it's been an interesting several days. good stuff. not so good stuff. sad stuff. joyous stuff. i love the human experience! been thinking a lot about who i am, where i've been, where i am now, and where i'll be going in the near and distant future. life is fearfully exciting right now, and each day is a mix of struggles lost and won.
the highlight of the past several days was having caleb back in chicago for a few days. caleb's fellow yale seminarian audrey, who's been hanging out in chicago all summer and who is also formerly from the hyde park vineyard (my church these days) which caleb helped start back when he was at the U of C, joined caleb & me to go out to ravinia to hear tony bennett w/ tim & some folks from tim's church and steph hood & steph's son micah. uhm, frankly speaking, caleb, audrey & i weren't really interested in hearing tony bennett's music. like ok, we know he's cool and all, but, uhm, we don't really listen to that kind of music, so, uhm, we were mainly interested in hanging out. which is what we did. wine, crackers, hummus, cheese, beer, the whole shabang. it was a lovely night, and i got to see the stars...i even saw a shooting star! i love seeing shooting stars...
so after ravinia, c., a., & i drove back to my apartment, and they jammed on my guitar and josh's guitar (which he left here when he moved to new york) for hours and hours. they did wilco, son volt, VoL, o brother where art thou, jimmy eat world, bob dylan, and a bunch of others. my own private concert! it was the loveliest several hours i'd had in a long, long time! audrey plays and sings like an angel. and caleb...he's no angel...he's a rock star. totally. he had me near tears when he did the VoL songs, like on to bethlehem (which i cried to the first time i ever heard it) and a certain slant of light and offer etc. the way caleb plays VoL songs, it's not like he's covering the songs. he plays w/ the passion & intensity that bill would play with. it's so cool to see. it was totally awesome to have my guitar being played with such ferocity and joy and enthusiasm. i just know my guitar wanted to go home with caleb...i feel so bad for my guitar it has to stay with me. oh well, caleb will just have to come visit my guitar on a regular basis. and any other guitar players out there should come visit my guitar so it won't mind living with me.
so friday, uhm okay, so on the way to work i got in a little fender bender. yeah, that's the bad thing that happened this weekend. but it could've been a lot worse. like somebody could've gotten hurt. or i could've caused a lot more damage. so i hit the other dude's truck, but he got this tiny dent and i got a big smush above my front passenger side wheel. it looks okay at night, but it's quite a bit more noticeable in the light of day. ok. enough of the bad stuff. drive safely, guys. especially in stop & go traffic.
friday night the girls (that would be my cousin kris, connie & rea) went out for a belated bday celebration for rea. we went to this french restaurant which took over where villa kula used to be in lincoln square. french food, okay, it was good. it was also nice to hang w/ the girls. it had been like a zillion years since i'd seen them. like i don't even remember the last time the 4 of us had a chance to go out. i gotta tell you though, it's great having girlfriends, esp. forgiving and understanding ones like the girls i hang with. they've been so supportive of everything i've been going through...i love my gal pals...
so saturday i just chilled listening to music, arranging cds and what not. caleb came over a little before 8pm so we could go see the wilco movie @ the musicbox. caleb was the perfect person to see that movie w/ just cuz he's like my music guru/consultant, and we've shared a lot of wilco, esp. after thursday night when he played a lot of my fave wilco songs. the movie was a lot better than we thought it would be. it was awesome seeing some of that footage and hearing the outtakes. seeing the process of making the yankee hotel foxtrot album gave me greater appreciation for the whole album. i'm going to go see it again w/ connolly, my fellow chicago wilco fan. if y'all wanna see the movie, well, go ahead, but if you don't listen to wilco, it might not really mean as much to you. in which case i would run out to the record store and load up on wilco. i really like all their albums, so i can't recommend one or the other. i'm into all of them. but i gotta warn ya they're not all in the same vein. but it's all good rock 'n' roll, some songs w/ a bit of twang, others no twang whatsoever.
after chinatown w/ audrey & caleb (ken kee's for latenite cheap lots of food and even vegetarian stuff!!), we all crashed @ audrey's then went to church in the morning. caleb was playing guitar in the band, which happened to be led by 'than madjiarczyk, an old friend from my years in evanston vcf. it was great to see 'than again. which reminds me i have to email him. it was my first sunday at church for an entire service. i had been avoiding coming in time for worship because i was kinda scared of getting hooked. but i felt ready this sunday. the band did a bunch of recent older songs that i knew, so it felt comfortable enough, and i felt like i could worship genuinely without manufacturing anything. that's a big fear of mine--because worship was such a huge core of who i am, i'd kinda been running away from it because i was afraid i'd get hooked back into old "christian" habits since i get so emotionally worked up through music...it's kinda hard to explain...those who need to understand will understand...but this time i just worshipped without thinking about it, and i think that's what i need to do. just do it. over analyzing can get in the way of genuineness. and then the teaching was by this dude named jonathan who was like really really good. man. he had me in tears several times. it was all good...i think a lot of this God stuff is coming together for me...the pieces of the puzzle that have been floating around in the far reaches of the delta quadrant are making it back home into my heart where it's being put together by someone other than myself cuz i sure don't know how the pieces fit.
