DIARY
THE YEAR of the BOSSY BIG TOE ends on July 3rd, 2003.
1. EMINEM: My Dad’s Gone Crazy
Last year the Solsticewalk happened later than intended. I’d been so tired and running around. Of course, I suppose this year’s exactly the same, but my will’s strengthened by the divine button placed on my belly.
If the walk was belated, it was also ambitious and brilliant as the glorious mysteries. I walked around Flint, by which I mean I WALKED AROUND FLINT. Thirty five odd miles, circling the perimeter. It took fifteen hours, including the two hour break… 4 PM to 7 AM… beginning at my house at Maryland on Flint’s Eastside, crossing to Bray and Richfield, then north to Carpenter, and there a situation in which I could’ve literally been shot, and then west to Clio, then south and all windy to the Atlas as the last vestiges of twilight faltered and it started to rain. Two hours later I reemerged into the cloudy starlight, and made my way through the golf course, had my run in with the police, followed Hemphill and Atherton through to Center and wandered north through the morning twilight to Bray and Richfield, and my feet screamed at me and pretended to bleed.
Elisabeth burned me the Eminem Show, and I listened to this song over and over on that trip. I was listening to it in the Swartz Creek Golf Course, walking near the point at which I was dumped over eight years. A skunk tried to spray me, but I peeled away in time.
I slept all day, of course. Jessica was gone, visiting her family in Ohio. I was alone and it was the 4th of July. I felt the wind coming off of the porch.
That night, Angelo’s was busiest ever, with fights in the parking lot all night and prostitutes, drug dealers, college kids, bums, and autoworkers stumbling drunk around the place all night. Dishes dishes all night, and my apron was stained. The air was wet. Sticky and humid. The glow of Kessels across the street. The sound of drag races. The winking lights up Franklin. My god, this is the most beautiful fucking city in the world.
2 EMINEM: Let’s Get Down to Bizness
Same album.
The interstice: Fleas invade our apartment. I dust with the powder landlord Dave gave me. This infuriates the fleas and they rise like a wave from the carpet and try to devour me. But my brother pulls up and picks me up at 2 AM.
Jessica gets home. Colin is coming. We’re planning a U of C style scavenger hunt. For Flint. But we don’t have time because we have to deal with the fucking fleas. We bomb the place and kill the little bastards. We stay the first night at my parents. We make a list that week. Colin and I plot out a road trip to Ann Arbor, to Hell, to Tecumseh, Michigan. We find the Hidden Lake gardens southeast of Jackson. But nobody signs up for our scavenger hunt, so we spent those last nights watching the Adventures of Pete and Pete instead.
I have one day. I go to church or something. Or one of those Flint festivals. Then I walk in a hurry to Hal Lawson’s funeral (rest his soul) at the UU Church. Then K-Mart. I buy cool kids clothes. You know: K-Mart. Then Borders. I drink coffee until seven. I read all the plays by Lee Blessing, since he will be the playwright I am working with. By “working with” I mean getting coffee for and sharpening pencils for. On the way back, the sunset behind me paints the Miller Road slikrout all California and shit.
I run into a girl named Beatrice, who’s here from Newark selling magazines with some sketchy outfit. I run into her because she is walking the wrong way on Miller road. I’m to help her find Court and Center, because her ride stood her up. I am unflinchingly honest with her: Detroit IS a city, and Flint IS just as bad if Newark. Is it worse? Well, if you really want to split hairs, it is, actually. But I don’t think splitting hairs serves any purpose. Misery is misery, and poverty is misery, and misery is… well, you get the picture. She says, of *course* Newark is worse than Flint. I say, you haven’t seen the North End, have you? You haven’t seen Eastside? Follow me north from Court. I’ll show you Mabel and Minnesota. I’ll show you Lewis and Olive. But she gets picked up, after downing a public beer with me across the street from the market my parents used to shop for groceries at (now a Family Video). And I go home, and am happy to see Jessica. Our house is a mess.
