Category Archives: good things

Right Now

Settled in a great new apartment in a great new neighborhood with a great new roommate.
Spring and maybe summer have arrived in Chicago. On Tuesday, it was 85 and sunny for my post-work run.
A couple of great overnights in Champaign, and vacation on the not-to-distant horizon.
Lunchtime walks in beautiful places.
Lots of demands at work, but most of them are interesting and stretch me in good ways.
So much good music in the next two weeks: Zoe Keating, Emily Wells, Front 242 (DJ set), Colin Stetson, Four Tet (DJ set). And then Movement not long after.
Back to back PRs in a set of races where I PR’d last year.
A new relationship that isn’t really new at this point, but that continues to fill me with wonder and joy and peace.
A battery of tests proving that I’m in excellent health.
Horoscopes that tell me to follow my heart:

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Despite everything I wrote to you last week about weighing self-gratification against fairness-to-others (which probably still requires some consideration), I can’t help but encourage you to veer slightly more in the direction of pursuing whatever the hell makes you happy. While it’s useful to reflect enough on your privilege relative to your friends or colleagues so you’re not blind to their potential responses, you can’t live a satisfying life by concentrating too much on assuaging others’ discontent. In fact, with multiple 5th-house planets now moving into a supportive trine to Pluto in your 1st, I’m sure you’re feeling pretty emboldened to make the personal most of any situation… and why the fuck not? These energies sure seem to be formally inviting you to intentionally put yourself at the unapologetic center of this week’s decision-making—and not just out of some future-minded commitment to ‘becoming your best self’, but in order to choose whatever will bring you immediate joy, creative fulfillment, and/or positive flirtatious attention. In closing, yes, I suppose I should reiterate the possibility that certain social allegiances could suffer tension, as envious or disapproving others react to seeing you so unapologetically serve your own pleasure. Maybe it’s because they’ve become too accustomed to you taking care of their needs first?

A Saturday in February

Raw vegan blueberry “cheesecake” and yerba mate.

Tea and a pile of blankets and an unwatched movie.

The longest, hottest shower.

My back against the window in the sunshine at Star.

So much avocado.

A slow walk around the block.

For Leslie

Six years ago this week, the world lost a treasure, and I sat at my desk at GSLIS mourning someone I never had the opportunity to really know. In previous years I’ve resolved to be more like Leslie – this year I put that resolution on my body. In her honor, do something unexpectedly awesome for someone in your life today.

About Leslie:

A Good Mail Month

One of my resolutions for this year was to write more letters – at least one per week. If my spreadsheet is correct, I’ve actually written more than 150 letters and postcards so far this year, far exceeding my goal, and in doing so hopefully cementing new relationships, epistolary and otherwise. This was spurred along by a challenge issued in October by the South Side Letter Writing Club: 31 postcards in 31 days.

So over the last month, I zipped off postcards to various points around the world. I sent postcards to strangers in my city, and to old friends in the midst of deployment. I sent birthday postcards and and RSVP postcards and playlist postcards and thank you postcards. I tamed my handwriting in order to fit a full-length letter onto the face of a small card. While I certainly sent more than I received, it was a fun project.

I was out of town for the last week, and came home yesterday to a GIANT PILE OF MAIL. A lot of it was junk, of course, but amidst the political flyers and the open enrollment materials were the following:

A giant package from Dubai containing a letter, random beauty products, a mix CD, yarn, and an absurd assortment of snacks.
A smaller package from California containing a letter, random beauty products, and a sampling of odd Halloween candy (candy corn M&Ms!).
Two postcards: “DC is the same – as douchey as ever. Be glad you left.”
Two letters, one from a long time correspondent on the other side of the world, another from a new correspondent on the other side of the city.

So today I’m thankful for the mail, and for all the wonderful people who make my life happier by taking the time to put pen to paper.

Last Weekend

There are so many ways in which the life I have in Chicago is not the life that I imagined a year ago when a life in Chicago was still just the glimmer of an idea. There are lots of days that are hard, and lots of days that are lonely, and lots of days when I think about getting the hell out of here. But then there are weekends and weeks like this one, full of moments and events that were beyond the reach of my imagination a year ago - running a sub-2 hour half in my vinyl dress, riding my bike all over the city, drinks and dinner and brunch with so many new friends, impossibly happy late-night texts, dancing til 2 on a Thursday, crying like a baby at New Order – and then I stopped, realizing that I couldn’t possibly capture all of the ways and times I felt my heart swell over those few days.

