Things I will miss about Chicago

Never too early to take stock and appreciate what I got:

• Robert Morris College, Lake County. Fabulous place to teach. It's small and homey, just like UMM was. And they serve a complimentary dinner every night. It's the sweetest relief for harried students (and faculty) who blast over to campus immediately from work, and who can concentrate SO much better with a few chicken wings and some fountain pop down the gullet.
• Giordano's Pizza. Deep Dish, Chicago-style. Not to be missed. I recommend it with mushrooms and pepperoni.
• Valli Produce, my fantastic local international grocery and deli. It's like what grocery stores would be, if the UN were in the grocery business.
• April, May, and a little bit of June. Midwestern Storm Season! Snow one day, 80 degree sunshine the next, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, fire and brimstone. The weather is wild, wicked, and unpredictable during this time, unlike the rest of this region the rest of the year.
• Boystown (LakeView) and increasingly, Andersonville. I love gay culture, and Chicago is Mecca for all the gay farm boys who grew up in shit towns ranging from the Ohio Valley to the Rockies. 400,000 people at the Pride Parade last year can't be wrong!
• Dixie Kitchen, Evanston. Southern cooking: The best BBQ Chicken, cornbread, cheese grits, sweet potatoes, and cole slaw on God's good earth.
• Diversity. If you want it, we've got it. Across the nation and around the world, if it exists, I defy you to NOT find it in Chicago.
• Tall-Ass Buildings. Birthplace of the skyscraper, Chicago will ruin you ever after for other skylines. Get a window seat when you fly in from anywhere, or if you fly out and head east.
• The Lake. Though decidedly not the ocean, nothing is more still and serene than looking east over Lake Michigan in January, as the sun sets behind you and the tones of blue deepen into black, and the planes like enormous stars hover over the horizon in holding patterns, bound for O'Hare.

Things I will take with me to South America

• My Stainless-Steel Rack-and-Pinion Citrus Juicer. (I drink the juice of 1/2 a lemon in a quart of water every day. Without this, I am nothing)
• Mojo Cat. (claro)
• My Flame-colored, Cast-iron Le Creuset Cookware and Poterie. (I don't cook. But if I ever do, I want my pots and pans to be FLAME colored.)
• My Shrine to the Virgin of Guadaloupe. (Nuestra Senora, pray for us.)
• My bilingual copy of Neruda's Cien sonetos de amor
• Laptop (fully loaded)
• Camera (also loaded)
• Clothes, Shoes, Make-up, accessories. (within reason)
• A Handful of Favorite books in English (Another copy of The English Patient because I keep giving them away, The Phantom Tollbooth, Wuthering Heights, some short stories, some Chaucer, monographs by photographers Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, William Eggleston Boris Mikhailov.)

I will refer to this list again in a few months when I'm trying to hire Sherpas to haul my crap for me. Or pricing out freight containers. Or calling the airlines for baggage size and weight limits.

Yo. 

The Corporate Demagogues Have Smiled Down Upon Me . . .

And given me my annual bonus. Praise Allah.

It's not as much as I'd hoped (what ever is, really?), but I have no complaints.

Tomorrow, I will reserve a meager few dollars for a trip to get some sun, or some lovin', or both. Or neither. Depends on where I end up. And with whom.

And the rest of it is an installment toward my ransom, payable to MBNA America.

The shackles, I feel them loosening a little more. It's almost March.

Welcome the World, my new bloggers

A new generation of blogstars was born at RMC Lake County tonight. My students in ART 205 have begun their photo blogfolios. Good luck, and email me if you have any questions!

Chic and Capable!

Posted by: jbeagan.

AK took this photo of me harvesting yucca in Venezuela, July 2004. This is the only plant I pulled, and I think Pepe even loosened it for me. We were at the family's finca outside Valencia. I was, of course, totally not dressed for the occasion; shod in flip-flops and wandering through fields of yucca, pineapple, and avocado trees. A few minutes later, a mean-ass little ant bit my toe. Pepe had to rescue me, and it hurt so much that I got to practice swearing in Spanish, much to the delight of both Pepe and AK.

