The price of being.
Written on 19 April 2008 by DuoToday is my mother’s birthday.
In keeping with her usual flair for moments that disturb the soul, we received her ashes today. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother dearly. But she was not always a happy woman. She was mired in a black hole of guilt and awash in feelings of regret and negativity that often caused her to project a lot of what she felt toward other people.
The main target’s were usually my brother and I.
She managed to pass away the day after my brother’s birthday. A big gift for my brother, who still lives with the sting of Dad dying on xmas eve. At least he wouldn’t have to live with the dismal memory of Mom dying on his birthday. I still live with the sting of Dad dying when he did. But it would have been a double whammy for Rival.
But, as always, it seems everything my mother gives, comes at a price. Her parting gift to us was to come home on her birthday. I really do not know how to feel about it. I do know, it has disturbed the very core of my being. While I am not about to start reading tea leaves and chicken entrails, I do have a keen sense of signs and portents at times. I know things happen for a reason. I know that there are moments in life where everything comes together to make a profound statement. Sometimes we don’t recognize it, sometimes we are incapable of deciphering it’s meaning. Nonetheless, they are there for the examination by all.
I am both pleasantly surprised and terrified by such things.
Current Mood:
Lonely & 
Moody & 
Thoughtful
Back to city life…
Written on 11 April 2008 by Duo
The thing that I have had to get used to the most, returning to city life in Chicago, is the fact that I am somewhere old, but in many ways it’s new to me. I live on a street that I pretty much spent my childhood on, despite the fact that I lived about a mile away on Sheridan Road. Everything is familiar, and comfortable, and at the same time new and freshly interesting. I can look at places, as I walk to my EL stop and almost everywhere I see a memory of my childhood. They say you can’t go home again, but this is about the closest thing to it. It really is. Of course, on the flip side of it, there are new memories being forged each new day.
The neighborhood is nice, clean and safe. Everyone is settling in just fine now. Selphie is preparing to return to school next week. Rival is hard on the job trail. I get each morning to a significantly shorter commute. After a week I have it down to a science. Took me 40 minutes to get downtown this morning. Of course, there are the stupider elements of living here too. On rainy days, you have the morons who insist on walking down crowded streets like Monroe with friggin golf umbrella’s. I had one woman nearly slice my face clean off with one the other day. The tourista’s who insist on trying to mosey down wells with 5 kids in tow at 5:30 and wondering why they are getting crushed by the foot traffic.
But, you deal with it. It’s all worth it. It feels so damn good to be back in this city, I cannot even put it into words. I really can’t.
One of the things I am coming to discover, is the difference between perception of city folk, and the reality of city folk. For the last 6-7 years, I have lived in abundantly rural or suburban type areas. Saint Louis is not so much a city as it is a bunch of disjointed neighborhoods haphazardly jammed together. Mount Vernon was as Ag-Industrial as you can get. And many of the people in rural areas consider the city a cold, uninviting place. Muggers and rapists and unhappy people live in city’s.
But to be honest, I have had more social and friend-making contact in the last 3 weeks, than I have had in the last 6 years. Rural areas are only really socially friendly if you try really hard to integrate yourself into their culture. City’s are always a melting pot. You can make friends and acquaintances simply by being just about anyplace at anytime. You sometimes meet one new person, and in a week via that one person, you now know 10 new people. You don’t have to join the PTA, or go to a community center in a city to meet new folks.
So, in any event…I have gotten used to being back here just fine and spiffily. I am stable again, and I am loving it to no end.
Current Mood:
Happy & 
Jubilant
Back for the long haul
Written on 9 April 2008 by DuoDigital Arcadia is now in its permanent home.
It wont be moving anytime soon. I promise.
Current Mood:
Accomplished
Surreality on a Saturday
Written on 31 March 2008 by DuoSo, saturday I had to work. No big deal, it all went down without a hitch.
I had to get up early, and get on an 8:55 AM train, out of the Chicago St. Elgin station. So, I get up, shower and get dropped off at Elgin Terminal. I got there around 8 AM, and anyone who knows me knows when I had time to kill, I decided to have a smoke before sitting patiently in the station house.
