The Big City Day

There’s been a bunch of stuff going on. In fact about three different blog-worthy days have happened, and they all have been memes that could be entitled, “My First Big City Day.” The first two days are cute and snappy tales of Chicago trains, streets and people.

The last one is sad as shit for me.

And it’s the one that wins the prize, the heavy award of being my first Big City Day.
The first couple days get all tangled up between living the good life here in Chicago and struggling not to live the bad life I did back in San Antonio. I’m not sure how much confession this requires. Telling people about my pain seems trite, pretentious and boring. If it can’t top Auschwitz then it’s usually best to shut the hell up and just cope. But the ‘plot’ of all this Bloggery must be served. And so-

In San Antonio I was a theater person, who opened a theater and ran it badly. I also got divorced. Details of which are not within my responsibility to reveal. Ended up in 2009 with nothing, and no one to blame but myself. Got into a relationship I shouldn’t have, which I’m sure the young lady involved would cheerfully agree. Details of that, I am responsible to reveal, just not yet. I threw away respect and opportunity, and the Universe doesn’t like that. Karma’s a bitch, man.

I’ve been paying the toll to the Karma Turnpike for a while. 2011 was for me the Year of the Suck, no matter what the Chinese say. Events steamrolled which I self-
destructively assisted until the bottom of the barrel left it’s splinters in my
feet and back. A friend pulled me out and got me here. Barely. I had a lot of misplaced anger about past friends and situations. It’s hard to accept that you just blew it; that when all rationalizations and context are swept aside, you just dropped the ball.


But I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. And I’m a little clueless as to how fix my head. In the last two years I have questioned and re-questioned every aspect of my personality, to ensure they were true feelings and not delusions of my pain
designed to keep me in Samsara, the wheel of suffering. In Chicago terms Samsara is a frigging Hamster wheel of Satan. Being a student of History, the Buddha and my own foolish crap, I can confirm that the strongest enemy every man is himself. It’s clearly proven that all personal greatness has come from conquering one’s own ‘badness’ r ‘wrongness’, for lack of a handier mundane term. It’s all easy after you conquer that. The Universe cannot do anything wrong, only people can.


My Omni-questioning continues, but the need to be in Chicago was one of my truthful
answers and confirmed by a visit and close inspection of the Theater scene.


So once here, I want to get it right. Live truthfully and well. A real life. A city life. And here are the first two candidates for my city day.


My list for the first day included the bank, a Zen meditation meeting, a photo shoot, and then an Improv show To do it all, I would have to make full use of the CTA, including the dreaded bus.


Now, y’all have very nice buses and drivers. But I will take two trains to avoid one bus ride. I don’t care. I dig them trains! There’s something about the light on busses that makes them feel like Limbo on wheels. The Hellish Limbo, not the Belafonte.


The bank I tried to find down Howard street wasn’t there. I looked once , twice and three times. I checked my little map book. Nope. I was where it should be. But I had to be wrong somehow. As much I would like to believe that the entire city of Chicago is conspiring to keep my bank from me, it’s probably not true. But in the
looming necessity of my next appointment I gave up the ghost. Walking back to the bus stop, I was a Rand McNally-Napoleon-retreating-from-Moscow.


Then I noticed that the address numbers across the street were a
different series of numbers than the ones on my side; 700 over there 2395 over
here. I looked once, I looked twice and I looked again and indeed
there were different. What the hell? A cabbie filled me in later. One
side of the street is Evanston and the other is Chicago. And the two towns just can’t agree on which numbers to use. It’s so weird it’s forgivable. I rushed to the Zen meeting, jockeying two trains and a bus, and getting close to late. Got there, figured out the buzzer and embarrassed myself in front of some Yoga people by being two hours early.


I retreated again.


Everything nearby seemed to be industrial warehouse type stuff. So I girded my loins and prepared to walk about and gaze in wonder like an urban Sacajawea. But two blocks down was a tiny little shack of a place that said it served roasted chicken. Inside it was comfy, warm, glowing with the smells of good cookin’ and filled with people and the walls were covered with pictures of chickens! Of course I sat
down. I had the pulled pork hash made with sweet and regular potatoes and it kicked ass. Fat and happy, I strolled two more blocks and found a coffee shop that, miracle of miracles, actually understood coffee and were cool about sharing that knowledge. Expertise and comapssion are rarelt twinned.


