So, today is Halloween… always my favorite holiday, but also overwhelming emotionally and now caught with the tailwind of wonder.

Visits--
Friday, a friend of mine visiting from out of time, and I got to meet her family and go out traipsing in the wilds…

sp and I met on the steps of the Art Institute and I felt a little loop in me to watch a familiar face roam closer to where I stood, next to the bedecked lions and their observers. Everyone here is dreadfully excited about the White Sox and parades have been taking over… fireworks in the evening, and shouts on the subways. The Art Lions themselves were participating in the debauchery with a combination of Sox hats and laurel on their feline heads. After sp and her sisters took me out to a packed beer bar that irritated bp by making her put out her cigarette at a table in a room full of smoke, we went back to the institute and took a look around.

I’m dreadfully embarrassed to mention that despite having a free pass to the Institute, I have yet to perform a thorough exploration of this museum. I felt even more ashamed of myself as saw the variety of work...

...Bresson and other black-white photographs, exploring Paris of the architecture and humanity. Lines and reflections proliferated and I learned about a technique called camera obscura, which results in a double-landscaped shot, one imposed upside down over another--a technique that encourages crazy multiplications. Also, African and Chinese arts, a touch gallery, children’s illustrations, little windows into rooms that would make me very uncomfortable with their svelte. And then we got kicked out; the place closes damn early…

The opportunity to have sp for myself… I showed her my subways and these digs I’m now inhabiting and we frittered and fried our time by talking away happily until it was the moment to go out and make some trouble. Her sisters came and nabbed us. Ah… another big family… how I revel in the dynamics, the realigning of energies, the fight and burst, the ferocious intensity of a group gathered in memory and recapitulation. Each sister seems so different, but explicable within the fabric of their family: roles donned, discarded, donned. Laughter and a long search for the place to go. We made a brief stop at a bar for red-bull and jeigermeister shots, which I’ve avoided since cc stabbed me gently with a penknife under the influence of such… On our way to a place called “Spy Room” for some rampage. My roommate, lee, joined and walked fast, and we linked arms all of us and ran down the street in endeavor to get wherever it was that we were going…dancing.

The place actually turned out to be good fun. Electronica dj’s, one of whom bongo’d while mixing… most impressively to Thriller while the crew asked me if I knew how to moon walk (oh, how I wish). The scene itself was an interesting one... all the girls were dressed up like sluts and I couldn’t quite tell if it was Halloween influence or not. I was rather impressed by two big blokes costumed as Flash, one of whom took my effort to squeeze the puff-muscles on his arm as an invite to dance with all the sexy women who surrounded me (the p’s & lee). It made me happy to see my roomie dancing with us, enjoying herself, and after a few watered-down and extremely friggin pricey shots, I was into the floor, enjoying my body, the movement, the flicker of it all… lights moving and shutting down.

We had a couple good hours before the entourage—a slightly hostile, crowded and out-for-makeouts group of folks I wasn’t interested in exactly—took over and made me feel a little lost in the center of so much. We got kicked off our seats, which apparently had been “reserved” by rich folks (sonny echoed my feelings on the process when she said: “what, you mean the seats we’ve been reserving with our asses all night?”). I lost and found my friends, admired the fellow who had the break-dancing down, and then I shed the club and emerged lit from dark and went off home with lee.

In the subway, a man told me he was drunk enough to give me his CD for free, and handed me a wrapped CD-case which later turned out to be pretty good electronic mix (Stop Die Resuscitate). Later c2 seemed to be jealous that I get folks talkin to me on the subway, and I started reflecting on why it was that this always happens. I’m still not sure: the look of a fish on land draws the bears & felines? But it really has been a constant in my life; no matter where I am, strangers start it up.

As we transferred later, a man with the bends so bad I thought he might pass away in front of me. I watched him obsessive, waiting for him to raise his chin and leave. Lots of folks dressed up and drunk, celebrating a premature Halloween by emptying their guts into the subway trashcans. Kids on roller skates: “I don’t care what you think, I’m gonna make you smoke this fucking cigarette.” And the man with the death riding him, a white pupil in his left eye, shaking with seizure withdrawals every few minutes before subsiding and descending into his mauled fleece jacket again. I thought about giving him money, but he had his arms tucked into his coat, no pockets, and it seemed like waking him might be one stimuli too many after the rattle, cessation, and running of the train. I left thinking about grace. What grace would look like to someone in so much obvious pain.

Halloween Party--
Yet again, I gave a pumpkin-carving to-do, but this time more than 6 folks showed up. Which was great, since I spent all day cleaning, mopping, dragging my bed out for a sitting ground, decorating, washing dishes, showering, grocery shopping, and my coup de grace: making some salmon dip while baking two homemade, fresh-from-my-paws pies, one apple and one pumpkin. I even remembered to put the hot cider on the stove to encourage the olfactorily-oriented.

The arrivals were predictably late and gave me time to ready myself and start on my pumpkin. But when it got rolling, it really did. Candy, wine, veggie & dip, beer, pumpkins—the evening quickly filled out in light drunkenness and ramble. Little shards of orange peel speckling the floor and a knife snapped in half in wondrous carving-fervor. The place was a little squishy… not because there wasn’t enough room, but because the rooms are spread out in little living-area/kitchen clumps that encouraged a yo-yo roll between the pies and the candy.

