the end

You probably guessed due to my lack of posting that a la deriva is no more. It is true, we have had many adventures together, a la deriva and I, but I have decided to retire it in favor of another project... which isn't ready to be unveiled quite yet. Thanks for reading!

movin on up

Read a post by me on a Chicago Sun-Times blog!

times they are a-changin

I hope you'll believe me when I say I have a list of possible blogs to write, both on paper and in my head. I have the beginnings of at least two more blogs about Israel written in various journals, and a couple more composing themselves in my head. I have ideas of what I can do with this blog that's new, what I can call it, what it can look like, what I can write about. Still a la deriva sits silent, and empty, and sad: Who has time to learn CSS, re-learn HTML, and think, much less write, critically about one's life and surroundings?

Still, I would like to blog everyday. Perhaps I will try.

Monday I begin my new job as an Intern at the Obama for America National Campaign Headquarters. Today I drink morning mimosas and eat sushi for lunch to celebrate and hop on a train that will take me west to Iowa. I've never been to Iowa. Nor, in the last year, have I looked forward to going to work in the morning. Stay tuned...

in the land of promises

More often than not, news from the Middle East is bloody, and images, at least in my first-world mind, are of third-world scenes: starving children, violence, unstable governments, poverty. Perhaps I should have known better from my trip to Morocco (and, come to think of it, the U.S. isn’t exactly starving children-, violence-, and poverty-free itself) but I was surprised to see that Israel was civilized. There were supermarkets and retail stores and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (but, interestingly, no Starbucks—it apparently didn’t go over well there) and flush toilets and clean streets and paved roads and street signs and freeways and nice houses. We didn’t go near the West Bank or the Gaza Strip (which, depending on who you talk to, are not really part of Israel anyway) or to Sderot, where rockets launched from Gaza fall daily, but even though most of the buildings in the rest of the country are ancient, they’re well kept up, and even though it’s only been around as an official state for 60 years, it seems to be doing pretty well culturally, economically, technologically, politically, and otherwise. Still, it wasn’t home.

-----

We were standing in a balmy Tel Aviv evening, a warm breeze was coming off the Mediterranean, American music was permeating the walls of the nearby bar; we were talking about Israel. Rather, Israel and Palestine. We were, after all, in Israel.

I have picked up a few facts about the Israel/Palestine situation over the years but I've never really understood it or trusted any source of information to be true and unbiased. Perhaps this trip and this conversation will serve as my impetus to try harder to supplement my knowledge, some of which I picked up from this trip and this night when I opted to leave the bar because the music was too loud and American, the drinks were too expensive, and there was not one Israeli in the place. Even though the bar was identical to many in Chicago—with the exception of the Goldstar beer label written in Hebrew—there was one distinct and poignant difference. And we were reminded of it at every moment by the vigilant armed guard for our group of 50.

Standing there, listening to opinions about Israel and Palestine with one ear, trying to tune out the washed-out club music with the other, I looked over the tops of the buildings, and at times the boat masts behind me, and wondered if the planes and helicopters flying by were “friendly.” Our guard, holding the largest gun I have even seen, standing just a few feet away gave no sign.


(View of Jerusalem's Old City—note the wall surrounding it and the gold-domed mosque)

And I wondered again, earlier in the day, sitting at the junction of the Armenian quarter, the Jewish quarter, the Muslim quarter, and the Christian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. I watched the men in black hats, beards, suits, with tzitzit and payot walk by, the women in long skirts and dark caps pushing strollers, and the group of dark-skinned little boys not wearing yarmulkes and I looked out over the satellite dishes and white-stone rooftops to the gold-domed mosque that stands on the Jews’ Temple Mount—the fabled site of the creation of the world and the first two synagogues, among other things (see above)—and wondered if the man in the bright-green shirt pacing over the rooftops in front of us with a hand gun at his side in one hand and a walkie talkie in the other was, again, friendly. Our guard was whispering to another participant, but still close by.