I am on a plane. I fly from Flint to Minneapolis, and then on to L.A. Hallie picks me up in the airport. I call Michigan on the way to Ojai. It is raining in Michigan, but the sky is cloudless above me.
After the first day I have ditched shyness. We get trashed every night and talk about politics PASSIONATELY. And there are all sorts of theater people there. I am a divine lit asst. and whatnot, among the ranks of eager but inexperienced kids. Nobody can get coffee or sharpen pencils like me. I ring the bell during the staged reading. And whatnot. I make friends. Most of them don’t manage to keep in touch, but it’s not like I’m so hot myself.
One day I have an incredible hangover that is larger than the Hulk.
One day I develop a growing respect for a kid that initially irritated me.
One day I hang out at the pool party and feel very awkward because, let’s face it, you *can* be extroverted and not a people person. It’s not that I don’t feel clumsy and incompetant around absolutely anyone. It’s that I’ve got this confessional spirit that never lets me shut up.
“Let’s get down to bizness.
I don’t got no time to play around, what is this?
Must be a circus in town to shut the shit down, all these clowns,
can I get a witness?”
Hallie and I listened to that song on the way to Ojai.
Later she drove me to L.A. after the conference, and treated me to dinner, and lent me a bunch of books. I slept on her couch, and the next morning, she drove me to the airport. I flew back to Minneapolis. And on to Flint. Jessica had gotten her car. And her hair cut. She met me at the aeroport.
3. PEARL JAM Oceans
I don’t know that I specifically listened to this song during the latter half of July and early August, but I’m sure Jess did.
She got her job at Spencer Gifts.
I started getting tired of mine at Angelo’s.
My work ethic didn’t flag however; I liberated myself with libations, and everyone liked me there, except for Chuck, the onion slicer, who hated me.
I washed dishes, threw away boxes, mopped the floor, and put up with peoples’ shit.
I saw tattoos and listened to James Brown, to Outkast, to Smashing Pumpkins.
During the days when I didn’t have to worry about my miserable job (that paid less than minimum wage because the owner is running a wage racket that seems simply obnoxious until you realize the true intent is him not having to disclose his real earnings to the government as taxable income, because we have to pay $3 cash per shift in order to receive our paychecks; make no mistake, Angelo’s is as evil as WalMart, but simply on a much, much smaller scale) I walked to the Public Library and wrote Urbàntasm on the front poch while it rained a few feet away. I sipped rum and tried to persuade Sean and Mark to sign on to CP2 for the Nocturnal, which was going to be the most incredible show I’d ever directed, and saw Candide with Jess and Bree at FYT.
We also went out for coneys one night, far to the north of Flint, and then drove around when we got back, and I showed her Mott Park, and then on our way home, we saw what we took for a human body lying in Lewis Blvd. Three blocks from our house. We drove home and called 911. We never found out what the real situation was.
But another time we went out for midnight coneys in Davison, and nothing happened.
We read Madeleine L’Engle to each other.
The week before my last weekend at Angelo’s I went to the Flint Jazz Festival and basked all day long in the honeyed tones rolling up the dun baked concrete steps at Riverbank park. I looked across at the cheerful ruins of the Durant. Now I’m just tracing my keyboard with my eyes shut, because I don’t know what to say about that.
Jess and I went to Laser Metal at the planetarium.
I went to the Unitarian church every week in the morning and St. John Vianny at night.
I met with Lisa Friedman at the Good Beans café and told her I had converted to Catholicism.
I’d go to Baker library with my mom and work on my open diary and so on. My webpages. Look for jobs. Look at colleges. Order graduate information for schools I’d put off for another year. Why would they accept me anyway? Sometimes I’d walk there and walk back. I walked downtown a lot. I walked everywhere a lot.
On my last night at Angelo’s, I kind of slacked off, having reached the pinnacle of dishwashingness the weekend prior by actually cleaning the whole area. I took a long break and walked south to those couple of blocks around Franklin and Lafayette, Hastings and Commonwealth , Tuscola and Glendale, where straight paths curve deceptively and the golden lamps hung in doorways strike aluminum siding like an amber blessing; lambs’ blood upon the fucking doorpost. I almost wept. This must be why I chose this song. This must be why. I’d been there. And now I’d been there again.
