childcraft

so i came back from dallas praying that it would finally be out of the forties.

it's not.

there's snow on the curb.

so depressing.

in other news, my first film is up on vimeo. give it a looksie. leave a comment. i was really happy with how it turned out. the next one is going to be with my partner, Geoff-- it's a character study on a fat Jewish carpet salesman named Mordecai. I'm pumped.

in other, other news. someone please buy me this:

actually just the 15th book: Guide to Childcraft. I remember that was the only one i liked to read because it had all the gruesome pictures of the babies with cleft lip and rickets, and what sores meant what diseases and how to treat someone for electrical shock.  it worked out well, because while the other kids fought over the other books, i dove for the parent's guide. i dont think i ever even cracked the other ones. 

i'm going to see if i can just buy that one on ebay or something. 20th birthday hayyyyy?

subway songs

something about subway musicians just fascinates me, and i mean the real musicians-- not the homeless guy with the boombox who sits in the center of the Jackson underground tunnel, which stinks like urine (wonder why). 

in the Lake red line station, where i get off for work, there is an old chinese (?) woman (?) who plays this bizarre cello-eqsue instrument, it's more like a broomstick with one string on it that sings this sickly, off-key song (I looked it up and found that its a erhu). She plays the same song over and over, i only wish that i could figure out what it is. 

there's also a native american-looking woman in sunglasses who plays the guitar, violin, castanets, tap-dances, and whistles all at the same time, with a tin measuring cup tied to the head of her guitar begging for spare change. 

a threesome of old crooners harmonize to stevie wonder, and a hendrix lookalike jams on an acoustic guitar. a wanderer sings amazing grace a cappella. a drugged out man playing african drums dedicated all his songs to the Jonas Brothers, who, according to him, died in a tragic plane crash in south america. 

Once i saw a young guy playing some pop punk acoustic serenades in the Washington Blue Line station. as soon as he started playing, a crazy at the other end of the stop started howling unintelligibly. the boy stopped, and the howler would too. start again, and the howling started up. it was a competition, and i think the homeless scraggler won because the boy eventually gave up in frustration, whining to himself as pop-punks do. 

yesterday i saw the icing on the subway musician cake. a man holding a plush tiger, both in matching red sweaters, gold chains and sunglasses. his boombox was playing a karaoke song. The plush tiger was freestyle rapping to "Eye of the Tiger".  he was all "yo, imma tiger, gonna eatchu, hear me roar" it was probably the best thing i've ever seen occur in a subway. 

so don't even bother asking, corner homeless. my spare change is going to help keep music alive. 

*edit: found this youtube video of the tiger guy, but it's from two years ago when the tiger was just a baby. it's pretty big now. poor quality, but at least it's proof!

the thaw

i think it's finally the beginning of the end. 

the end of the long, seeming perpetual winter. 

It's a gorgeous day out, an unbelievable 60 degrees, and my windows are open and the venetian blinds are being sucked into them from the gusts of Chicago wind that bring words of change. 

So I'm working on a screenplay right now. About some troubled son coming home for a funeral and finding himself, blah blah blah. But i'm loving it, because i feel so productive. I'm sitting here type type typing away, feeling oh so legit with my screenwriting software that makes any stream of consciousness look professional. 

i feel like for the past few weeks i've been balancing on the edge of this cliff, or maybe a coffee table, wobbling back and forth but overcome with this feeling that something big is on the other side. the calm before the storm? possibly. I can't explain it. But i have been doing a lot of lucid dreaming, finding an hour before work to crash face down on the couch, hoping to conjure some bizarre choose-your-own-adventure. It's all been giving me these weird feelings, not weird bad but weird unknown. 

I think i need to blog more, let these things out. I have all these occurrences and stories i've been meaning to relay. 

i'll leave you one now, about his lucid dream i had a few days ago. Saturday, to be exact. It echos this feeling i've been having recently:

whatever I'm doing at the moment has to stop. All of a sudden i am overcome with an urgency to go outside. It's an apocalyptic panic, and i grab _______'s hand and pull her with me, searching for the nearest door. As soon as i get outside, the air hits me like concrete. It's difficult to breathe, the air is so thick it's like inhaling water. I look down at my hand, pawing through the atmosphere, watching the air part against my fingertips and the spaces between my fingers, like when you slowly press your hand on the surface of a swimming pool. I am still clenching her hand, making sure we don't get separated. The sky is so dark, like when it storms in the middle of the day and you lose your concept of time because its suddenly night at noon. We are on the beach, the sand is damp and caked, the water is dark and grey and troubling. We get to the surf, and i spy a whale! a giant, dark whale and i can see his skin perfectly, all the bumps and tightness, and so i let go of her hand and turn around to call her attention. But the second i turn to face her, the water starts pulling me in and it's the strongest undertow that i could ever imagine, and i cannot even begin to fight it. It pulls me away, leaving her on the shore.