And one more time I wondered, in only the second day of our trip, while walking through Shuk Machaneh Yehuda—a blocks-long outdoor market in the New City of Jerusalem—and carrying bags of bright, sweet fresh fruit and some unidentifiable morsels for lunch, a man walked quickly by with a machine gun. I didn't feel I was in danger in Israel, per se; with its rolling hills and subdued greens and palm trees it actually looked a lot like California, home (see below). But there were a few moments during my 10-day trip when, more often than when I’m in the U.S., I stepped back and wondered if my life was in danger.


(California-esque view from our first-night accommodations just outside of Jerusalem, in Shoresh)

I was, after all, in the Middle East. A Jewish state, maybe, or so our tour guide kept reminding us, reminiscent of California, yes, but not quite home nonetheless.

------

You see, before I left, I heard many stories from people, Jews of course, who had gone before, who got a starry look in their eyes when I said I was going to Israel, who said dreamily, “I stepped off the plane and felt like I was home.” “I wish I could go for the first time again, it was so magical.” Even during our final group discussion before we ate our last kibbutz-made dinner and got on the plane, people were saying tearfully, “I didn’t feel like a tourist at all.” Walking in a 50-person group with my sunglasses, hat, sunscreen, humongous water bottle, and camera certainly made me feel like a tourist. And I didn’t believe the “everyone is a Jew” thing either: everyone definitely didn’t look Jewish and there are plenty of Muslims and Christians who live there too.


(Me, dressed modestly, in front of the Western Wall, which is the only remaining piece of the second temple's surrounding wall that stood where the mosque stands today)

The moral of my first, excessively rambling post on my recent trip to Israel is the word “skeptical.” I think if I had taken this trip back when I was an impressionable freshman just learning about my Jewish side and before I went to Spain and saw Europe, it might have completely changed my life. Now, as a skeptical young adult, almost a year into my first full-time job, well, I’m not so impressionable. I wasn't moved to tears when the plane landed, I did not go to synagogue last Friday night, and I wouldn't be too upset if I never took another 12-hour El Al flight. That’s not to say that it didn’t change me at all, though. The recent surge in my Chicago social life can be attributed directly to Birthright. Aspects of the trip, its people, or just Israel recur nightly in my dreams. And I have a certain fondness for the country. My fondness won’t translate into me voting specifically pro-Israel in November, but it does make me read a little closer when I see an Israel-related article during my morning Internet news prowl. The thousands of dollars of philanthropic funding that provided my free trip wasn’t entirely lost on me: I have facts to pursue, questions to answer, issues to think about, and endless fodder for many interesting discussions ahead.

To be continued…

maybe

Maybe if I wrote my posts like this I would have more readers.

I am composing Israel posts. I promise.

violin lessons

Today I found myself in an unlikely situation. I was hiding from the California-esque sun in the cool, dark, faintly sweet-smelling basement workshop of a violin maker and repairman. There were violins of all shapes and sizes hanging from the walls, some with finish, some without, some with strings, some without, some full-sized, some half-sized, some giant (otherwise known, I think, as cellos). The repairman was slightly awkward but friendly, and though I had diagnosed my own problem, he proceeded to tell me all the other things wrong with my eight-month old violin. The strings are too high and cheap and the fingerboard too low, the pegs not "doped" enough. He gave me my choice of three "good" violins with appropriate string-heights and fingerboard angles and set to work, fixing the only fixable problem.


I spent more time staring at the dark graveyard of desks and dressers and couches and painted arches and picture frames that inhabited the basement outside his workshop than I did squeaking out the parts of songs I could remember after two weeks of not playing, convinced it was the violins that were out of tune and not I.

It seemed like such an unassuming place to work: an artists' building with no real need for business or numbers. I paid in crumpled cash. I didn't see the computer in the corner, only the wooden work tables, the mis-matched chairs, the small wood-working tools and the light coming through the distorted glass windows. This is a man who took the less-traveled path. This is a man who does not stare at a computer screen all day. This is a man who gets to surround himself with beauty, in sight and in sound, and he gets a tangible reward from his day's work: a well-working violin, and maybe even a child's smiling face. I certainly walked out of there, into the perfect day, smiling.

