Love Train

Oh Wisconsin. I love you so much. It's the kind of love where I want you to be even better than you are because it will be good for you, not because it will be good for me. For what it's worth, Wisconsin, I think a train would have been really, really good for you. Especially a train that went from Chicago to Minneapolis and stopped in Madison. Think of that glittering modern future, laid out on tracks. The movement of people is the movement of ideas, and the movement of ideas is a good way to stimulate a knowledge-based economy. Not to mention ship goods efficiently in an age when oil is increasingly dear (money-wise and environmental-cost-wise). You know, no one outside America really knows Wisconsin? We are a wasteland. North of Chicago, south of Canada. I want everyone to know how lovely you are, how good and caring your people are. Even when sometimes your people are actually a lot like people everywhere - dumb, easily mislead, and yes, sometimes actually selfish and not at all caring.

My 5-year plan, not so much a plan as a "Eureka!' scribbled on a a napkin, includes grad school. Even though I believe firmly in sticking to a thing you love even when it's cranky and run by idiots and not so fun to be around, I've now, today, this minute, decided I am not going to bother applying to Madison. Not even as a "might as well give it a try." I have lived here so long. I am curious about other places. The near future is as good a time as any to seek them out. That's still at least 2012, anyway. Maybe the world will have ended by then, like they say it will.

We live in interesting times, friends.

These things happened

Wheat field Yo Yo Ma approves of everything you do.


Where did you park?

My friend Matt visited from Chicago this weekend. At breakfast today he told the story of his night curled on the floor by his friend CJ's bed, driven there (from the couch) by ghosts. Strange footsteps in the hallway (there are no neighbors on that floor) and, "It sounded like it put my shoes on and was walking around in them." CJ swears the place is haunted, and the cat was mewing at shadows.

"I was going to call you guys," he tells me and Carrie over our respective scramblers.

I kind of wish I could have gotten that phone call. If only because no one has ever called me while in the process of being haunted. I am not sure I would have said anything useful, but I like giving useless advice.

all your sanity and wits, they will all vanish

At Gogol Bordello on Sunday night. A dancing pixie successfully resisted arrest by two burly security guards, then was lifted out of the balcony by a police officer. A lighthouse and the wheel of an imaginery ship. Reunion with long-lost friend. Someone in a Barney costume came to the front of the balcony at the appropriate moment to remind us all that s/he has always worn purple.

glowing young ruffians

The National show last week was kind of like this.

I think I just like crowd energy, as long as it's focused on a point that is very far from me.

There's a pause most people take that wards off such disasters.

This city is crawling with poets who know me. I haven't written anything worthwhile in months, so I start to feel panicked and acidy when I see old professors or the one curmudgeonly jazz poet who remembers me from my high school competition days and says really encouraging things about how I can totally make it without an MFA. I managed to bump into both varieties yesterday and acid, acid, acid.

I also took the garbage out yesterday and was two seconds too late to stop the back door from swinging closed. I forget for a critical moment that my building has auto-locking outer doors. None of my neighbors was home. All the doorbells seem broken, anyway. I learned I can climb to my back porch by standing on a railing and grabbing another railing and just hoisting. But the door I never lock was locked anyway. I sat up there until I got cold.

Luckily I'd already finalized my plan to meet some friends at the top of State St. for dinner and a Book Festival reading, so I just started walking, phoneless walletless, wearing not quite enough, passing the big "legalize pot" festival and accompanying fire dancers on Library Mall. About 45 minutes, I think. I got to the rendezvous just in time, bummed dinner off one friend and a scarf off the other. Mary was crashing on my couch, and had a car, so we drove back afterward, and knocked on the front door until the downstairs neighbor who I never see wordlessly let me in. I think he hates everyone, and has potential to become the reluctant but heartwarming friendship you see in Sean Connery movies.

I really enjoyed climbing up and down from my porch. I have this fantasy of coming and going that way all the time. Or forcing friends to do so.

Annoying things I have been procrastinating on dealing with since moving:

car problems
no gas (no hot water)
no internet at home
desk needing a few well-placed nails before I can put things on it
fruit flies
no working doorbell
bees preventing me from enjoying my deck

The last is the most important. After that, I can get back to having remotely interesting blog posts, maybe.

Biked halfway to work today. I think next time it might be easier to just bike all the way - leaving the former-railroad-bed bikepath for the bumpily-paved hills of Tokay was torture for my out-of-shape quads. And then I was way early for my bus out of paranoia. Google Bikes says the full ride to work would take an hour, but I am dubious.

There was a 75-year-old man who passed me on the path. He was impressive.

