Hebrew Poetry, Chi-Town, and things that backfire in your ear.
To My Love, Combing Her Hair
To my love, combing her hair
without a mirror, facing me,
A psalm: you've shampooed your hair, an entire
forest of pine trees is filled with yearning on your head.
Calmness inside and calmness outside
have hammered your face between them to a tranquil copper.
The pillow on your bed is your spare brain,
tucked under your neck for remembering and dreaming.
The earth is trembling beneath us, love.
Let's lie fastened together, a double safety-lock.
Yehuda Amichai
Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell
Okay, so who knew that really cool and meaninful poetry was to be found on the wall of a fucking L-train Mass Transit Car in Chicago? So there's your culture shot for the day.
In other news, I spent the weekend in Chicago with Aubrey Blake Planitz. We did exciting things like climb every stair known to man. For real, Chicago, some of us are used to nice low to the ground shit with minimal gravity defying use of our legs. Other than that, I loved Chicago so much. I'm putting some serious thought to a little relocation more towards spring. I could do without a winter in that place. We left Saturday morning, went to MEijer's where I stocked up on soft food items like pudding and applecause just in case my tonsilitis deal didn't allow me to eat over the weekend. Yeah, well, that went right out the window after we walked like a million goddamn miles up down and through Chicago; if you're ever in the Loop (Downtown Chicago), Johnny Rocket's makes a mean mushroom swiss burger. Especially when, and I speak literally here, no stretches of exaggerations or 'well practically', it was the first solid food I had eaten since the previous Sunday thanks to that tonsil deal. Oh my god it felt so good to put something dead topped with vegetables into my tummy. My mom called in the middle of dinner and I got all excited "Hey guess what I'm eating a hamburger!!!!" My mom was kind of excited tooo I guess.
Amazingly we didn't really do any of the things that you would expect to do on visitng Chicago, like go to the Navy Pier or a musueum or something. We instead did cool stuff like look at a million third-floor apartments, eat the best fucking pizza ever (Cafe Louie's, check it out), and go to the most unenthusiastic show ever.
Sunday night we saw Short Arm Trick, 15 Minutes Late, and Never Heard Of It at a place called the Metro. There were more bands but we came late. Hey it's our style to come late. Nudge. But the venue frowned so heavily on "Moshing, Stage Diving, and Slam Dancing" that like nothing happened. Me and Aubrey were making preparations before the show to fuck some shit up, and then we get there and it's like dead. I think a little pogo action was the peak for the most part. The latter two bands were actually really good. We made some rockin' friends at the show and hung out with them later. And Aubrey talked to Rick from NHOI and it turns out she was dating a dude that he used to play with. And the first words after she goes 'do you know Andrew dsfjj' were 'That kid's a douche-bag!' It was so funny she had to call him and tell him.
Post-show we made our way out of Chicago City to Chris the drummer from 15 Minutes Late's house. It was a fun night I suppose, they had a fridge full of something called Old Style which is their cheap cheap beer. Cheaper than Milwaukee's Best locally, if that gives you an idea. I wound up awake til like 8 am because Chris's sister was wired from a 17 hour drive in from Arizona, and she was too funny. If you know Holly Furknovich, think of that kind of personality energy but minus the taste for vulgarity and whathaveyounot. Sleep for a while, then Monday we looked at a couple more places and went by the Noble Horse Theater, which is a horse place in the middle of Chicago that is drooling at the face over Aubrey because of her qualifications. They don't exactly pay well, but she has the option of working for lessons which are probably quite expensive money-wise, especially in the city. Nap time in the afternoon.
Driving around we happened across a band unloading in front of a venue, and we inquired as to what the haps was dudes. They were Kill Radio and they highly recommended thjat we attend their event. Obligingly, we took the mass transit down to the area, upon which a MT employee told us we were about a mile from where we wanted to be; close enough to walk. Four miles/ 45 minutes later, we arrive at the door a little frazzled and a little moist only to find out that it was fucking 21 and up. WOW. Thanks for the headsup on that one band. Like either of us looked 21. Hell I don't look 19 half the time. We bitched amongst ourselves and got on with the night, culminating in a frantic search for smoothies and the tracking of hardcore individuals, leading us down an alley and to the door of another 21+ joint. Gay, Chicago, gay.
Tuesday we checked out bright and early and then had a little bit of a head-scratching moment when the Blzer was gone. Aubrey retrieved it from the towing place for a cute onetwentyfive buckeramas, and we stopped by the stables for her to ride for them. Do that, leave town, stop in Indiana for illegal fireworks. I now have 2 dozen dozen, that 2 gross, of bottlerockets and a handful of tenshot Roman candles-with report! And that about brings me back to this Michigan stuff.
On a lighter note-hahahahahahah I'm so goddam funny- the Joe Super Diet has worked again. Everybody knows the Joe Super Diet from it's inception in tenth grade, whereby Joe Super gets really sick and loses weight. I'm tipping the scales at a nice 148 pounds, from that week of eating nothing but pills and Popsicles. And all that Chi-Town walkage. Sometime I'll have to find a way to get a picture from a year ago to the public, cos you can totally tell I've lost..~35 since then. I think it's my face that stores fat most efficiently or something. Like even my driver's license picture looks way bigger. So yeah. Bitches watch out, and bring me delicous homemade food in a vicious contest of fattening Joe Super back up.