One of the reasons I'm a journalist (or I want to be one) is I enjoy finding myself in unlikely situations. Discovering unlikely people. Looking for graffiti under a freeway underpass, watching bikes fly by at a motocross raceway, exploring the bowels of a brand-new clean room in an engineering building, smelling the air in the sanctuary of a LEED-certified environmental synagogue: when I'm in these out-of-the-ordinary situations I like to take a step back, look around, and think, "Not many people can say they have been where I am now." I like to dabble, walk a mile in someone's shoes, and while I don't mind my daily routine, I relish the opportunity to leave it.

to the holy land and back again

I left for Israel without telling you and now I'm back. Lots of words and thoughts and pictures will be up soon...

shiny new

At 1:00 a.m. on Sunday morning as I was speeding along the freshly rained-upon sidewalk on my spiffy new bicycle (yes, the sidewalk, and don't worry, I didn't go further than that crack), the quiet moist air in my mouth, the wind brushing across my face and through my hair, I thought to myself as my lips moved into a smile, "This move was a great idea."

You see, last year at around this time, before I bought my one-way ticket to Chicago but after I started thinking seriously about moving here, I focused a lot of my decision-making energies on whether I thought I would regret the move later. Now I see that however badly I think I'm doing now, or how everything turns out later on, this move could never induce regret. While I probably won't end up here in the long run (though I can never be sure--I may be living on a corn farm in central Illinois in 10 years) I seem to have surrounded myself with very thoughtful friends. I may not have the quantity I had in college or the social life (yes, sometimes I go to sleep at 11:30 on a Saturday night), but I have met some very good people. And in my slightly less than a year here, I have received two of the most thoughtful gifts anyone outside my family has ever given me (of course not counting the many nice gifts my family has given me over the years).

The "new" bike that I was so gleefully riding the other night was presented to me as a no-occasion surprise Saturday afternoon in the living room of my boyfriend's apartment. I had my ears and my eyes sufficiently covered, and when the hands came away, the bicycle pretty much of my dreams was sitting between the alley-found armchairs and the old wooden floor.

"To what do I owe this amazing gift?" I stammered with amazement, gazing at the slightly faded black frame, the shiny handlebars, the cushy seat, the rusty fenders (perfect for painting white and red).

Apparently my friend has been eyeing it all winter, where it sat unlocked near a hidden bar on a forgotten street populated mostly by warehouses. She sat for a day or two scrubbing at the rust, tuning up the chain, fixing the flat tire until it was roadworthy and presented it to me with a smile. It still needed a little work, but it was a nice smooth ride. "What do you think?" she asked. I felt like Ralphie in The Christmas Story; of course I was thrilled to have my very own bike, and for free! And more importantly, my friend was thinking of me.

My new bike looks something like this, but black, a little rusty, and minus the metal thing in the back: (I will post a real picture when it's completed)


I will be speeding around the city with it upon my return from Israel when, I'm hoping, it will finally be warm. I'm pretty sure Spring doesn't exist here. Sure it's lovely: the trees are blooming and the colorful tulips are opening, but it's 53 right now... and it doesn't seem to ever want to get warm!

Nevertheless, I had my window open this morning, and in the couple minutes I had to kill before leaving for work I was playing my other most thoughtful gift--a red violin--as softly as possible in the crisp sunny morning breeze.

blue oblivion

I shuffled over to the pool's edge yesterday afternoon, dodging puddles and little kids, sweating slightly from my brisk mile walk from the train station, the relatively warm weather, and the hellishly wet, warm locker room.

"Hey Lindsey," my coach declared from the pool with a wave and a smile. "You're the youngest person on the team now! You beat the youngest by four months!"

Evidently, I joined a swim team. I think it's safe to announce now that I've canceled my gym membership, filled out my forms, written a check, and been to every practice but one for the past two weeks. Apparently, in addition to being arguably the most out-of-shape swimmer on the team, I'm also the youngest.

