The Death of Imagination

Too, too much going on. I had mixed feelings about Liver Laddoo going back early yesterday. (His flight today was cancelled and he rescheduled for Sunday evening.) I felt like we had emotionally unresolved issues (particularly from a bit of a run-in that morning) which I would've liked to have worked through. But I was also plain exhausted from illness and lack of sleep, and it was nice to be able to stay and relax for a change.

For the most part, I thought the visit went well. Thursday he stayed at a hotel, which gave me a little more time to pull the place together. Friday morning I had my first session with my grief counselor and that went pretty well. When I was finished, he came up and we went out for lunch together at a Nepalese place on Devon. The food was just okay, but the waiter's odd notion of service left us both laughing.

He wanted to go out that night but I wasn't interested. Fortunately, he ran into people he knew at SoFo and they dragged him around town with them. I was surprised that I didn't even hear him stumble back in at 4 a.m. We both slept in and then he made us aloo poha/bataka puva with supplies we'd bought the day before. I was a little annoyed at how long he took getting ready to go out--particularly his putting off to the last possible moment some work he needed to finish before the end of the calendar week--but we got past that.

The birthday party went better than expected. One of the hosts still isn't speaking to me (so I presume it was his partner who sent the invite) but we managed to stay out of each other's way. Almost immediately, I fell into conversation with someone I recognised only from FB and he turned out to be a linguistics major whose masters thesis was a dictionary of an extinct North American Indian language.

The theme of the part was "Bacchanalia" and most of the guests complied by wearing togas. (Ever the contrarian, I wore all black with a skull design on my t-shirt.) At one point, I strode into the living room and there were dicks out--not a lot, but enough. One of them belonged to one of our hosts, the same who'd had a threeway with us this time last year and the party ended with his bigger half going to bed and me and the cats watching on while they went at it a bit.

Of course, I felt massively strung out the next morning and couldn't sleep in. First the airline hostess upstairs woke me up with her heels and then, just as I was nodding off, LL decided the best place to sit on the pot while he listened to Rachel Maddow was two meters from my head (instead of, say, the whole other bathroom upstairs). Since it was his last full day, I pressed him to schedule something, but in the end it only worked out with one other person (a jovial Jordanian).

After lunch at Ghareeb Nawaz, we walked to a couple of sweet shops in search of something he could take back to his desi friends in Portland. It was cold and getting colder, and Liver Laddoo was underdressed and complaining. After they left, I began feeling dyspeptic and managed to eat only a little porridge for dinner, which bit me in the ass at four a.m. when I woke up feeling ravenous.

At that point, the snow had just begun to fall. A few hours later, I hurried shoveled some off the front walk before heading to the bus stop. I got confused as to where I was going and stood watching a 151 go past before realising that was exactly the bus I wanted. The driver of the 36 that I eventually caught was in no hurry, so I arrived a full 15 minutes late for the installation of my crown with my stomach still in turmoil.

I joked with the dentist that all his messing around in my mouth was at least keeping my mind off my gut and we laughed at that together. That's probably the moment at which my day took a turn for the better. Pasillero got in touch as I was making my way to campus through a winter wonderland and was amenable to rescheduling for tomorrow evening. I really hope I feel up to it.

Sunday may well turn out to have been our last nice day of the year. It's been cold and grey this week, but I was hoping it was only a spell and the weather would turn. Today, however, it's snowing and it feels like winter is really here.

Winds were coming from the north so I went down to the shore after this morning's All-Staff to photograph the surf. I've never seen the lake so high. (Indeed, a friend checked the DNR records and found it hasn't been since 1986.) It's now higher than the level of the lagoon on campus, and parts of the bank are swamped. When I went out to landfill to take photos, I found chunks of concrete washed up on the grass at least four meters from the waterline. This storm is not kidding around.

The snow was just beginning to stick at midmorning, when the temperature was still officially above freezing. It's expected to drop slowly over the course of the day so we'll see real accumulation before nightfall. Some suburbs have rescheduled trick-or-treating for Saturday. I can see the logic, yet I see this as the slim end of the wedge that will be the end of celebrating Halloween on Halloween.

After dawdling at the grocery store, I arrived home with barely enough time to feed the cat, feed myself, and figure out my outfit before heading off to my next social event. Then, while scooping tofu noodle soup into my gob, I got a message from my neighbour asking if I was going to another party later that night. I told her we'd see.