The Thread Unravelling

It's been nearly 10 years since I started college. Machias, and my life at the University of Maine in general was so formative, and so monumental to me at the time and in the years afterward, that it is with great poignance that I realize that it's really over. And has been.

Yes, I graduated years ago. And yes, I'm nowhere near the same person now that I was then. It feels like there have been several intervening lifetimes since then as a matter of fact. But I've lost touch with so many who were once so close and so dear.

I've known this, but have stubbornly denied the evidence. But the notion really came home to roost this evening. Last night, Nick and Erin phoned, but I was out so I waited to return the call until today. They are two of my most loved and dearest friends from the college days and we've stayed close. But after about a half hour spent catching up on the latest, there's not much more to say. So, I tell them I love them and say goodbye.

I then decided to return Head's call from a few weeks ago. I've decided that this must be the last time I use her ubiquitous college nickname and now call her "Jen." I have actively avoided doing this for years now, and not that it matters or that she cares. But the "Jen" of today is nowhere near the person "Head" was then. But I still see the farm girl with the Manic Panicked Green crewcut, despite the years and years of long honeyed curls since then. Despite that she's been married to her college sweetheart for over 5 years. So I call Jen and catch up on our mutual friends: who is where, how they are doing, who's had a baby, who's getting married, etc.

Then, there's not much else to say.

I know that this happens. It's part of life that as time goes by, the current picks up each one of us and floats us toward our different fates, and that we steer our little boats the best we can and we navigate the changes in our lives. But I miss my girls, who are no longer girls. We are mothers, wives, professionals, women. We are approaching 30. Gone are bedtime poems, parties that lasted for days, marijuana and Jim Beam or SoCo, the band, the patched-up mens' jeans, the piercings, the road trips, the laughter.

But somewhere, in another place and time, Machias lives on. It's winter there, and a carousing cadre of girls, young women, are wearing flannel pajama pants, storming into one another's dorm rooms, padding down the hallway in flipflops, borrowing a condom from a neighbor, cramming for an exam, ignoring the ringing hallway phone . . . all the while completely unaware that this will not last forever, and indeed, it's already over.

Through Sheer Force of Will . . .

I return to my blog. I'm freakin' exhausted. This week begins my new schedule of classes four nights a week, on top of my indenture at Corporate HQ during the day. I'm going to tinker in PhotoShop on some of those pix from the High School before I take some Nyquil and pass out.

On a positive note, I think that I will derive much energy, both creative and soul-generative, from my new crop of students. I love the way that seasons change in academic settings, and how you can reinvent yourself and your curriculum with each new term. Every 10 weeks, there is the opportunity for a fresh start. And I was so fucked up in January that it's time for life again, the way I want it to be.

Some things I'm concerned about tonight:

• getting caught up on my work at my day job
• the fact that my cat is too fat to clean her ass anymore
• getting run down
• being a good teacher
• getting my bonus, and it being substantial
• Pepe's heart
• getting a weekend away with someone I love, who I don't see very often

Her Majesty's Satanic Request

Thank God for AK.

See, folks, the reason why she's a teacher is that she inspires the youth. And she kicks my ass, which is always a good thing. She's reminding me again, as she did in college, that I AM A CREATIVE INDIVIDUAL. And she's prompted me to move to Venezuela with her this summer. Everyone should have a friend like her.

See, at her suggestion I've started this blog, and actually keep up with it. This is good. But I'm also a photographer, and you'll notice if you trip through the archives a particular shortage of photographs.

But no longer! Thanks to her gentle reminders, I have once again allowed my dear friend to influence me for the better. Below are three photos I took on a recent trip to Mexico, corrected and uploaded at long last.