I'm no stranger to being the youngest--odd, I know, considering I'm the oldest in my family. Regardless, by virtue of the fact that my birthday is on the late end of the Kindergarten cut-off date, I have always surrounded myself with people that are slightly older. And since graduating, the people I have surrounded myself with are older still--I'm the youngest in my apartment, the youngest in my office, the youngest of most of my friends (even those still in college), the younger in my relationship...

It doesn't matter, really. I was making friends at swimming who were 24 and 30 before anyone knew the difference. But still, there is a slight difference. I tend to group all of my peers in the same general age group, the 20s, but I constantly have to remind myself that while I'm figuring out what I want to do with my life and anticipating my one-year anniversary with my boyfriend, my 27-28-year-old friends might be thinking about marriage and kids. That, and they like to make fun of me for being as old as their younger, snot-nosed siblings.

But if my same-aged peers are not at work and not swimming and not living with me and are not my friends, where are they? Some of them are in college, some are traveling the world, some are in grad school, some are living with their parents--there's no way to know for sure.

Lucky for me, my age is not holding me back at swimming, thanks to my youthful muscles and my many, many years of swimming regularly before my couple-year hiatus in college. Regardless of how successful I am at it, I've come to realize that it's just plain essential for my sanity: I never realized how much I needed a time without cell phones and computers and dealing with people and expectations. It's an hour off three times a week, and it's small in comparison to the 40 hours per week I work and the 168 hours per week I worry, but it certainly helps.

on a tragic note:

There was a shark attack in San Diego on Friday that killed a swimmer at a cove I used to swim at with my team during the summer. That hits a little too close to home.

this is not a political blog...

Nor do I want it to be. But this article/blog is my favorite of the week and I couldn't resist posting it:

Drop Out, Obama

R.I.P. Banana

I was eating a late dinner last night at the little green folding table in our kitchen while talking to my little sister on the phone, when I happened to notice out of the corner of my eye that my roommate was up on her knees on the kitchen counter, with her head jammed in the little space between the window and the cabinet and her butt sticking straight up in the air. There was a faint smell of banana wafting past my nose.

"Uh, what are you doing?"

"I dropped a banana. And it didn't just fall on the windowsill, it fell behind the cabinet. These things only happen to me!"

I sighed, hung up with my sister, and left my dinner half-eaten on the table while she jumped off the counter and started furiously opening and slamming drawers and cabinets. Short of dismantling the cabinets, there was no way get behind the cabinet from the front, so we'd have to get there from the back: a one-foot wide by three-foot deep space under the counter and behind the cabinet, mostly obscured by a metal bar across the top and the wall below the window. Or risk the return of Nelson (formerly known as Squeaky) and living with a kitchen that perpetually smelled of rotting banana. We got to work.

I held the flashlight and my roommate, a coat hanger. The banana was sitting about three feet down in the middle of a graveyard of never-again-played CDs, dust, and scraps of paper. When the coat hanger proved useless, I bent it a different way a tried again while my roommate held the flashlight. With each pierce of the metal coat hanger in the bruising yellow skin came another whiff of the future smell of our kitchen, made all the more dramatic by the dull thump I heard each time I tried to lift the hanger and the slick meat of the banana slipped off. We opened the window that hadn't been open since last summer, hoping we could unscrew the gate over it and get through the hole from a different angle. We were greeted by a shower of pebbles.

I taped a spatula securely to the end of the coat hanger and fished around while my roommate pawed through our drawers, looking for a pair of tongs, a barbecue poker, or anything more sturdy than a coat hanger. She stuck her arm down the hole as far as it would go, her head jammed awkwardly against the windowsill, one leg stretched straight up in the air. Her arm and taught fingers were just slightly too short to reach the now black banana. The circle of the flashlight bounced around in the hole while I giggled, my roommate teetering dangerously on her one hand on the counter, shaking from laughter.

We found a metal pounder of some sort, with a long handle and a sturdy base held by a triangle of metal arms that was just thin enough to maybe, just maybe, stick under the banana. I stuck my finger in the loop at the end of the instrument, stuck my arm down the hole, and very carefully scooped up the banana. We stifled our laughs and tried not to make a sound as I slowly raised the banana, my roommate ready with her hand to grab it. She did, and it ended up, like the mouse, securely fastened in a plastic bag, black and furry with dust, waiting to go down to the dumpster with the rest of the trash.

