20SB Blog Swap

Hi my fellow blog readers. 20SB is hosting another blog swap, and Ms. Smiley is my partner! Um, I love this little tid-bit of great info for women. Please check out her blogs, fantastical. You can read mine on her blog as well. Thanks and much love to you all!

Hello to Lindy’s readers. This is Ms. Smiley here, of A Panther Smiles and SAFSHOPS. I am a new fan of Lindy’s blog and can only hope to be as thought provoking as she for this blog swap courtesy of 20SB. Thanks for reading my 2 cents and check out my two blogs at www.apanthersmiles.blogspot.com andwww.seekandfindshops.blogspot.com.

For a minute there, I was gonna keep it really real, but I’m not ready for that and neither are you. Keeping in the vain of Lindy’s blog I am going to touch on the recent randomness of my life. I have recently discovered the ultimate man magnet and it doesn’t cost me a penny.

Wanna know what it is? Well, for a little background about me: I recently ended a relationship with an utter douche that may have provided me with many a life skill, he also showed me the things I do not like in men and hope to never desire in a man again.

Now, on to my newest discovery, the ultimate man magnet…

One night, several months ago I was watch television on the internet or on TV, not so sure, but either way, I caught an episode of 20/20 that blew my mind! There was a study done about the attractiveness of women to men based on the time of the month in their ovulation cycle and all the physical and internal changes a woman experiences on this wonderful rollercoaster ride of hormones. Why would this interest, me you ask? I mean, I just got out of a relationship, so I’m obviously attractive to somebody, correct? Well, duh!

The problem I had recently been having was that I wasn’t attracting anyone new and 20/20 helped me to discover why: birth control! Basically, men are able to sense women who are “off-limits’ per se because of pregnancy and unless that’s just their thing (check out creepy Craigslist personal ads) they are also not attracted to women on the pill or some form of birth control such as the Nuvaring, et al and she’s just not doing it for them.

Well, since Elizabeth Vargas and John Stossel told me to, I have been off BC for several months and the mandscape has changed my friends. I’m still pretty creeped out that only older men seem to want to approach me, I’m just getting warmed up and am about to begin some serious speed dating and other trials in my little experiment.

Has any one else out there notices a difference in their attraction rate when off BC or even when you are on it? Please share!

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Admiration

I love William Carlos Williams.

The Young Housewife

At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband’s house
I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

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Week

I had another great week/weekend. Got plenty of sleep. Worked a lot. Stayed up late to write and drink wine. Started a book. Thought about Bali. Hung out with people I love. Cooked amazing foodages. Saw The Get Up Kids and felt nostalgic. Pit stops at DeVille. Saw Lucero at Bottom Lounge. Ran into a few friends. Listened to Mori say more random crazy shit. Went to a private party at Manor for a group of UFC fighters. Danced hard at AK. Another early morning pizza run. Watched a movie I barely remembered from 1998. Found Devon Sawa on Twitter. Chocolate chip pancakes at Sunrise Cafe early in the afternoon. Laughed an insane amount. I love my life.

I have the most fantastic friends. Most of them (pretty much all of them) are dudes, and they are all pretty amazing in their own right. Insanely fun. I have good peeps in my life.

I'm catching up on a few things. Sorry this blog is so boring and lacking of any effort at all. I'll make up for it next time around.

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Writing and the Death of a Friend

I've been hovering over this computer for two days now, writing a couple of pieces for an online magazine and doing some creative work as well. I've been rewriting an article, rhetoric is so completely difficult for me. I can't help but slip into the creative realm when I write.

Last night, I was thinking about my past, something I try to avoid. In a moment of self deprivation, I questioned my writing abilities and tried to decipher if I had any real talent. I think everyone with any sort of passion eventually questions this. We try to avoid it, but it sneaks up at the most inappropriate times, this was one of them. Me, trying to be Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, trying to use wine as a way to lessen the self conflict, staying up until 3 am forcing myself into a moment of creative fury that never seemed to arrive.

My mother always wanted to me to be some sort of artist. While teachers, since I was in second grade, advised her to nurture my writing ability, she felt that it was my minimal talent in drawing that should be pursued. The perfectionist in me hates to paint, despises drawing. It frustrates me to no end. She, however, stuck me in art classes, all the while my teachers were reading my papers aloud to classrooms full of my peers.

