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The Grammatitarian, Part II

2009-07-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Isabelle and I came here together from High School. While I smoked joints in the parking lot before school, she eagerly studied her algebra book, trying to hammer down isosceles triangles, as if she had nails made out of X’s and Y’s.

She was gorgeous and came from the wealthy family with a house on a hill. All the ways in which a high school girl can be perfect, all the numerous things you can imagine, she was. Skirts not so short so a guy can only picture dirty things, but skirts just short enough for him to imagine laying on a blanket in a wheat field somewhere, sunlight on her cheekbones, butterflies grazing her knee caps. Hair she twisted with her right index finger when she thought hard, and then upon realizing the answer she sought, was released into a spiraling curl down her freckle dotted shoulder. Wire frame glasses, a bit too large for her face, a bit too librarian for her looks, so that when she removed them, people tended to gasp silently in satisfaction, as if they were opening a present which had been placed before them at the beginning of December, and could only now open on Christmas Eve.

She let me lay with her in the wheat fields. I ran my fingers over her naked freckled shoulder. Someone had given her to me as a gift. But it was all under false pretenses. As all beautiful teenage girls must do, (all teenage girls who’ve never had a care or a worry in their entire lives) she invented a problem and had decided it was absolutely necessary for her survival to rebel from the tight grip her mommy and daddy clamped down on her with. Upon seeing me, smoking joints in the parking lot junior year, Isabelle knew I was the man of her dreams. The man of her dreams for a year or two, at least.

She could have done worse. She could have picked any other guy at the school. And he would have fallen so quick and so hard that he would have simply become her father incarnate. Any other guy would be clamping down within a week or two. Grasping for any extra Isabelle tidbit he could get. At least I knew she would never belong to me. At least I loved being alone too much to ever love her too much. And that fact, the fact that both Isabelle and I loved one another under certain unspoken parameters and borders, is the fact that made our love more true and more real than most other stories of teenage love I’ve seen in the movies or read in books.

While the rest of the kids only paid attention in physics class on paper airplane day and the rest of the time simply doodled phallic sketches on their desks, Isabelle and I were apt pupils when Mr. Moose described the laws of gravity. I underlined it in my notebook. She highlighted it in neon pink. All things that go up must come down.

The Grammatitarian, Part I

2009-07-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

I really can’t stand this guy. This guy, I really can’t stand.

Me, I was jeans and t-shirts. Him, he was cardigans and khakis. Me, I was feet up on the chair. Him, he was perfect posture. Me, I was ivy league for four years. Him, he was ivy league born and bred. Me, I was unpopular. Him, he was the shit.

You could find him walking the quad in between classes. While everyone else crossed the lawn, arms furiously pumping at their sides, hurridly tromping down the blades of grass in a rush to make it to class on time, he stayed on the sidewalk. Somehow his path was always straight ahead. Somehow he’d never once been in a hurry.

My first week there, the whispering willows dangled down like witches fingers, inviting me into a cocoon of relaxation under their shade. Moving on, I ignored the trees and instead searched out the campus for a code of names and numbers. The buildings loomed about everywhere, all of them dressed in identical red brick and tiled roofs; materials mandated by the University a hundred years ago in order to maintain the prestigeousity, inside and out.

I followed no path on my quest. I was off-roading, moving forward, moving sideways, backtracking, possibly even levitating at times, in order to find Hamilton Hall 109. Halfway through the class, a class I had yet to track down, I gave into the willows and laid down, assuming the wind and the leaves were as good a guide as any, trying to utilize some transcendental tricks, and fell asleep there, two yards from Hamilton Hall, the most gorgeous building on the entire campus some would say, because it was camouflaged in ivy and tucked behind a veritable forest of healthy arbors.

I awoke to a tickling sunlight slipping down through the split seams of foliage. As I crawled out from beneath my willow’s fortress of branches, I was introduced to an unwelcomed number of curious glances, disapproving brow furrows, and even a few ivy-league-level scowls.