Back at the ShitHole, I sat in Lloyd’s van while he floated, and he told me stories of his encounters with ghosts. I alluded to St. Joseph’s. And I went home, again, in the purple twilight. August was getting on. It was getting light later and later, and was almost still hazy, like the morning when I watched the firefighters put out a house on Jane walking home, or like the morning when that kid from Angelo’s gave me a ride home.
I’ve forgotten most of their names; kind of sad.
4. OUTKAST Rosa Parks
To backtrack a moment, for my birthday, Jess made us a picnic lunch, and we got in the car and drove out to Stepping Stone falls and watched the water as we ate. There was a wedding nearby.
My mom took us to see Pirates of the Caribbean a number of times. She liked that movie, and would take us to see it at Cinema Hollywood up by Saginaw.
My brother had the car, and when we needed a ride, he’d supply “the Cody Cab.”
I memorized that whole stretch of Coldwater through Beecher; Dort through Northeast Flint. That was how we got from my parents’ to ours’.
Back to the Flint Jazz. I did go to church that Sunday, in spite of being exhausted from work the previous night. (When I worked at Angelo’s I worked dishwashing weekend night shift; 9 PM – 6 AM. For $5/hour – $3 graft). (It’s despicable to graft from single mothers earning minimum wage… which wasn’t me… but *was* practically everyone else working there. I’m just saying is all… asshole).
To backtrack even further a moment, when there was the Great Blackout that summer, sometime early August, the electricity in most of Flint stayed on (though not at the Kessel’s) but because Flint gets its water from Detroit, our water supply was contaminated. For some reason, that night was one of the busiest at Angelo’s and we bought hundreds and hundreds of cans of pop.
God damn I hated that fucking job.
But at least it meant something; unlike the job I have now.
But to skip briefly forward, at the Flint Jazz fest, I went to church after one act, before meeting Jess (and Ken) at the next. On the way I was walking through Carriage Town by Atwood, and I talked to a man visiting from metro Detroit, and this was the song I listened to).
5. OUTKAST Mainstream
At the end of August, I’d quit my job at Angelo’s.
I worked on Urbàntasm a lot, but I also left the house and wandered far and wide. Sometimes, I’d have Jess drive me out to Miller road with her, and I’d sit in Borders or Halo Burger, reading all about Flint and Chicago. I longed for Chicago. I longed for Flint. Why must I be such a demented person when it comes to place?
I spent a lot of time at the Good beans Café. I really liked Ken. He is probably one of my favorite people living in Flint these days. I attended Good Stock and talked to Kate Nicolai, and Greg’s girlfriend, Liz. I’d hoped we’d correspond, but we did not. She helped me with German poets for the fatal three chapters of Urbàntasm, which I’d started working on.
On September 11th, I held a reading of Urbàntasm at the café.
And then I made up my mind to photo document Flint. I captured sights from most of the city in 500+ photos. I captured the Eastside, the North End, Downtown, and the Westside. I didn’t get the South Side. Maybe sometime soon? Fuck it all fuck it all fuck it all fuck it all fuck it all! It was all blue and cloudy. Why must I be stuck here? Why must I be a twenty-six year old starving nothing that’s going to decompose eventually anyway? I just want to render beautiful thoughts into beautiful words conjuring beautiful images to be imagined by beautiful people. Is that too fucking much to ask? Of course! It’s a fucking ego. If I’ve got such a fucking ego, why do I feel so genuinely shitty about myself and everything I do most of the time?
I miss Flint, too.
If it wasn’t for Jessica, I’d go back right this moment, and be even a bigger better nothing.
But I took many pictures of Flint that month, I did. It was one of the most bittersweet weeks I can remember, putting so many miles on my shoes that my feets screamed in that beautiful, that cooling, that sighing breeze.
We were running out of time. That summer.
6. THE DOORS Light my Fire
We moved out. The summer had ended.