I would love to start doing some art projects, but free time is few and far between lately. University art classes probably ruined me for life, in that, I hate the intensity and the lack of freedom I felt in these classes. What do you mean my apple doesn't look like an apple? It's called cubism. Asshole. I think I got burned from the intense criticism from professors.

It's October. It's the anniversary of the death of my friend, Nick. Two years without him, it's difficult to fathom a world existing with him gone. The earth still spins, it still moves and that is a so hard for me to believe. It's a concept my soul wants to deny.

I think about his family often. I think about how tragic it is to lose someone, a victim of their own hands, of their own pain. A family who will always be left with questions. I want to go to them and tell them that he is still here, he is still tethered to this line of memories that will never end, memories that connect us. It's a web, it's entanglement at its finest.

I miss him.

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He Leaves

I woke up and felt the need to write. It's 8 am, and I'm slightly hungover from only a few beers last night. I tried to shake off this feeling. This is the feeling of sadness and relief all mixed up together, all these things that have made me doubt myself in the last couple of weeks. Mr. S. Korea Teacher is leaving today. The realization that I will probably never see him again has sunk in. It's 8 am, and I'm writing, trying to see through this mess I've created.

I don't even know what this is. I don't even know what I'm completely feeling or felt about him. I didn't know him. I shoved my ideals onto this image, onto this guy who was completely too good looking for his own good, for my own good. I wanted him to be perfect. I wanted him to be perfection in his tall, thin, dark eyed, olive skinned body suit, and he's not. So, I sit here at 8 am and wonder who he really was, and if he'll ever appear in my life again.

I feel deceived. I feel deceived by my own memories, my own beliefs. So, I sit here with the clock ticking, with it creeping towards 9 am, towards takeoff, and I let myself in on a little secret. The secret of denial, it was lust, it was lust, it was lust.

Last night I belly up to the bar with Mori at DeVille as we watch one of my old flames kiss another girl. I watch him touch her leg and how he desperately wants to take her home. I smile and inside I want her to go home with him. I feel little if anything. Indifference.

The indifference has plagued me up until this point, up until today, with my heart sinking, with my heart beating. It's 9:18, 18 minutes past takeoff, and it's over. It's gone.

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Last night, my buddies and I went to see "Rain Machine", Kyp Malone's little side project. We're sitting there out in the crowd, during intermission, trying to come up with words to describe the show thus far. You can't capture things in certain words. We settled on a few, which, were "good", "awesome" and "orgasmic". That does nothing to really summarize how great Malone was.

We had such a great time. The entire crowd of people were trashed. They were dancing to music that Malone wasn't even putting out, somewhere in their heads they were at a club downtown grinding against some dude. I was amused, but wish they could have fully enjoyed what was being pulsated through their ears. It was pornographic and it was intense. (I obviously, tossed in the word "orgasmic" to size "Rain Machine" up.)

I was also able to work my first media pass for this show. This is a whole other blog in itself. But I did it, and I'm pretty out of my mind excited about doing it again.

This is completely random, but my bff, Mori is very funny. She won't let me post this on twitter, she won't let me post this on Facebook, so it's going here, right on my blog.

She says the most completely random things. She does not have a filter. I like this.

It's Friday. We go to a little coffee shop, pull out our laptops. She's photoshopping some of her designs, while I write my little heart out and listen to some music. I'm staring behind the counter, watching the three young barista girls who all look very pretty. I watch them tend to the customers and work their barista magic. I pull off my headphones, tap her on the shoulder and ask simply, with my head in the clouds, "I wonder how many of these girls were madly in love with him?" Mori stares at me for a second, glares and says "They are all lesbians, you moron." She puts back on her headphones and continues photoshopping. Just like that my reality shifts.

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I Love This City

It's cold in my "second" office. I wish the heat would kick on. I also wish I could spend a Chicago winter elsewhere and then come back to the city I love sometime around March. I'd return more infatuated than I was before. No other city inspires me, no other town makes me feel like this. Thinking about moving West makes me numb, I'm over San Diego. What little I had left to covet, is long gone, out of my system.

This city is maddening. It's a trove of pleasure. It's my city.