Not only did I make both parties, but I even managed a little bridge in-between. Things were in full swing at the H&M Flat and I made myself a nuisance by deciding I wanted a Sazerac and then, when that proved impossible, insisting on making Old Fashioneds for myself and a couple other guests. It was so packed with cuties but I ended up chatting most with a cute Jewish boy from the burbs and then texting him drunkenly in pseudo-Yiddish afterwards.

Granville was the stop closest to my neighbours' gay friend's housewarming so I thought I might as well stick my head into the Anvil and see if I knew anyone there. As it happened, gopower and Coleman were literally right inside the door so I foisted shots on them and chairdanced to GaGa before running off.

The housewarming was winding down but the host was in no hurry to get rid of us. I was so drunk at this point that I didn't even grok that he and his friend we're trying to reposition the refrigerator. Then his friend starting hitting on me and pulled me behind the refrigerator but my neighbours were leaving and I wanted to walk home with them so I made excuses but he insisted I take his number whereupon I discovered that...I already had it? He'd given it to me at that 30th birthday party at SoFo the month before and both of us had forgotten since he'd never really followed up.

I was unsurprisingly hungover the next morning and blew off my brunch date with Liver Ladoo's Houstonian friend--or at least I thought I had. I woke up from a late nap and was still struggling to head up to the kitchen to fix lunch when he texted me and asked if I wanted to eat. I reluctantly agreed, since I really didn't want to wait a couple more hours to feed myself; I ended up making some scrambled eggs to tide me over, which was wise.

I wanted to go to Tiztal but it was already closed and of the various alternatives I threw out he settled on Big Jones. It emptied out while we lingered at our window table watching the stop-start snow outside. I took him to the Brown Elephant and instead of buying furniture he left with some of the tackiest knicknacks in the whole place. At the next thrift store, we spent more time trying on clothes and looking at books, but the result was much the same.

The highlight of the afternoon was the conversation with had with the little old Polish man who was stocking the shelves. A bilingual announcement came on over the speakers and I cringed at the terrible pronunciation of the Spanish, which elicited chuckles from him. We started chatting about languages and accents. When he found out we spoke German, he asked about the differences between Bavarian and Berlinisch; in turn, he informed us about the peculiarities of the Highlanders in the far south of Poland.

I could have happily gone on chatting twice as long but I wanted to get a load of laundry in before bedtime so we left shortly after with promises to get together again soon. Who knows--maybe it'll even happen this time.

Two weeks ago, we had snowdrops and aconite in bloom. Last week I saw forsythia, daffodils, and crocus. But I held off posting about any of this because I didn't trust that the spring wasn't false. The meteorologists were saying we were about three weeks ahead of schedule. I know climate change is accelerating, but still that seemed just too fast.

Yesterday it was freezing but sunny. After brunch with one of monshu's protégés to discuss his role in the upcoming memorial, I strolled to the lakeshore, tracing the path we would be taking for the scattering. It felt so good being out that I walked all the way to Andersonville, though I took the bus from that point (after spending too much money at Middle Eastern and dallying to chat up the seldom-seen Coleman out on the sidewalk).

Kitty-corner from us is an apartment building essentially identical to ours. They have a huge amount of southern exposure due to the park across the street, which maximises afternoon sunlight. The warmth radiating from the long brick wall spurs the plants in front of it to early sprouting and blooming. I wanted to stop and photograph the daffodil-flanked forsythia I saw there, but it was bisected by the shadow of a tree. No problem, I thought, I'll just come back the next day.



In the meantime we had a couple inches of snow. The flowers of the daffodil are now buried and the forsythia is looking distinctly uncomfortable. Tonight they're predicting as much as another ten inches from lake effect, which isn't much for an overnight snowstorm but really stands out in the disconcertingly mild winter we've had. It's all predicted to be gone by next weekend, however, with the highs currently predicted to be around 8°C or so.

In the end, the snow the forecasters predicted did actually fall, but only for about an hour. Coworkers brought it to my attention around 4:30 yesterday, but by the time I reached Rogers Park, it was gone. Lovely while it lasted, though. Usually by the time it starts to snow the grass is yellowed and dying, but it was a fresh spring green in most places, which produced a beautiful contrast. I was bemused to see so many complaints given what a mild winter we had. We had snow on the same date two years ago (which also melted off in short order) and I remember it lasting into May before.

We have characteristically modest plans for Easter. The Old Man is going to pick up a bit of lamb and maybe we'll invite Nuphy over or something. ladytiamat is in town and it looks like I'll have to head down to the Inner Darkness of Hyde Park for a glimpse. I had Fabulous Gay Plans for the day, but they were tentative and likely to be sidelined in favour of gardening anyway. (There's a whole lot of wood to bury and I think the condomates are getting impatient.) I guess I should dye some eggs.