I wake up, sprawled on my back on the couch with one leg up on the back of the couch and my arm over my head and the other dangling off the edge, and i think that my roommates must think i'm absolutely insane. 

any dream interpreters out there?

on a lighter note, this is a bit of wisdom i got from an vibrant old woman with a broken arm:

"when a bird falls and injures itself, it's best not to help it. The bird will use all of its remaining energy to heal itself slowly."

she tells me she refuses to go to physical therapy, but instead is fasting and has a newfound energy and sense of focus. 

and then she tapped my nose with a smile and was off. 

memoir girl

or so we have dubbed her, comes in with her makeup done perfectly. her lipstick is dark and painted, her whole face really is like a oil painting. It's not greasy or anything, more like unrealistically perfect. She's snow-white fair, and her rich brunette waves frame her face exquisitely. when she talks, she almost whispers seductively, pulling a conscious smile out of the corner of her lips. i'm not trying to glorify her; that's really just how she looks. She's young, maybe late twenties, and sometimes wears this fancy fur hat when it's really cold to go with her ivory turtleneck. if you can gather anything from this description, hopefully it's this: she kind of thinks she's a bit of a big deal. 

she orders the same thing every time: a large cappuccino with an extra shot, extra, extra sweet with sugar-free vanilla, as well as a large hot water and a large ice water. she smiles coyly at me whenever i predict her order (because it's such a surprise) or know that she likes her hot water without a sleeve and says "thank you, sweetie." 

this is where it gets weird.

she grabs a table against the wall and lays out page after page and an open book and goes to town writing what we think are her memoirs. Though at such a ripe young age, i can't imagine how long that book is going to be. apparently one time, one of my coworker's failed to "keep an eye on her stuff" after she requested a watchful eye while she took a pit-stop, and she flipped out that something could have happened to her irreplaceable writings. 

after she calls it a night, we always gather 'round the table she was at in horror. she leaves the biggest mess. and not only is it a mess, but it's a creepy mess. she leaves cups under the table half-way filled with a mysterious liquid that definitely doesn't resemble a sugar-free vanilla cappuccino. it always seems like she accumulates more cups than she requested, all filled with dark cloudy water or flakes of oatmeal. in addition to cups and ripped up sugar packets, she has, on a few occasions, left rejects from her sacred manuscript. scrawled illegibly on crumpled up notebook paper in brown or green marker (i picture her doing the clichéd crumple-up and toss-over-the-shoulder-in-rejection), they are borderline gibberish. incoherent. 

"Reece is involved ... why so nervous and guilty - soon after or about 6 minutes after VC left -- Reece wrote story for school & got into trouble or called in to see school therapist - ... only reason .... wanted to pressure ...." 

and more about Reece, who apparently is involved in some shenanigans. the other page i found is even more hard to read and therefore ten times more confusing, but "Reece" and "infection" pop up here and there. ive seen her with a few medical books, and someone said she was in fact a medical student. 

either way, she looks pretty harmless. but she's just another one of our nuts. 

la plage

i went to north avenue beach the other evening. it was relatively warm out, meaning low 50s, but coming from over a month of bitter cold winds slapping your face left and right, the cool breeze was more than welcomed. even at work today, everyone seemed be to ordering iced versions of their favorites, and believe it or not-- we did spy someone in shorts. i think the brutal cold sends everyone so far into hibernation that the first hint of a new season calls for celebration. 

so this heat wave prompted johnathan and i to pack up a comforter and head to clark/division on the red line and venture east to the water. 

by the time we got to the shore, the sun had completely set, but it was still pleasant out. despite being right beside lake shore drive, it was strangely quiet on the beach. there was little left of the ice that had previously paved over the sand. i frequently would look out my window to see the ice floes on the lake, just the sight of it chilling me to the bone before i even set foot outside. the sand was damp, the water was dark, deep blue. the moon was high above the water, looking back at its reflection cutting into the navy water.  you could see the ferris wheel from navy pier, completely illuminated.  there were only a few other people who had decided to venture out to the beach like us. it was wonderful. it was as if this wave had come over me and started in my toes and scrambled up my body, twisted around in my stomach, and stretched out my fingertips and out the tips of my hair.  

i return two days later with my other friend and her camera, my own journal in hand hoping to channel the energy from the glistening water into some creativity for my screenwriting class. i lied on my stomach on the blanket, dreading the creeping shadow cast from the quickly-setting sun behind the skyline. before long, i had curled up in the sandy blanket like a big cocoon and fallen asleep. sleeping on the beach is one of those incredible simple things in life, when you forget that there's probably sand maneuvering its way into all your nooks and crannies, and you just pass out on nature's own tempur-pedic. complete & utter bliss. the drool mark on my journal proves it.

being on the beach did spark a few thoughts of mine, some of which stemmed from an old friend in high school and a conversation in my junior year english class. 

has anyone read Sophie's World? 

