Ten years ago I didn’t have a blog. I only filled countless hand-written Mead composition notebooks and wouldn’t start Live Journaling until 2003. Ten years ago I started my last year of college and began taking my first improv class. I didn’t have headshots and I was overly concerned that my self-taken portraits would somehow say I wasn’t serious about pursuing a career at Second City.

Ten years ago I had my first emotional brain/heart fuck after being in love and then unintentionally abandoned by a high school sweetheart. He moved up to Chicago, we dated again, and then he went back to Ohio with the intention of returning after finishing school. When there was no concrete break-up and I was under the naïve assumption I was going to date this man again, it made me feel like a horrible person each time I fell in love or lust with another. He never moved back and I always got conflicting reports of if he ever actually went back to school.

Ten years ago I hung out with guys who watched baseball and for the first time I understood why people enjoyed it. My view changed from “It’s boring” to “It’s suspenseful.” I even went as far as buying a Cubs hat to show my commitment to the sport. I’ve since lost that hat.

Ten years ago I trekked to Evanston from Logan Square for the first time with my gender-bending (probably now officially trans) friend via bus and train (and another train). Our mission was to go to a beach. We discovered that Evanston beaches aren’t right off the train, are best visited by car, and are most often labeled “Private.” It was a gorgeous day and we were determined to reach our destination. When we finally snuck onto some sand, after twenty minutes we grew tired of the beach. So we got high, turned around, and ate amazing ice cream cookie sandwiches (I bought two and they were heavenly) to sustain our cravings on the long journey back home. My eyes peacefully glazed over as the Purple Line’s express train’s movement lulled me to half-sleep. It seemed like we were gone for years.

Ten years ago I was working a miserable summer retail job at Urban Outfitters. I would get blisters from wearing ugly four-inch tall flip flops that were for some reason a thing I needed to have based off of other employees’ in-store clothing purchases. We were an army of hip Frankensteins. It rained a lot that summer and I’d be trapped in storms during my train-to-bus commute. While working there, I developed a hatred for inconsiderate, self-involved consumers who would destroy a pile of tee shirts and I’d spend hours pointlessly refolding them. A manager once said the quality of my folding must have been because I hadn’t been trained properly.

Ten years ago I drank Miller High Life a lot.

Ten years ago I was off of work for three days. I was living alone and had the tendency of rotating where I slept: bed, Futon, Papasan chair. I was on the Futon in the living room that day, head by the television, when my landline rang from the other room.

It was my dad. I remember he said, “The country’s under attack,” which was kind of serious phrasing for me to process in the morning after just being asleep. I turned on the television and watched what everyone else was watching.

I saw the second plane hit while in my place alone then gathered with my friends in their next-door apartment and watched television all day. We watched the towers fall together. Our streets were quiet. We were able to see the Sears Tower from the window and would nervously check to see if anything had changed in our horizon.

After a full day of coverage, our brains and hearts overwhelmed with what happened, we turned off the television and did something we’d never done with each other: we played cards. No music, no nothing. Just silence and companionship.

I went back to work that Friday and I couldn’t grasp how people were “dealing with their grief” by going out and shopping for dumb sunglasses. I was angry to be working. I despised these people for being at this horrible store instead of being with their friends and family.

I was apparently too stunned to be emotional over those three days of constant media coverage. I didn’t cry until a few days later when I heard a street musician singing “This Land is Your Land” on his guitar. Waiting for my Blue Line home, I found myself with tears streaming down my cheeks affected by those familiar, simple lyrics.

I didn’t know anyone who was hurt. My city was left untouched. But I remember the summer of ten years ago probably more than any other summer.

Siblings that grew up in the lake over the past few weeks.  Mama sounded her protective chirp as they scurried past my dangling legs on the dock in zig zag formation.  I threw the broken pretzel rod in the water to coax them back and they eagerly darted for my offerings.  Left, right, left, right.  In the air they were a V.  In the water, a W.