Full of flavor and caffeine I went back to the dojo and had a meditation
session that could not be beat. It ran a little long, and I was pressed for one last leg of my journey which was a show at The Second City. My friend at
the show sent me a text with advice for the bus, and I hopped one and got close
to the club, but then had to run a few blocks. I will no longer forget that City Blocks on a map in Chicago are HUGE by the foot step. I was late! But I made it!


I thought that was my “first real day in the city” story.


The next day I walked the campus of the University of Chicago. It’s beauty was stunning and familiar. My Dad told me he liked to walk around there, in his jacket with patches on the elbows which he still has, pipe in the pocket, ready to smolder. The walk was odd, in that when I play with Lego’s I build buildings and structures just like these! Yeah, I play with Legos. Kiss my butt.
They are the best toys ever. Then I found used bookstores nearby that have history sections that you would not believe! Oh wait, you live here. So you would believe it! Then I get my first Chicago style pizza from this place who apparently hire people with Don’t Give A Shit Syndrome. Usually I applaud the hiring of the handicapped,but they should wear signs to warn us.


Big buildings, old books and bad service with good food seemed like
another “First real day in the city” story, but more personal and
intimate. Other stuff happened, but after a dawn and a midnight there came along the real story of Chicago, at least my story of it in this cold, cold night that everyone else calls warm.


Chi University had a special lecture by one of my favorite writers, Joe Sacco. He’s a graphic novelist and a personal hero to me for the genre-crossing nature of his work. I went, and there I sat at a table with a man I never thought I would
meet, much less be able to ask him questions. It was a total rush! And it
filled me with ambition and confidence, which I was going to need for the open
mic Improv night I was going to. I used to do comedy Improv on a regular basis, but I had not been on a stage in two years. Before the divorce I rarely went
a day without a rehearsal, if not a show.


I had a lot of my ego stored in my Improv, and had let it all go. But I want it back, and it was time re- pop my performance cherry. The place was
dark, and the beer was cheap. The improv shows that preceded the open mic was good,
but nothing I couldn’t match. I was getting puffed up and arrogant, ready to show this town no mercy! When the show finally started, I jumped on stage and was the first guy to get a suggestion.


And then, I got my ass handed to me. I was Eminem before the end of his movie.


I got a couple laughs in eventually, but it was a far cry from I had been used to. Kinda like the Casey At Bat of comedy, except they take your testicles from you when you strike out. I was shit-hearted. I slunk out, feeling that same cold shoulder from audience and other performers that I used to give those who sucked. I bundled up, and hoped the trains were still running. Once on board, we were was entertained
by a crazy homeless guy.


“The stars are fallin’!” he screamed. “ Falling out of the sky like rain!” He had good volume and put a lot of energy into it. Then another homeless guy, a younger one started the work the car. Two seats up and guy turned around with a
preview for us. “I’ve seen this guy before, he always says exactly the same thing.” The guy said, delighted to deliver this rationalization to us so we would feel okay to not give him any money. I won’t bust the guy’s chops by telling you his Shill, but it was very practiced and deft at the pulling of the heartstrings.


Both these guys were performing, and there was more reality and meaning to their performance than any Improv my cocky ass delivered that night. For extra salt in the gaping bullet hole where my ego used to be, a girl from the south started chatting with a guy from the south. At first the discussion included
me, as a former Texan, but soon the other two branched off. They got along
great! Chatting about careers and other wonderful wealth provided things, none
of which I had. I listened and shrunk into invisibility. Then the train got
delayed. Trapping me in this train car. Trapping me inside with this proof
of my inadequacy as a man and as an artist. We all just sat there, the CTA forcing me to silently stew in my juices of failure. Finally, we got moving. It was after midnight when I got off at the 47th street station on the Green Line. I walked a mile down 47th towards home, enjoying my misery in such a fitting setting, wondering if I would be mugged or killed or something, half expecting it as an appropriate ending to the night. But fate did not perform that coup de grace on me. She let me get back, alone and finally at home, sitting in my furniture-less room. A mugging would have been kinder.

I’m gonna go back. I have to. And I will be disliked the moment they see me. And I will have to win them over. Unfortunately, I can only do that by being myself, and I have no idea what that means. The guy who leads my Zen group posted this on
Facebook the next day:

“Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in.”

don Miguel Ruiz

It’s a good Zen precept, but it's also against everything that makes Improv, Improv.
So between these two ideas, Zen and Improv, I will wander, my hands shoved deep in my coat, hat pulled down over my ears. It’s all me, man. It’s all me. Chicago knows that. It’s the lesson of her winter, of her industry and even of the huge fire that once laid her low.

It’s never the city, it’s the man.