If you’re reading this – if you’re a part of my life in any small way – thank you, thank you, thank you. For holding me through this last year. For loaning me your steam cleaner. For sending me real mail. For calling me out on my shit. For picking up the check, or letting me pick up the check. For longer walks than either of us expected. For the bourbon and the coffee. For over a thousand texts in under two months. For the yoga and the dancing and the bike maintenance and mentorship. For you, all of you, all of the time. My heart is so full, you guys.

Keep Saying Yes

St. Patrick’s Day was epic this year, but not in the ways that it tends to be epic, at least in a college town. My housemates had invited people over for brunch, but many of them didn’t come, and so we found ourselves with a number of bottles of champagne, a gallon of orange juice, and a whole lot of leftover bacon and waffles on a 75 degree day in the middle of March. I sat on the porch and wrote letters. Chris took a conference call. Rachel played video games. The two of them spun poi while I sat on the sidewalk and took photos. We drank all of the champagne, texted Kat to come home, ended up in a cuddle pile on the couch with the dog and the cat. The next day, Chris emailed me to say:

Seriously, you’re amazing. I’m glad you’re in our lives, regardless of how short the waltz. Keep saying yes, yes, yes to drunken nights and beautiful people.

I’ve taken that to heart in the months since, and have been saying an emphatic yes as often as possible. This has included:

Yes to a movie on an impossibly hot day. And so I saw The Cabin in the Woods, which I would’ve never seen otherwise but really enjoyed – and had the occasion to go to the gorgeous Logan Theater for the first time in very good company. The same thing would happen later in the summer with Your Sister’s Sister (at the State with Shana and Javan) and The Hunger Games (at the Logan with Carrie).
Yes to seeing the jellyfish at the Shedd with Karina and her adorable cousin, who later listed ‘meeting Elizabeth’ among her favorite parts of her weekend in Chicago.
Yes to fancy lady sleepovers where we lounge around in vintage slips with martinis and ridiculous movies. These weekends at the Uptown Beach House were some of the highlights of the summer.
Yes to biking around the city to meet friends for cocktails – and hopefully much more of this to come now that Orange and I are back together.
Yes to going to shows. I don’t care who it is. And so I saw Café Tacvba with Karina and had a great time even though I speak basically no Spanish and even though someone dropped a beer on my head. And I saw Cameron McGill with Carl for the first time in ages, and experienced an intense – and intensely wonderful – flashback to 2005. And I went to Lollapalooza as Karen’s +1 and we wandered the grounds and saw some music but mostly just enjoyed the free drinks and the beautiful day.
Yes to borrowing books and long bike rides and neighborhood walks and free ice cream from sympathetic vendors.
Yes to nights out when my bad mood made me inclined to stay in (thanks, Annette).
Yes to being Carl’s +1 for Leah’s wedding, which gave me the excuse to buy an exceptionally incredible dress.
Yes to last minute dinners in, to bánh mì sandwiches, to drinking my dinner around a table with random and exceptional people.
Yes to future travel: potentially Hawaii and Italy in the next year, as well as solo trip(s) to be determined. And to day trips on lazy rivers, and to visits with good friends.

So many amazing experiences in the last six months thanks to taking that advice. Chris Tom, I hope I’m making you proud.

Nicolas Jaar

A few weeks ago, I sat down to try to write about Nicolas Jaar’s Essential Mix, a piece of music that has blown my mind like nothing else has done musically in a very long time. The result was a 435 word email, excerpted here and sent just before walking to Pitchfork where, by the spontaneous grace of Carl, I got to experience Nicolas Jaar’s hypnotic set in person.

To quantify the extent to which this mix has transfixed me for the last two months, in late June, I drove from Anaheim to south of San Diego and back twice. 110 miles in each direction times four equals eight hours in the car in three separate days of driving. This two hour mix is all I listened to.

There was a day at work in early July when I listened to this mix three times, the last time spilling over into my drive home and then my 30 minute walk in the rain to meet friends for dinner. And then, after a lot of bourbon and arriving home from the bar at 2:30, I poured a digestif for my two friends, and we lay awake until nearly 5am, listening to the mix again, drifting in and out of sleep.

