I'm planning on leaving Chicago, the city of my birth behind me. If I had it my way I would have left it awhile back when my whole entire family packed up and left (smartly). It was a melancholic affair, my parents were rooted in the home which was of immense historical richness in our family history. They bought it at the time at $29,000, a 5 bedroom Victorian style craftsman home, and sold it for 840K. I grew up in this house and I believe I'll always have a very powerful nostalgic attachment to it. Don't most romantics feel such sentimental investments in places? Especially when said places becomes a living time capsule, or a phantom limb in our brains where we remember having dwelt within those places, spent time, had conversations, had mems there. Sometimes nobody gives much heed to . . .
A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too longPascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon . . .
Status update
Dear future me,It's the 9th day into the new year. Surreal, it's as if all of the festivities, bad sweater parties, and hoopla just motioned blurred past us.I made some resolutions, I don't usually because I'm a goal setter naturally and find this timeless tradition more of a overture of meaningless half hearted practice. Perhaps some kickstart new years with new goals, but few seldom actualize them.Anyway I always keep mines as manageable and attainable:Read more: typically I'll read a book a month. Book for pleasure reading varies, sometimes I want a swords & sorcery genre, other times a mystery thriller that seems to be taking place in Norway/Sweden more than anywhere in the world, and some others are just novels with a particular niche genre. Yet like movies there's . . .
Our House
Our house....is a very very nice house.....I'm a time traveler today. Destination: sometime in the 80's.The scene is uptown, the near north side of Chicago. It was a ramshackle, peculiar, eclectic and architecturally aesthetic hood. Seemed to be in a constant state of disrepair, the buildings of uptown were built with a long faded glory of America's heyday. That time when people wore suits in their apartments and it was perfectly normal to be drinking a martini and having a cigarette too while saying a bunch of whimsical witticisms and laughing at life's cruelties with a cavalier smugness. Or: crazy white people living in a plastic bubble wrap existence. Uptown was a melting pot of immigrants and hill billy rednecks, and a diverse bunch of friends I couldn't have whipped up. Yet . . .
Old Soul
I am the odd one out and I nearly always stand out from the herd I'm the poster child of different, just as you are uniqueness + distinctivenessthe multitudes of lotus eaters join en'masse with the cult of conformity thinking to find acceptance, embracing of themselves only to find it was never there in the first place . . .
Instapoets
they caused quite an uproar baffling my malcontents with the resounding praises of gratuitous adoration unworthy of our explorationdisruption stirring in the hearts + minds of masters of elegant craft, dethroned in their mansions built with lego blocks of purity and intellect those usurpers were mere children! Bratty ones at thatHow dare they hack the system of snooty mostly white men/women lauded authoritarians of wordplay to their chagrinthey were beaten down by the emo prattlers untalented millennials who understood technology and how to sucker their cult followers into liking their Korean drama google translated into wannabe poetrynow us lower ranked poets who dreamed dreams of rising and having our works shine, can finally take heart that even our worst pieces were snowflake . . .
New Years Day
New Years eve day
dear future self,9:45 amTomorrow's new years day. Tonight I'll ring in the new year and lounging in some classy digs, namely The Drake hotel. Not in downtown Chicago but in Oak Brook, IL home of the HQ of Mcky D's if you please. I remember all the times past before the epic celebratory auspicious occasion. Friends frantically trying to set plans within plans, furiously pooling resources together, everybody connecting dots like it's an Ocean 11's bank robbery heist...thinking every contingency with militant precision. If only humans could be so focused, so thoughtful of details that they commonly ignore and overlook....perhaps the world would be less dull and ignorant. Think even beyond this at how much happier people could/ought/should be if they worked in tandem instead of making . . .
Delete me
To prepare myself for upcoming 2019, I went out of my way to delete my entire collection of anti-social media accounts I really felt less than perked up to actually maintain. Besides this, I firmly believe that wasting yourself and your precious time festering on them is damaging to your psyche as well as your own thought life. After awhile when you rub shoulders with people who willingly live on such channels you start thinking along the same lines of other conformists who think this is edifying. . . .
A Description of the Field
I come here to meditate in the early morning, when nobody is around. Stoops loves it here, and before this his home had been Horner park by my old digs where he grew up from puppy status, or Mc'Fetridge park right beside it. I missed those places and all of the random encounters with strangers, usually neighborhood residents walking their dogs out. I loved peeking into the condo windows across the street, catching snippets of people enjoying their own lives or seating around an inviting table partaking in a sumptuous meal. I can't remember the last time my entire family was assembled together. There's also Gomper's park close by which has an attached forest preserve (La'Bagh woods) that's awesome for hiking and having a quick BBQ somewhere relatively scenic. . . .
Sulzer Conrad Library
There's a plethora of 'places' that resonates within me, memories of my having been there at some point or other. One such is this particular library where I used to go after school quite a bit. I'd marvel at the plethora of fantasy & sci fi novels they always had on display. Even if I never read them thoroughly I did enjoy the cover art :) and I'd get lost in books on graphic design, typography, art, and other macabre books. Or the sci fi Princess Leia wannabe retro galaxy girls in gleaming gold bikini's and laser guns. . . .
Crazy boring Asians
The most horrendous movie of 2018 goes to.....Crazy Boring Asians! Hurray!! Honestly I'd rather have watched something like 50 shades of black (which I plan to, like tonight).Worst eva book to screen adaptations I had to suffer through on a movie night recently was this overhyped gem which I knew would eventually become a film. Barnes & Noble has been pimping this book for some time now, not so subtly too. What a stupid title I'd think whenever I saw it. . . .
Shape of my ♥
He deals the cards as a meditation And those he plays never suspect He doesn't play for the money he wins He don't play for respect He deals the cards to find the answer The sacred geometry of chance The hidden law of a probable outcome The numbers lead a dance I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier I know that the clubs are weapons of war I know that diamonds mean money for this art But that's not the shape of my heart He may play the jack of diamonds He may lay the queen of spades He may conceal a king in his hand While the memory of it fadesI know that the spades are the swords of a soldier I know that the clubs are weapons of war I know that diamonds mean money for this art But that's not the shape of my heart That's not the shape The shape of my heart If I told her that . . .
Groovie Movies : December
It's that time once again, winter...you're stuck indoors without a thing to watch. Netflix is spent, other channels are dry as a bone. Well, you're here right now reading this so obviously you're either A. bored or B. extremely bored or C. just really want my secret movie recommendations.Everybody likes their own thang, and I'm not a cinema nerd (I just play one in real life). Here's a few and my cute notes as to why they're even up on this. . . .
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.” . . .
