two hundred. thirty six.

All of my city classes are done - it's a terrible sadness.

I thought I was doing a terrific job of taking copious notes in every class, but upon glancing back over what I'd written it's just a lot of really cryptic scribbles. I can pick out maybe one or two words that might have some significance, as well as fragments of book titles or authors. I continue to tell myself that I'll take the time to decode it soon enough.

I need to get better at note-taking and general organization of written materials. I discovered that for 8 weeks of classes I used 3 different notebooks. Whilst recently shuffling around the study I found a stack of additional notebooks, all of them somewhere around half full, none of them cohesive. I'd start the first part of a story in one book, jot down bullet points in another, and write out half sentences or more notes in other books. If this is a reflection of how I go about organizing other facets of my life, it's a miracle I can function at all. 

My creative writing teacher always likened writing to cooking - you just have to know the recipe. We all suspected that his analogy had more to do with the fact that he never had anything to eat before class and talked about food as often as he talked about writing. Have I told you how eccentric he was? When he spoke, most of his L's became W's. I tried to write down a sample sentence for you, but alas, it too is also scribbles. I can tell you that he used "like" as a filler word a lot. A wot. Wike, a wot. 

Anyhow, back to writing as cooking, sometimes I didn't want a recipe, I just wanted to mess around and throw a meal together. I didn't want to talk about what made that meal unique based on the ingredients and the recipe. He would constantly point out weird little things that we would unintentionally do in our writing, and then tell us to keep doing that. This was both interesting and wildly unhelpful. How to continue to write subtly? Doesn't the very fact that I now know that I write subtly ruin everything? I can never be subtle again.

I want to know what makes something good but I also don't. 

I always want to know what makes something bad, but he would never say. He would question the purpose of words or sentences, but never outright tell us something didn't work. He would leave us to figure it out for ourselves. Very rarely he would scratch out unnecessary words. I loved going through and finding words scratched out. Good riddance!  

Needless to say, I enjoyed it tremendously. 

He left us with a bunch of really inspirational, hokey statements. It was the best. 

Two hundred. thirty five.

Sometimes walking in the city can feel like I'm immersed in The Truman Show. You know? As if I'm walking around the backstage of a giant production.
When I'm walking to class, I take a back way, a long way, a quiet way. Few people walk here, so it's always jarring to happen upon a group of construction workers reading and doing crossword puzzles with brows furrowed before they begin their day. You know? We all seem so out of place for a few seconds, like actors out of context - the man wearing their hard hats & struggling over a few letters, pencil gritted in teeth. Me, walking an unusual path. Everyone freezes for those few seconds, even the pigeons: "maybe if we don't move she won't see us..."
Later in the day I stumbled upon an unfinished art show at the cultural center. Huge wooden boxes with cryptic names sat in a hallway, waiting to be unpacked and set up. Aha, I was too early, they weren't prepared for me. I have fooled them all! I have beat their system! Was half expecting a security guard to escort me out, and I could wink at him and whisper that I knew what was going on.

Anyhow. So just a little mad these days.

two hundred. thirty four.

Hannah and I went downtown recently to go to an Irish singing lesson of sorts and then a music jam in a pub. Life should always always be this way. The ladies knitting, people playing music, fish & chips at every table.
It flashed me back to a moment to a pub in Galway.
To set it up: We had just met Paul, a nice lad engaged to a nice lass back in Chicago.
"Where did you meet her?"
He pointed. "That pub, right across the corner. We met there!"
"How sweet! That gives me hope that I can find a husband here in Ireland," I said laughingly. [And, you know, completely serious.]
"Really? Oh great, meet my friends!" Cried Paul, in a enthusiastic "but-wait-there's-more!" announcer voice.
Disregarding my protestations, Paul dragged me over to meet his three friends. None of the the fine Irish gents were interested in love and marriage (though not for Paul's lack of trying, as he would constantly check in and ask if we were falling in love yet and point subtly at the church just behind the pub). They were jolly good fun though, mostly making fun of each other and filling us in on Irish life.
Brian and I got to talking about Chicago vs. Galway.
"I would live here in a heartbeat," I said.
"Here? Why?! This pub is as good as it gets here," said Brian.
"This pub is one of the best things in the world!"
"But you have Boystown and Wrigleyville!"
As if the delights of those sex-crazed and boozy areas could satisfy me the way the ocean could, just steps away, and the music playing at my elbow, and the Guiness in my hand. As if the lights and clubs of Chicago could compare to the graves that were older than my country in farmers fields. People passed them everyday without a thought. As if the Budlight buckets could top the warm whiskey drink the bartender insisted I try.
So we shook on a trade, Brian and I.
Still banking on it coming true one day. If you meet a man named Brian parading around in my life, you can be rest assured that I'm over at his pub in Galway.