Within seconds of the pretzel hitting the water the bigger of the babies nearly levitated as he skimmed across the surface.  He pushed through his siblings to reach the first bite, and the second, and the third.  His neck craned to reach the small bit of food as if he was pushing himself to win the Olympic (Rold) Gold.

I ran out of food to give them.  And as soon as I threw the last bite, they became disinterested in my presence and swam away.  Damn ducks. 

They swam away and the water blended with the night’s darkening blue.

***

I was coming home.  My brain was in a knot.  It had long shut down hours earlier from whatever irrational thing it decided to hook itself on and I was thinking with my heart instead.  I took note of the changing scents from each individual spring tree that lined streets.  Writing bad poetry in my head about streams and bridges.  Biking at night down Wilson makes you forget that you’re in the city.  There are sections of darkness.  Pockets of quiet.  There is a crossing by a small river that resembles a country village.  The summer never hits until August, and on a Sunday night everyone turns in early.  No one is out. 

I arrived at my street and saw a duck.  A damn duck in the middle of the street.  A damn duck in the middle of the road with a baby duck huddling under her tail.  I couldn’t figure out how she’d done this since there wasn’t a body of water for miles.  But there she was, quacking in circles as if she’d been there all night.  And after all my bad poetry and philosophies swirling through my mind examining the beautiful tragedy we call life and death…THEN THERE WAS A DUCK IN THE ROAD?!  I wrote several trite stanzas in my head before I could continue.

I wanted to pick her and her baby up and take them to a lake and release them majestically into the wild.  ”Everything will be all right, little one!” I’d say, and toss the duckling into the air.  The duckling, not old enough to fly, would fall like a rock to the ground. That image didn’t change my course of action.  Still motivated to convince the birds I was their friend, I slowly and pointlessly chased after the two with my camera.  Rather than just walking after the ducks, I found it best to follow in an hunched over half-lunge.  It made sense to pursue them like this because obviously the duck would mistake me as foul and not human by my stature.  Ducks are short.  Humans are tall.

It was going to be great.  I’d sit with them by their nest.  I’d invite people over and tell them of how I heroically rescued the ducks and carried them both home in my messenger bag.  Nevermind the countless piles of goopy duck shit in the apartment, THIS WAS POETIC AND BEAUTIFUL.

Mama Duck didn’t have such goals.  She settled under a vehicle’s large frame with her oblivious kin close to her breast and resigned herself to her urban fate.

Damn ducks.

I feel I’m pretty self aware of when I’m at all possibly in someone’s way or wasting someones time. It’s second nature to worry that if I kinda might possibly have the slightest chance of almost nearly being any sort of burden to another human being, I will more than likely apologize before imposing. But those who weekend gawk-shop are plagued by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. They shuffle down the sidewalk hoping the crowd will just carry them down to the next silver street performer. (Or: Every crowded street has a a silver-lined street performer…?)

They have cell phones for sunglasses and children as bracelets. High-decible youth trained to dart under your feet as you try to maneuver down the Mile. Your pace is slowed by these yawning, squirmy obstacles who have their own cellphone sunglasses and an American Girl doll attached to their own wrists. And the cycle continues.

You’d think that these tourists coming from locations that quite possibly have more shopping malls per square mile than a city-proper does, would be less fascinated by a simple retail store. The shiney object ratio remains relatively unchanged no matter how many county lines you cross. A mall is a mall is a mall.  Maybe if they decided to get out of their cars and walk from the Chipotle to the Target to the Victoria’s Secret to the Starbucks to the Borders rather than drive four blocks they would understand what the outside of a reatil store looks like. A “caramel macchiato” sounds different when you order from a human rather than through a box that squawks back at you as you lean out of your car window.

In the suburbs, caffiene just manifests itself as road rage rather than false energy because one is always behind the wheel of a car. So it’s understandable that they are swept away by this new sense of entitlement. I paid 6 dollars for this drink. I am walking slowly. And I am going to shop at these stores that I see every day through the window of my car.

God bless Amer’ca.