I'm parked along Michigan Ave., the other day. I'm watching a drove of tourists march down the street, stopping to see the sidewalk entertainers and peer their eyes through the shop windows. I watch them drink their lattes and carry leftovers from the little sidewalk cafes they stopped to eat at. I'm listening to my ipod and it's as if their footsteps beat to the sound of my music. I want to tell them to move here. I want to stop each one, with their amazed looks, their picture taking, and tell them my stories, my little love notes written out all over the city.

It's not the lake, it's not the architecture, it's not the endless amounts of things to do that I love, it's the grime, it's the grittiness that I desire. It's the scenes of the homeless and the noise their cups make when they jingle the coins around and around. I love this city. It's the endless amounts of debris that line the pavement one day, and then disappear the next. I love this city. It's the sound of the "L, the honking of the cabs and the constant screaming of various sirens. I love this city. It's the failure to connect with anyone, but needing to connect with someone. I love this city. It's the reckless ways that people come together and fall apart. I love this city.

Yesterday, I'm driving down Chicago Ave. and pull up to a stop sign, take a brief pause while a biker darts out in front of my car. Simultaneously we move in a steady motion towards each other, seconds away from a collision. We look at each other and our eyes lock, I yell something like, "what the fuck are you doing dude?", he yells something back about me being a "fucking bitch" and just like that we are on our separate ways. That's how it is, the rawness of the city, the truth of it all. I love it.

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Happiness

It's strange, I can always tell the energy that someone gives off. I can feel it seep out from their skin, hover around their body.

Last night I was approached by a guy who offered to buy me a drink. I relented, and let him buy me a Steel Blonde, a great little beer that I have never had before. We chat for awhile about life, our careers, our home base and then he asks me the question that many guys ask me. It's the question about being happy here in Chicago, which leads to the question of being happy in general. Am I happy... in general?

Maybe it does sound condescending when I reply I have THE best life. I love my life. What's not to love? So, the boy, the man, the whatever, in the blue sweater looks at me disgruntled, he looks at me angry, and asks, "what makes your life so great, you are kidding right?" It's as if I have a secret, which I don't. It's as if he hates me for this, as if I'm hiding or lying, I'm not. I just choose to work with my life, not against it.

Why would I hate my life, this life? Yes, there are things that I would tweak, things I would adjust. I would have my dream career up and running, I would have an amazing artistic loft, or a little cottage by the lake, and most recently, maybe a love, but these are things that I look forward to pursuing. These are just the little added benefits to "life", things that make it fun.

The biggest lesson I have learned this year, the most powerful lesson that I was taught, is two part: One is that all the tremendous amount of pain that a person goes through, at different periods in their life, is just a part of it; you can't avoid it. It will happen. Someone will break your heart, someone will leave you, you may get sick, you may hit rock bottom; no one is immune. We can't protect ourselves, but that is the brilliance of it all. There is prolific joy in that.

The second is that everyone will leave you at some point. You will be abandoned whether through your choice or not. People will move on with their lives to something else, or they will simply pass away. This little reality taught me to just be happy with the moment, not the past or the future, but this moment. Enjoy the time you have with the people in your life right now.

Dude in blue sweater needs a little epiphany. Dude in the blue sweater needs to not get so angry with "rosy peachy girl". Whatever. There is nothing special about my life, it is what it is and I love it.

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Effacing

There is something in the air. It’s the harvest moon. It’s been an odd last few weeks. Things are changing, and I’m really digging it.

Last night, the loft party I had intended to go to was cut short by me being really fucking tired and crabby from the night before. I decided to load up on french fries and go to bed. I slept through the entire night. I slept so hard that Mori screaming and my dog barking didn’t even wake me up. A centipede had apparently crawled across her stomach at some point in the night. My dog attempted to save her from it.

I’m sitting here on the floor doing an open house, my other part time job. I’m watching the clouds; these ominous looking clouds that float by the widow. They are heading east where they will dump their weight somewhere over Lake Michigan, letting go of miles of excess baggage they have been carrying around for way too long. They will spend a day, or so, releasing the stored mess, and return to another image, another self, constantly effacing the other version of what they once were.

It seems that there is always something pushing them along, keeping them moving, a silent energy. I’d like to imagine that instead of being pushed, however, they are being beckoned. Someone on the other end of the earth entices them and moves them to change, pulling them closer. Their journey being a combination of ups and downs, heavy points and light points, and in the end they just dissipate.