And there he was, as the crowd broke and the waves of legs pleated aside; him, like the sun, with student bodies acting as planets and moons and stars and invisible gasses and mysterious blackholes, rotating about him, scared of being burned. None of them ever dreaming there was unchartered territory. None of them having the foggiest idea there was perhaps even galaxies beyond their own…

The goal at Saint Eclaine’s was to never be diverted. No matter how many times your thoughts deviated in the direction of smacking that cute girl’s ass as she sashayed past you down the hall in her robe, fresh out of the shower, or taking a flask into your art history class because it would guarantee a better understanding and interpretation of the pieces being presented, or attempting to climb up the brick wall of the Dean’s office simply because it sounded like a good time and a good climb, the goal at this college, unlike so many others, was to resist the temptation and stay on the straight and narrow. What may have passed for bad-ass in my hometown would immediately become passé. Everyone seemed to recognize and accept it but me.

Keys

2008-09-09T11:17:00.001-07:00

Computer Poetry

2008-09-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Jonah taught me how to make computer poetry. The basic requirements are a) a computer, b) a microphone, and c) some gurgled noises or a mumbling voice. You basically put these noises to a dictation program on Word. Since computers are not flawless, the outcome is a bunch of words that are nowhere near similar to their input. Some of it is surprisingly profound.

Here are a couple phrases that popped out when Jonah read Whitman's 'Song of Myself' to it:

-You will never see any more efficiently

-Please find the truth

-I suspect that I am. And that is not very somber

-Some of them make sense..... (this one is coincidental, no?)

However, some of it was really mundane. There seemed to be a lot of business related words. Obviously, this is probably because the business world is the program's target market. There was a lot of talk about times and numbers. Also, political words like presidency and candidacy came up a lot...

Anyway, Jonah gave me the sheets of paper and told me to create a poem out of some of my favorite lines. I rearranged, added some words, and corrected some punctuation. Here's what I concocted:

(Before you proceed, please understand I agree what I'm about to do is totally cheesy. I know... But I was reading Blogger.com's Administrative Rules and Guidelines, and one of them is, and I quote, 'every blogger must post at least one of their personal poems in said blog. This poem, in all likelihood, will be extremely awful and nearly unreadable by the general public. Suggested topics include: how much you hate the president, how painful love is, why the mainstream is ridiculous, etc. We encourage you to please keep an 'emo' state of mind while writing.' I'm not kidding. It's in the fine print. Just fulfilling the requirement with this post...)

The company has claimed 'now's the perfect time'

That comes as a given

Jump in. Right now.

They say 'make us your main task'

He says 'what about me?'

They say 'consider yourself now a we'

He says 'thanks for the future'

They say 'don't mention it'

Where I come from

In our inventory

We consider him a low level loss

House Party

2008-09-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Diving

2008-07-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today, my roommate and I drove past a dumpster. A beautiful ray of light danced off the edge of a treasure leaning up against it. "Probably nothing..." I thought to myself, but three blocks later, I couldn't get it out of my head.

"Aly!" I eventually blurted out, "On the way home, we have got to take this exact same route and stop by that dumpster we just passed!" She looked at me like I was crazy, but agreed to it.

An hour later, the treasure was still there- a message board in a opening frame with lock and key. There a few others like it, but I choose one and promptly decided it would become my new method for storing jewelry- my necklaces would dangle from it in an oh-so organized manner sometime in the near future...

Just as I'm hauling it back to the car, I hear shouting from down the street. A short little man with big curly hair and a hawaiian shirt walks up. He's yelling and laughing all at the same time. He's obviously a tad crazy. Picture Sean Penn in Sweet and Lowdown...

"Girl, I just got off the bus to come pick up those boards, and here you are! Imagine that! You know how much you could get for these boards? Sure! You could make some dough offa these. These are real aluminum. Sure! You could earn a pretty penny off a these."

"Uhm. Well, I just forced my roommate to take the long way home so I could come back and get this, so..."

"Ah. That's alright girl. You go ahead and take that board."

Now I feel like a jerk. After all, the guy just wasted a bus ride for the boards. Plus, he could apparently make a lot of money off of it... "No, it's okay, you can have it."

"Yeah? These probably worth 'round four bucks each."

My eyes narrow. Seriously? Four dollars? "Actually, I'm going to take this, okay?" And with that I grab the board. I try to be nice, however, and point out the other cool stuff in the dumpster- like a great old handpainted plywood sign, resembling an old movie poster.

