Updates for November

Brianna’s coworker gave us a plant. It’s one of those types that you water twice a year and leave alone. Californian, maybe. Its leaves are fat like an Aloe plant’s, but they are sharp at the edge, too. So sharp in fact that one leaf punctured another leaf and now grows up and through it. What does it mean for a plant to stab itself? Nothing. And if I were to tell you that the plant used to belong to Oprah, would it mean more then? Nope. Still, I thought I should share the news of this strange plant, which needs no water, attacks itself freely, and used to belong to America’s most popular talk show host.

Most of this comes from Brianna: Two cars crash into each other in front of our apartment. “Crunch.” Everyone is OK. “Shit,” a man says. Those are his only words. I don't know what the other driver said. The guy came out of his car and just started looking around at the glass in the street, as if to say, “Did all of this come from me and my car?” Meanwhile, he was blocking rush hour traffic. There were many horns going. A line of cars stiffened up and down Kedzie.

Brianna felt sorry for the guy because clearly his car was wrecked to the point that it would not start. The unexpected pressures of causing an inconvenience after you yourself have been hurt—that is the worst.

But no, after standing around for 10 minutes, the guy got back into his car, started it without conflict, and backed up to allow traffic to resume. By now cars were stopped for blocks and blocks in each direction.

Later, when I took Lorca out after work, I saw a side mirror on the curb. The glass was spidered, as they say, but still in place. A few wires reached out of the plastic molding. That’s sort of cool, I thought. And a bit funny, too. This mirror like an eye looking up at me from the curb. I’ll put it in my office. I felt goofy and somehow powerful. I ride a bike and do not have to worry about my car splintering all over the road and being a dumb mess. That sort of thing.

Hours later I remembered that there was half a six-pack left in the trunk of Brianna’s car. I went outside to get it. When I was walking back up the front stoop, the six-pack’s wet paper bottom ripped, dropped out, and two of the three beers popped open the cement steps. Ale dribbled down the stairway and glass shards peaked up from where a welcome mat would be. I could see that these lost beers were the result of my hubris with the mirror. I went upstairs for a broom.

Journal Moments Without a Home

“In my childhood there are many caves.” -- A Turkish bus driver speaking about the local geography.

It is 5am. I am reading in my side room. My emergency exit is a sealed door to another apartment. On the other side is a dog in a crate. I turn a page, he mumbles annoyed in his crate. These are the morning sounds.

Things that are unsatisfying: Joe Strummer’s inspiration for the song, “Spanish Bombs.” Literary anthologies without author biographies or contextual notes. The first time I used the word “chill.” Reciprocation. Catholicism being a system of faith when it is obviously a system of works. Gino’s East frozen pizzas. Dressing rooms in winter months, my body is as pale as the moon.

“Being an adult means expressing jealousy in the form of cautionary advice.” Whose aphorism was this? Why is it in my notebook?

The car had engine trouble. My dad took a look under the hood. A small bag. Inside the small bag, a wad of cash. “What’s this?” he asks my grandpa. “You think you’ll never have an emergency!” says my grandpa. 

The Uppers, The Downers

I was hungry and confused and it was raining. At the cafe I used to work at the tables crammed full with study dates. I was drinking decaf coffee and getting upset about it, it was bothering me how I couldn't sit in my red brick apartment and do anything. It's so dark and cold, and I uncaffeinated.

I got some beer and hamburger at the bar place across from the coffee place, and then the server smiled at me a bunch, but I thought, Come on, Jim, servers always smile, it's their job, and she kept dropping by, this lady, maybe she was a student at UIC or something, maybe from nearby, a Mexican woman in her 20s, I'm not obsessed I'm just saying.

But really because I'm Irish I am obsessed because over all those mornings on the Western bus, all those cool Mexican kids we never hung out with who had better taste in music and cooler haircuts, I was only ever friends with the guys, but almost could've been with their sisters, because we were all Catholic and had that hard crucifix connection.

I thought about all this while I was eating alone, sifting through a pile of papers, feeling older than my age like I was looking into this dusty future of me in this blandness drifting off the map, just getting withery and working this bell curve forever, then the Depeche Mode song started playing, "Everything Counts," everything counts in large amounts they kept saying, which is when my bill arrived, there was a smiley face on it, Everything counts in large amounts, I said, signed it and left, I wanted to stay and see, but I live with my aunt and I'm in shambles this week.