#307

Ugh! Time. It passes, events in its slipstream mass, accrete, gain specific gravity, and settle into an orbit from which they are difficult to deviate by main force. Took a whole trip to Chicago since last I posted! Had a little ten-day vacation between the end of school and taking on work as a bus washer until school starts up again! Also, have had a lot of intricate, heavily plotted dreams wherein having sex with a variety of extremely hot women was integral to many of them, about one woman every three dreams. This probably indicates that I could use a girlfriend, but who knows. Sometimes extracurricular romance is a healthy and natural thing (provided all generals and particulars are honest, open, and aboveboard) and sometimes it's the devil in you, jerking you around by the glands. Hard to say! Hard to say.

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Chicago is always pretty cool. Love being in that city. As a born city boy, merely the sight of many tall buildings, let alone being amongst them, is soothing to the mind. Love a small town, love the great wilderness even more, farms are cool, I can hang anywhere and thrive, but there's something about a city that is particular, and that something particular to each city, and I love Chicago and Chicago's particular thing very much. My dad used to work there, both my brothers went to college there. It's a thing with our family, hanging out in Chicago. Ezra hadn't been since some barely-remembered middle school trip, so we did some basic tourist things; crashed at an err bee and bee on the south side, up to the big skydeck on top of Willis Tower (I would say the weirdest part of Sears being in its grave is decidedly the new name for the tower--why couldn't they have kept the name on, I wonder? Because we fucking hate history in this country, history can fuck off and die, we say--the new Skydeck, incidentally, had a lot less history than it did the last time I was up there), Shedd Aquarium, all day the next day at the Field Museum basically, and on the last day we wandered about Millennium Park till it was time for the train to leave. Next time we'll do some more stuff like that but also try to get to a couple of the neighborhoods less traveled and also try to spend more time there in general. I like to spend a lot of time in museums, and can easily spend two days in the Chicago Institute of Art. Like to see Pilsen and Hyde Park, too. We took the Line everywhere, as is right and proper. 

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We had breakfast at this place kind of at the bottom of a hotel near the lake twice called Little Branch--man, that place was just rad. Loved their digs, their food, and their smoothies. Also had a big ole cup of Mexican chocolate and that was extremely legit as well.

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Everything, of course, cost way too much damn money, But that's part of it. So fuck it.

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Doing a thing of reading several books at once at the moment. Here is what they are and how it is going:

Still reading John Milton's Paradise Lost. I dunno, I like it, and I read bunches of it at once, but it doesn't seem to finish. And there's two more poems in the book after that, Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. Damn, boy. I mean. he's good, he's fucking brilliant and all, but damn. Something about it is just slow.

Los Años Extraordinarios, by Rodrigo Cortés--pretty early on, but it's damn awesome. I read a lot slower in Spanish--maybe have mentioned this--but it's important, so we soldier on. In this case in particular, gotta stop and look up words pretty much on every page 'cause the dude has a word fetish, which is cool. Yet, there's a reason I need to break this thing up with other books.

Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey--loving this bad boy. The one on which progress is proportionally the most voracious at the moment. Kesey really is fucking Steinbeck-level Great American Novelist, boys, you heard it from me and you can take it to the bank. Might have to reread Sailor Song soon. There's a book that smacked my brain and changed me around.

Jason & Medeia, by John Gardner--call me what you want. but this is way fucking better than Paradise Lost. Like, way better. This shit is intense and way more readable. Dope poem, makes me want to work on something like this that's been rattling in my brain for a long time.

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Whichever one of these I finish first will give way to Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. Love my Hesse. Gotta find that book of fairy-stories of his, that shit is fire. Also everything the man wrote, pretty much.

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Ok bye gotta eat gotta write more still getting used to everything but hardcore production will, I pray, resume sooner rather than later because I really want it to ok yes cool peace

--JL