The meteorologists really whiffed it yesterday. They predicted "snow showers"; when I checked back around eleven, they were still talking about "accumulations of up to an inch" when we already had twice that. Today we're getting "lake effect snow" which in my mind is synonymous with "flurries" but really shouldn't be. It wasn't quite white-out conditions an hour ago, but it was impressive nonetheless.

This week has been odd because, being back at work, I naturally slide back into my old routines. Then I get home and find a rude awakening. monshu used to have dinner ready for me; Mom only begins thinking about it when she hears the door slam. I'm not bagging on her--it can't be easy sleeping on the couch as she does in order to be ready to help the Old Man if he gets up in the night. But I'll admit to being very put out the first couple evenings.

Yesterday, however, we both got a break when zompist and his wife showed up bearing dinner. Actually, at my urging, they'd arrived mid-afternoon in order to catch the GWO at his best. Good thing, too, because no sooner had he eaten than he began feeling unwell and slunk back to his bedroom. The conversation naturally went on without him, but it was only after nearly two hours talking about myself that I remembered one of the ostensible aims of the visit was to talk about China for the new book zompist is writing.

He wanted to see our vacation snaps so I had to break the news to him about the theft of monshu's camera. I did see that he left with a bag full of books. We got lucky, actually; most all of my non-linguistic materials were buried on the lowest tier of the book stacks in the office. I gamely offered to have quick look, not expecting to turn up much, and found a box containing not only Retreat of the elephants but Sources of Chinese tradition and a complete translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. That oughta fix him for a month or so.

Although he was busy, Scruffy contracted for brunch with us at Pauline's. He likes a good value, and we both remembered the portions there as being on the large size, so it seemed a good choice. A chunk of the conversation centred around his need to learn to let go. I did my best to counsel him on my techniques while noting that monshu, who was mostly content to let me bang on, was the real expert. He opened up more to us about his family than he ever has before. Does everyone who isn't an only child have a ne'er-do-well sibling whose freeloading off the family teat is a source of tension and whose post-parental well being is a cause for concern?

Afterwards, I had some time to devote to the reading I'd meant to spend the day before on. It was easier to make the push to finish Wolf Hall once I realised what it didn't cover; neither the downfall of Anne nor Cromwell himself is covered in this volume, which makes me more eager to read the sequel (though at the same time I wonder if it might not be worth waiting for the third volume, out soon). I do wish I'd had the sense to finish it before watching a movie adaptation, since I did have some trouble with Anderson's characterisations encroaching on Mantel's. As her focus character, Cromwell is more sympathetic overall and Anne Boleyn less.

I also recently finished off that Japanese novel I'd started more than two months ago, figuring it for a quick read, and given up on for several weeks. It finally got good in the last third, but I don't know that I can recommend even a short novel on that basis. The volume contains a whole apparatus that I'm reading to see what it is I failed to see about the work's appeal. Right now, I'm just puzzled at the description "hard-boiled" which seems to apply less to the science fiction (which ultimately takes a turn for the metaphysical) than to the use of noir clichés involving detectives.

Something which genuinely should prove to be an easy read is Ann Patchett's Run. It started snowing yesterday afternoon, so we finally had the weather for it, and despite the distractions of doing laundry and moderating a debate on Charlie Hebdo (for my sins), I quickly read the first quarter of it. I'm a little put off by the somewhat cheesy tale of Auld Irelaund it opens with and the credulity-straining coincidence of the complicating incident, but her invocation of tragedy squeezes me where it counts and her characters seem well-rounded enough. There's still a lot that could go wrong with a White woman from Tennessee trying to write about racial issues in Boston, but for now she's got the benefit of my doubts.

It's flurrying again, but I doubt it'll amount to much. We had our first real accumulation of the year on Saturday evening while I was at the opera. It ignored downtown completely. I didn't start seeing signs of accumulation until I was on the North Side (I lucked into catching a 147). Up in our part of Rogers Park, we seem to have gotten about an inch. I was in a contemplative mood, so I got out at Loyola and walked the street down to the Lake and back. Footing was treacherous: it was still warm enough when the snow began falling (monshu told me it started around seven) that it had partially melted and was refreezing. Plus I was wearing my dress shoes, which have some tread, but not much. A shame: there was no wind to speak of and I was warm enough in my cashmere and topcoat to have stayed out much longer.