I’d thought of saving money by staying in Flint a few extra months and being a sub teacher for the schools. But the schools didn’t want me to sub.
I was happy to be going with Jessica. I was going to look for an apartment in the Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport. That was exciting to me. But I generally hated the thought of going back to Chicago.
When Mr. J arrived, we took him to Bubba’s steakhouse.
We packed up the next day and they left.
I had the car. My parents were gone doing a brother or a sister thing.
I was all alone.
I cleared out the rest of the house. Met with Dave. Gave the keys. Got the deposit. He liked us. We were good tenants. I miss that shitty little house.
The night before Mr. J had come, we met with the Galeas and the Crawfords… the kids that is… kids being relative of course… Victor who I’d known forever and ran into that summer waling about the Quilts at the Crossroads at the butt end of August, and Sam and Michael, then Sarah and Lindsay. Three boys and two girls. We tried unsuccessfully to D&D, but ended up eating pizza and drinking 40s, and talking deep, and then they left, and Jess and I were sad.
So two days later I was running errands, like getting a renewed drivers license (which I promptly lost) and supplies at Family Dollar in Hallwood plaza, because I knew the same dumb shit would be more expensive in Chicago. And I listened to the organ solo from this song and decided I wanted to use it in Urbàntasm.
And then my father drove me to Chicago.
7. SMASHING PUMPKINS Glass and the Ghost Children
Now things are going to speed up a bit, and not really because I’m tired so much as because life became so much more frustrating and uninteresting.
I was having a miserable time recruiting for CP2, though I’d gotten a couple people. I’d gotten in a huge fight with Sean over the whole deal. I was back in HP and while I’d missed the 2nd Floor Coffee Shop, it didn’t feel right. It never did. Not the 2nd Floor Coffee Shop. But there.
I stepped back into my old temping job at NMFF, which I’ll bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch about. It was the responsible thing, though. I’ve been all about being responsible.
Every day I responsibly trekked north or south, to Rogers Park or to Bridgeport and went apartment hunting. I needed something cheap, because I had begun to formulate a purchase in my mind. I hadn’t decided yet on what, though. I didn’t raelly know. I found McKinley Park and found my little apartment. I’m as attached to this as I was the house on Maryland. And the landlord, Jerry, is really cool. But the price was the decision. $420 per month, with most utilities covered, and I’m right across Archer from the Orange line stop, a Unique thrift store, next door to a Los Comales, and down the street from the fabulous New Archview and the slightly less fabulous Huck Finns. I’m even in a stockyard neighborhood. They make gum here for Chrissakes.
On the night I moved in Mark came over to visit. It was nice to see him after so long, but he was already changed, and it was only going to get worse. Not better.
I remember very little about October other than being responsible, becoming obsessed with baseball because of the Cubs remarkable success and then even more remarkable failures, and finally, getting dressed up on Halloween to go to Mercedes party.
The song hasn’t even finished playing through once, so I guess I’ll dwell on October a little longer, though I’d really rather not.
I stayed with Kaury and Marina those first few days. I slept on the couch in the back and we hung out and watched tv. I was doing my languages for the twentieth time. I failed of course. But we sat up and talked and all the leaves started to change and clung to branches in the rain even though they‘d gone all yellow. I got a 30-day CTA pass so I could travel freely.
I was very frugal.
I went to St. Thomas and saw Tom. Tom will be one of my best friends always. I’ve known this.
“As she counted the spiders, as they crawled up inside her.”
It’s a better lyric than you think at first.
I was corresponding with Lisa often. I was trying so hard to make CP2 work… to get people for the Cenci. It was going to be spectacular. I struggled with Urbàntasm. Still stuck on those fatal chapters. I remember sitting in the barmy cool autum of the 2nd Floor Coffee Shop. Why does it feel like years and years ago?
8. RADIOHEAD Everything in its right Place
9. RADIOHEAD Pyramid Song
November was neat and clean. NaNoWrimo. I’d been gearing up for a full month posting on the boards and everything.
I knew what my story was going to be about.
It was about a serial killer in Flint.
