Purify

I am not neat by nature.

Growing up, my mother instituted "Saturday Chores" for my sisters and me. We had to clean our bedrooms and then were each given a scouring assignment: front room, kitchen/ tv room, or bathroom. Kitchen/ family room was the worst. You had to clean the stove, fridge and scour the counter tops. You had to pick up and put away all of the flotsam and jetsam from tvland and scrub the floors. The floors were tough because you needed to accomodate the kitchen floor linoleum and all of its grime then dump your water and work the wooden parquet. Our house was pretty small but ma did a good job embodying every type of housing wing in about 1000 square feet.

The bathroom was grungy but easy. Swipe up the mirrors, scrub down the sink and then the toilet. Change the litter box. Scrub the small floor, then scour the tuband shower walls. Strip down and take your shower while rinsing away all the scrubbing bubbles. Hop out, dry off, throw on your sweats and mop your way out the door.

The living room and hallway assignment was the longest process but the most soothing. The walls were an astonishing bright green and the wall-to-wall carpet the color of the forest. You had to oil all of the colonial wooden furniture and shelves, remove and dust all of the books and knick-knacks and then vacuum the carpets and cloth on the furniture. You also had to vacuum under the furniture -- no cheating! Strangely, cleaning the living room always made me feel kind of Zen.

The motivating beat for Saturday Chores was ma's vinyl. She had splurged on the entire Beatles Apple Collection. Also, there was Steve Goodman, the "Three Legged Man" and Billy Joel. (Trust me, if I never hear "For the Longest Time" again, it still won't be long enough.) I enjoyed dancing & dusting to The Last Waltz by the Band. But nothing beat cleaning to Jesus Christ Superstar.

And now for confession number one. I can sing the entire original Broadway soundtrack note-by-note and word-by-word from the Overture through John Nineteen Forty-One. I once won two tickets to a performance at the Chicago Theater on Johnny B's morning show by calling in and singing a medley from the score. Through the years, I definitely have had some strange wins and losses.

And my losses and my nature have led me to the juice of confession number two. My apartment is a horrible, disgusting dastardly wreck. It looks like it was hit by a dust storm, followed by a mental monsoon and sealed with a hiccuping hurricane. And when you add my nature + earning a master's + a ridiculously menacing cerebral blow, you get Disaster Land.

So today, I put on Jesus Christ Superstar and sang it word-for-word while scrubbing the grease stains and soot out of my kitchen. Mostly. I still have to scour the floor. Damned Saturday Chores perfectionist upbringing.

(Image is "Purify" by Rachel Combs-Gullick.)

Sleeping by yourself at night can make you feel alone...

There is a difference between lonely and alone; but sometimes the choice to be alone can be lonely. Although I imagine there are those who feel quite lonely even though they have chosen not to be alone.

Choosing to be solitary does not necessarily mean loneliness nor being alone but sometimes it's just so daunting knowing you need to go home to an empty apartment. There are certain creature comforts that come with companionship. For example, having someone to cuddle with in bed. Of course, then that someone usually expects you to shave your legs on a regular basis, but still, it gets hella cold at this latitude and it is pleasant to have someone keep your feet warm.

So I bought some cozy socks and I still sleep on the couch because your bed doesn't seem so empty when you are sleeping on the couch. But then your bed accidently starts accumulating clothes and turns into a kind of express lane closet and then even if you find someone worthy of visiting your bed, you can't really invite them over for a cup of coffee at the end of the night due to the three or four mountains of clothing heaped on the bed and sorted by degrees of cleanliness.

So I think I'm going to clean my room. But I'm not shaving legs yet. This is a process, you see.

(Oh, and I took this image from George Lindmark's Fantasy Paintings site.)

Naiad

Today is a breathtaking gift of Nature all rolling green with her azure cap and puffy cumulus feathers. Wandering away from my house, I encounter brick-painted, huddling homes from two centuries ago built by immigrant Irish who saved a few pennies and built a new community in a triangle a couple miles removed from the death-stench stockyards of their employment. Today there still exists a few Irish and Poles but now it is mostly comprised of upwardly-moblie Mexican nationals who have yard sales on Saturdays and fiestas on Sundays.

The triangle is bordered by Archer Avenue (formerly the Road to Widow Brown's) which reaches out from Chinatown into the wandering desires of Resurrection Mary. This is the southern border of Mount Pleasant, which settles along the river. The Chicago River is now the home of haunted steel mills and scarred ports. Most of it is vacant although the passing trains graon on their tracks day and night like a grandfather on the porch warning against the transcience of our values.