Perhaps I would've, too, if I'd known how quickly the landscape would change back. The snow lingered on most of the morning and we even though we might see more come as we went to meet Diego and Uncle Betty for lunch. But the early flurries petered out and it warmed up just enough for the dead leaves and dying grass to emerge again. Later, it got nasty. The humidity rose and the wind picked up, so our stroll around the South Loop before the piano recital ended up being something of a bust.

It was late last week that the weather turned, the freezing lows becoming the daytime highs. We actually had a little snow in the night before Friday, but it only collected on areas of bare earth. Coming in this morning, the only remnants I saw of Saturday's fall were on the baseball diamonds in the park at Touhy and the Lake and the rocks between the water and road. Surprisingly, the Bradford pears at the development just before Calvary were just starting to turn, but a hard freeze shrivels even leaves which haven't fallen yet, so they won't be much to look at. Pretty much everything else is stripped to bare branches now. It may get a bit milder later in the week, but winter has arrived and it's not leaving.

Officially, the high temperature today was 12°C. It's sunny, breezy, and feels so much like spring that the massive piles of snow-ice at every corner actually seem like the anomaly they are rather than the dully accepted fact of our existence they've been for the past couple months. People are out and about, coatless and sometimes jacketless (although not yet shirtless). Miniature hydroscapes are everywhere you look. In the west-facing slope of campus, snow came to form an icy sheet. Now meltwater is eroding it away like a science-fair model of karst topography. On the way back from lunch, I passed a perfect ponor sculpted from the ice by a trickle of runoff.

Just now I made a half-circuit around the lagoon. The ice sheet, which had been diminishing for a while, is gone entirely from its midsection and at the far end is becoming transparent. The mounds of ice dumped by Facilities are still impressively massive enough to last for some time yet, at least in part; on the northern edge, the snow must be fresher because it hasn't solidified as much. I tried to step on it to get a better look at the murky pool, possibly several feet deep, gathering alongside it and it swallowed my foot up to the ankle.

Among the many discarded items uncovered were a bottle of energy drink, a smashed orange, old pizza boxes, and a dead duck. (At least I think it was a duck; I was moving in for a better look and then realised the entire greensward around it was covered in defrosted goosecrap.) The puddles are bad in some spots, but elsewhere they've carved outlets through the snowbanks and drained away into the storm sewers. Still, glad I wore my boots today.

"Are you up for an adventure?" asked the Old Man today. And, truth to be told, I wasn't. Last night, under the spell of camaraderie and bourbon, I'd let clintswan talk me into doing a shot with him. Knowing if I didn't come up with something better, I'd be partaking of his Goldschläger, I scanned the rack and asked for Patrón. The consequences of that choice were still with me when I woke up the next morning, expecting to share an "austerity breakfast" of Irish oats with my spouse. But despite going to bed four hours before me, he still got up two-and-a-half hours after me, right when I was thinking there was nothing in world more tempting in a nap.

Unfortunately, that was also the time Scooter decided was optimal for hacking the back porch free of ice. After a half hour in bed cursing his name, I got up and told monshu, "Okay, let's go." Snow was falling in large fluffy flakes when we set out and, at first, the streets seemed as choked as usual. When we reached Lincoln Square, he urged me to look into Pannenkoeken even though I didn't hold out much hope of a free table in a reasonable spell of time. To my amazement, there was no wait at all. "I think everyone just looked out the window, went *uhhh*, and decided to stay in," I told him after we'd ordered.

And at this point, it was really coming down. We both ordered the joint's namesake, his sweet (ginger and apple), mine savoury (bacon, havarti, mushroom, and a fried egg), and it was everything I'd always hoped. He vouched for its authenticity (I'd only had Pfannkuchen, which are a bit different--at least in the South) and I relished one of those rare meals which is perfectly matched to your mood and situation. Afterwards, we hit Merz Apotheke (soap and zinc) and The Chopping Block (wooden spoon and instant read thermometre) after which came the cornerstone of the expedition: Gene's Sausage Shop.

In the evening over a meal of bison and bacon brats, red cabbage, and rapini with sour rye, he said, "I just wish Gene's was a little closer. Of course, if it were, we'd go there too often." Perhaps; perhaps we'd just eat a little less meat but of better quality. On the other hand, Lincoln Square would lose a bit of it exoticness and we'd miss out on the expeditionary experience that comes from going someplace off our well-beaten ruts (even on days when we're not braving a snowstorm).