It was based on my emotions in those lone, cloudy blue nights as I took pictures, only far more fierce and violent.
About that last night or two when I drove north on Ballanger in spitting rain and turned left onto Flushing. Pale lights.
It actually turned out.
If anything I have written manages to be published it will probably be this.
On the first night I went to the Chicago get together, and drank beer and talked to all those folks. Again, the whole “I am an awkward person” came up, though I did talk quite a bit with Matt Day, who I now know quite well. He was a Math major at the U of C (grad student) and was writing a novel about Death. I met other people too… a girl at the Med who was very interesting, but I didn’t see after that. I also corresponded with a San Diego girl named Sarah, but we stopped corresponding, and the last couple times I’ve written her, she hasn’t responded.
I also ran the first workshop for CP2. Despite the incompleteness of the cast, all seemed to be going well… “good thing” I thought. The preparation had been a bitch. Of the actors present that night, none would see the show through to the end. But I didn’t know that.
HYDE PARK! You are so old.
McKINLEY PARK! Why are you so quiet.
I did my laundry in the November or December snow and drew pictures because nothing is colder than all that naked and still industry.
I finished my novel. But I was going crazy.
December came.
I went home.
I went home for that tragic, wonderful, heartbreaking week.
THE WEEK BEFORE.
The week before I went to go see Return of the King alone. I sat in the theater and was in awe but I was in awe alone.
The day before I held out because I still thought I could trick someone to go and see the movie with me, so instead I went to my place and got drunk and watched Romeo and Juliet three times in a row.
I remember the night before I threw a party, but Liz was the only person to attend. I’d been playing Castlevania on the SNES. And Liz came and we talked a long time. Then she left. And I finished playing Castlevania IV and went to bed for four hours.
The next day, I went downtown and took the train to Kalamazoo. My mom picked me up in snow and sun and we talked about the ring I was going to buy. At Thanksgiving, I’d told her all about my plans to propose. So it was new news but not incredibly new. We got home and went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra with a ton of friends at the Palace of Auburn Hills. They were okay, I guess. I was just happy to be home. I was happy about Christmas.
And the next day we went and picked out the ring and I put the first payment down.
Everything else blends together.
Like years past, I did most of my shopping on Christmas Eve, and got almost everyone music.
Like years past, I hung out with Sam nightly.
I do remember one night, early on, Sam and Caitlin and Cody and Mary and I went clubbing in Hamtramck. But it wasn’t the same as the year before when we went back to Jesse’s basement and dranks fifth of rum and discussed politics with her pit bulls.
Christmas itself was wonderful. It was spicy. It smelled good.
The next day we saw Lord of the Rings as a family.
I got very sick and was useless and sleeping most of the rest of my break.
And again, I went back to Chicago, and lived alone for several days. I cried when my sister and father drove off, into that cloudy bleak flat city. Leaving me behind. Early January.
But when Jessica got back to Chicago, I was happy again, and went out on a warmer Saturday morning and took dozens of pictures of my neighborhood.
10 R.E.M. E-Bow the Letter
Probably the only time a song from New Adventures in Hi-Fi makes it on my Summerseve list. It’s usually my least favorite R.E.M. album. Even after Roconstruction of the Fables.
I’m typing fast now.
I’m just trying to finish up.
To sleep, you know?
I’ve moved from coffee to rum coke.
3:20 AM.
January.
One actor dropped out of CP2. She found me two others.
We had a successful blocking rehearsal, and then a retreat which, while it had the desired intensity, didn’t seem to cultivate the feelings of loyalty and excitement I had hoped. This was entirely my fault, or nearly entirely. See, I had placed too much faith in my own ability to motivate and improvise. This process had needed to be sculpted more. And I was also guilty of still putting too much time into Urbàntasm (same three fatal chapters) though both projects were being shortchanged at this point.
I should’ve known something was wrong when our group split in two during the last activity. Three members had to depart by the minute the retreat was supposed to end. The other two wanted to stay through the end of the activity, even though it involved a seven mile trek through windchills around zero desgrees. We made it to the John Hancock. We looked over the Westside, which looked about as cold and gray and cloudy as I was feeling.