i kinda felt like a lost puppy after church because i still don't feel quite at home there, although it was nice having little elements of comfort that sunday, like caleb and 'than, but my pastor rand found me w/ that lost look in my eye which i think he recognizes by now, and he was nice enough to give me something to do so i felt a bit more connected. he got me to give him and a new family a ride to a going away party for ellie, this really incredible woman in the church who's moving to boston. this was the first activity at church i participated in w/ hyde park vineyard outside of sunday service. i was just glad i had audrey & caleb there since i trust those guys...and then peter & amy druck, the facilitators of the small group i attended last wednesday showed up and it was cool. peter & i talked about bands, which puts me in a really good mood. and they're vegetarians too!!!! i was so happy i had someone else to be hungry w/ at parties. ha ha ha! actually, there were plenty of crackers and fruit and veggies so we were fine. not to mention cake & this awesome chocolate peanut butter brownie thing. peter & i both love death cab for cutie which is cool. i'm gonna make him & amy some mix cds of some of the other stuff i listen to like the wilco & son volt & VoL & maybe the promise ring and whatever else comes to mind (send suggestions to sarah@wildwoodagency.com).
so it was another afternoon of goodbyes. ellie, whom i'd just met, is going to be sorely missed at this church. even i'm gonna miss her and i don't even know her. she just reminds me of eloise mckitric, my old boss @ evanston vineyard who was like a mentor and mother to me. eloise was a huge influence on my life. i also had to say goodbye to audrey and caleb who are both returning to the east coast monday. even though i'd just gotten to know audrey, i was really sad to see her go. and caleb...well, it goes without saying that saying goodbye to him was hard. i'm really hoping those two hurry up and finish school and move back to chicago. we'd have such a blast in this town. and my guitar is really going to miss caleb. i'm gonna have to make an east coast trip for sure now.
it was such a beautiful day after the party...i ended up having to drop by rand's cuz he left his bible in my car, and we had a chance to talk, and i shared what it felt like for me to say goodbye to aud & caleb and to see the church say goodbye to someone they loved so much since goodbyes to me are even harder now since my dad died. it was good talking to rand about this stuff and to just catch up about how i liked peter & amy and all that jazz.
afterwards, i wandered around aimlessly downtown stuck in traffic, talked to megan for a while (i miss her!) and then ended up at crow's nest in lincoln park where they were having a big cd sale. i love cd sales...got me some good deals which is rad and now i'm listening to 'em. that's it i guess. i'm feeling good. sad & good. hopeful. feeling like my life means something. starting to feel connected to other people more local than on the west coast or east coast. i still miss my friends scattered across the country. but i'm thankful for my local ones like my girls, connolly, olarn, and rand's like 'what about me?!' when i talk about my nonlocal friends, so yeah, rand, tim, the kenyonites whom i see every so often, allison & drei @ work, and hopefully folks at hyde park vineyard, if i can get used to being in church again. it's like pulling teeth sometimes...but i like jesus. he's been cool. more than cool. hard to explain. some of you guys think i'm nuts, and that's all fine and dandy. i love you any way.
spread some love or at least tell a good joke and make someone laugh. take five minutes to breathe. listen to some rockin' music. listen to some beautifully sad music. drop me a line.
"...and i'd like to say i'm faithful
to the task at hand
speaking gospel to a handful
and others with their list of demands
it's cold this year and i'm late on my dues
it's cold in here ah but that's nothing new
my heart's electric with your love again
so it's on to bethlehem..."
-from "on to bethlehem" by bill mallonee (of VoL)
stuff i listened to the past few days--
thirdshiftgrottoslack--jay farrar
time (the revelator)--gillian welch (man, i love her voice!)
frosting on the beater--the posies
les bains douches 18 dec 1979--joy division
universal truths and cycles--guided by voices
in between ep--rosie thomas
don't tell a soul--the replacements
very emergency--the promise ring
tim--the replacements
revival--gillian welch
bunch of VoL stuff
sebastopol--jay farrar
wide swing tremelo--son volt
a.m.--wilco
being there disc 2--wilco
yankee hotel foxtrot--wilco
private concert--caleb & audrey (the best thing i've listened to in AGES!!!)
Saturday, August 24, 2002 at 4:53PM 
yeah, so i was listening to the promise ring's very emergency driving west on armitage, when what do i see but this truck in front of me w/ that sticker, and not only that, i happened to be on track 2 which is the emergency!emergency! song. hehehe. ok, so i didn't have any other photos to post, and i hate looking at plain text on a page, so shoot me. whatever. going to see duvall (descendant of the smoking popes) tonight w/ connolly & olarn. connolly will enjoy it...i don't know about olarn. connolly & i pretty much jive on a lot of bands--wilco, the ocean blue, and he even saw VoL when they played the metro a while back. he also loves my gilian welch revival cd which i played for him a couple weeks ago. today i will expose him to neutral milk hotel, the gloria record, and let's see...what else did i pick up at reckless today...oh. just some old replacements cds and springsteen & x. ok. oh! i know! i'll play serene! cuz i love ryan and jesse...=)