The Essential Mix is traditionally two hours of electronic dance music, broadcast at 1am on BBC Radio 1. Every DJ who is anyone has had an Essential Mix. This is unlike any that I’ve heard. There’s electronic music, but also classical, jazz, film scores, classical guitar, and Motown. There are weak points in the mix, certainly. There are points where you might be tempted to turn it off – Beyonce? really? – but I’d admonish you to give it a chance, particularly because just moments after the Beyonce bit, it goes to a place where I without fail turn the volume all the way up and put my head down (or back, if I’m driving) and let the music wash over me.

Pour yourself a glass of something and put on your good headphones. Get in the car and drive somewhere an hour out. Load this up on your phone or your iPod and go for a long walk somewhere quiet. Get lost for awhile.

“We continue…”

“Gather all around the things that you love, I thought, and prepare to lose them.”

My horoscope for this week suggests that I take maximum advantage of the big opportunity that’s ahead for you, Capricorn: an enhancement of your senses. That’s right. For the foreseeable future, you not only have the potential to experience extra vivid and memorable perceptions. You could also wangle an upgrade in the acuity and profundity of your senses, so that your sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch will forevermore gather in richer data. For best results, set aside what you believe about the world, and just drink in the pure impressions. In other words, focus less on the thoughts rumbling around inside your mind and simply notice what’s going on around you.

And maybe that’s what this broken arm is for: finally getting me to slow down and notice, appreciate, invest, and give back in ways that I’ve been too busy and distracted and heartsore to do these last few months.

Last night a new friend came by after work – I’d stayed home after a painful casting appointment and a couple of nights of bad sleep – and we took a long walk around my neighborhood. We stopped to look at statues in a park I’d never noticed. We were roped into a game of tag by a bunch of kids playing on the sidewalk. We walked by a new bike repair place and peered through the windows of a soon-to-be coffee shop. We kept an eye out for “my” ice cream truck after hearing a snippet of its signature music. I wouldn’t have taken that walk had I been able to ride, and we wouldn’t have had that visit if I hadn’t had my accident.

On Friday, a friend cut through my stubbornness and kidnapped me for the day. She and her 5 year old made me a futon nest, plied me with margaritas and The Muppet Show, and generally forced me to be still and engaged and present. It was a great day, pain and cast notwithstanding, and it wouldn’t have happened without my accident.

This has been a physically and emotionally difficult week, and will likely be a physically and emotionally difficult summer. There have been and will likely continue to be nights where I’ve cried myself to sleep out of anxiety, frustration, pain, and loneliness. I also know that my physical and emotional pain are so minimal in the grand scheme of things.

But that doesn’t diminish what I’m feeling right now: profoundly grateful for everyone who has reached out, expressed their concern, offered a shoulder to cry on, sent flowers or funny mail, gotten me out of my house or back in it, and generally reminded me that love isn’t binary, that family isn’t defined by blood, that community isn’t bounded by physical space, and that what you put out into the world will be repaid tenfold if only you’re brave enough to let it.

Beach Walk

Perfect day.

“To look life in the face, always.”

“Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours. “

This morning: time and temp can’t decide whether it’s 80, 70, 75, or something in between. The sun is shining, and I have my windows rolled down on Lakeshore. I’m speeding a little, and my hair is blowing around, and I’m singing along with The Cars. The lake is an impossible blue, the surface wrinkled by wind.

Driving to my new job, the one where I get to do all the things that I’ve loved about my last three jobs, and none of the things I haven’t. Driving with my new city behind me, marveling every day at my good fortune at actually getting to live here. Thinking about last night – good food in the company of a newly dear friend and her close friends – and the night before – bourbon and The Smiths until far too late, just like in the old days. Thinking about the morning already behind me, waking too too early, a breeze ruffling the curtains, my sweet cat curled next to me on the quilt made by my great-grandmother.

Feeling thankful for the wall of love surrounding me, for so many amazing people in my life in so many different ways. Remembering how three months ago, I ran head-first into my own sadness – and how this morning, driving through my new city to my new job on a perfect day, I was struck by the intensity of my happiness in that moment.

“I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I…I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more…never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”

Three months ago, I was afraid. Today I would say that I’m terrified, very deliberately using the word that a love and I once used to delineate our feelings about what we were coming to share: equal parts fear and delight. Terrified by the possibility that this just might be it, that this might actually be happiness, that I might have actually rounded that corner and found myself exactly where I’m supposed to be at this moment in time. Honoring everything that I’m feeling for what it is, and not needing it to be more or less. I’m so overwhelmed. I’m so thankful.