[just stay calm]

just stay calm.

[megaphone]

[writing]

[randomness]

[archives]

[index]

Saturday, March 23, 2002

an age-old conflict
I lost the keys to my bike lock. Which wouldn't have been so bad if my bike hadn't been locked up at the student center. So I had to call Northwestern's Department of Facilities Management to come and cut the lock off. A kindly middle-aged locksmith sliced it off with something that created many sparks. And then I asked him about being a locksmith. This question was the, uh, key to the vault. He told me about how he had to be part social-worker for people if they've just had their car stolen or house broken into, giving them advice about life in times of tragedy. He seemed to genuinely like locksmithing because he gets to help people. But sometimes, he says, students don't see the department is trying to serve and protect them. He paused, and thought for a minute. "There's a deep-seated conflict between the city of Evanston and Northwestern, right?" he began earnestly, without a trace of irony or sarcasm in his voice. "It's like that. Or it's like.... the Catholics versus the Protestants. Or the Israelis versus the, the.. Palestinians. It's the students against Facilities Management." He continued, "They put quarters in the locks, they steal keys to give to their boyfriends and girlfriends..." He's right, of course. We always tried to screw the system. Maybe someday there will be peace.

13:23

Friday, March 22, 2002

update
On Sunday, home again. Wish me luck.

23:11

Thursday, March 21, 2002

quote
"Accolades or not, we're all going to end up on that big ol' Albany Times-Union crime beat in the sky." -- Mark

18:34

cool thing
When you have no idea what to do with your life, and you don't have much hope, and your family's mad at you and you've hung up on both your mother and your sister, gummy peach rings can really cheer a person up.

18:33

publicly transported
I'm going to see Sarah. I have to take the bus to U. Chicago. I've never taken the bus in the city before. So uh... how do I do this gracefully? A study in the mental processes behind taking the bus.

I get off the El with my hand on the compass in my pocket. I need to be on the west side of State Street, so I read where west is. But the stop is easy to find -- a mass of people waits there. Soon my bus pulls up, the 6 bus. It's impossibly packed. No more people can fit. But they do, limbs and backpacks all fitting together like Tetris pieces. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. A bald man in a black leather jacket, talking on a cell phone, chats happily in front of me as I am mashed against his back. We are off with a lurch. My grips slips because I'm wearing wool gloves. I switch grips again and again. A large woman wearing a once-white fake fur hat is taking up two seats and snoring lightly.

I inspect the wire running the length of the bus, along the wall, that I will pull to request my stop. I envision myself pulling it successfully. It seems awfully far away. Will I be able to reach it? What if my reaction time is too slow?

The bald man pulls a Mentos commercial and squeezes between two affable older woman. One of them chuckles at him.

A white man in a knit cap reads a Guardian Monthly. How pretentious, I think. Well, no, actually I think, how cool, he is reading the Guardian Monthly. And then I think some people would *think* he were pretentious.

Another stop, more people get on, they jam into the stairwell. That would *not* be allowed in Copenhagen, I think to myself. They would just speed on by that bus stop full of people. I shift positions, regret my backpack even though it's small, and switch grips.

The bus starts its express run, no stops, down a highway, and it flies lightly over small bumps, making our stomachs skip. A crunchy college guy smiles at a girl he knows when this happens.

A woman reads a newspaper, with an obituary headline reading "Helped develop Formica counters". How sad, I think, that that's the headline of a man's life.

What will my obituary headline read, I think. Perhaps: "Wish fulfilled, girl gets to 'sleep all the time'".

I can't understand what stop the driver has announced. His words were garbled, perhaps in Portugese. I ask the man reading the Guardian if we've passed 53rd Street yet. "It's just round the corner," he says in a lilting Irish accent. My eyes beg for specific directions. "It's either this or the next one," he continues. The driver announces 52nd Street. "So it's the next," he says. I am relieved. I feel like he and I know each other. We have bonded. When I hear the driver say 53rd Street, I jump to pull the wire. The bus grinds to a stop and I call to him, "Thank you! Have a nice evening!" The doors almost close on me, but I push them apart. Ha!

I pull out my compass, wait till the needle stops spinning wildly, and walk west on 53rd.