I will later paste this into the body of an e-mail I owe several friends

It has been busy here. I have barely been home, except mostly to sleep, since moving. Thankfully, the "hi-goodbye" phase of the summer is over. I will miss the friends who have just moved, and the ones who have just breezed through town from various distant places (Korea, Boston, Miami, etc), but it will be nice to have a night home to finally get my kitchen organized, too.

A technical writing job has fewer interesting anecdotes than a newspaper job, too, so I've had less motivation to write about work. Readers familiar with -->company<-- are already aware of the crazy art and the free tea and the lush landscaping that await employees, and it's not interesting enough to otherwise detail. The quickest route to my office involves crossing a fake stream via stepping stones. There are fake ducks along the way.

I might have some thoughts about the transition to a large company with the atmosphere of a college campus, but I'm still kind of nauseated by the contrast. Out of sadness for the newspaper industry, I mean. Though at the same time, I was proud of how well we managed with so little. I think we all were, even when it was really, honestly, far too little. At least we could say we worked that hard with no safety nets.

Extracurricular projects in the works. Exciting times.

overview

It is very strange changing from a company with 8 employees in my particular office to one with 3,000+ on a multi-building campus. As with any change, there are things that are better, and things that are worse. The orientation process is really not jiving with my sense of independence, the way all my previous work has involved just jumping in and learning by doing. On the other hand, this company can't run on 4,000 completely independent employees, and I must get used to a higher degree of teamwork anyway.

Living in Madison again is surreal, like a dream. I hop on my bike and go see a friend 10 minutes after I have decided to. It's far too easy.

Post-move update

Hi, blog. How have you been? Yeah, me too.

Only liberal sometimes

My married high school friends who just bought a house and made me feel super old had their housewarming party last night. My friend Robin and I had joked that soon all we'd be hearing about would be the home improvements, as that is how we stereotype people who own houses but don't have kids. So I asked Travis about his plans right away. You know, to get it out of the way.

Travis, a former Marine who will happily take the conservative side on some issues where I would not, takes me out to the back yard and says, "See that tree in the corner? Part of it will have to go." I start to flinch in the dark. "That way I can put in a whole row of solar panels. They should catch the sun up until early afternoon."

He goes on with the other solar panels he wants on the other side of the yard, and then talks about selling the excess to MG&E (and if they won't give him a competitive rate, he'll just get himself mostly off the grid) and how he wants to replace all the appliances with more efficient ones. Oh, and then he wants to brick up part of the basement, the part with the weird fireplace, and turn it into a reading room. And if he ever had a load of money, it would be totally sweet to turn another part of the basement into an armory for all his knives.

The way he puts it, while he runs conservative on many things, he'll always be pro-choice, and he knows the country's fucked if we don't start making better choices about energy. Like I told him to his face, I think those are really great priorities if you're only liberal sometimes.

It's really nice to talk to old friends after a long time of not being much in touch and find you haven't both changed so much that you have nothing in common anymore.

Westside-itis

I received my packet of "welcome to our company!" materials while I was in Florida. I was perusing it last night for entertainment value because it was that or unpack my duffel and finally discover whether the jam I bought survived airport baggage handling.

Bear in mind that this will be my second professional job and the first one was at a company too small to even contemplate having the kinds of problems that come with hiring literally hundreds of new people each month. So the idea of a "welcome to our company!" packet is itself foreign to my experience thus far, and just reinforces my sense that I've been accepted at a college that is also paying me. Also bear in mind that I am a Madison native, unlike, surely, a large percentage of new hires, and it's fair to prioritize when you're dealing with complete newcomers who need to meet basic needs in a strange city.

But still. It's interesting to see what information is given to each month's new crop of Madison/Verona/Fitchburg residents, and how it contrasts with what I actually love best there.

* "What to do in Madison" lists movie theaters, but not live music venues (and not the Orpheum) and none of the local theater companies. Other than that, there is State Street, the Capitol, and a link to city and county park sites.
* "Where to go" includes only the Terrace, the Overture Center, APT, and the college sports scene.
* Events and Clubs lists the farmer's market (neglecting the winter and satellite markets), Concerts on the Square, Bratfest (barf), and Hoofers. But not the county fair? All the little neighborhood festivals? At least the Miffling Street Block party was also excluded.
* Tips on parking downtown, cabs and buses. But not on bike paths.
* Grocery stores are all west-side ones, logically so, but I was hoping they'd at least mention the impending Willy St. Co-op expansion. And Trader Joe's.
* Fitness clubs (with a focus on the megaliths) and "general stores" (Target, Walmart, SuperTarget).
* And then apartment resources with a focus on apartment complexes west of Hilldale.

