It's Over, It's Over, It's Over

regent (REE-juhnt) adjective

One who rules for a limited period, on behalf of a king or queen who
is a minor, absent, or ill.

We approached the Armitage apartment nearly crippled over with stomach knots. The old neighborhood, the old walk, that burned feeling of tender scars, all floating in the crisp winter air, drying out our lips and accelerating our heart beats. Were we under surveillance? Does she stalk the block, hunting down her aggressors, volumes of law books tucked under her arm? Street lights posed as eyes; pedestrians trolled like agents. We arrived.

My attention immediately focused on the original location of the For Rent sign I taped atop the inside window facing the street, some two weeks prior. It wasn't there. I paused. We began whispering our thoughts, searching quickly for tangible indications. A lone chair sat shadowed by the building, hidden in the far corner. Adrienne pointed to a small mound of cigarette butts just outside the front door. Possibly, maybe, a light shimmered in the kitchen.

Smiles staged a coup across our faces--rejoicing, we sang Roy Orbison to Damen. The burden lifted high and wide, drawing out sudden exclaims and gitty laughter. Our lease, our landlady, was broken.

His Name Was Peter Sacks

akimbo (uh-KIM-bo) adjective

With hands on hips and elbows turned outwards.

I've tried to write a decent blog entry for the last couple of mornings and nothing's surfaced. My quick, furious jaunt to Tucson proved both ridiculously exhaustive and wonderfully reaffirming, yet, somehow, I am starved for how to put together a set of interesting sentences. So here's an unrelated thought.

A very kind coworker gave me a pocket version of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg as a gift. In the foreword, Goldberg quotes a passage from Jack Kerouac that, in a roundabout way, reminded me of a South African poet I met in college. His name escapes me (as names often do), but the experience of listening to his thoughts and hearing his voice enliven his poems will remain etched in my memory forever. "Patience is passion," he said, nonchalantly in response to a particular poem. "The words stem from the same etymological root."

Patience is passion. I used to say that all the time. It used to ease my more depressed moments, used to make sense out of loneliness, out of pining. Almost like a little prayer--was there ever a god of Patience?--to help balance dreams with reality. And now, from this palm-sized book about applying Zen meditation to writing, a fountain of old practices emerge.

I used to write every day. To journal. Read. Every day. Bike to class, to work. Shoot baskets at a nearby park. Drink on desert porches and draw self-sketched portraits. Sit alone in bars. Midnight breakfast burritos. Sunsets atop parking garages. Tack book or magazine-cut collages to my bedroom walls. Smoke joints, laugh, and drive home. I used to have a car. I used to underline only in pencil. I used to like two cigarettes each night of drinking.

I used to write every day.

A Mixed Drink

bling-bling (bling-bling) noun

Expensive, flashy jewelry or other items.

I just finished the Bukowski novel and, honestly, I doubt I'll pick him up again. Not that I was particularly disgusted or offended, as would probably mark most Never Agains in the Bukowski readership. Personally, I simply didn't find the book as a measure of much more than a succession of sexual exploits and belligerence. Although remarkable for their longevity and humor, all the stories of drinks and girls and erections and vomit never resulted in any interesting kind of enlightenment. Then again, maybe that's exactly what Bukowski intended. Pornography for the casual poet.

Bookowski

forehanded (FOR-han-did) adjective

1. Providing for the future needs; prudent.

2. Well-to-do.

3. Made with the palm facing forward (such as a stroke in tennis).

I'm reading again and it's much better than it ever was when assigned. I get to pick what to read, when to read, how far to read--a whole world of choices. In the mornings now, I go to the second or third floor of the theatre (whichever contains less distractions), sit by the windows, pour myself a cup of coffee, and read for about thirty or forty minutes. Starts my day off with a little story, kind of like meeting a friend for a casual breakfast. Only, I suppose, they do all the talking, you decide when they stop, and there's no check involved.