And let me take this opportunity to say Happy Valentine's Day to AK for today, FELIIIIIIIIZ CUMPLEAAAAAAANHOS for tomorrow, and Buen Viaje for her imminent trip to Venezuela next week. Have a Polar Ice for me, baby, and have a great time!

Detail, Pyramid of the Sun, DF, 2005 

Windowsill, DF, 2005 

Bathroom, DF, 2005 

Jumping the Gun

It's mid-February in Chicago, so I am officially sick of winter. And because of this, I tend to behave prematurely as if it is Springtime. Spring comes in little teaser baby-steps, and I'm ready for a full-on gallop by this time of year. Of course,I am encouraged by the sporadic days in which the temperature climbs into the 50's, which it has done on TWO CONSECUTIVE SATURDAYS! However, I did freeze my ass off on three occasions this week, refusing to wear a winter coat when I left the house in the morning.

Last week I ran out and got my car washed. How it gleamed in the feeble winter-afternoon sunlight! And for a few days, my car was this little economy-car silver bullet of hope. Then we got snow and its shine is hidden once again under a patina of salt. Sigh.

Yesterday, another sunny and warm Saturday. I flung open the windows, walked to the drugstore in only a sweater, and sat on the porch to read. For some reason, I took yesterday's weather as a mandate to bust out the lovely rainbow-colored hammock I bought in Venezuela last summer and hang it out on my second-floor balcony.

After about an hour of trial and error with a length of clothesline, I got the hammock hung and the knots to hold my weight. Granted, it swings about four inches from the floor of the porch, but it's suspended and that's all that counts. I spent a lovely hour reading and swaying before it got dark and cold and I went inside for dinner and an evening of online chats with people who actually LIVE in hammock-friendly climates.

The delight in my hammock quickly switched to concern when I awoke at 9:30 this morning to gray skies. I knew it would rain. I rolled out of bed, grabbed the box of garbage bags, some tape, and some clothespins, and I went out to preserve my hammock. It was just starting to sprinkle. They say if you protect them from the elements, hammocks will last forever. So now, rather than seeing my cheerful hammock, hanging at the ready for my repose, I now have a grim black body bag trussed up on my tiny balcony. Half of the hammock is protected by the eaves, but the other half would have been soaked in today's miserable grayness.

Contrary to the weather reports, it's pouring. And cold. At least it's not snow.

Indoor/Outdoor living is not a luxury known to Chicagoans, who have to spend the year hiding indoors either from the stifling heat or the blistering cold. I think I'd better get used to the body bag, or figure out how to rehang the hammock so that it's totally under the eaves. But then the birds and squirrels would probably prey upon it. Fuck Chicago, man.

Yet another reason to move to Latin America: Hammock-friendly weather, and delightful indoor/outdoor spaces in which to hang them. Four more months, baby.

Wool Tights and Telemundo

It snowed again this morning. It's Chicago,and early February, so this happens. I decided this morning to dress for the weather, rather than rebel against it and freeze my ass off as is my habit. So, today I'm wrapped all in wool tights, a wool skirt, knee-high black boots and a long-sleeved cowl-neck sweater.

I will not miss ANY of these clothes.

I know that there has been a change in my consciousness when I actually PREFER to watch Telemundo. I got home late last night, and flipped straight to the four channels I primarily watch. Absolutely nothing appealed to me, so I switched to Telemundo. I've been watching it lately so as to immerse myself in Spanish. But it has been an act of will, not of preference.

Until last night, when I discovered that crappy TV is crappy TV in any language. At least in Spanish, I'm contributing to my further education by watching it.

!Mucho Gusto! Me llama Jessica . . .

Well reader, my abysmal Spanish skills and ascetic financial discipline have conspired to find me enrolled in a "Community Education" Spanish 2 class. It meets for two hours at Prospect High School on Tuesday nights from now until mid-April. 10 weeks for $62, and it's less than five miles from my apartment. So, for the first time in nearly a decade, I found myself last night a student in a high school classroom. This time, however, there were more people aged 60 than 16.