Anyway, I'm looking at four apartments today and maybe more on Friday, and they're all downtown and I'm pretty hopeful that I'll end up living somewhere I want to live, by things I want to live near. Like, easy distance to all the great stuff the High Noon and the Orpheum put together. And the arboretum (how can you not mention the arboretum???). And campus film offerings. Etc. Anyway, it's better for me if getting to work is a struggle (I'm aiming to combine bus and bike as much as possible) because I HAVE to go to work, so I'll make it happen. If I lived close to work, everything outside of work would be a struggle. No thanks.

This weekend I sold my body to science.

Fyi, at plasma donation centers you have to itemize all piercings, tattoos and self-inflicted scars like it's stuff you're declaring at customs. What is it? Where? What year? This is so they can tell when you've got new infection risks, in case you weren't planning on telling them about that tattoo, and defer you for X number of months while you either do or do not develop the symptoms of HIV infection.

So, at one point, a nurse approaches a guy waiting to donate and says, "Wait, I need to document those wounds on your neck!" He's got some fairly impressive hickeys, I can see them big and dark from across the room - "These are wounds?" - and she says smirkingly, "Yeah, those are WOUNDS. Go ahead and tell whoever wounded you…I don't even know how to spell hickey. What do I write, acquired in the act of lovemaking?" And he's smirking too and starts sending a text message.

"I'm about to make a sandwich full of DANGER."

Yes, I drove roughly 1.75 hours and either paid or misplaced a total of $19 to see roughly 3.25 hours of circus tonight. Yes, I live in a circus town (which got a shoutout at tonight's show). Your point?

Baraboo is great but it sadly lacks:
- man jumping barefoot on broken glass
- man diving chest-first naked onto broken glass
- audience volunteers standing on man lying belly-down on broken glass
- naked man pulling glass from his own scrotum. Assuring, "if I could afford this much sugar glass, I'd be in college right now, studying sculpture."
- fire eating, fire burlesque, fire fire fire
- man slicing watermelon with sword on belly of woman lying on bed of 6" nails (yes, I know the trick is to distribute your weight evenly)
- woman playing the most breathtaking music on a saw
- so much juggling of knives!

Monday I have to call the dentist about this pain and get that asbestos smell from my car checked out and probably start eating nothing but rice and peanutbutter. Have your fun now, kiddos.

If I could romanticize in florid language how hot it has been

This ardent June/near-July/summer, murky with sweat, clasping us to her hot breast & the swampy creases of her arms. Our lungs thrashing in the sun like stranded, smothering fish. So on/so forth. It is damn hot.

(Or, as my friend Bryan says, "like being trapped in a giant's armpit." A sleeper hold, perhaps. Say "uncle.")

No one can sleep, we swap tips on keeping the air in the apartment circulating without AC. Some of us consider buying AC. This may be the final step to becoming an adult. My last night at the survey center, a woman in California tells me I should come visit her and we'll go to the beach.

P.S. I have opinions

My brother graduated from high school today. I'm really proud of him and the rest of Memorial's class of 2009. That said, the usual graduation cliches repeated in every single speech (Cherish your friends! Follow your dreams! Make the world better! Help those in need! You have done so much! Life is the journey! You will all be shining stars of great specialness!) caused me great distress. I have lately become more aware of how lucky it is for these kids to have gone through high school in a city where the public schools are so very good. Many, many of those who graduated will be going on to college, and have grown up in environments where it's a matter of course, to the point where, five years ago, a friend of mine had great difficulty convincing one of the guidance counselors that despite her fabulous grades she really did WANT to go to the local technical college instead of aiming for a four-year university. The kids who come out of schools in Madison are miles ahead, in that respect, of many of the people I have met since leaving high school, both in other countries and this one. I wish someone, anyone, had mentioned that, had pointed out that the kids sitting in front of them were among the most privilaged in the world.

I also wish someone had mentioned the JMM student who was shot last week, Karamee Collins. Ignoring the fact that his death was a crime, and that there may have been many, many factors leading to it both longterm and shorterm, societal and individual - ignoring all that, this kid still went to that school and was a part of the community, and his death was a loss that should be acknowledged even, especially, in such a moment of triumph as today's. At my high school graduation, a nod was made to students who should have been there but were not: the boy who killed himself freshman year, the students who died in a car crash the summer before. Why wasn't that done today? While it should not be a challenge to live until you graduate, it sometimes is - and I firmly believe that should be acknowledged even as you celebrate having made it that far.