A few Harry Potter jellybeans chewed, reviled and removed into the nearest trashcan. Even if you don’t like their taste, how is it even possible to avoid candy called “boogers,” “sardines,” and “dirt”? They reminded me of the gritty jellybean I once deposited on the floor of a movie theater.

I was hoping to mix up some of the winenight buddies with some of the folks from other parts of my life, and I did to a very small extent. sp came—for a short while accompanied by her sisters before they jettisoned for a party of two hundred they had been invited to by some guys leaning out the window of a truck on the freeway. And so did sb (a little shift from the letters of my pac-northwest friend… I’ve been noting that I have two cc’s in my life, so the Chicago one will be c2 from here on out. And I have three sp friends. So, maybe I should start assigning nicknames rather than stick with the initials? 'course I might piss some folks off with that one…). I work with sb at the Tutoring Center and have been waiting for the opportunity to make friends; something about her seemed kindred the second we met, and I was friggin happy that she could make it, even if her boyfriend couldn’t. But nobody from my dratted Narrative Design or Travel classes came...

But it all worked out well, because the joint was packed… aa steadied the music after awhile (and, it seems, rearranged the icons on my desktop?). p came decked in the baseball regalia, wondering if anyone else would dress up (which mp, sp, and aa sorta did)… he ditched the outfit once, but following a certain amount of rum and spiced cider, put it back on. c2 carved “her every-year same jack-o-lantern,” while sb carved an abstracted, but deliciously happy cyclops. p gave us a bat, and lee did one of her marvelous pandas with some etchings on its back. I did my traditional rabid face-scraping, which turned out fine, just fine. d and tw talked about baseball… discussing the 45-minute "old man discussion" tw had with his neighbor, while d dodged into the kitchen to ply the juice with vodka. mp and I nervously recounted our recent interview for our dream job, and then laughed it all off. L and m2 made the dynamics of conversations sweetly - engaging the shypers. And e was darling, as ever, although I was a little too distracted by multitudes to tease him about the recycling programs around town. Ahhh… the crew. Ahhhh… the crew.

A sidenote for the indoor-lurkers: we had quite some fun on the smoker’s balcony – conversations full of self-conscious pauses followed by self-conscious ruptures of silence. c2 eloquently filled in some of the space with a stream-of-conscious monologue about filling in some of the space. At one point, the conversation found its way to “booting.” It took me some time to figure out what this is. I knew the toilet was involved, but beyond that, “booting” wasn’t a clear term for me because the conversation started with a citation about how “booting is the only thing in the world that leaves you feeling better afterwards every single time,” which I felt could conceivably be translated in different ways… bathrooms are, after all, havens of great comfort and glory. But I figured it out after awhile. Slow me. Reminds me of when I moved from the county to Seattle and didn't know what half the cuss or sexy words meant. Anyhow, the conversation revolved around the nefarious topic for an amazing amount of time, and even though I heard several people saying “we have to leave this topic or I’m not going to be able to eat//going to boot,” I do believe these same people managed to continue with titilating details. Booting is such a good story center – abounding with embarrassing events both drunken and not.

We of course talked about intellectual things. Many, many intellectual things, thank you very much.

At some point, I got really tossed on the rum and ranted for a little while in the kitchen with sb and sp about Bush, war, organics, teaching, recycling, and all things political. I needed some of that off my chest. These are frightening times we’re living in… for example, take Bush’s recent decision to believe that his electoral base is fundamentally fundamental. Please god, don’t let this country become a crack-house surrounded by the police.

And then, the night was over… I had the glorious privilege of good company until about 2-ish and then everyone gave up on calling a taxi and walked off in search. community love, wind, this place like a newdream. sp stayed over for the night and we gossiped and talked for awhile before falling into the dreams of the moderately soused. The next day, we woke late, went for Mexican, watched the leaves falling around, and looked in on my favorite pet store, which sp found “random.” The long walk home, goodbyes to my first visitor in Chicago, and the solitary invasion of homework afterwards. And a few telephone touchdowns with some of my very verriest of favorites in this world.

Halloween--
just went to the store for some rootbeer—with outkast in my phones. the kiddies are all tressed with their bags. bumblebees buzzing, smiles at the doors… las tiendas cerca de mi casa estan dando dulces a los ninos pidiendos. grim reapers and vampires. little sox fiends and mouses. goldilocks and her three puppies. I will be doing homework tonight with all my gifted pumpkins lighting the windows and the sky falling deeper into a foggy bottom autumn where the leaves daily strip the trees more nudey. the narcissistic-libido of my mind slip-sliding in new cathexis-nexi where energies burst like bunny rabbits from overbred warrens of fuzz. enough with self-abnegation and judgment… today is the day of release. my life brewing like a witch’s caldron gone sweet and mysterious. who knows what will come next, but I feel it might be good, could possibly be good, most certainly will be good. my cup overfloweth with gaterade.