Opthacular Spectacular

And now, in typically Davie St. fashion, a bunch of random photographs that are a little too large, leave you confused, having still no idea of what my life here in Phoenix is like, and feeling - frankly - a little empty inside.

Liza drove me here, or something like that. Welcome to AZ!

David took us apartment shopping and to In N Out Burger on our first day here.

Now I'm living with him and haven't been back since.

I get to make my own orange juice from the fruit trees in the back yard. I did it this morning! But this photo is from a few weeks ago. I've never felt so handy in the kitchen before. And it tastes like liquid awesome.

As the delightful Kati Jo commented, "Look at you, boi! You're a student teacher... only five years after being a 'real' teacher."

This one time, I ate dinner on the back porch while talking with Liza on the phone. And I took this photo while talking with her just to prove what an awesome multitasker I and/or my phone am/is/are. Also, to prove that though I moved across the continent, I still look the same.

This is a photo of me with one of my classmates. The doughnut and the pointer finger are incidental. I took this photo to text it to the boy that I'm seeing because it turns out that he used to be romantically involved with her. Like seven years ago. Apparently Phoenix is like one of those small town high schools where everyone has gonorrhea.

I have a Taiwanese friend named Andy. He knows where to go for good beef noodle soup.

Also, he is wicked cute.

Currently pouring over

the lyrics of Ryan Adams

Boys Like Ravenous Dingoes

The things to say, they build and compound, they stack and they topple. They require plotting on an intricate thought map; they require planning and scheming and precise wording that I am not capable of composing at this late Friday night moment.

My family was on vacation this week. Escaping to a condo on the coast etc. They were having an excellent time together in Sarasota, but I was not there. I regret that. I was here working out a year of indentured servitude. A year wherein I do the work of people who are getting paid to do that work while they continue to get paid for that work that I am doing. While I instead pay, tidily, to do that work for them. Sweet deal, eh?

School is going well. My June morning have been spent in a kindergarten summer school reading program. I have five delightful students. I secretly adore them. They are Diego, Jose, Armida, Tylor, and Gabe. They say hilarious things like, "Can you please help me, Mrs. Bennett?" and "What did you say, old man?" Then I have my actual grad school classes in the afternoons. These are significantly less delightful. My fall experiences will be divided between a sixth grade all-subjects classroom and an eighth grade math assignment. About these things I am excited.

I am seeing this boy. Bam, there it is. He is basically nothing that I ever thought I would go for. For instance, he has brown eyes. And yet: it works. It is pretty weird, and I am continually amused by it all. (If you've kept up with the dirty intrigue, by the way, I should tell you that he is most certainly *not* my housemate David. He is, instead, one of David's childhood best friends. Yep, it is weird. Yep, we're working it out.)

We have a place that we go on Thursday nights, this boy that I'm seeing and I. It is our own private bar. We have our own hot bartender. We have our own go-go boy. We have our own DJ and our own dance floor. (I would like Mr. DJ to consult us a little more closely on the music selections, but I'm not sure yet how to kindly convey that message.) We were there for nearly two hours last night, and only two other patrons came in during that time. Oh wait, three. One guy with a huge potbelly came in and asked if it was a strip club. Our go-go boy was mid-martini and not dancing, so the answer was no. He looked like more of a boob man anyway, though.

Some days, if something difficult happens or I feel a bit low or out of sorts, I look up at the palm trees. The constant sunshine and the palm trees are miracle drugs; lithium for the eyes. I miss many people, places, feelings, things about Chicago, but fundamentally, I am so glad to not be there any more. I am glad to not be in Chicago.

There are dates, specific days of the calendar year, that I thought I would never forget. But you know what? I forgot them all this year. They came and they went, and I completely missed them. Don't take this too harshly, please, but I feel so very good about that.

Currently Listening to

Taylor Swift's "Today Was a Fairytale"

Phoenician

That's the correct demonym for residents of Phoenix. Makes me feel like a Harry Potter character to say it.

I'm at one of those coffeehouses where the staff feels that they are just too cool, the people just kind of sit around and look at each other, and the music is a bit too loud for comfortable conversation. That's okay since I'm just here relaxing on my own, whiling away a few Sunday afternoon hours.