Here, the river itself is spanned by several suspension bridges still studied today by rapt mechanical engineers. The river, far below me, appears in the sunlight as a chunk of amber hiding in its depths some winged prehistoric creature. With its ornaments of railroad ties and ordered train cars and abandoned factories and graffittied granaries it stands in stark contrast to the lake it flows from -- divorced from natural union by dynamite. Once I visited her here among the broken factories and prarie flowers and I came back with a baby. Once I led a parade to meet her at her contrived lake source and dyed her the color of envy.

I am never far from her for long.

Couch

It embraces you and makes it easier to sleep against the static and cathode ray burning through insomnia's pacing and you never have to face the vast linen scold of your queen size mattress waking beneath the ecstatic 5 a.m. bleating gymnastics of the love and needle junky giantess upstairs.

This is a third-beer-confession to your drinking buddy who also confesses to not sleeping in his bed since June, which is nice because it kind of becomes an extra closet a place for the things you should put away during insomnia's drop-ins but don't and somehow you never feel so empty on the couch and you can't toss and turn. It's a rough but not unwelcome hug, like your daddy's razor burns.

Image by Maya Gohill.

I Have Bad Gas

OK, would someone please explain a couple of things to me???

1. Why is it that socialized medicine is reputed to be bad because it eliminates consumer choice and the free market laissez-faire economy will sort itself out, with the best competitors/ companies rising to the top like cream or whatever BUT private utility companies are given government subsidies and monopolies in different municipalities? In other words, the government closes the free market to favor for-profit natural gas companies such as People's Energy or oil companies such as Halliburton or mercenary companies like Blackwater-- but that's okay and not threatening to undermine all that capitalism purports to stand for? Why and how?


2. Why is it that now that our Democratic Republic has been converted to a Corporatocracy -- primary product oil -- half the people I know no longer can afford luxuries like natural gas for hot water and heat?


3. Is it true that People's Energy can now turn off your heat in the winter if you haven't paid you bill? If so, why should they get government subsidies within a non-competitive market?


4. Among other things, are our tax dollars now going to be used to:

• Steal oil from the Iraqis for American-owned private corporations?


• Fight wars for oil companies -- who have made record profits the last 3 years running.


• Give no-bid government contracts to oil companies, who make record profits, disappear billions of dollars and then move to Dubai?


• Build warming centers (read homeless shelters) for people who have homes, but who have had their heat shut off in the dead of winter because of the astronomical increases in the cost of energy and 6 years of economic depression?*** With all of this oil our government is killing for, we can't even get some heat?

If we're going to have a mixed economy -- and you have to if your nation can be found anywhere on a map of reality -- why can't we face the fact that social welfare will ALWAYS have to exist to prevent rioting and starvation and maintain social stability. (Oh, and it's also THE RIGHT THING TO DO, but I digress.) We justify and allow corporate welfare at a much greater cost. And with corporate welfare -- such as government grants and subsidies or when the feds let corporations off the hook for things like taxes or environmental, health and safety regulations -- the citizenry has to foot the bill at least twice.

• Once, to provide government contracts to large, for-profit companies. (example: Halliburton's multi-billion dollar contracts in Iraq)
• Twice, to clean up the fall out. (Another 150 billion dollars to prolong this endless quagmire -- a quagmire that was exacerbated by poor policy planning after the invasion in 2003, policy enacted by companies like Halliburton, for example.)
• If -- for example -- Halliburton makes record profits from this invasion which just keeps going, will Halliburton be footing the bill for the health care of the vets who come home with chronic and severe health problems while fighting this war for oil profits? Perhaps when hell freezes over?

I don't think that capitalism is the healthiest way to run and sustain a society as large and as heterogeneous as ours, however since that is the system we are using, shouldn't we stick to its basic principles -- like a free market, no corporate subsidies, tariffs on goods manufactured in other countries, etc., etc.? Or if we are going to support a system of corporate welfare, why can't we also support a system of civic welfare and institute socialized medicine, support for sustainable (and affordable) energy sources, childcare programs, etc., atc., etc.?

Am I missing something?

***(This is the City of Chicago's current solution to the disconnected heat situation -- send those without heat to warming centers. How about, cut off all contracts for People's Energy if they can't use their exclusive regional contract to help heat the community?)

Borrinquen!

Today is Puerto Rican heritage day in Chicago. They have a regular parade in the Loop with floats, beauty queens, bands and whatnot. Then everybody heads to Humboldt Park for the real action.