Anyway, this morning I started Women by Charles Bukowski. I received it as a gift two birthdays ago and, after moving into our new apartment and reorganizing all our books, Adrienne found that we now own two copies. We also own two copies of Catcher In The Rye and Catch-22 (nodding to our mutual interest in good catching), but the Bukowski pair signify the only identical editions we share. With two absolutely exact copies of Women sitting side-by-side on our livingroom shelf, I realized, having never read the book, I was taking the ultimate decorative risk: displaying something, in duplicate, I knew nothing about.

Twenty-two pages in and I can say, with a certain authority, that Charles Bukowski, too, knows very little about women.

Ushering In The New

prise (pryz) verb tr.

1. To force open or part something with a lever.

2. To extract information from someone with difficulty.

noun

A lever.

We stood by the side of the aisle positioned in such a way as to keep an open angle for approaching seat holders. Dressed in our blacks and whites, brandishing orange clip-on tags announcing our volunteer status, we intercepted every unsure ticket like penguins sliding into view. Penguins with little more than twenty minutes knowledge of the auditorium, its facilities, and its rules.

Free admission can certainly pad one's confidence in assumptions. When money's not involved, the accountability dissolves, and everyone's acting on integrity alone.

A scattered crowd witnessed the building, moody tunes of Califone, who performed forty-five minutes precisely, exiting to the excitement of second-round beers and the promise of the main attraction. With this transition, our roles quickly evolved into answering questions about restrooms and dancing and smoking--"But it ain't cigarettes, man!"--and then again into stalling conversations about the band or the theatre or if I saw the show last night or anything at all just to keep from ascending two more flights of stairs to a place where the music makers blur into a sighing distance.

This we did with somewhat reluctance, until the moment when the house lights dimmed and a bunny suit carrying drumsticks walked on stage, sat down and began feigning to drum on a box that changed colors with the beat. The bunny played with his sewed expression and mock intensity amid laughter and raised eyebrows. He left waving. Wilco followed and performed for two hours and me and Adrienne held hands and smiled--two penguins in front of the Northern Lights--surrounded by hippies dancing and air guitaring, fleeing from disgruntled security.

Wilco, too, left waving with thanks. And in a way, when we walked outside toward the Red Line, on our way to a new place to lay our heads, we waved as well. Our eyes finally free from the prise.

Have Thought, Wilco

effrontery (i-FRUN-tuh-ree) noun

Shameless boldness; presumptuousness.

Here's what I think a wonderful idea for a family movie would be (for serious):

Wilco, an imaginative early teen borne into a Midwest yupster family, founds a micronation to tackle summer boredom and instill confidence against self-proclaimed "professional bully" Frederick Warner. After a local radio-spot covers Wilco's alternative country, media interest explodes, releasing distorted (albeit positive) information and ultimately leading Wilco to declare war.

Yesterday Light

exigent (EK-si-jent) adjective

1. Requiring urgent attention.

2. Demanding; exacting.

Yesterday afternoon I wrote an entire entry about how the most difficult aspect of breaking my lease deals with the intermittent periods between action, how every message I leave contains information about a message I received, and how waiting for an accurate interpretation of the received messages ("Should I be concerned about this? Is it a substantial threat?") compares to a child's imagining of what might sit inside a wrapped Christmas present. I named the entry "Clear and Present Danger" and based it on the above word.

Then, before I managed to save, every computer simultaneously turned off, making an unannounced machine-sigh. The office lights died and the dim, distant generator lights flicked on, and we sat in near darkness answering the occasional phonecall in a kind of dull, sleepy silence. Someone lit a lone candle; the room caved. I remembered making tents of blankets on chairs, holding my breath, sheltering a small flame of secret excitement, and waiting for the unknown to happen.

Lord of the Land vs. Ten Ants

hoi polloi (hoi puh-LOI) noun

The common people, the masses.

During my inaugural meeting with the Illinois Tenants Union, the Associate Director and I briefly discussed the medieval roots of "landlord" and "tenant". More than anything, I think our conversation served to break the tension--it was my first serious interaction with a lawyer, after all--and direct me toward the silly imagery of jewelry-laden landlords gallivanting through the streets during the day, skipping care-free from house to house collecting handfuls of hard-earned money, and eventually laying down to rest at the top of their sound-proof, sun roofed Castle of the Privileged, with all windows facing away from the dirty city lights.