At the moment, I'm the third wheel housemate, so I'm trying not to be around all the time. That's a bit of a challenge since I'm still living out of boxes and don't really know anyone here or many cool places to go. This Friday the other rent boy will be moving out, I'll be moving in to my bedroom and getting settled a bit, and it will be just me and the man with the mortgage left. The two Davids. We still haven't worked out the name issue yet. I mean, it isn't a problem for us since neither of us are in the habit of speaking in the third person, but it does seem to be tripping other people up a bit.

Yesterday I found the Asian supermarket. It is a way better one-stop destination for Taiwanese food than anything that we had in Chicago. They have my tea - which I needlessly super stocked-up on before moving - bagged and bottled varieties, they have the kind of frozen fried rice that I used to buy, they have the perfect green onion pancakes for making dan bing, they have the lychee jellies and a nice variety of ramen noodles. I'm really happy.

Oh yeah, I'm really happy. I love it here. This can always change, right, and I've only been here a little more than a week. But for right now I feel like I've made a really great move. There's palm trees everywhere. My nose is really red right now because I did some tanning in the backyard after church this morning. The nightlife places that I've been to so far have been great. People are so friendly. It is 95 degrees and awesome. School starts in a couple of days, and I'm excited about all of the possibilities that holds. I met with the program director last week, and it was such an encouraging meeting.

I'm on Pacific Time now, so stop texting me so friggin' early. Thanks.

The drive here! I almost forgot, there's been so much to do in the last week. The drive was - unexpectedly - wonderful. I got to see so much more of Illinois than ever before, had some crazy weather in Missouri, sang Carrie Underwood at the top of my lungs while loving the beautiful crossing of Oklahoma, picked up Elizabeth Annette in Texas, was wowed by the subtle beauties of New Mexico, and then we rolled into Arizona through some really cool red dust storms and amazing mountain terrain, right on in to Phoenix.

Money sucks, the spending of it, the lack of it coming in.

I bought a car! I had to; school is about 30 minutes away from my lovely Central Phoenix neighborhood. She is the same shade of red as the lipstick the every little girl paints her face with when she first breaks into her mother's cosmetic cabinet to begin experimenting. That bright, sort of tacky red. I named her Truvy, but you can call her Miss Truvy. As in, "Miss Truvy, I promise that my personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair." She is an Oldsmobile Alero, which I am certain makes my GM-pensioned Grandpa and Grandma smile down on me from Heaven (and hopefully watch over me since she has 140,000+ miles on her engine).

So that's a bit of a rambling update from me. I did it. All of those spoken and unspoken threats to you, Chicago, that I was going to leave you: fulfilled. All of those songs that I heard and thought would make great driving away music, I sang 'em. All the ways that I told myself that I should make my life better, I'm going to do them. I started last week, and I'm not going to stop.

I don't think I can overstate the importance of these words to me in the last couple of months: "Decide what to be, and go be it." Thanks, Avetts. I have, and I will.

And just to add insult to injury, when I get on my feet a little more, money-wise, I'm going to get a scooter. I am.


Currently Listening to
MGMT's Oracular Spectacular

Dear Chicago

I'm sure I tell this story all of the time. I'm sure you are sick of hearing it. But here I go again.

I remember so clearly the day that I first came to Chicago to live. Moving truck cresting the Chicago Skyway, crossing the Illinois state line, first glimpses of the impressive architectural feats of the downtown of this monstrous city that was going to kill or be conquered. I remember driving up Lake Shore Drive on the most beautiful late summer mid-afternoon that has ever been. I remember passing that sleek starship that we call Soldier Field, being overwhelmed by the verdant Grant Park on my left, thinking that the blue of Lake Michigan was the most impressive, most fabulous, most alive color that I had ever seen. Sailboats dotted the blue; my heart raced with anxiety, wonder, joy. There were beaches, there were skyscrapers, there were people everywhere.

To say I was overwhelmed doesn't do justice. I guess I was gobsmacked.

