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The few weeks after coming home from six weeks at Ragdale/west coast were a bit blurry and discombobulated, getting my bearings and catching up on neglected things, finding ground. Then I left for southern California for wearemany and downmiles nuptials, prior to which I was a bit concerned about my state of being, but after a quiet weekend to regroup, I flew out there and put together a fun performance and then MCed the burlesque bachelorette party and it was quite possibly the most perfect event ever. I mean, I know I was involved in it, so that sounds a bit biased, but what I mean was that the whole evening felt that way to everyone involved, simultaneously, so it had more this collective experience of creative flow. I think probably it was the confluence of love and affection in the room combined with the performances, and the occasion, (and the production talents of willagurl), and it was just one of those amazing sum-is-greater-than-the-parts experiences that I felt so glad to be a part of, in the moment and forever, I loved knowing that experience would always be there as part of the lifelong story, it was amazing to do that for someone you love, who is family, and to bear witness to similar acts all along the way the next day for the ceremony and party itself. It was humbling in a way that made me feel proud. Afterwards I cruised down to San Diego on the train and hung out with anjiyama where we sang and sang and sang and sang and had a mutual adoration fest. I'm so full of love for her, even when we are salty. Going out there and seeing Noriko, and S, and Angie, it really was a trip to see family and it felt exactly like that in all the best ways.

Then I came home and crashed. It has been a hard couple weeks, which is not to say it now feels magically easy now either, its just that the inner voice in my head has stopped being the berating awful drill sergeant and now is more like a dry but sweet british gent. He makes recommendations on what I should do next in a way that is much more charming than that other dude. I also came home with a cold, that was never severe, just tenacious and slow to heal, and the weather been very dreary here, not just grey but blustery and rainy and therefore slightly more difficult to negotiate leaving the house. The weather is still not great, there was hardly any sun today, but little rain, so I rode my bike everywhere and had coffee with the Lovely and Talented cocolola and the also Lovely and Talented IRX, then biked to the gym and over on that side of town there are huge houses on tree-lined streets that are flooded in yellow now from all the trees, the leaves depart the branches before they turn brown, they are in their color prime but drop off, since here in Chicago autumn is less of a season and more of a fortnight. (But o! what a fortnight it is.)

I have been feeling more balanced, less doomsday, it got really dreary and scary there a moment or two, and partially my condition has been helped by a new work project that had deadlines and is creative and challenging and even pays me. Some switch got flipped in the brain though, or maybe the drill sergeant got exhausted and fell asleep, but more likely I'm just realizing, nine months after leaving my therapist, that he was right, I am hard on myself. Now that it is my job to manage that, I'm seeing exactly what he means. Though I still have to trick myself into changing the behavior, I have to spin it as being kinder to myself means I can actually get it together to do whatever it is I'm browbeating over. Which, I guess isn't exactly spin, but you know what I mean. I can't be kinder to myself simply for the sake of it. That's advanced level gaming, I'm not there yet.

I had this realization a couple weeks ago that I wasn’t going to get a teaching job I wanted for this fall, I am so barely qualified and there is such intense competition in the applicant pool. I was aiming for something that would be a gamble during a good economy, but is probably statistically equal right now to winning the lottery. (Maybe I shouldn’t have just read that news story about unemployment statistics just now, but too late.) When I resigned myself to the particular failure of my campaign, I was disappointed but no self-loathing about it. Last night I had a bout of feeling quite foolish for even making the attempt, it was unpleasant. Given the federal stimulus package, I should be getting unemployment benefits until January, and then who knows. Prior to that who knows. But I’ve decided that until then, I will write like hell. Perhaps this is what I finally need to turn some mental blocks around, I mostly have lived the soft life of writing merely for pleasure or art or whim, and maybe what I need is some time writing as if my life (and my rent and food source) depend on it. Journalists are bred and shaped this way, it makes them hearty and quick; creative writers, maybe we are accidentally coddling ourselves. We didn’t even have the academic challenge of the giant thesis exactly, though I did turn in 100 pages of creative work in exchange for my degree, so I shouldn’t sell myself short completely. Anyway, the point of all this is right now in my life, I don’t really feel like I have anything to ground and stabilize and identify myself except for my writing, and I am going to take this as a sign, universe, before you start stripping me of more things. Then again, let’s look at it from the other side that’s more empowering: maybe I am equally stripping and releasing things as others are being taken.