"Nah," the guy says, "thats a piece a junk. Prolly real heavy. Now looka this! This is prolly worth a lot!" His eyes widen as he pulls out a piece of wood with four wheels attached to the bottom. "Oh yeah, these wheels prolly worth ten bucks each," he says as slaps one and watches it spin. Suddenly he looks up at me- "Hey, you gotta boyfriend?"

"Yes!" I immediately declare (total lie).

"Ah, thats too bad. You should ditch him and go out with me. We could have fun. We could go dig through dumpsters together and stuff. That would be fun..."

I laugh, tell him thanks for the sign, and wander back to the car.

On second thought, though, I'm having a hard time finding the downside of one of my favorite activities, dumpster diving, on a date with a Sean Penn look-alike.

Grassy

2008-07-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

Segway

2008-07-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

My roommate and I rode our bikes downtown to see a concert at Millennium Park. It was a pretty popular show, it was free, and it was a nice day out, so what do you expect but lots of people riding their bikes?

We arrive and the bike racks are minimal, and those that are around are literally stuffed full already. But, if you know Millennium Park, you'd agree that there are tons of fences around to which one could lock his or her bike.

Once we find a spot on the fence, we begin to walk away when we hear a 'swish' and a 'swooosh'- a breeze blows through the trees- there's a flash of yellow from behind...

Whoa! Is it a superhero? No. It's a segway security guard coasting to a stop on the sidewalk and hovering over us with a goofy grin on his face..

"Hey," I say as the nerd balances on his behemoth piece of machinery. The segway elevates him, making him a few feet taller than me, but he seems to believe this point of view is simply part of his genes. He obviously thinks he's better than everyone he's zoomed by throughout the day and the giant rubber wheels on his transportation-contraption are an extension of... well, whatever other giant things he is lacking. As he stares down at us, he adjusts his belt around his big belly and begins to pull a pad of paper out from his pocket.

"Uh. What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm about to write you a ticket," the jerkface says.

"Uh. For what?"

"Locking your bikes to this fence."

We proceed to argue a little... I tell him that this stupid park should be more accommodating to bikers and at least post a sign on the fence if this is the rule. He proceeds to tell us the ticket would cost us $300. I say this is stupid. He proceeds to say he was just kidding- our lock would just be cut and the bikes would go to city lost and found if we didn't move them. I say this is also stupid. He proceeds to tell us we should get a segway, because they're just plain better than a bike. I proceed to ask him where he would lock up his segway if he had to. He proceeds to claim he never gets off his segway. I proceed to punch him in the face... not really, though.

In the end, the guy won. We shoved our bikes in somewhere else and he scooted around on a major power trip. So it would seem that today I got bossed around by the most disrespected form of authority the United States has ever known- a security guard on a segway.

Typical

2008-07-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

(Over-flow of 'i love my kitty pictures' coming at you. Brace yourself if you mind gush.)

My kitties are pretty typical...

Boy kitty is drunk most of the time.

Girl Kitty is into turn-of-the-century feminine literature.

Boy Kitty is always leaving the toilet seat up.

Girl Kitty is always messing around with someone else's balls.

But in the end, they really love each other.

Pot

2008-07-05T14:18:00.001-07:00

I was riding my bike West on North Avenue today when a car pulled up next to me. The passenger, an older woman with a middle-eastern accent, leaned out her window and proclaimed "We got pot!?"

I looked at her a little befuttled and acted as though I didn't realize she was talking to me.

But she insisted again- "We got pot!?"

"No thanks," I said, beginning to wonder to myself 'geez, do I look like such a huge pothead that people are now soliciting me while driving?' Thoughts started simmering in my mind, like 'shoot, I should probably take off this stupid floppy hat I decided to wear today' and 'phew, thank goodness I just returned those Birkenstock sandals, because those would be a dead giveaway.'

"No, no," the driver leaned forward, pushing the woman passenger aside, who was presumably her her mother, "Wicker Park? We're looking for Wicker Park..."

"Yis! Yis! Wigot Pot," declared the mother.

Ah! And with that, I pointed them straight ahead.

Swat

2008-07-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I was sitting at the local organic bakery up the street from where I live. It tends to be a busy place, and the crowd ranges from neighborhood hipsters, to, well, uh.... neighborhood hip(sterish) families.

