Home Again. Still.
My electronic new year’s resolution is to post more often and less wordy. So, I welcome and encourage comments and questions. If anyone wants to hear more of one thing, I’d love to hear requests. I like writing with a purpose sometimes. I’ve recently started writing travel articles for a new magazine called Mint Male www.mintmale.com. It is a gay men’s magazine, and is really an exciting prospect for me. Most importantly, it gives me a “reason” for my writing. It also attracts some new attention, which can be good and bad. Either way it’s definitely a new voice. One I’ve never really used before, and am just getting the hang of. Of course this means that I am gay as well. I’ve never put it to the word before, so here it is. I like to think that the average person (who knows me at all) would have been able to tell by now, but I’m going to go ahead and make it official. My first article, which also happens to be about one of my all time best travel experiences, Sydney, Australia, can be read here:
http://www.mintmale.com/category/travel/
Being home was definitely as refreshing as I had hoped. I got to see all those people I felt I’d left in limbo, and it feels great to just pick up where I had left off. Regardless, everyone has changed, that’s natural, but to me they’re just as accessible as usual. Which is the most comforting part, knowing I always have a place and some peeps! I’ve gotten to see my family, which has been very nice, but also very different. Being away to come back, people expect you to have changed, and I have. It’s like I’ve reentered their lives as a more worthwhile character with enough experience points for a couple of level ups. I’ve certainly grown out on my own on that vast, mystery of a sea.
Lady Gaga has certainly been the craze I had never anticipated from the ship. I was naïve to think that I was one of her more unheard of fans. Not the case. She, marvelously, is one of the biggest names in the country right now, and I couldn’t be happier. When she received an award on MTV she said she wanted to thank God and the gays. She is fabulous, but then again:
“Not everyone can dress like the costume design of The Fifth Element multiplied by insanity.”
I’ve had lots of great party time in the city, times that can’t be priced, times I feel more lucky than ever, and so many pinnacles of fun stick out that I can’t place them apart. Oh, how often the best times meld together. There was one moment, though, that struck me as especially sentimental. It was after a great weekend with everyone and I had just started my ride back to Palos on Lake Shore Drive along with my good old neighbor Stacy. I was looking for the appropriate “going home from the city” music and found Of Montreal. What a sound they have? Well, shortly into the drive there was some traffic. There was something unusually wrong, as it was too early on a Sunday. As we approached the majestic Hancock tower, the problem revealed itself. A pick up truck driver had obviously not properly tied down (or possibly had not even attempted to tie down) a mattress. The said mattress had been rolled into and destroyed the front tire of a small red car. This car was therefore “stuck” in the middle of Lake Shore Drive, which is as close as they get to being a highway. This was it for me, real Chicago. What a sight? Nothing substantial, but at the same time unforgettable. I love driving cars, and often miss it when I’m away. I also love screaming to myself when I encounter bad drivers, which is perpetually. Here though, I couldn’t help laughing. Stacy agreed. Classic move.
That was a nice ride. We reminisced on growing up in the suburbs. We got to drive our way through the Forest Preserve, which is beautiful, but the main motive was to avoid Harlem Avenue. A true urban nightmare. As children, we had the same bus stop at the corner of Richard and 121st, kiddie corner to my house. That’s funny we’ve known each other as long as we have. We used to build snowmen in the street to be run over by our bus, and Stacy remembers how our dog Gretta used to escape right before school. We’d be chasing her around the yard for hours it seemed (a common occurrence these days). The Palos Pool was our lives in the summer, and we’d ride our bikes to Blockbuster, which is gone now. Ben Franklin is gone too. Things are changing, and our lives are different. This is simply the truth.
I’ve been looking at pictures from home, and I made a photo album for my Grandpa and Grandma to show them my travels. They don’t use the internet so haven’t really had the chance to see where I’ve been. Putting it together was very poignant for me, concentrating my best memories into one picture book, how different that world was. Especially the world under the ice; blue, lonely, and always haunting...
And there are times that I feel more lonely than ever when I’m at home. Every now and then is becomes a place stranger to me than the farthest reaches of the Earth. And so it goes. At this point, I am very much looking forward to heading out to sea again. I don’t know just yet where that may be, but the mystery has always been the most exciting part. International Fine Art is calling my name. I’ve been trying to read up on my art philosophy, the “why do we as a people express art” type of a thing. It’s a fascinating question really. I should intend to focus on that during the course of my next contract. The Part III of my journey, as it were. Gosh. Already? Part III? Here we go.
When reason sleeps, the sirens sing
