Big Wheel Keeps on Turning

"I’m living in a static fury, an unraveling laugh track, the land of the dead. And now, my heart is telling me to get back."
MIRACULOUS LIVES, Part I – The Berserker

I seem to be experiencing most of this month in the third person. The seasons are changing, but manic as ever, with clear and crispy afternoons followed by ill-omened sessions of snowfall. I hobbled down Rush Street last Wednesday to hand in my week’s notice to Urban Outfitters. When my lease is up in March, I’ll be returning to Seattle for a few months for some final medical treatments and recuperation before planning my next move. Although there has been discussion about relocating to New York, San Francisco, or even Berlin, what I mean when I say move is, in fact, somewhat open to interpretation. Living in Chicago and working in retail has proved to be manageable, but not nearly enough to establish a foothold here in the weeks, months or years ahead. Since having dropped out of school last October, I’ve surrendered this incendiary determination to generate something that is all my own in this city and instead, become one of those pneumatic bodies filling up the street who live from one paycheck to the next, hardback to paperback, prescription to subscription. It’s dishonest and unproductive.

I blame no one. Not Chicago, not two-and-a-half years of school, not even some idiot mugging crew on Lakeshore Drive. I will come back, if necessary, with the ammunition of logic and experience, with the muscular creases common in the faces of most survivors, with a navigational design undeviating from desire and principle. But first, I’ve got to get all those things back. The words and music and intensity and conviction. Without any of these things I’m simply another one of the hungry. The walking roundabout. The men in black mouthing at their reflection in the train, recoiling into their coat-collars, resting in defeat. Forever anonymous. Innocent and guilty and unknown to themselves.

(All these triple-ands, this colorless rumination and talk of blue devils and whatnot…quite the birthday party, isn’t it? Actually, it’s got nothing to do with being miserable, this is just my way of getting sentimental.)

I spent my first day out of crutches walking around the city listening to a free audiocast of Michael Cunningham reading from The Hours. I finished Specimen Days last summer and found it to be a revelation. I’ve since decided that I’d like to take some sort of stab at writing a novel. Maybe when I’m thirty, maybe tomorrow. I’ve written several different openings, a few of which have the potential for expansion if I could just permit myself to commit to an idea. I’m reluctant only because I don’t want to encourage the perverse meditation than goes into prose writing, the patience of laboring on spherical descriptions and defying dramatic impulsions. To be honest, my problem is that I want to do it all. In fact, it’s this same recklessness that all too often gives to inertia and lack of sleep. The key to these next few months will be redistributing these energies into a specific domain. Maybe it’ll be a project, perhaps something far less selfish, I don’t know. But these unremitting patterns of flippancy and indecision have become rather boring, silly and conventional.

It’s time to grow up. Yes. This time, without settling for less than enough.

- TO BE CONTINUED, Part II – From the Hancock Observatory -