..::sparkle and fade::..

..::31.05.06::..
i've moved. and i'm fairly certain now that it was the right choice. i've been feeling better on most fronts...i just had dinner with my friend from texas, her mother is a schizophrenic, which i understand on many levels, but not all at this point, and it was wonderful. i miss her like mad. she moved to texas within the year. i've taken up her spot on cuff (the chicago underground film fest) with a brother i never had but always wanted...something that's hard to find in general, but harder to find in chicago. it seems it's hard to find friends here. real ones. but it makes you appreciate them when you do. there is something to be said for connecting with people...a point i'm finding to be more and more difficult as the years go on.

i got the pleasure of attending a wedding i really believed in a couple of weeks ago. weddings are great. they're just sort of a jaded event in some ways in this day in age...with divorce rates soring etc. there are people out there i admire, but could not be. in the past week or so i've been to a great wedding, received photos of a recently purchased home from a friend, and most recently time-lapsed photos of a former roommate's pregnancy. i'm feeling all "warm" inside so to speak without all the roasted corn on the grill from the weekend. it's nice.

my friend started a femininst press for poets. i'm attempting to help her in any way i can. i admire her ambition and abiility to make things happen with a hectic schedule. she just got back from a killer vacation in puerto rico. i need a vacation despearately. amusingly enough, i just got my security deposit back from my last apartment, and although this place is above and beyond the last, apparently my last deposit superceded the current one. ha. how rents in chicago have changed in the past couple of years. at one point in time al burian wrote about my current neighborhood...but that was when it would have been cited by mother as "dangerous." now it's yuppy. the first day here was the immigration rally. fabulous. fantastic. i think sadly, that it made my mother nervous at first...the hood has since grown on her...

i miss my ohio friends like mad. all of them. there is something to be said for meaningful conversation. one can have a love for that from afar...remember things in the past better than they actually were sure, but i'm very much glad to have put myself out financially in the name of love and friends as it proved that is not some figment of my imagination...no, far from it.

i've begun again to appreciate me time. i've been a better acceptor and sayer of the word "no" in regards to social commitments and feel guilt only for a spell...it's weird how people change. a coworker brought up a churchill quote today that although i saw it to be true/fitting...was scary (and now is apparently perhaps not actually him) If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."...true but scary. haha.
to columbus kids and kenyon kids: i miss you and your brains terribly. and i'm very very serious about that. whether it be the shellac record that ultimately reminds us all of jeffe, law and order or northern exposure too...andrea, whom i still adore, chris whose brain i'd trade for any day...and love which at this point i don't pine for, but would love to have. i thank you all. good night.

winnie cooper i miss you and kevin arnold too.