i write posts at home on my desert island (no internet access) of a computer, then forget to bring them into work with me.

you all know what life in a new city is like anyway: frantically emailing out resumes to every part-time job and employment agency listed, spending quality time with the chicago public transit system as i zip south to job interviews in the loop, and north to my theatre in evanston, coming home at night to the teeny tiny studio apartment that we’re not really supposed to be living in (and so can’t complain to the manager about the neighbor upstairs who karate chops her furniture at 3am). zeke paces and skitters about the room, trying to stay out from under our feet in a teeny tiny space.

i’m in a rush to be settled, even tho i know these things take time. you have to find the apartment first – after that you can unpack your stuff, connect utilities, open bank accounts, find a job, learn your way around town, meet people, join in things, start to feel like you LIVE in the city. it all comes back to having a home. since we’re living in hiding in our friend’s apartment, we don’t have an address. or any utilities. without a phone number or an address, it’s hard to receive mail. or apply for jobs. or wear any of the clothes that are in storage that you need for said job interviews, or check email, or open a bank account, apply for health insurance, discover local cafes to hang out at, meet people, or really do anything besides take the damn train back and forth across town. they let you ride the train without a legitimate address, but that’s about it. these are petty concerns, in the long run, of course. it makes me realize what it must feel like not to have a legitimate social security number in this country.

we’re supposed to move in a week, and i’m waiting with bated breath to hear about a job interview. if these things work out, life will start to feel normal. i hope. or at least i’ll worry less about being broke and homeless.

blogger wants to print the date twice on some of my posts- who am i to say no? too much work to fix the format, at least for now. the walls of the studio apartment grow closer: no internet access, no furniture, no simpsons (the black and white TV somehow misplaced of Fox last week). we want to go out and play and shake off the cabin fever, but poverty inhibits. we settle for $1.50 coffees in exchange for the privilege of sitting in the roomy living room of the starbucks on the corner, reading books, and schedule our evenings around various free/cheap industry night performances at local theatres.

there’s something about city living that awakens survival instincts. things that matter to me, living in a small town, become so inconsequential in the face of more basic challenges of city living. today’s petty example: normally i make a point to buy earth-friendly bio-degradable laundry soap; here, my pressing concerns are whether will someone nick my clothes if i leave them alone in the dryer or the fact that laundry soap at the yuppie market down the street costs 3 times what it should.

when you consider that most of the world lives in urban areas (i have no stats to back this up, but go with me here), no wonder it’s hard to get people to do anything extra. life in a small town is so convenient that it’s easier to inconvenience one’s self in small ways like buying earth-friendly soap or separating your garbage for a special trip past the recycling center. here, i just want to survive: personally, professionally, financially.

craig’s list chicago, wonderful bizarre beast that it is, produced this list of “et cetera” employment for me today:

Lawn Foreman Needed Immediately

Looking for Women with longer Toenails

30 Beer Promo Models needed for events in Chicago

Migraine and Eating Habits Study for Females 18-55 yrs old

I’LL BE THE BEST BABYSITTER!!!!

Need someone to teach me to rollerblade

Sell Someone Else’s Car for $200

Attractive Caucasian Male models wanted for foot fetish video

if a temp agency doesn’t call me back soon, i’m gonna have to start growing out my toenails.

a near total lack of internet access means that readers of this spotted and inconstant blog have been saved the daily agonies of the first week in a new city: apartment and job hunting, apartment and job applying, apartment and job interviewing, the wiles of public transit. i start each day energized by the city; by 5 or 7 o’clock i’m exhausted by the sheer volume of the city, all the sidewalks and trains and people.

there’s little to say about driving a u-haul cross country that isn’t a cliché: self-portrait of us, bleary-eyed but eager, on the driveway of my parents’ house, u-haul in the background. the companion photo was to be taken upon arriving three days later but we were too tired to take it. the truck started to smoke on the second day; we checked the oil and coolant levels and concluded that we’d done all we were contractually bound to do, and so kept driving. nothing blew up. The cab of a Ford F350 is a small place, even for two people and a cat who really like one another, and two12+ hour days found us in iowa city, iowa after midnight, our teeth still rattling from the motion of the truck.

we’ve found an apartment, and i’m never moving again. not because of the apartment (tho it’s quite nice) but because the effort of combing through listings and calling agents and wandering neighborhoods, paying the first-last-and-in-between months’ rent and filling out all those crappy financial applications (two 25-year-old kids just arrived in the city, suitcases in hand, one part-time theatre job between the two of us looks pretty shaky on paper) is too much for me to keep doing on a semi-annual basis.

a brick building, vintage walkup-style, a large, lovely kitchen painted hideous shades of salmon and sea foam, high ceilings, claw-foot bathtub, wide window sills for the cat to sit on, hardwood floors, decorative fireplace and built-in book shelves. the vintage gold velvet sofa we had to leave behind would have looked great in there. location is key: it’s two blocks to the train, take-out thai, groceries, and funky consignment shops.