Living in this city now for three years - three trying, rewarding, wonderful, awful years - has not yet robbed me of the wonder that I felt that first day. I still love to look out the windows of the Brown Line L train as it crosses the Chicago River into downtown. I still love the skyline views from the beach at Fullerton and the Museum Campus. I still love walking up and down Broadway and Clark and Milwaukee and Michigan and Belmont and Randolph. I still love the parks and the restaurants and the theatres, and the people still make me roll my eyes and laugh. The hearty, strange Midwestern people. The city people. The people of amazing ethnicities and difficult languages.

I am excited about my big move. My life is going to change in large, fundamental ways. But I'm worried. I know this city now. I know my parts of it well. We've reached a level of comfortable stasis. I'm worried that I'll never be able to walk to work again. I'm worried that I won't find tacos al pastor that I love as much as the ones at Buena Vista. I'm worried that no Gay Pride Parade can ever compare. I'm worried that I won't find good thrift stores and won't like the nightlife and won't have any Muslim coworkers and will have to drive, like, everywhere, like, all the time.

Thank you, Chicago. Thank you for three beautiful years of life. Please don't forget me.

"I hope that you will think of me
In moments when you're happy and you're smiling
That the thought will comfort you
On cold and cloudy days if you are crying"

Photo courtesy of LAP Photography. Copyright 2005.

Uprooted

This picture of my nephew Jesse is outdated - he's way bigger than this now - but it cracks me up and must be shared.

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One problem with having friends in other countries who speak other languages (no offense, Anne Sue!) is that details can get lost in translation. They they can sometimes misunderstand time words or verb tenses from emails and Facebook status updates. One of my friends and one of my former co-teachers from Taiwan met each other last week and were apparently talking about me and how I had moved to Phoenix. They both sent me emails asking about how I liked my new home and when they could come visit.

Not yet, people.

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Chicago has all of these awesome, kinda strange laws. One is that if your restaurant, cafe, or coffee shop provides sidewalk dining opportunities, you have to maintain flower boxes and live plants in a certain proportion to the amount of seating available. It sounds weird, but it makes everything look much, much nicer. Sometimes it is an invitation to mischief though.

Walking to work Monday morning, I passed by a stem of tulip that had been uprooted from a restaurant window box, bulb and all, and left to die of exposure on the cold, desolate concrete sidewalk. There was still a bit of dirt clinging to the tiny rootules spreading from the bottom of the bulb. The green of the stem was still fresh.

It felt a bit like one of those horrible news stories where person after person walks by a dying woman on an urban sidewalk, and it is all caught on surveillance camera footage. Like the callous rabbi passing by the beaten, suffering man in the story of the Good Samaritan.

I kept walking.

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If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked to have been assigned to work at our bank's main office two years ago when I started this job. Yesterday I got tickets, really great seats, to a Cubs game. Just for being there at the right time and saying "Yes, I would like two free tickets to tonight's game." My bank has a bunch of season tickets which they generally give to those hefty, important business or loan customers that they need to keep happy. I guess no one wanted them yesterday, so I got to mark "Baseball Game at Wrigley Field" off of my Chicago Bucket List.

And then there's the neighborhood connections. I have met so many of the owners, operators, and managers of some of Chicago's biggest and best gay bars over the last month. Scarlett, Circuit, Roscoe's, Bobby Love's, Charlie's, North End, MiniBar... I could have been drinking for free for the last two years, people. Not to mention the Boystown restaurants, salons, shops... Shame.

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I have nothing to say about Arizona's new state law concerning illegal immigrants.

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On Sunday I finally cashed in my Entenmann's outlet punch card. Two years of bakery thrift store shopping for two free loaves of bread. And two boxes of donuts - those I paid for. I was able to walk to this palace of refined flour and carbo-laden breakfast treats for a few months after I moved back to Chicago in 2008. Since I've lived in Lakeview my visits have been limited to occasions when Sofia and I happen to be driving by on our way to...wherever.

I really wanted to ask that quirky checkout lady if I could take a picture with her since it was certain to be my last visit. I'll always remember her: her rambling, borderline-nonsensical cash register conversation, the way that she loved me for bringing my own bags, and that uniquely sloppy way in which she pins up her hair. Kind of the art of misdirection, actually. 'Cause she's beautiful.

Currently Listening to:

"Borderline/Open Your Heart" by those talented kids from that Glee show