chicago, day 1

I've been in Chicago for 32 hours now. I'm staying with two friends of Carrie, Bridget and Raul, who so generously offered me their guest bedroom even though they didn't know me at all and I hardly know (and wish I knew better) Carrie. They're both community organizers who really enjoyed Sarah Palin's speech tonight. I bought a beautiful used bike, fucked up my knee again, searched for apartments but was demoralized by what I saw (today I nearly signed for a place where the floors were all tilted at a 15 degree angle, different directions in different rooms), spoke to C.H. who helped me figure out that I need to lower my real estate expectations and raise my rent expectations, and then this afternoon I found a fantastic two-bedroom in the Williamsburg/East Village of Chicago. I had almost signed the lease to another place two doors down when the landlord called the broker and said that his sister just got divorced (that very second) and needed to move into the apartment. I tore my checks up. Then the broker felt bad for me and I was able to leverage that bad feeling into a $100/month discount on the landlord's fancy other rental unit. There is a jaccuzi tub, washing machine and dryer inside the apartment, a MINI WINE REFRIGERATOR (!), two bedrooms, and exposed brick in the living room. Best of all there is a fingerprint-identifying deadbolt on the front door, meaning you slide your finger across the lock to get inside. Also, the last tenant moved out in a rush and left behind lots of useful things, like a toaster and coffee maker and trash cans and mirrors, as well as lots of useless things, like ten pairs of fancy size 8 high heels and Us Weeklies from last year (I'd read them all already. Like I need to read about Jennifer's relationship disaster...with VINCE VAUGHN...pshaw!). It's in a yuppie/trendy/hipster neighborhood, as measured by an 8 minute walk to the first Urban Outfitters, 11 minutes to American Apparel. You can hardly swing your yoga mat without hitting a tattooed young thing on a single speed bike!

What the hell am I going to do with all this space? That is where you come in! I have a whole extra bedroom! Please come visit me and stay for a month.

The people in Chicago have been very, very friendly. Maybe this is just because my trip to Ireland was a transformative experience and since the beginning of August I have been the grinning, chatty, TMI-revealing American I've always wanted to be, but it seems like people in Chicago are a lot more willing to chat it up with strangers than New Yorkers. Yesterday, I was biking back to Bridget's from the lake after buying the bike and I asked another biker for directions. He said, "I'm going that way!" and we biked together for 25 minutes chatting about the winter weather and his job in Wrigley Field. Tonight, I went to a free Andrew Bird concert in Millenium Park - which, holy shit, an amazing public space, and holy shit, what a talented musician! - and the old drunk woman next to me became my best friend and talked nonstop about how much I would love Chicago and how she would be up there with the kids dancing if she were young. And in between the biking and the concert there have been probably half a dozen little conversations with strangers. I kind of like it! It hasn't become oppressive yet.

So a few of you have written to express condolences for the emotional events described in the last blogpost. Thank you all so much. But I think what I have realized about myself is that I am a sensitive little bitch and whenever things are slightly rough for me, I plunge very quickly into despair. For example, before I chanced upon my amazing new apartment, I saw about five terrible apartments. They were all uniquely bad - 15 degree floor slants, ten feet away from constant rumble of elevated tracks, terrible locations on deserted streets, extremely expensive and in the dead financial center of town, extremely dirty and small, extremely pink-hued of wall, etc. - and I was worried that I would never find a place except way out in the bumfuck of nowhere, and I imagined my lonely life of working from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then taking the train 75 minutes to a 20 minute walk to a dark, small, rodent-infested box where the neighbors screamed hysterically and me being too scared to go outside instead watching one Netflix after another and feeling sad when I watched all three discs faster than the new ones could come and then reading Sugi's novel in bed (which would be just a used stained mattress laid on the dirty industrial carpeting) with plaster from the ceiling falling on my face from the vibrations of the lovers upstairs, and the -25 degrees with windchill blowing through the inch-wide gaps in the uninsulated wall jacking up my already $300/month heating bill. And then I somewhat seriously entertained the notion of just not showing up for my job and instead returning to Palo Alto, never working, and just mooching off my parents for the rest of my life. But then I reapplied myself to Craigslist and found a nice place in a nice neighborhood and saw a nice musician play nice music while sitting next to nice Bridget and making friends with her nice friends, and I really felt my breath being taken away by the warmish breeze off the big lake blowing under Frank Gehry's steel sheets and across all the heads of those young things rushing the stage to dance very badly when Andrew Bird played the one upbeat song of his repertoire. It was a nice night, and I feel embarrassed that I did not have the patience to wait out the one bad night and instead got temporarily depressed and demoralized.

Which is to say, the brutto winters in Chicago are apparently what makes the bella summers so great. Takes the bad to appreciate the good. I should not have been so hasty to declare my life a trainwreck either yesterday or the day I fought with my dad, and I am actually feeling rather okay. (I still feel pretty shitty about Stephanie's disappearance, but I have faith and hope and charity and a two-bedroom apartment that permits dogs should she ever decide she wants to try again.) Tomorrow I might be moody again, but this evening I bought two travel guides and a detailed street map of Chicagoland and a Time Out Chicago, and urban adventures seem to be a good cure for self-absorbed depression. We'll see!