The immediate initial response I had to walking into the overly-lit building was that I was in trouble. I imagined that someone had audited my permanent record and found out I had filched on a detention in March 1994. This is, of course, entirely plausible and actually likely. Now, though, I had been mercifully summoned to a local high school, rather than having to return to Rhode Island to serve the detention at my actual alma mater. What is it about public high schools that automatically make me feel punished? Or like I will be punished? Or COULD be punished at any second? I mean, it's been 10 years since I graduated. Was high school really such a prison that after all this time, the neon baby-blue lockers, fluorescent lights, and hand-painted posters advertising the Psychology Fair should have been so disquieting?

Adding to the phantasmagoria was the school's one-time tradition of immortalizing past luminaries in a chain of framed 8x10 senior portraits, crammed between the endless symmetry of the rows of lockers and the low ceiling. It was like a film strip of all the kids who were better than you, even though now they are old enough to be your parents. Unless you are me, of course, and you find that you are old enough to have actually been a part of that tradition (apparently suspended in the mid-90's), had you been a high school luminary and had you attended PHS. The Wall of Fame highlighted a range of acheivements, all labeled by the deft and uneven hand of a secretary with a Dymo label maker and yards of red plastic tape. Past Valedictorians, Russian Award winners, and Foreign Exchange Students all grinned down from their identical frames, a parade of 17 year-old faces that never get old, never get acne, and never get to lose the feathered bangs.

I think I'm going to take advantage of my Tuesday night access to the garish and empty building for a little photo work . . . .

The class itself seems like it will be good. There was enough that I already knew to make me feel like a top student (some habits and needs just never DO die), while there was also enough that I didn't know (especially vocabulary) to make me feel like I'm not wasting my time. La profesora is a sweet and energetic Puerto Rican woman named Mayra, who teaches a bilingual kindergarten class in the district. She is young and petite, so as not to be intimidating to the kindergarteners (or us, I suppose) and when she wants the class to pay attention she says "1-2-3 Eyes on me!" It's actually very charming. And trust me, if it weren't, I'm snarky enough to say so.

The more I think of it, the more fun I think it is that I will be back in a high school weekly for the next 10 weeks

Out Like a Lamb

For today, readers, let us turn our attention to a little-acknowledged but widely-pervasive condition called SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER, or SAD. It's a state in which many of us find ourselves during the interminable winter months when living in Northerly latitudes. There is little sunlight, and when there is it doesn't last long; and the conditions in general make even the simplest machinations of daily life take on the quality of an epic battle.

This is a time of year when people take vacations or, in the extreme, commit suicide. And really, who could blame either one?

I discovered that I suffer from SAD while an undergraduate living in the wild, romantic, and forbidding landscape of downeast Maine. The windswept rocky coast passes most of the year obscured in a gray mantle of winter, a situation punctuated only by a brief and mild and perfect summer, before a riotous weekend of autumn color. After that, all warmth and color is ruthlessly smothered for another 9 months. Chicago isn't much different, except that people work like slaves and because they MUST get to work, a patina of salt encrusts everything. Otherwise, we too only get about 43 minutes of daylight for months on end.

Like so many other things, especially serious illnesses, one often does not realise the severity of a condition until there is some abatement of that condition. For me, sweet relief came on Saturday, when the temperature reached a near-record 57 degrees Fahrenheit in Arlington Heights, Illinois. I flung open the windows, got my car washed, and felt SUNLIGHT and WARMTH on my face as I performed such glorious tasks as running out for a Cuban torta at Pancho's Burritos for lunch, or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Driving home from my Saturday errands, I cranked up the radio, sang at the top of my voice, and rolled down both front seat windows so that the wind blew freshness and sunshine into the car, into my lungs, and into my hair. In a moment or two, I was given just a little nourishment, the tiniest taste, a morsel, a dram of sustenance. The coming of spring, the literal and metaphorical rebirth, is always just around the corner. And this year, the added flavor to it all is my move to South America, the knowledge that is it summer there now, and it is always summer, and the warmth and the wind and the light will be the rule instead of the exception.

