Sinister: pull out the map

[Joseph Vess]

Yesterday was the first day that maybe felt like fall, a slight chill in the
air as I cycled in the morning. The sky was a totally clear blue, and stayed so
throughout the day, even as it warmed up in the middle. That night I read, by
chance, Geoff Dyer's description of the same day. “It was neither summer nor
autumn. The sun had none of the intensity of summer but the trees were still
thick with green leaves.” Today was even cooler, even closer to fall.

As I rode I thought about why I like days like that so much. The first time I
really noticed this feeling it was exactly the same time last year. That
exhiliarating combination of things: crisp air, clear sky, the intimation of a
brisk fall ahead.

The first time fall made an impression on me was two years ago, having just
moved to Chicago, and I think this is source of the positive connotations. For
the first time I felt like I was where I belonged and things that I wanted to
come together were. I had a job where nothing was expected of me and that paid
me (just) enough to live on. I had a place I could afford, good roommate, good
friends around, and a working bicycle. That was, and still is, really all I
need. That fall I cycled incessantly, exploring the city that I had called my
own for six years but never actually known. I rode all over the city, eating in
dingy ethnic restaurants and riding through neighbourhoods that were
fascinating solely because they were there and new to me. I made new friends
and revived old friendships, and being anywhere else in the world never
occurred to me.

The soundtrack to this period was Dear Catastrophe Waitress, which I listened
to incessantly at work. I couldn't afford to buy the album, so I would listen
to it on a Dutch radio station, from front to back all day, for weeks on end,
building up to finally seeing them live at the end of October. By the date of
the show I knew every word to every song. One lazy evening I had even cycled
out to where the show would be to make sure I knew where it was and could get
there by bus.

It's a cliché, but it's really true that the more you own and the more
responsibilites you have the less free you are. One of the reasons I miss that
fall is that there was such a feeling of aimless possibility, that surely
anything might happen since I was in a magnificent city with all of my basic
needs covered, so I had the perfect foundation to build on. Now, two years
later, so much has changed. I am doing—at work—what I want to be doing, I am in
school studying exactly what I want to study, I have my name on a lease of an
apartment instead of just hanging out there until the demolition crew comes,
and I feel like Gulliver, tied down in every way, barely able to move. Every
time I think I want to leave, I want to escape, I have to think, “No, I have
class next week. No, I don't have enough vacation time. No, I don't know anyone
who would want to do that. No, that doesn't exist in this shithole of a city.”

I think about leaving, not constantly, but regularly, and I am painfully aware
each time that I can't. I worry what stifling this urge will do to my psyche. I
don't want to get used to it, I don't want to become resigned to the fact that
for the next two years (or maybe only 20 months, I hope) I have dramatically
reduced options. And then what? Will I be too old, too debt-ridden from school,
too resigned to not doing things, to take advantage of it and do what I wish I
had done. Will there still be things I want to do? In as way this is all
academic. Leaving is not really an option, I can't afford to in so many ways.
But the possibility is always in my mind, and I don't want it to go away.


Joe

------------------------
Joseph Vess
josephvess at yahoo.com


	

	
		
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