I finished my dinner. But I'm not sure I'll ever look at bananas the same way again.

remember the earth

It is Earth Day. Just in case you haven't seen enough top-10 tips on reducing your carbon emissions lately, I'm going to add my own to the mix. I am by no means an expert on the environment, but I have picked up a couple of easy and environmentally friendly practices that I have, for the most part, added to my routine, and I hope you will try to add to yours. In no particular order:

1. Walk, bike, run, or take public transportation instead of driving. If you must drive, drive a car that gets good gas mileage.

2. Use reusable cloth bags instead of paper or plastic at the supermarket and during other shopping trips.

3. Replace all of your light bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent ones.

4. Turn off the lights when not in use and turn off and unplug all all electronics when not in use. Buy energy-saver appliances and electronics when replacing old ones.

5. Turn your heat cooler a few degrees in the winter and your air conditioning a few degrees warmer in the summer. You will save energy and money on your utilities bill and you probably won't notice the difference.

6. Take shorter showers and don't leave the water running when you're brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. Run the dishwasher only when it's full and don't rinse the dirty dishes beforehand.

7. Buy local whenever possible (buy your produce at the farmer's market instead of at the supermarket). Buy fair trade.

8. Use Tupperware (or the equivalent non-brand version) to store food instead of plastic bags. Try to reuse them if you do. Use a reusable lunch bag or an old plastic bag as a lunch bag and garbage can liner instead of a brown bag. Buy a reusable water bottle for your water instead of single-use bottles. If you use a single-use bottle, recycle it.

9. Buy secondhand whenever possible. Buy books at used book stores or borrow them from the library.

10. Don't print this list out. Commit it to memory. Try to read most electronic documents on-screen. If you must print, use scratch paper or recycle it after you're done with it. Buy food and items with less packaging and recycle whatever isn't trash.

If you have any other easy tips to add, please do comment below!

more about water...

An addition to my post on water: The New York Times had a story today that further explains why certain plastics could be dangerous (specifically, the plastic that's used in Nalgene bottles).

Yes, I realize I could drive myself nuts by trying to understand and eliminate every object and activity and material and food in our world that may, in some cases, cause cancer. But if it's an easy enough fix, why not?

the unifier

A few times per month, or whenever I can, I venture down to volunteer at the unassuming storefront that is The Boring Store and its hidden 826CHI. (Pause for me to get out my journalistic writing style:) Founded in the Bay Area by the brilliant (my own editorializing) contemporary writer Dave Eggers, 826 exposes children of a variety of ages and skill levels to a variety of different styles of writing through free field trips, in-class visits, and workshops at nights and on weekends. It encourages excitement about literacy through these programs, along with its free tutoring program, in a creative and non-academic atmosphere. In short, it's amazing.

(Pause for me to ditch the fact-laden journalistic writing style in favor of something more descriptive:) Its sign is a confusing mix of words and sentences that do not amount to any understanding whatsoever of the organization inside. In the window is an uninteresting collection of brown boxes and some question marks. The first time I walked by I thought it was a box store, lacking any better explanation for the windows that stand adjacent to a row of old-fashioned furniture store neighbors with wrought-iron security gates. In the store is a random and creative assortment of supplies for spies, each displayed with its own personal brown box. Every aspect of this place is meticulously thought-out, from the mannequins equipped with black spy mustaches to the one-way mirror into the store from the classroom. And kids go wild upon entering. Even I, an adult (who admittedly retains some childlike impulses), like the brightly colored floor and the 50-something spy cameras that point toward the front door and the old-fashioned cash register.

Last week, on my once-a-month day off, I got up early and made my way to 826 as I often do for a field trip with a first grade class from the South Side. Without going into too much detail about the experience, the class goes on a field trip to 826, which, we tell them, turns into a publishing house during the day with a very mean and mysterious boss named Moody. A volunteer teachers the kids about what goes into a story, the class creates the beginning of an often very strange original story which is illustrated by another volunteer (once a second- or third-grade class wrote about a trilobite festival, creatures I had never before even heard of) and each student is directed to finish the half-finished story and create illustrations.