until october, we live in a studio apartment the size of a postage stamp that has no phone; zeke is surly and eats a lot; andy and i cook one-pot pasta dishes on the tiny stove and climb over one another with great care. everything is a matter of inches.

i’m not much interested in architecture (looking at it or understanding it), but what everyone says is true: this city is fucking beautiful. the gothic-spired stone buildings rub elbows with dark, shiny new sky-scrapers, and the 1970’s boxy monstrocities are kept to a minimum. lake michigan is so huge that it’s hard to believe i’m not standing before an ocean; only the lack of salt-smell and the stunningly flat horizon remind me how far i am from mountains or sea. the dark blue lake meets the paler blue sky; white sailboats sparkle and i strain to see to the other side but can see nothing but water and sky.

there is no phone service, and consequently, no internet access, in our sublet. more once i start my job and have free internet access again.

in the great purge of august 2003 we have found creative ways to rid ourselves of excess belongings:

monday’s theme party: come with some booze, leave with some stuff.

guests provided the beer and wine, since we’re too broke to be throwing parties just now, and in exchange, they got to leave with a party favor: bubble soap, a stuffed armadillo, nail polish, jingly belly chain and matching anklet, Flying M frisbee, travel yoga mat, Quiet Stylin’ hairdryer, tie-dye stationary, a handspring visor & accessories, a jewelry box that plays the Theme from Love Story…even a five disc CD changer and gold velvet vintage sofa were included in the deal. only, everyone wanted to take the cat home, instead. net gain: 5 weinhard’s and 1 hangover (andy’s).

Buffalo Exchange (buy-sell-trade boutique)

net gain: $27.70 and a nearly new pair of Franco Sarto heels

Rainbow Books

net gain: $17.56, but even they won’t buy the awful Lo’s Diary, this horrible horrible first novel in which the author attempts to create what Lolita’s diary might have looked like. i’m concerned that even goodwill will refuse it.

Computer Renaissance

1 pair of computer speakers, with subwoofer: $9 (sale pending)

YWCA

if i sneak up on the donation station early in the morning and leave my stuff on the doorstep, they probably can’t refuse to take that terrible novel.

my grandparent’s garage sale

total sales of my beanbag chair, glass head sculpture, empty jewel cases, and other useless bric-a-brac totaled $8.75. when you subtract the japanese dishes, tablecloth & matching napkins, and gameboy games that i/andy purchased from my grandparents, the net gain was $3.75.

my mother

unused flicks movie pass: $20

dan brown novel: $20

my haircut: $50 (my mother provides financial support for my gypsy lifestyle by way of nice things that i otherwise couldn’t buy for myself. moms are great that way.)

my co-worker, tim

fender acoustic guitar & pasteboard case: $125. finally, someone will play the guitar and i will be free of the guilt. i loved the guitar, it’s just that i have no musical talent whatsoever and find that to be discouraging.

net gain: $273.04 + 1 pair of shoes + 5 weinhard’s (now 3) + 1 hangover (now recovered) plus good karma for having given warm coats to cold kids at the women’s crisis center.

moving day approacheth

after three rounds with the Blaster.Worm virus we are (hopefully) operational again.

guilty pleasure: the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times. it’s like sunday morning yoga for the face, as my jaw hangs open at the sheer frivolousness of the people and triviality of the news. i mean, this section actually makes Cosmo’s “How to tell if he’s a keeper” and “10 quick ways to move up the career ladder” sort of articles seem to have significant gravity.

a piece that rankled in particular last week:

Banshees Howl on Oregon’s Dunes

…

For certain people, summer is a Tolstoy idyll on a lake in Vermont at some 21st century version of a dacha. For some, summer is a series of parties on the East End of Long Island, drinks at the house of Russell Simmons, amid nesting swans and friends that one vaguely feels one has met, probably on prime-time television. For some, summer is a group house with weekend mattress shares calculated by meticulous fractions, or the ritual of tugging red Radio Flyers from ferry landings to houses stocked with Humboldt Fog cheese and designer drugs.

But for the people here (Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area), who never considered trucker hats an ironic accessory, summer is a family camping holiday whose central activity involves screaming up the flank of a sand dune on an all-terrain vehicle.

…

(Guy Trebay)

can you believe it? trucker hats without irony?

the writer goes on to peer down his nose at the hefty $4500 price tag of a typical ATV, scoff at the idea that recreating together qualifies as a healthy family activity, and posit that none of these people are capable of appreciating the beauty of the natural world simply because they didn’t mention it when he asked them questions about their ATVs.

granted, i find ATVing a distastefully noisy and moronic method of enjoying the great outdoors just as this hamptons’ poolside reporter does, but at least i recognize that the irony that hip new yorkers enjoy while wearing trucker hats comes from somewhere: it’s only ironic if someone else does or did it seriously once. god, given the choice of summer activities, i’d rather camp in the oregon dunes, even if i did have to ride an ATV, than bump elbows with the “certain people” of Trebay’s world, sporting the latest $4500 gucci hoo-ha and doing designer drugs in some sort of modern architecture monstrosity in the hamptons.

the worm ate my computer.