While smoking, I had the most surreal situation occur. A fellow in a motorized wheelchair came up to me and we had a very strange conversation:
Him: Hi
Me: Hello there.
Him: I just wanted to compliment you, you’re gorgeous.
Me: Uh, thanks.
Him: Really, you are. It’s the beard, it makes you so beautiful. It’s why I am trying to grow out my own.
Me: Well, it takes time.
Him: I’m not gay or anything. I just wanted to compliment you, you really are very handsome.
Me: Well, thanks. You made my day.
He introduced himself as Daniel, and I reciprocated. He was an odd sort of fellow, to say the least. But what bothered me was not his compliment, but my reaction to it.
Anyone who knows me, knows I have zero patience with intolerance. I wont ever stand for it. I have no room for racism, or homophobia, or any other kind of intolerance. So why was I so bothered by my own reaction? I guess it comes down to very simple human nature. We are all imbued with gender stereotypes from a very young age. And while a person can work to fight those stereotypes outside of their own person, it’s a very different thing to confront them and dispel them internally.
Men do not typically compliment other men on their attractiveness. This is something that is taught to boys, via social cues and other methods from a very young age. They don’t call each other gorgeous. This is something that is reinforced into boys, pretty much from the time they peek into the world.
But a thought occured to me. Maybe if more people complimented one another, regardless of gender or idiotic stereotypes, the world would be a better place. Maybe those gender walls need to be reduced to hedgerows. I was caught off guard by the compliment, to be sure. But I wasn’t bothered by it until he came out and said “I’m not gay”. That’s when it hit me. I had reacted via body language and perhaps even tone. I didnt think, per se…I reacted. I reacted based on roles which had been reinforced in me, and I do not necessarily agree with, or support the values of rigid gender roles. As a single father, raising a child…I know that the lines can and do blur.
This is what Obama was talking about, when he spoke of his grandmother being afraid of black men on the street, despite her own grandson being of mixed heritage. A lot of people out there are not racist, but alot of them still have those reinforced and trained reactions based on those incorrectly imbued stereotypes. A lot of people out there say they are not racists, but they still fear people of different races. I’ve never reacted the way I did on Saturday, to black men or women. I grew up in a city that was as much a melting pot as the rest of the country. I grew up with tolerance for people of different races, so I just don’t have those types of reactionary moments.
It’s pretty clear that in some ways, while on the surface of it, I have zero room for intolerance, but somewhere inside me, I have to work a bit to clear out the crap that drives my reactionary senses. I have to work to clear my head of those reinforced instincts given to me. I have to change myself further, in terms of purging those little subroutines programmed into my head in regard to how I react.
I have to ditch those things underneath the surface, because saying one thing is not the same as living it, or doing it.
Current Mood:
Confused
Moving with a purpose.
Written on 28 March 2008 by DuoSo here we are. April is upon us, it wont stop snowing…
However, there are great and wonderful things afoot! I have found a pad. It’s in Andersonville, in a neighborhood I know well. Let me just say here: I will be very happy at the end of next week, when I begin the final move into Chicago.
So many things to do. I sign my lease and pick up my keys on Monday. Need to pack up the stuff where I have been staying in the interim, and I need to get a truck rented.
I have, however decided I also want to perform an experiment. Other than the furniture I have, and a couple of box springs, a dishwasher and a new office chair…I plan to finish outfitting the house entirely using nothing but Craigslist. I am convinced I will be able to basically cruise town and pick up all the stuff I want for the new place, without having to buy retail.
And You might ask yourself: Why would he do this?
And, I might say to you: To see if I can.
Don’t get me wrong. I like style, I like hip. But Chicago’s Craigslist is just RIFE with all kinds of really awesome stuff. I think I can put together a really swank pad if I play things right, and I wont have to break the bank doing it.
As Selphie has now nearly arrived at 15, I feel I can take a few more liberties with my own living space. As such, I want to have a bar, and focus more on entertaining. I enjoy cooking, and being more social these days, and I want my place to reflect that.
But I don’t think I need to spend oodles of money to do that. I fully intend to look around, find the hard items I want, along with some of the sundry items. Give me a month or so..ill have it all in place. You wait. =)
Current Mood: Jubilant
