my toes are cold. my fingers are cold. new york is cold and messy. greatest city on earth? they could learn a thing or two about cleaning up snow from minnesota. whatever, i head to portland oregon tomorrow and everything will be melted by the time i'm back anyway.
chicago was colder though. my god, it was cold. i haven't started shaking uncontrollably from cold since i lived in minnesota. but i did there, walking from the lakeshore back into hyde park. i think my dad learned to make pancakes there, the pancakes at the original pancake house tasted just like his. and it is where he grew up. hmmm.
so i got back from chicago on sunday night. it's now thursday, i haven't unpacked and i leave again tomorrow. i've been busy.
did you enjoy valentines' day? or is it valentine's day? who owns that crass commercial usurpation of love? i ate sushi and was cold. i lost my glove walking back from the restaurant. michelle bought me a book of 100 love sonnets by pablo neruda, and i bought her 100 poems by e.e. cummings, not all of which are about love but the best are. "i like my body when it is with your/body. it is so quite new a thing." her present was satisfaction of all five senses, a scented candle, massage oil, chocolate, poems and music. she's the best!
reading: john barth "the floating opera" david foster wallace "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" and still to come, ben okri, his sequel to one of my all time favorites "the famished road" -- find it. read it. email me about it.
i have to go to work. this is when i love commuting downstairs, because i don't really want to go outside.
In my prior job I went to Chicago several years for an annual meeting about December 10. One year it was so warm in Minnesota that we weren't wearing coats and I had to debate myself about taking a winter coat -- "after all it is December." The next year my friend from Missouri asked me to walk up State Street with her to the place she planned to meet her husband. A few steps down State Street in the wind made it very apparent that I wasn't going to get back to the hotel without frostbite unless I made a stop at a department store to buy a hat. Yes, I agree that cold of Chicago is something else.
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