The Lion in Winter

When I started this project, I figured it would be the place where I offer sage advice for the prospective expat as I negotiate my escape to South America.

Well, I had a life changing experience today, and I have come through the other side of it with a new mission for this blog.

This evening, after a long day, I decided to check my account balances through my bank's website. This whole financial awakening has become a metaphor, you see: my debts are the ransom I must pay to Corporate America before I can be free from its thrall. So now, I'm exponentially more motivated than I ever thought possible.

So, I access the bank's website and click the link to log in, and . . . the fascists I work for have blocked access to all Financial websites.

The RAGE! The INDIGNATION! I work 6 days a week in that office, up to 10 hours a day. When the HELL am I supposed to pay bills, monitor my finances, and tend to my affairs? And heaven forbid something actually turns up wrong. Is it REALLY better for employee productivity to NOT allow us access to these sites? The alternative is that I have to LEAVE the goddamned building and spend God-knows how long to fix something that would have taken TEN MINUTES online.

They've done this before and we hollered until they lifted the block. But I have really friggin' had it. I am not a child, and I do not need "parental controls" like I'm some horny 13-year old looking at porno sites.

So gentle reader, the exodus is on. But this site is now also the forum for me to vent my spleen about being shackled to cubicle culture.

Every day, I feel more and more like a lion in cage . . .

Financial Planning

My awakening to fiscal responsibility has been, quite honestly, painful and slow. I genuinely felt for too many years that I was not interested in money, did not have to be, and could spend it with the abandon of a Dubai oil sheikh. I never minded the pennies, and the pounds certainly took care of themselves --- in other people's pockets as I spent spent spent.

And even when I had myself convinced that THIS time I had grown up, figured it out, and took care of business, I quickly realized that I was backsliding, was worse off than ever, and had to change my approach. Again.

Now, reader, I'm NOT a thick person. Academically I was stellar throughout the course of earning three advanced degrees, and my IQ is at the very high end of above average. But for some reason, I just did NOT get it when it came to money. Granted I suck at math, but really, it's so logical that you just need to get the hell out of your own way and start paying attention to how the systems function.

But now, with my goal of getting the hell out of this cubicle and out of this country, I have more motivation than I ever have before. Maturity I think has a lot to do with this, but I also must credit a couple of sage elders (namely JL, my boss, and SH, a new expat friend) for giving freely of their wisdom and advice.

More than anything, the cold hard facts are just scary. SCARY. I owe a LOT of money, a good portion of it at high interest rates. How did I let myself get this bad? How did I just not care?

Maybe it was the same Peter Pan complex that I had toward leaving college that has driven my childish attitudes toward finances. Maybe there was something a little too conservative, too square, too Republican about managing money. Or maybe I just didn't think long term, toward having goals and plans and dreams that all needed financing.

Granted, 2004 was the first time I had ever made a "grown up" salary, nearly tripling what I made as a grad student and pot head in 2003. But I didn't do much to get on track in 2004: traveling too much, buying more shoes than ANY one woman should own, and just not minding the pennies. And all of that debt seemed a little hopeless, like it was SO huge and I was just NEVER going to get it under control.

BULLSHIT! It's a choice, it's discipline, and I can friggin' do this. I do not want these debts on my back any longer, costing me money, and just being a psychic burden. Especially once I leave Chicago and head to Venezuela. So I've started. I have set up a very aggressive plan that should get me out of debt before my 27th birthday in June. That's the goal anyway. And I think I have spent enough time with the calculator that I now have a reasonable and sustainable budget for ANNIHILATING the debts of my past adventures, and freeing me financially and spiritually for all that is to come.