And to make a long story short, the three actors who left early soon dropped out of the play.
The two that followed me to the tower stayed much longer.
Only Maggy would see the show through to completion.
I seriously considered dropping the show. But “I don’t have the right,” I thought, so I gave the actors the choice. They wanted a show. We talked. We voted. We chose The Hunter and the Bird by van Itallie and The Dumb Waiter, by Pinter. Cenci was gone forever.
There are times… I’ve never experienced a nervous breakdown, but there are times I’ve felt it perilously near. This has happened a lot this year and, since my return to Chicago since Christmas, with growing frequency.
I’m not such a sap to think that love always saves the day… or even often. But as personal calamity (being relative) after personal calamity (all things are relative) accumulated, I felt that she was the only thing… or rather, my anticipation of certain moments with her were the only thing that kept me grounded. I don’t know how I would’ve survived this year without her. I mean, I’m sure I *would’ve* survived. But I cannot imagine how.
That said, at the end of February we got into a major fight.
11. JANE’S ADDICTION Jane Says
12. LUSH Scarlet
My music purchases of early February and the morning when I broke down listening to Janes Addiction were major turning points for me this year. It wsn’t that I lacked hope before, but for some reason, those events provided me with a sense of forward momentum for the first time since the end of summer.
Ironically, the most difficult moments of this year (as opposed to simple loneliness, homsickness, and hipsteresque ennui) were all to follow.
But they would’ve happened anyway, and momentum propelled me through those moments into something better.
What were they?
Well, first was three out of five actors dropping out of my doomed, cursed, hideous play, and having to salvage it. I already talked about that.
The second was a huge fight with both Jessica and our mutual friend Matt. The arguments were about different problems, but were sort of related through context. If that makes any sense. It was a very uncomfortable weekend, though I did get to see Gemma’s beautiful production of Under Milkwood.
Plowing on (I’m really movin’ now) March passed somewhat uneventfully.
13. RADIOHEAD Where I End and You Begin
April had drama I can’t talk about, except to say that it plumbed me like an angler seeking rusty treasure chest keys and thankfully failing miserably.
The Occlusiion Group was formed.
I Got Into my blog.
I have to wrap up this now, though. I’ve been meditative, so I know the last several months by heart, and anyway there here, they’re all here.
14. (Scav Hunt Theme song)
En route to the slide show, I walked past 41st and Berkeley, that I saw in my dreams and is featured in Euphemism.
15. JUNO REACTOR Bible of Dreams, Track 1
Scavhunt was stress after stress.
CP2 was cursed and doomed. Someone must’ve said “Macbeth” early on, that show was so fuckin’ cursed, but we DID it, we PUT IT UP, and we should be PROUD. It was a SUCCESS.
Family drama.
Friend drama.
Work drama.
God.
But I’ve known what I’ve had and I’m thankful for what I’ve had.
This is the month of June and it’s almost over.
I make it a point to always wear shades in the sunshine, April through June.
If I don’t I feel naked, and so stare at the ground.
Soon it will be July and this won’t be a concern.
But now, at last this year is over.
16. DES’REE Kissing You
Last year was the YEAR OF THE BOSSY BIG TOE.
What will this year be?
Hmmm…
It has passed.
And it is over.
And something new is beginning.
Beginning with me losing my job, becoming engaged, and recommitting myself to old goals but hoping to see myself and all things with greater clarity.
I amputated a big toe this year.
It had to happen; it was devouring my body.
I think horizons are long since a foregone conclusion.
They should’ve been years ago.
Rising.
Falling.
Questions.
Stalling.
Faltering.
Failing.
Climbing.
Rising.
This has been the YEAR OF SYNCHOPATED SAILING.
Tomorrow I will commit the first act in the long process of naming this next year.
Last year I solstice walked around the Flint. That will be hard to top.
Tomorrow I will start in downtown Chicago, and head south.
My goal is Porter County, IN.
I’ll report back soon, and let you know how it went.
~ Connor