"Well, they're lords of the land."

"Exactly. And some take that title a little too literally."

The First Weight Is Lifted

albatross (AL-buh-tros) noun, plural albatross or albatrosses

1. Any of the Diomedeidae family of large, web-footed seabirds.

2. A persistent wearisome burden, as of guilt, for example.

I am sitting at the box office window decked in pinstriped suit pants, a white collared shirt, and a thin black tie. My hair, for once, lays parted in an appropriate location and, judging from my dirty-pane reflection, my black frames compare me to a geek henchman from the Matrix or a maybe a roadie from Weezer. Either way, the whole ensemble exists for preparation only, incomplete without the fanfare of a white, raggity, over-worn wig, a dusty old grey fedora, and an acoustic guitar. All for the sake of illuminating two preposterous characters in an evening barprov performance with my friend Matt (also donning a hairy wig and suit combination).

Then again, while gingerly dialing the phone number to my prospective apartment management company to ask about the status of the application, a thought crossed my mind: Anyone listening to this call, anyone eavesdropping with basic knowledge of my situation, may very well believe I'm wearing suitpants and ties and nice clothes simply to boost confidence, to exercise any cosmic leverage to secure a new apartment.

And when the man on the other line spoke the good news, I wondered, for just a second, if maybe, in some sort of weird way, he'd pictured me in dark rimmed glasses and sporting a thin black tie, singing back up to Rivers Cuomo.

(Creative) Worker Bee

vespiary (VES-pee-er-ee) noun

A nest or colony of wasps.

Today I am recording a voice-over tape at Beep Media. It's pretty exciting, and I'm a little nervous, but mostly excited to talk in funny voices. Reminds me distinctly of my early childhood when I used to do one-person radio shows on my recordable boombox, occasionally cutting actual radio feeds into my hyjinx. In college, I had a couple of radio-related projects, both of which churned out some funny material, but neither of which I still own. Editing sound so I could create conversations with myself as two different characters (or more, even) always amazed me.

I googled Beep Media, Inc in Chicago and found the president's blog which, in a way, eased my nerves.

Here's to christening new job opportunities!

Democratastic!

tween (tween) noun

A youngster between middle childhood and adolescence,
usually between 8 and 12 years

America, it seems, may finally be maturing

Sweep Dreams

jounce (jouns)
verb tr., intr.
To bounce along.
noun
A jolting movement.

At 1:35 this morning, our neighbor Noah arrived home from an evening of drinking full glasses of Coca-Cola and improvising himself into every conversation. He'd had quite the night indeed--nearly overwhelmed with furious and accurate pop culture discussions, listful Old School impersonations performed in conversational-yet-oblivious homage, and a general longing for that exact quote from that one scene in the last episode of something trendy. Yes, another successful post-Second City class. Another three hours drowned in faux-Irish pubfare, complete with distilled laughter, a nervous haze of smoke, and a damn good song from the Hold Steady.

These people are my friends and they listen to me.

But when Noah arrived home at 1:35 this morning he realized, quite suddenly, through the muddled sugar-craze of nine Coca-Colas, that no one else was there. He did not take the bar with him, his classmates did not follow his lead back to Bucktown. Noah knew, once again, he would be alone in his room, alone in his kitchen, alone on his couch, alone all night long. And he was very, very, very awake.

So he marched in defiance, soldiered his way across every inch of the apartment, seizing control of his lonely body. He tossed his shoes, he moved his bed, he adjusted a table, he turned on the oven, he started his Mac, he moved he walked he tripped and made another noise noise noise noise noise--

And we pounded on the ceiling with a broom to stop him. To stop him please. Stop him. Please.

And it worked.

For five and a half hours.

Until he could hold it back no more, at 7:15 this morning, and, again, marched across his wood paneled floor, energized with the desperate need to distract himself from loneliness.

Three Times A Charm

third degree (thurd di-GREE)
noun
Intensive questioning using rough treatment.
adjective
Pertaining to the third degree.
verb
To subject to such treatment.

