So lately, instead of rampantly describing my innermost feelings on the internet, I had decided to face life’s problem head-on in some virginal nod to Julian Cope. And as a result, I’ve peeled back from the narcissism to level the old stomping grounds and catch up on a bit of work. Its this time of year I find myself working it, figuratively and literally but in such an unglamorous and inglorious way that it shows under my eyelids and in my general verbal and written demeanor.

There is a hidden meter within me I think that rates the tolerance for bullshit and that meter is one that I’ve learned to surf quite consistently. After all, in some Taxi Driver-esque fashion, I’m quite the nice guy. I’d argue everyone is. Everyone is civil when the rules are followed and when order is bestowed. But even living in the city under constant duress, can push you over the edge quite like being passed by at a eight in the morning with some guy in a jester hat on a bike blaring hot mix five takes on Grandmaster Flash. It happens mind you. And it happens to me quite often in the throes of French inspired meaninglessness.

These are the times when you retreat. When you clean your apartment and rearrange the broken furniture so that it doesn’t resemble a room at a transient motel. I know its hard. MRI’s blotting out the sunlight in the windows. Huge, beheaded debutante princesses hanging neckless from the wall with moustaches and scars. If this doesn’t already scare you, you apparently haven’t set foot in my apartment and probably do not want to. Screen printed skulls adorn the wall in Spanish aerosol haze. Bike parts hang from the ceiling like trophies from the alien ship in Predator.

This is bachelor hell as one might think.

And honestly the way I’m figuring it all lately, is that its a little bit country and a little bit western. Sometimes I worry about it, you know. That this is hermitage incarnate. And I sit there in the bleak light, battered from having to lecture students about technology and consistently face the world and its strange interactions. Because for my money, the worst part about living has nothing to do with the seasons or the climate. Its the insufferable nature of people. There I said it. This is not to say I hate everyone. Its quite the opposite.

There are people out there who are very few and far between that are locked in some orbit on collision course. Its almost as if emerging from a mist like some post September Eleventh dust storm or the opening scene to Dragon’s Lair when the bricks fall down. We all stagger and scatter and ultimately exit stage left to greener pastures… or so we think.

To live your life in some instinctual fog requires a landscape thats suits the purpose. And in the backdrop exists numerous pitfalls. Its the living embodiment of Activision circa a time and place that carbon dates me as some renovated lich king. And for this I have relocated in some glorified transient motel come storage facility for starving artists nestled in between hospice, puerto rican pride, pizza hut and epic douche baggery. Somewhere landlocked between Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Bucktown and the Crotch of Wicker Park.

Why have we all relocated here? And by all of us, I stand with my fingers pointed at the accused who have migrated from the promised lands of Pilsen. I know why I have, just blocks from the new Lincoln Park that stands desolate and disturbing lined across Division Street. Because this is Chicago. Because the harsh realities of climate and change require me to be just four blocks from shelter at any given moment, like dotted points in hyper space. An arms length from human contact without ties, bonds, or tithes.

Pilsen was good for that, mind you. Until the dead of winter. When no one wanted to visit. When your legs had to carry you into the transience and meaningless nature of void driven contact. People huddle in their beds during the dead of winter and cradle their institutions. And to them I offer nothing but the best.

But at word count six hundred and sixty six it has dawned on me. Those shanty towns are for those who will make their own graves as a small map marker like one eyed willy. A pirate’s paradise or a deserted island, destined to be swallowed by first name hurricanes. A respite from the void of storms that will never hold the line. People like myself are destined for a life of hard times, toil and trouble, at least for the moment. Not quite unlike the sailors who journeyed across the harsh waves of the sea.

My sea is cosmic. Maybe yours is too, for all I know but I don’t know about you. You and I, whoever you are that might be reading my message in a bottle, let me divulge this bit of torrential wisdom.

We live the life and that is the life of the high seas. Some of us tread the shallow waters and don the pirate flag. Some of us get dirtier with automatic weapons pointed at temples, demanding due course and action. And some of us ride the current out in the dead spaces where the mystical nature of the magnetic, the moon, and the water might take us.

I’m the type of sailor with the bad luck and curses but the idea in my head that the sea knows whats best. And that sea is a harsh mistress; full of bitter ale and ominous storm clouds. But in the end, its all I know. Shout and scream at our vessels from the shoreline and regard us as mere bogeymen and I guarantee you that you will invoke the wrath of the Gods… but not by our hand. We’re far too adrift on the rhythm of the deep to act.

All you types of people resembles are the undertows of the great, gigantic expanse that houses things far expansive than yourself; like Cthulhu or any other alien being on the face of this planet untouched by man’s disease. The great tentacled beast and I want nothing to do with your parlor tricks and telecine logic.

We live for the storm because the storm is as real as it can ever get in some ‘wrath of god’ or douche bag jetski wake type of way.

Its the only way for we ,those unaccustomed to land locked masses and true-isms, to ever achieve zen.

You can at least afford us that luxury.

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