The Foundation: 030

'Everything at best of alleged being.'

I walked into my apartment Saturday morning and for the first time in the eight months I’ve been here it smelled like home. Faint smell of coffee, and fresh air. It was in the 40s the night before and I left the windows open in the apartment for the breeze and to cool off, because being on the third floor with a flat black roof I’ve been running the window units.

Sometimes I walk in and think, I should take out the trash. Or, the neighbors have been smoking. Or cooking. Or it smells like Fabulosa for a couple days after I do the floors. Or vinegar from cleaning the coffee machine. When it’s really warm the windows stay closed until I know I can cool it down, fans and all. Saturday morning smelled just right. I try to give myself things like this to hold onto.

The night before, it was getting cold, so I went and sat by the lake til past dark and wrote a little by city light. Stood near the water washing over the pier and let it wash over my boots, felt the mist of the waves.

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Before the summer started, I told myself, I’m going to get out and take in the cultural offerings of the city in a way I never did because, in short, I made other choices. It’s September now. I did make it out, finally. Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend. And probably that I’d been before contributed to … I guess I’d say it felt a safe first step back into the world. I don’t know what I expected. I did buy two books (Rust Belt Chicago and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods) and wandered around with no real plan. I found a seat in a coffee shop and wrote.

I can’t remember the last time I went out somewhere crowded that didn’t involve kids or work. Since the beginning of the pandemic. I worked from a basement office for the first 30 months, then took care of a newborn for six, eight months of overnights and that brought me pretty well into summer of 2023. Stopping drinking in there complicated the whole going out thing. Then I was back and forth from Arkansas and trying to find a place to live in Chicago and by then it was January.

After coffee I drove to a beach. It was cold, and windy enough to cut through my hoody. Chicago has always been home, I guess. Maybe I just had a good day. The notion of home itself is heavy, depending where you’re from. The light didn’t last.

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Reading (Expanded):
Stella Maris. This is the last I’ll say about this book (here). Second favorite McCarthy book behind The Road. It’s either this, or Suttree for the second spot. I’m not looking for a Blood Meridian argument, I know it’s the masterpiece. I like this book more. Have never seen things so captured, though if you’ve read better on the themes I’m all ears.

“I’d always had the idea that I didnt want to be found. That if you died and nobody knew about it that would be as close as you could get to never having been here in the first place.”

Shelter: Continually enjoy this newsletter. (Subscribe button is top left at the link.)

Range of Motion: Surprised by the nostalgia for a front porch, the depiction of a summer afternoon listening to cicadas and watching the neighborhood. Until the end of sixth grade we had a porch. (Her essay from earlier this summer, Goodnight Chicago, is beautiful.)