This week marked our return to the Chicago Apartment Finders and, more grossly, our reentry into the neverending adventure of apartment hunting. After a spring of weekend condo searches in Logan Square and Uptown, an intense summer spent scouring all of Chicago for something with a deck (and teasing ourselves with short jaunts along Wicker Park's stretch of Hoyne Avenue), it seems our fall will define itself as the third installment of the Search for the Right Home. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense.

Our now-tainted Armitage garden apartment appeared, amidst somewhat sketchy circumstances, as a viable, livable option on the very heels of the month designated for our move. It was a blurry day, I remember, the end of June. Misty, warm, a summer anomaly, our first real visit to the Bucktown area. We walked along Armitage as fading hopefuls, nodding our heads lightly and grasping for optimism--"Oh, there's a convenience store on the corner," and "We'd be right next to the MapRoom,"--while internally praying that this apartment would lack the stale, white-washed walls typical of Chicago rentals in our price range. The tenant, Colleen, stood outside sweeping the front porch when we arrived. I remember her as nice, kind of distracted, a bit frazzled, maybe even nervous, but just shrugged it all off in favor of inhaling the apartment's feel. Later, when dealing with her to arrange the move, I recognized her initial interaction as a front that hid an insecure, control-obsessed yuppie, not a quirky demeanor. Yet, we entered the apartment with the kind of desperation that turns plastic into gold. Colleen did not fool us into settling for the bottom floor; we did not close our eyes and shake hands. The place had big front windows, free laundry, front and back porch, hardwood floors, the character of an aged building--potential.

Rarely do I think back on moments in my life and wish to relive them as a witness. But the conversation-walk after first viewing the Armitage apartment stands as such a case. The mist evolved into rain and our pros and cons merged into one prevailing thought: We can make this work. Although we never said that aloud, I know we certainly didn't convince each other beyond what either of us wanted. Smiling, embracing, sighing, centering our minds and bodies on relief, we simply decided to punch our ticket.

And now we're clocking out.

Those big front windows proved cheap and easy to break into. The free laundry comes at the price of constantly removing other people's damp, rank bathroom mats. Each porch collects trash like magnets, with our neighbors storing debris from summer construction in the back and choosing to withdraw their promise to remove it. Our floors warp to obstacles in the second room and echo with dragon-like volume above us whenever unwanted roommates walk, stomp, march, or pace (which occurs steadily each night from 10 PM to 1 AM and begins anew each morning between 6 AM and 8 AM). Flakes from paint-covered brick topple to the ground in chunks at the very touch, and outside seem to amass in piles like red dust. Our thermostat reads at least ten degrees warmer than reality, and this morning we awoke to a high in the low forties.

But there's not a cloud in the sky.

Say It Ain't Stole

pococurante (po-ko-koo-RAN-tee, -kyoo-) adjective

Indifferent, apathetic, nonchalant.

The thing that burns most about the violation of home burglary rests on the very fact that people, that fellow humans, carry out the action. No one can blame stolen laptops on javelinas or raccoons, and no monkey pries open a window in search of digital cameras. People commit crimes. People steal from people. And yes, surely the animal kingdom houses a similar level of opportunistic creatures that pillage from others, but the major difference between animals and humans--here comes the mighty generalization--lies on the balance of instinct and choice. Although every animal and every person engage in distinct, individual lives, their biological predispositions entitle them to a varying slate of survival choices. A person's history may point to certain options, but, ultimately, the person chooses their direction, chooses how they want to continue living.

A person chooses to distribute additional acts of human suffering.

It's Hip To Be Aware...pretentiously

pertinacious (pur-tin-AY-shuhs) adjective 1. Holding resolutely to a purpose, belief, or opinion. 2. Stubbornly unyielding.

There's something funny about someone choosing to use "pertinacious" in a sentence and then having to define it when questioned, as though they're purposefully defending both their word choice and their character. Like when a hipster abbreviates the name of an unknown band hoping you'll then ask, "Who?"

"Lost Sock Monkies."

