How I Write When It's 20 Degrees Outside

Anton Chekhov wrote that the weather is a chastisement from God. You have to wonder just what the fuck Chicago did wrong. Lest we forget the the city's windy not for its you-most-certainly-are-in-KS-strength blustering, but rather for its politicians, that wind metaphorizing its way into the literal and vice versa, the Word and Wrath of God blowing trans-Loop, gerrymandered transit lines and chapped faces frozen alike, the circumstances of production and object themselves spooning away in some frozen chrysalis. Sin and chastisement all, I'd crucify the tablet smashers myself, if only I didn't have to make the 40 minute (rather than year) wander down to city hall. We idolators take the brunt anyways, but it's just not commensurate punishment.

But some other writer said not to ever, ever start with a description of the weather. But also you have to wonder if it can be called weather (that is, if that thing that is outside is the same out there as it is in here) seeping through, as it does, all those bodily thresholds. We're all holes anyways, from orifice to blackhead divits to the asymptotal proximity of electron and nucleus - H20, air, and tiny sparks of electricity, flimsy enough, it would seem, to drift like so much ashy detritus from the burning cherry-tips of fat-cat-chomper thunderheads, dragging until their substance flecks away to us below, and we slip on it and fall on our asses in the middle of a crosswalk. We blow away little by little, suck up our substance by smaller degrees, until dissipation overtakes reification. So the weather wraps your liver up in cold (and let's not forget that cold is a whole lot of nothing-at-all), and you think about that time Jon Anderson offered to rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace. I said thanks but no thanks, and yet he insisted. Jon Anderson, you're not fooling anyone - you don't know how to play tambourine. Now you see me coming from stage-right, about to rage on you! Look scared!

Grizzly Beard

Chicago is a bearded city. Facial hair carries a lot of currency here, brings a lot of cred with it, and, inevitably, like a new pair of Roos at the top of the monkeybars (or last week at the Empty Bottle, now that I think about it), also brings a lot of mad-dogging and aggressive jealousy and the like.

And my beard has served me well, certainly. But things have gotten a little out of hand. I keep forgetting to buy new batteries for my digital camera, but rest assured, my face situation is approaching critical. So it's almost time to shave. But before that, a shout out to the haters:

1. Dude at the coffee shop with a ratty, patchy excuse for a beard, fuck you. I know you take a long time to refill my coffee not because you're busy frothing up some soy/espresso concoction, but because in your heart of hearts you know your beard will always elicit looks of pity, while mine draws in nothing but awe, like some black hole in my face. And you need some new records - even though I have my cans on when I visit your establishment, in the back of my mind I know one of seven Wilco tracks, one of four Belle & Sebastian tracks, or something from Chutes Too Narrow is playing, and it drives me crazy. You are bland.

2. Girl at the record store who thinks I'm like 40, fuck you. I know about Bloc Party, I just don't care.

3. People who avoid me on the train, you're cool. Thank you, I would like to take your seat.

4. Kyle, my roommate, thank you for shaving your beard, even though it was looking pretty good. We dress similarly most of the time, and I don't need the extra stares that matching beards inevitably draw.

5. Zit under my beard, fuck you. You have taken advantage, and it will not be tolerated.

6. Bob Ross, I miss you.

I am unpacking this sentence. Yes I am.

I'm coming to the tail end of grad school apps. Only a couple of things to worry about: GRE's and the applications themselves. Strangely, it's the latter, not the former, that worry me. I usually do pretty well on standardized tests, just so long as I'm pretty familiar with the material. Though I should be studying more. But I dread, dread, having to wade through the tedium of filling out applications, having transcripts sent, making the tiny but, from what I'm told, necessary tweaks to my personal statement. Writing 15-page papers? No sweat. Calling back the electric company? Kill me.

Writing is easy by comparison because the task is so immense: it's impossible to ignore. When I'm in "writing" mode, I end up constantly preoccupied with the piece, always thinking about it. In effect, always writing. Things like paying bills, though, comparatively easy thing (as long as you have the money) seem impossible. They have a tendency to recede into the background to the point that they become unnoticeable, and I forget about them.
Whatever I'm writing will turn out pretty well, but all of my bills will be overdue. Gosh, it's all so frustrating.

Trauma

When I was in the third grade I came in second place in my class' spelling bee because I reversed 'a' and 'e' in "beautiful." Ever since, I've had to double-check whenever I write that word, that double-take gawking at a fresh scar from an old accident.

Appropriate My Ennui!!!!!!

I thought about writing this totally long post that was monotonous and exhausting, in which I explicitly avoided the themes of monotony and exhaustion, while always hinting towards them, so that by the end of the post you woud look back and be like, "Whoa, dood. At first I though that post was about laundry and verbs, but it turns out it was about monotony and exhaustion. It turns out that by not communicating his feeling of always being exhausted (by a new temp gig) and of feeling like his life is just a series of endlessly deferred obligations (or the "differance of the [n]everyday" for all [two] of you loyal academics and academixtresses [by the way, Academixtress would be a totally good DJ name for a Ph.d. who spins L'il Kim and Morton Subotnick mash-ups, or finds the break beats in Varese's Ionisation (and it's my idea, so fuck right off, all plagiarizing my blog and shit - same goes for that "differance of the [n]everyday" line)]), he has actually succeeded in communicating just such a notion! Pardon me while I wipe down my now-befouled Blackberry!"

But instead I wrote a really long sentence with intentionally confusing punctuation, and "apologized" for not writing in my blog as much due to my having a new temp gig, and being too tired to drag my ass to the internet cafe down the street every night. (But apparently not too tired to drink too many 25-cent beers every Tuesday.)

Anyways, the internet gets installed on Saturday morning while I am at work. ("Work on a Saturday? The hell, you say!" But it's true - Chicago needs fancy reprints of its newspapers, and its yearning does not have a weekend. Therefore, I don't either.) This means: a) No more hauling my brick of a fucking laptop around unless I really want to, and b) Probably some boring blog entries about how I should get rid of the matresses that are propped up against my bedroom wall. Maybe with all of that leisure time to sit and think, I'll even figure out what this blog is about.

In fact, that last thought has given birth, perhaps prematurely, to an idea. EVERYBODY COMMENT ON THIS POST WITH WHAT YOU THINK THIS BLOG IS ABOUT AND/OR WHAT IT SHOULD BE ABOUT!!!!!!

And now, this awesome picture, apparently taken at a bar mitzvah. Or a quinceanera.