As I sit on the patio, enjoying an ice tea and cookie on this lovely summer's day, I spy a massive police SUV pull up and illegally park in front of the little bakery. Out march two giant men in green army fatigues with bullet proof vests and other assorted and intense looking armor.

"Whoa. The SWAT!" mutters some nerd sitting behind me.

Indeed it was the SWAT. What could they want? Is there a bomb inside the bakery? Should I grab my cookie, hop over the fence, and flee as fast as I can? No. Probably wouldn't impress the cute guy sitting in front of me by doing that...

Shortly thereafter, one SWAT member emerges. He is not covered in dust, clutching a fistfull of detached wires. He is, however, carrying a little baggie with a chocolate chip cookie inside. He's swinging it back and forth as he heads towards his vehicle- happy as a little kid! The second SWAT member then steps out, holding a tiny coffee cup, full of what I like to imagine was a cappuccino.

Ah! So this is the sustenance needed to fuel the men who I picture rolling around in the dirty underbelly of Chicago, firing massive uzis at terrorists, and saving the world, every, single, day.

Self Help

2008-07-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

The ride home on the bus tonight seemed particularly accentuated with people studying self-help books. And much like a dog tends to look like it's master (or vice versa) the self-help books tended to reflect their reader.

The first person I noticed was a pallid and frail looking woman crouched over her book:

Your Guide to Vitamins

I moseyed down the aisle and grabbed a seat next to a nerdy looking boy with wire framed gasses and a khaki polo neatly tucked into a pair of khaki pants. His book of choice:

Sex, Love, and Courage (The two chapters I noted him flipping through were Cougars and Office Romances.)

As I was sitting and staring at my seat-mates book, an overweight woman arrived at her stop. Low and behold, as she arose and passed by me, the smell of pizza.. or chicken... or chicken on a pizza... or chicken covered in pizza sauce... wafted towards me from a brown paper bag she was carrying. And what else was in her hands but a copy of:

When Love Equals Food

So many problems, and so many solutions.

I wonder what my blatantly stereotypical self-help book would be... Probably:

So You Want To Be a Hipster?

Chapter 1: Hair- Beards for Boys, Bangs for Girls

Chapter 2: American Apparel is Your Friend

Etcetra Etcetra...

Cousins

2008-07-02T08:34:00.001-07:00

Him

2008-07-01T20:12:00.001-07:00

So there we were, my friend and I, sitting in the grass near the pond in Humboldt Park. We get together occasionally to do a tarot card reading, which usually just means we have a bit of a therapy session and talk in depth about what's going on in our lives, our little problems, and how we can improve things.

The problem today is the same problem that seems to consistently emerge in most girls' lives- boys. My current dilemma is boys who make me really happy, boys who are super attractive, boys who are wonderful in so many ways, but boys who might not be quite right for me. So do I settle for someone just because he's so nearly close to being Him? (Not him as in God, just Him as in the person in my life who's name gets to be emphasized because I feel a capitalization or a punctuation or an italicization in my stomach when I hear it.)

"No!" says my friend. And I agree. So the only solution is to keep looking. "You have to picture him, then. You have to manifest him into your life," she says. Okay then! "Tell me who he is. Picture him and tell me exactly what he looks like."

"Well...." I close my eyes and he appears in the dark like lines on an etch-a-sketch. "There's this really dashing smile. It indicates his sense of humor, I suppose. It means he's lighthearted. And laidback. There are these soulful eyes. I could look into them and know what he's thinking, and when he's thinking about me his eyes are stormy and passionate. He's talented. He's happy.. He's interesting... He's unique...." I start to go off on a tangent and my friend drives me back onto course- "Stop," she says. "Don't tell me about his personality, just see him physically and tell me what he looks like."

(And anyone who knows me, knows what's coming next...) "He's got this really wicked beard, " I say.

Then I open my eyes...

Down the little pebbled park path comes a beautiful bearded man out for a stroll with his pet dog. The sun beats down on him. He's all a-glow. My eyes widen... "Oh wow. Oh boy. Oh geez." I sit there stunned, realizing that if there was ever a moment in which a coincidence could be a bit more than simply a coincidence, this might be that moment. Yet I can hardly manage to push out a meager smile as he meanders by.

So it would seem that today the universe created the perfect man instantaneously upon my request and plopped him down directly in front of me. And I let him stroll down the path, into the trees, until I couldn't see him anymore.