this city shrinks and grows at a dizzying rate. two of my favorite ladies in the whole wide world and especially in this moody city are taking off for opposite coasts and opposite lives, way too soon for me to fathom. i need more friends to sit in my kitchen and drink whiskey and make coffee and talk about things quiet and slow and fun and fast even before we go out to dance with the rest.
things tug me in different directions. things, lately, are not new.
i am enamored with physical missives, with messages that cling to their objectness, that refuse to travel except from hand to hand. maybe that's half of why i like my job so much; the other half has to do with feeling strong and alive, with the immediate gratification, physicality, sense of completion, in taking one thing from one place to another. no more trying in vain to stretch my bored weary legs behind countertops or talk my way through another long day.
chicago is the antithesis of and the antidote for my urges, both. i close my eyes and think of hills and trees, the scent of pine, mud between my toes and every face easy and familiar on small-town paths. i open them and i'm in love with long long flat streets in every direction, with the hugeness and smallness of everything, with collapsing distances between one place and another as we spin our legs faster and play with the wind and the traffic flow and the way the bike flows smooth n sweet.
sometimes i think that's the only thing that keeps me here, this teeming stupid downtown and the way i can work sort of at once in and out of and beneath it.
but everyone is always looking in ten directions at once, and i just want us to stroll into each others' houses without knocking, move slowly and calmly, dogs and gardens and markets and front porches with creaky swings. something of the south is ringing in my ears, still buzzing in my ribcage, but i don't know if i could shake off the humming pulse of this city.
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