saw Jazz Me Blues... the El rustled by between the acts.


28. R.E.M. Low

I tried to make the Blues Fest, but I was too tired to make much of it. Jess and I met Hallie for dinner; we hadn't seen her for awhile, and she shared news of her hopes for London, my hopes for New York. Sam's sister, Emily, graduated, and came to visit us for a week.

We attended our last barbecue at Armand's. I watched My So-Called Life and rehashed all of the reasons I had for loving it in the first place. Sam and Jess and I rode down in gray twilight to CWAC and met Lisa for the end of the year party for the Art History department.


29. BILLY CORGAN. Mina Loy.

The night before the Solstice, Billy Corgan released The Future Embrace. Primed for this by My So-Called Life and a full-decade's training, I bought the album and listened to it the whole way down to Hyde Park.

The next night, Sam was out of town, but I met with Sky and Bill and Coral and some friends at F212, a coffee bar, and we hung out past closing, since Bill was spinning. We walked to Sky's place and talked about demographics. Then, I walked north along Clark, and across to Ardmore, and home. I was exhausted, and the sun came up when I got home.

I read Billy Corgan's online autobiography. I prepared my writing for him as I'd been planning for so long. I met with Sean several times, and over drinks we rehashed the details of musical glory. We planned to see him in concert.


30. DORIS HENSON. When You Go.

It wasn't unusual, at that time, late Spring and early summer, for Sean or I to walk to the other's and drink a beer or six and talk about music for six to ten hours. Sometimes, the elevator in my building would be broken and we'd have to hurtle up or down the stairs. Once, both elevators were broken, and the dryer I spent several dollars on trying to get some clothes clean. I carried them up in a huge box.

On the weekend of the 3rd, Jess and I went to see the fireworks at Adler. But the fireworks started early, and we missed them under drunken adulations, and someone stole Jess' cel and we were upset and argumentative all evening. It was a wretched wretched night.

The night of the 4th, Sam and I stood in our dark front room, or stood on our roof and watched the firework brimson up over the foogy depths of the lake and explode, crescenting. We walked down to the beach and inspected the shattered and charred cardboard remains. The waves knuckled their way in along the bank like little invading ghosts.

The night of the 5th, Sean and I saw Doris Henson, Crimea, and Billy Corgan in concert, and through sheer patience, afterwards, I offered up my manuscript through the trusting hands of Doris Henson themselves. I bought their CD, and i admired it all night long as I prepared for Buick City Blues, my official stress relief.

Sam was gone this weekend as well. I was all alone. The first night, I was going to do Buick City Blues, but Meridith was the only one there, so we visited instead. The second night, Sky and Bill and Gemma and Christian came, so I did the show. The last night, I went down to Michigan to see my family, and have a kitchen shower at Peg's. Many of our relatives came, and Naheda, and the DeVoes, and Sam and John Crawford. It was bright in the front room.


31. DEPECHE MODE. Get the Balance Right.

We rode back, crowded, Caitlin and Cody who would stay a day, Sam and Jess and myself. We god back in sweatiness. It all primed me into my last two weeks of work at NMFF; I started training Sean to take my place.

That weekend I went to NYC to stay with Nina and find an apartment for Jess and I to move into come late August. I found one in a few hours, and spent the next two days trying to learn more about my new city, visiting with Nina, drinking coffee and reading and generally feelings lonely. I missed Jess. I missed my family and friends.

"It's almost predictable..."

I got back.

One more week of work passed, and Andrea gave me a going away cake, and they all wished me well. I could leave without rancor. I could leave without anxiety. I could leave happy.

Saturday was Pre-Cana. Saturday, Jess and I finished Harry Potter. All of these things were giving us adrenaline boosts, but now many things rushed towards conclusions. Our time was almost gone. I took one more trip to Flint. For packing.


32. R.E.M. Sweetness Follows

I took the train in. I rode all the way to East Lansing, talking to a Spanish teacher at MSU. When we arrived, my brother and father gave me a ride home, and Cody and I went out to Rube's for blues, then on to the Atlas for a coney.

I procrastinated through the next day before my family all rolled out to see Willy Wonka, and then I went in for the last walk. This would be my rainwalk, officially. I parked and walked around Mott Park; the park, the church, the rolling avenues and paths up there, and it was all damp and slightly drenched, and it's one of my favorite places in the world. At night, when I walk there, I feel echoes. Echoes.

The next day I visited with my grandmother and aunt and cleaned my room. Late in the day, the next day, Cody and I started back to Chicago.


33. BLUES BROTHERS. Everybody Needs Somebody to Love

The next two days was the sweat and anxiety of dragging Jess and her possessions from Hyde Park to Edgewater Beach.

At the end, sweaty, my brother and my roomate transformed me into a Blues Brother, and soon we were joined by other Blues Brothers for my Bachelor party. We rolled from home to Rosa's to BLUE Chicago to the Green Mill, and while I bailed early at 3:30 AM, it wasn't without getting sick.

These were my last couple days in Chicago. I went out to the Ardmore beach with Sam and Sky and Libby between packing or recovering from my hangover, and we made rice with fish and Santa fe veggies and drank 312 and time counted down.


34. THE SMASHING PUMPKINS. Here's to the Atom Bomb.

Then I flew to Ohio for a week of preparation.

Adornetto's. Trader Joe's. St. Nick's fest. Certificates. Zanesville, Ohio. Nichol's. Birthdays. The Market House Inn. Driving through the late summer dusk.


35. DES'REE. Kissing You.

And got married.

Had a wedding. Had a reception. Had a wedding night at a bed and breakfast. Had a day for family and presents, shopping and packing. Had a morning for driving to the airport.

Had a flight to Belize, a night in the cabana with storms, a walk into town, a night on an island, a night to rest, a day on the monkey river, and a day on the Mayan ruins. A morning to get ready to go. A flight back... delayed... a night in Houston.

A week in Chicago, with friends. A harrowing trip to move. Through Michigan. Through Ohio. To New York City.

I moved here with my bride. This is now, and here we are, and this is my new life now.


36. SUFJAM STEVENS. All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!

And here we are after many adventures and mishaps! All but fully moved in with more things and commitments than I ever thought I could handle as a child, as a teenager, as a young man.

Soon, I will no longer be a "young" man, strictly speaking.

And the future: well, I hope it holds a career and fatherhood. For now, I have a "real" job... two real jobs... tutoring and writing. I am also writing for two very demanding classes. I am also hooked on the O.C., courtesy of Jessica.

I'm in a new city, harsh and unfamiliar and full of alien faces, but it is a city full of jazz, and a new cycle has begun. This is truly a great adventure to be embarking upon.

It's like when a clown turns to you as a child and opens up, blinking fast. Like he's going to scream at you, "WAKE UP!"

* * * * *

Began in loneliness.
Stepped up to companionship and friendships on all levels with the deepest meaning and sincerity.
Blinked to see something, to try to describe something with meaning.
And then brought the meaning to bear by getting married and moving.

This is:

THE YEAR OF DEEP WELLS

END OF POST.