That will be another post for another day.

ten below

i knew it was coming,

i had been told countless horror stories of its impending arrival. 

i just didn't really know the true extent of its wrath.

as in, january in chicago.

when it's too cold to snow, that's when it's bad. if i step out my front door into flurry of big fluffy snowflakes, i seem to forget that it's freezing out. i adopt the excitement of a six year old and have to command every muscle in my body to contain my urge to make a snow angel in the empty parking lot next to my building. 

this is going to be a trying time on my appendages. my cheeks and tip of my nose and eyelids will hate me, my fingers will curse my gloves for not working overtime. when i inhale its like my lungs will freeze solid from the air inside them. 

au revoir simone - fallen snow

wait, it gets better!

au revoir simone - fallen snow (teenagers remix)

 

Janet

it's been a long time since i've last posted, i realize. i keep making all these pathetic excuses to myself, saying that i am too busy. While i am busy, i also spend the remainder of my time surfing craigslist or refreshing my facebook on this same computer that i could just as easily be blogging on. But who's interested in what i have to say? i'd much rather comb the "missed connections" late at night. 

And then i decided that i have plenty of odd stories to tell, and while i love scrawling them into my little notebook tucked in my purse, i figured i could publicize a few.

today i'm going to tell you about Janet. or Janice, but i'm pretty sure her name is Janet. She comes in almost every day to the tea cafe where i work, wheeling a small suitcase behind her. She is a small woman, possibly shorter than myself. I cannot even begin to guess her age, but her leathered face makes me lean towards the 40s, but probably not much older. Every day she dresses in a different color scheme. Let's say today is red; her red fuzzy striped socks poke out from under threadbare red corduroys, her red turtleneck complements her red vest, with her big red coat on over them. A red bucket hat and red earrings complete the ensemble. 

She walks up to the register and orders her drink; usually a small vanilla chai with skim and whip cream, but she likes to mix it up and surprise us with a blended lemonade or another concoction. Always whip cream and skim. And she pays with her club card, which as a constant $20 on it. When she orders, she cocks her head slightly, and strokes the ends of her black hair, speaking in a sophisticated tone. Her face is worn and red, i think she has rosacea, and she opens her compact and assesses herself frequently. 

She sits down with her caravan, and begins fiddling with various things. One day, she will be laying out fragments of tin foil on the table. Another day, she pays her bills. She obviously loves cats, as we have gathered from bookmarks and magazine clippings that she has left behind for us. We collect her scraps and post them in the back room, our little shrine to her and her eccentricities. Frequently she will hold up a pen (usually a kitty-themed one, at that), erect at eye-level, like she is an antenna for some alien radio. Aliens, from what i hear, thats what the aluminum foil is about. She talks aloud to herself or an unseen being, sometimes almost shouting and cursing. My coworker said that one she saw her poking herself repeatedly in the eye socket. She writes little poems and omens on notecards and post-its, and when we find them we huddle around it and repeat her eerie words. I wish i could remember the last one we found, some verse about coming to earth and finding hatred. It was sad, and sad to think that that's how Janet feels. That there's hatred. 

One of my coworkers is keeping a mental file on her, like a little side-project. I like Janet, she is a little kooky, but for the most part, harmless. From what i hear, she has toned down her behavior. I'm always nice to Janet, i always make sure she wants whipped cream. I wonder about her, where does she go before she comes in? after she leaves? i hear she goes to our other cafes as well, like a little specter that appears right when you think you lost her. 

edit: 1/7/09

Walking down Madison towards the blue line, i pass by another location of our tea cafe. and sitting against the window, prodding at a sweater with a pair of scissors, is Janet.

She's like a little ghost. 

edit: 1/8/09

these are the two index card messages we have received from Janet:

the first date (1/27/67) marks the flash fire that killed three astronauts on the Apollo-1 mission. 

the next date (1/27-28/86) is the Challenger explosion.

the last date (2/1/03) is the Columbia explosion.

three incidents of astronaut deaths. 

i'm trying to decide what kind of statement she is trying to make. 

are we wrong to infringe on alien territory? are these horrific accidents warnings?

the other one is the poem, actually it could even be a limerick.  

"An artist reborn came in fear.

'Don't write anymore' he did hear.

On Earth he didn't know

He had any foe

'Twas shocking when Hate did appear."

you figure it out.