In Humboldt Park, they have a neighborhood-wide party, complete with drinking, sex, violence, a carnival with centrifugal rides and vendors, and a whole lot of cars. Everyone gets their Puerto Rican flags and drives around the park -- as seen in the photo. When I say everyone, what I mean is A WHOLE FREAKING TON OF PEOPLE IN CARS! Everyone drives around and around and around -- drinking, shouting flag-waving. Generally, a good time is had by all.

I live a block from the park. This means I must spend the day one of two ways:

1. Find a good, safe parking spot, stay put, drink and enjoy the festivities

OR

2. Get out of dodge early in the morning and stay gone until Sunday.

I tend to vary my pattern, but this year I'm choosing option 1. So I need to grab a cold one and head for the porch right now.
Cheers! Salud!

The apartment has become unbearable -- it's gone from flotsam and jetsam to the city's largest landfill.

In a suprising move, the kid suddenly got motivated to start sorting through all of the stuff. So not only is the place getting cleaned up, but he has been amusing me with The Bizarre Odds 'N Ends Fashion Show. So far this has included The Hip Rocker (his dark jeans, a ribbed sleeveless tee, topped with a black and brown pinstriped vest), Eighties Suburban Guy (a Girbaud tee, and really light/tight/high-waisted jeans), and my personal favorite -- Tried For 1970s Roger Daltry, Ended Up 1990s Mountain Lesbian (a plaid sleeveless button down shirt and the aforementioned light/tight jeans).

I better get back to work, since I'm the Mom and all.

HOT AS HELL!!!

(I borrowed this image from whiskeysierragrafics for the selfish, aesthetic purpose of illustrating this blog)

I live in a ridiculously extreme climate. Example -- the heat index was 113 degrees farenheit yesterday and in December it will be minus 30 degrees farenheit and in each and every month the humidity hangs around 75% so that you're either cold and damp or hot and wet, but not in the pornstar sense...

I don't have AC and in the winter I try to keep the heat set between 60 and 65 to conserve energy and money and also because I don't want to be a weather wuss. I operate under the theory that if you allow your body to adapt to the season, you'll be healthier and generally more comfortable (kinda the old wives tale concept of thickening and thinning the blood.)

But every so often the shit just GETS to me. And yesterday it really got to me, I was puddling up and getting (literally and figuratively) steamed at every idiot in traffic and I had to keep counting to 10, breathe, repeat-- but the arrival of Aunt Flo reduced me to a shrill meltdown of hot messiness so finally I went to Streetside to drink High Life on sale and sit in the AC. Then all of the little Beer Baby Boys kept telling me how "fiesty" I was. (Who says that? Why do men like that word? It makes me think of extra spicy chicken wings.) I wanted to say, "I'm not fiesty, I'm a bloody, thirsty, hot mess" but I was afraid I would cry, so instead I said, "you really got screwed by your mechanic -- I can't believe you paid $280 for a fuel pump on a Ford!" (which was kind of a smug and unnecessary thing to point out to someone at that juncture) so then the little BBBs told me I was an emasculator -- but both of them had AC and were still whining about the heat -- so I'm pretty sure they had no balls to begin with. Anyway...I mostly just wanted to go home and be by myself, but I couldn't face the broiler that was my apartment.

Overture

As I lay beached on my couch last night, unable to swim through the flotsam and jetsam of my apartment, a lightning bolt of understanding jolted me in the vicinity of my right forearm -- which immediately became numb and tingly. (Yeah, I was laying on my side; it fell asleep.)

If you're trying to teach the law of entropy to your 11th grade science class, I suggest you plan a field trip to my apartment. Seriously. The flotsam and jetsam (read: empty cigarette packs, books, plastic shopping bags, papers, tools, laundry arranged in various baskets according to degrees of cleanliness, CDs, DVDs, magazines, mail) has increased to a point in which no work can occur within the closed system that is my apartment.

That's when I realized that I am actually a mermaid, who has recreated her ocean floor existence above sea level in a midwestern city on the second floor of a 6 flat. Eeesh. This would be the lightning bolt I referred to in paragraph one. It seems that one upon a time I was a happy little be-gilled and beguiling sirena who washed ashore and met a pirate. Enamored by his gauzy shirt, bottle of rum and foul mouth, I agreed to exchange my tail and gills for a life of poor air and above-board existence -- after which, the pirate left me for a long, hot summer of romance with the first mate and a manatee. I naturally repressed this memory, and wandered around in post-traumatic stress disordered state. It wasn't until last night, looking around my trashy apartment and feeling quite at home, that everything came back to me with said lightning bolt.

I think I'm going to throw a party so that I'm forced to clean my place. I'll be making a rum and horchata punch. Details to follow.