This to me is almost a metaphor to how I feel about our lives and/or about spirituality (I hate that word for what it connotes, but I have nothing else to use). We are constantly changing and redefining ourselves; we are always changing form, in a figurative sense. It seems as if some internal force is pushing us, we may not realize that we are also being delicately pulled by something stronger. We have moments where we release much needed baggage, we unload it upon others in a storm of fury and bottled up emotions. We become still for a brief period where we let go only to be filled again by unneeded drama. So around and around we go, in circles. We repeat and repeat and repeat. Such a vicious cycle.

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The Streets on Fire

Last night I went to Riptide, a nice little 4 am bar in the Bucktown vicinity. It seems to be the place I run into random friends. We all take whatever is left of ourselves after a night of drinking, stuff our bodies into the a small area and try to hold a conversation. It's also the place where I met Mr. S Korea teacher. (On a sidenote)

I happened to run into the guys from "The Streets on Fire"at Debonair, earlier in the night, and we met up again at Riptide. Only today, after sleeping for six hours, I decided to do my usual research and listen to some of their music. I was invited to watch one of their shows this month. I figured I should check them out before I go.

I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed. They describe their music as a product of "relentless raw energy", and it is raw and I loved it.

Voted as one of the top ten bands in Chicago by Metromix, I'm looking forward to seeing them play. I want to see if this "raw energy" in all it's full glory. Also, ask frontman, Chadwick, how he got the "wings" that are impeccably pinned on his navy suit blazer... hint, it wasn't because it was recently his first time flying.

On a whole other note.... I have a little side project I'm working on. Very very excited for it and hope that it actually pans out. Wish me luck, please... even if you don't know what it is! :)

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Moving Continents

I found him at one of those sleazy 4 am bars. He walked by me and I thought to myself, I want this guy. He had these dark eyes, the kind of eyes I later learn, occurs when you smoke too much pot. Whatever, I tell my best friend. He rolled a cigarette for me, smiled, and I thought, I'm done.

I’m sure he never thought he would be part of my blog, I didn’t either. I didn’t bother to call, or text after the last time I saw him. Sometimes, I can be an asshole like that. I get the feeling he is as well. It could be the entire moving thing, but I would like to take the tough girl role in this one.

He’s moving to South Korea to teach in the next month. A fact that I learned the first night I met him, a fact that I dismissed. So, I have reluctantly avoided him. This last week I have thought about him a little too much. Although, I’ve almost completely forgot some subtle details about him, the way he parts his hair or what the smell of his skin was like. These are details I cared less about, I want the part where we closed down the bar one night, not even realizing it. The fact that each time I saw him, I smiled just a little more.

He could not fathom that I hated The Flaming Lips, like most people do. I think I’ve come to say it because it really makes people irate. He was amused by it. I pushed it too far, because the smile I could get from him made me jump to other great bands. I’ll throw in a little bit of Beatles and let him know that they did not really alter the course of music as we know it. I’ll argue for other bands, like The Rolling Stones.

Nirvana, we agreed upon. In my head I remember thinking he was such a child when Kurt Cobain died. He told me that Nirvana altered the way he thought about music. I told him about my brother sending me Pearl Jam CD’s from California, advising me to stop listening to big hair bands.

I didn’t get to tell him, Frightened Rabbit was in fact a band I had downloaded at some point, but never got around to fully listening to them. He had played them while we shot pool that night, all the while bullshitting about life and his move. I also forgot to tell him, that night, as I stared at the poster above his bed, so many other things. I couldn't focus, I couldn't breathe. I didn’t pay attention to how his fingers wrapped into mine. I was busy watching the continents, mapped out on his wall. I moved them together and moved them apart. I dissected Asia away and pushed it towards me. S. Korea seemed to float, such a lonely little country. So I willed it’s way over to me, across an entire continent and landed it safely in Lake Michigan. He didn’t notice my eyes, even when he pushed the hair away from them, he couldn’t see they were unyielding. They were stationary and set on an Asian jungle, only steps away from North Ave beach.

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Public Road

About

I live in Chicago. I freelance. I like music. I like to write. I love adventures. I love my life.

I'm a Member of 20 Something Bloggers & blogher

20SB Blog Swap

Admiration

Week

Writing and the Death of a Friend

He Leaves

I Love This City

Happiness

Effacing

The Streets on Fire

Moving Continents

Public Road

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