"Oh."

"They're like Bloc Party. Only, you know, good."

"I like Bloc Party."

"Their E.P. was okay."

Hipsters: Always Justified. Makes you wonder what would happen if Pitchfork reviewed food and not music, whether hipsters everywhere would shun pizza.

Scene Is Believing

slaver (SLAV-vuhr, SLAY-vuhr) verb tr., intr. 1. To slobber or drool; to smear with saliva.

I recently read the Onion AV Club interview with Terry Gilliam, a director that consistently chooses challenging films and tends to produce, in my opinion, movies with incredible visuals. Anyway, during the interview he muses about the state of television and film, comparing the image-driven genres to radio. The link to both story-telling methods, he alludes, is imagination (or, in terms of his critique, lack thereof). While imagination and radio seem obviously connected, imagination and film seem connected by mere suggestion, akin to the difference between reading a novel and then watching its "equivalent" on screen. Gilliam contends that the determining factor for a film's success directly relates to the degree the audience incorporates imagination into the production.

This high regard for engaging imaginations struck me as quite noble--the amount of money and judgement implicit in the movie-making process could easily squash one's creative perspective. Furthermore, Gilliam's comments reminded me of my own goals as a creative person and, I suppose, the most fundamental rule of artistic creation: show, don't tell. TV's Grey's Anatomy and Lost come to mind as immediate culprits of daily entertainment no-nos, constantly soundtracking every tear, every chase, and every quirky little moment of comedic relief. When these shows leave the characters alone in their environment and pursue each shot with intent to capture the scene and not the feeling, they succeed.

Yesterday and Today

I suppose the hardest part about writing a daily blog lands on the matters of discipline and free time, both of which, for me and this blog, still exist in their infantile stages. Not to extend excuses--this is hardly a doctoral thesis. I created this blog to challenge myself and, well, maybe I set the initial stakes a little too unrealistically. Nonetheless, this morning I've decided to mull over the best formatting for my forthcoming entries.

The title of each entry will consist of that day's word. Incorporating the definition--which I learned with yesterday's word, "senectitude", is a definite must--tends to create the most problems. Should I provide this at the beginning of the entry, the end, or simply provide a link to the wordsmith.org site? Giving the definition at the very beginning seems a little dry and reminds me of a trite marketing meeting or some kind of hackneyed movie trailer (one of those romantic comedies where a narrator defines the word "love" over quirky scenes of actors slipping down stairs, stealing flowers, and kissing in front of city skylines) . Then again, placing the definition at the end serves virtually no purpose other than to hide potentially valuable information from the reader in order to skirt conforming to---- ahhh, screw it. Let's just see what it looks like.

First Things First

Alright. So I finally created my blog, named it as appropriately as possible, and subscribed to http://wordsmith.org for all my random word-generating needs. The whole process reminded me distinctly of my first venture into the now rigorous and, seemingly, ubiquitous feature directing me to create an apt-and-easy Username and Password for whatever site or service I find timeworthy. These security measures certainly make sense--especially given the prevalence of spamming and identity theft--but circa 1997, as a lad whose primary goals in life centered around concepts like "cool" and "free-throw", the Username and Password presented itself as a nearly insurmountable personal challenge: Write a unique word that represents YOU. Really, to a teenager, demanding a character-specific self-imposed label is like a teacher declaring, "Okay, class. Today I want you to write a one-word personal essay describing all of your talents, interests, and aspirations. It may also include a number. After class, we will read them aloud in social judgment."

It's even more complicated than that, actually. I remember sitting at the public library and sifting through what seemed like a million word combinations, each one more brilliant than the next, each one inevitably already in use by some creative demigod or, worse, some asshole email name collector. In all honesty, I think that the process of creating of my first email address taught me the true lesson of metaphor. My email search could've easily ended with Zach7882@hotmail.com, but I wanted a representation, something that I could write on the back of a notebook that would register a new or immediate recall of me. Something special, something individual, something applicable.

And when all of those were taken, I took a color I liked, something that sounded cool, and separated it with an underscore: sapphire_haze@hotmail.com