This is all beside my main point in writing about 826, which I am finally getting to. In this class of first-graders from the South Side, there was not one white student. There were maybe two Hispanic students, but the rest of the twenty-something kids in the class were black. The teacher was young and white. All of the volunteers and the full-time staff at 826 were white (and the majority young and female).

In the confines of the store, and even in the real world, none of this really matters, of course. Any kid, any class, regardless of location of the school in Chicago's rather strictly segregated North, South, and West Sides, regardless of parents' income and anything else, obviously gets the same program and the same number of volunteers, and the same professional-looking bound and "published" books at the end of the field trip. But the reason I bring it up, I guess, is to illustrate Chicago's persistent problem with gentrification and segregation based, unfortunately, on income and race. I don't know exactly what kind of area this school is located in or anything about the home-life of the children. I won't venture any explanations or solutions, as growing up in SoCal, diversity outside of white or Hispanic or Asian isn't really my specialty.

I will, however, keep volunteering.

taste of summer

It is the warmest day of the year so far--69 by my last count--and the streets are teeming with wanderers reluctant to sit in their offices and there's not a cloud in the sky.

Yet Chicagoans, perhaps some of the most resilient folk in the country when it comes to weather, are strangely attached to their coats. Even today, when skirts or dresses without tights, when short sleeves, when even sandals are acceptable attire, the vast majority of the street wanderers still have all their skin covered and they are still wearing their coats, myself included. A jacket has become almost an extension of oneself at this point: we have been carrying around jackets, big and small, for the past six or seven months, and to go without one now is a bit uncomfortable--or even risky. Just like going without an umbrella in summer is inadvisable (due to those mid-afternoon or evening downpours), going without a jacket between approximately October and May is like taking walking on the wild side. Literally, at any moment, even on the warmest day of the year so far, the temperature could start to drop and the warm, happy non-jacket wearer could find him or herself not so warm and happy anymore. It wouldn't be the first time the temperature has changed 20-30 degrees in one day. So we cling to our jackets and our tights (yes, I am including myself with the Chicagoans--I am wearing a skirt with tights and a jacket today), even when they make sweat, even when they seem unnecessary in the face of the bright light sun. It is not summer yet.

all about water

Apparently, there is no proof that water is actually good for you. What they forgot to mention is there's no proof it's bad for you either. What does this mean? Keep drinking water. Obviously, everyone makes their own rules, but I say, if my body is made up of mostly water, it makes sense to put some water in, especially if I'm thirsty.

There is also no proof that the plastic in Nalgene bottles is bad for you, but it might be. And there is proof that single-use water bottles are not meant to be reused, and that steel water bottles emit no questionable chemicals into the water bottled inside. I have been an avid user of Nalgene bottles in all shapes and sizes for about two years now, and I'm making the switch to steel.

diet decisions

For the past seven-plus years, my not eating red meat, and my usually not eating pig-products or lamb, and my occasional rejection of any meat or fish whatsoever has been a fairly easy and "just understood" sort of choice. Everyone who knows me knows I don't eat these things, and most of my friends are vegetarian anyway, so it's not an issue. And if it, for any reason, becomes a not-so-easy choice and I run out of ways to explain it or I'm just not feeling it anymore, I'll adjust my dietary constraints accordingly. I started eating poultry instead of being a vegetarian, I started eating pig-products and fish in Spain, and now, while I still eat poultry and fish and shellfish and don't eat red meat or any other strange kinds of meat, I will occasionally have a piece of good Spanish ham, or prosciutto, or a piece of bacon on a sandwich.

Lately, however, I have been thinking about becoming an occasional beef-eater, making it an occasional treat like prosciutto or good Spanish ham. I don't think I'll ever be the type to eat a steak, or even ever really order beef at a restaurant or make it at home, but it might be nice to eat a real meatball every once in awhile, have a real hamburger, try a bite of corned beef or pastrami, eat a famous Chicago hot dog... I feel there are some culinary delights out there that I have never tried, and maybe should before I decide to reject them.