It is difficult to express the quantity of relief and excitement I have about getting on a plane tomorrow. I would probably be happy to get on one going in any direction, to any city, so its even better that its not any city, it’s a city I’ve wanted to visit and never have, it's a visit to Miss Katrina, and later the rest of the merry band of grad school family in a cabin in the woods next to a river with a hot tub on the deck. Or rather, a soft tub, but such differences are negligible to me. Of course, its supposed to stop raining in Chicago right around the time it starts raining in Portland, which all this is happening about 12 hours after I land, but it wouldn’t be Portland without a little of that, I suppose. It is festive even.

Here are all the times I think about how my daily rituals have been changed by loss: coming home, opening the door to the apartment, leaving the apartment, waking up in the morning and not needing to put on clothes to stand in the backyard, getting home at night and not having to leave on my pants because I’m going right down the back stairs, picking up my keys to put in my pocket, putting on shoes, cooking meat, using the can opener, singing outloud, talking to myself, hearing dogs bark outside, doorbell ringing, running through the house to catch a phonecall, dropping food on the floor, walking past the orange futon in the middle room, sitting on the toilet, plastic bags in the house, going for a walk in the neighborhood, sitting on the couch, opening the kitchen window, opening the back screen door to the porch, whistling, doing laundry, vacuuming, thunderstorms, naptime.

In other words, about fifty times a day. Yeah, I need to get the hell away from here for awhile.

Its after midnight, but you know the rules, I’m not asleep yet so its still Sunday night, its still Sunday. I noticed the clock at 11:40 pm and thought I could squeeze something out ,but then I got distracted as usual and now its clearly after midnight, no skirting in. I went to temple this morning and felt for the first time how it actually feels like being there on a Sunday morning is my default. I’m not always there, but nowadays I am more often than I’m not, and funny how that happens more often on accident than intentionally. Or rather, the intention sneaks around the side and doesn’t have that direct look we think.

Sophie isn’t much better, but isn’t worse. This morning she drank the tuna water from a can that I drained, I rejoice and opened another, and another. She drank only a few licks more, but it was something. And at least all the tuna I could throw into a plastic container and throw in the fridge and eat for lunch this week, its not wasted food like the gross dried up bits of boiled hamburger and noodles that went untouched. Tonight she ate about 5 bites of chicken before giving up. Jet and Jyl came over and it was good to have company, also to eat delicious snacks and build magic rock aquariums. Now it is bedtime but I want to stay up late and I suppose I can, there isn’t a hard and fast rule , maybe I will write my movie review tonight (rather than my usual 7 am Monday slot) and sleep in, maybe it will thunderstorm through the night and I will sleep under blankets with the windows open.

I am hermiting, it started yesterday, continuing today, maybe tomorrow. I mean, I am leaving the house I suppose, it is just mostly to interact with the strangers at the post office, library, a bar where I order a late lunch. Today I decided to bring flowers to Bopkyong because it is her birthday and halfway there I got concerned about the type of flowers that would not convey the wrong message, and found pink gerber daisies, and I know some people are not fans, but I am, and I thought she would be too, and those are a festive, friendly flower with little possibility of romantic misconstruance. That is not a word, at least it wasn’t until just now. I felt confident in my purchase, but then nervous upon presentation, and there was a certain awkwardness to it because she was so taken aback by the gesture, not in anyway that was insulting. Funny how in the moment I passed it off as I was in the neighborhood running errands anyway, but the reality is I put on shoes and got on my bike specifically to buy this small pot of flowers and deliver them, and then I rode home. That seemed too intimate to confess in the vestibule as I put my sunglasses back on and said my goodbyes.

While riding my bike in roscoe village, I passed a march of elementary school students, carrying handmade signs and chanting, walking in protest formation down the sidewalk. They appeared to be going to an anti-bullying rally, two blocks down at the playground, as their signs and songs and direction would indicate. It was amazing to see.

On the way home, the first chink in summer’s armor: stranded behind the garbage truck while on your bike.