That said, there were a few times this weekend when I could have eaten a bite of beef. Corned beef, which frankly looked delicious on marble rye, pastrami on a novel pretzel-style roll at one of my favorite sandwich restaurants in Chicago, veal-that-looked-like-chicken at a German restaurant in my neighborhood (Now that I think about it, though, I don't think I'll ever want to even try veal, judging from the bad things my parents have said about it my whole life, being that it's from a baby cow and all). Even though I had the opportunity to become a full-fledged meat eater this weekend, I didn't. My excuse was what it normally is: "I haven't eaten beef for seven years and I don't know how my stomach would react." This time my theory was debunked by a doctor who insisted that a human stomach is equipped to digest meat, whether or not it has been getting the practice.

Regardless, though I'm curious about certain beef-based items, I realize the reason I rejected my opportunities to taste is because I don't actually want to become a beef eater. After reading The Jungle, after recently becoming more and more concerned with the environment, I don't need it and I don't really want it.

Strangely enough, in the same train of thought that I think about eating beef occasionally, I also think about becoming vegetarian again. Or "fishatarian." I rarely ever make meat of any sort at home, so it wouldn't really be too much of a change. But maybe I like having the freedom to eat the occasional turkey sandwich, chicken tortilla soup... philly cheese steak?

Evidently, I'm no closer to a decision.

eyelids droop

This is rather a bad habit I've developed, probably due to years of writing articles late into the night at the Daily Nexus office and writing essays after that while the dark waves crashed on the invisible beach outside my window. I can't seem to produce quality work during the day, but in the middle of the night, when I seem to have all the time in the world to edit and re-write, my writings, or in this case, my articles, move along swimmingly. Not only do I not get paid enough to spend eight hours working and another three writing at night, but I do not start work late enough to be able to stay up until the early morning and still be high-functioning in the morning.

Having recognized this, I could now go to sleep. But this might just be the highlight of my work week, writing along to the quiet drone of my 109 Ani DiFranco songs on shuffle as my eyelids droop.

silence

Once every two months or so I experience complete silence in the city.

This morning I was lying in bed for one last sweet second after my alarm went off when I noticed it. The fan was off. My incessant alarm was, thankfully, off. My thoughts were still groggy. All the 8:00 commuters had already left, so there was no creaking on the stairs or around the apartment. And most notably, there were no cars honking, speeding up, or stopping at the nearby lights, and there were no buses stopping with squeaky brakes, speeding up with noisy, dirty exhaust, or otherwise announcing their presence--the street or the route or the fact you can answer any further questions at www.transitchicago.com. Thank you for riding the CTA.

-----

I haven't quite decided if I like living in a big city. I like this city, I like its variety, I like its public transportation (even if it means I can't get to anything on time)--notice I DIDN'T say I like its weather--but big cities in general are horrible messes of places that are often exciting to visit but easy to leave. I think Chicago assuages (GRE word) the mess slightly by being sprawling and composed of 70-something different neighborhoods that each have their own feel: urban, suburban, European, gritty, clean, you name it. It still is a horrible mess, though. The public schools are bad, the north side is disproportionally richer and therefore better funded and maintained than the south and west sides, the sales tax--I just discovered--is over 9% and rising because of the transit system's budget and staffing and service woes... but there's a strange power to it all. I like working downtown, riding the train, craning my neck so I can try to see the top of the Sear's Tower (difficult), strutting across streets like I have something to do and like I know where to go (usually, I have both).

My friend asked me not too long ago if it bothers me that there are people everywhere. Before she asked I hadn't actually thought too much about it... there are so many ways to escape these days, from listening to music, to watching videos, to just plain reading. Then, sometimes, even with all these people, it's quiet. But when I think about the big mess and all the cars and people and hurry and bustle, I want to go back to my little bubble next to the Pacific Ocean, where I could hear the waves.