7 posts tagged “minneapolis”
December 2006
Dear "Love is for Suckers,"
Forgive the epithet—that's what your shirt said, and I never learned your name. It seems to fit you, though, given your life story (I couldn't help but overhear as you told the rest of the bus). I just wanted to commend you on your resilience and spunk—there aren't many people in the world who would leave an abusive relationship at the first sign of trouble and get out of town. You've got nerve, that's for sure.
I'm sorry to hear that things didn't work out with your boyfriend. I was, however, delighted to hear the story (all four times!) of how you cleared out your apartment this morning—everything you could fit in your suitcase came on the bus with you, and the rest went to Goodwill or the pawn shop. I bet he'll be floored when he walks in the door tonight, three a.m., and the apartment is as empty as the day you two moved in. (Except for the dirty dishes in the sink, Love is for Suckers. That was a nice touch.) Honestly, the story got better every time you told it.
You were absolutely right when you said that you didn't have to put up with your boyfriend's shit when you have a momma (albeit a momma 400 miles away) that loves and misses you. Drinking with his buddies all the time is one thing, hitting you is another. A lot of women would have been too scared to leave—where, they'd ask, could they go? But a family in Chicago is still a family, and I know you're right when you said your momma would welcome you with open arms—and just in time for Christmas!
It's too bad that you had to pawn your nice red leather thigh-highs to pay for your bus ticket. I bet you look great in them, and I agree—your momma would have loved to try them on and go clubbing with you. But you and your momma and your girls can buy more boots later. After all, they're just boots—and now you're on a bus home.
(You probably could have kept the boots if you'd pawned your boyfriends PS2 instead of smashing it with the toaster... But the therapeutic benefits of wanton destruction of other people's stuff are not to be underestimated. I fully support the decision you made there. So will your momma. Plus, that was an especially scintillating part of the story, and I'd hate for you to have lost storytelling material just to save a few extra bucks and a pair of damn fine boots.)
I hope your momma makes you a whole tray of macaroni and cheese.
Love,
Sara
As I stand on the lawn
(mostly weeds instead of grass, but too dark just now to see)
at the corner of cracked concrete sidewalk
and gravel driveway,
looking up past the tree branches
at the greywashed, starless sky
(light pollution is heavy here)
this breezy summer night too warm for anything but sleeveless shirts,
waiting for my friend to move the car that parks him in
so that he can drive me home
I close my eyes
just for a moment
the smell of grass and, faintly, car exhaust
heavy in the air,
the sounds of night, and people
in their apartments, going slowly about the things
that people go about at hot summer midnight
I feel myself freeze time
just for a second
one extra second
of this perfect summer moment
one second more of this, to last all summer
before the car is moved
and I get in
he drives me home
and we have to say goodbye
It's been a quiet week at home. Helping out around the house, some unpacking, some cleaning, some drawing. I've been sick for the last couple days, but that's fading, and I should be back to normal by tomorrow.
It's kind of weird being at home—I'd become so used to having friends around (literally) all the time. And here I haven't interacted with almost anyone but my family in a week. It's a difficult adjustment to make, and while I'm dealing with it as best I can, things have been pretty rough emotionally. I love my family, but living at home is a very different experience than living up in the Cities.
I miss people pretty badly. And it's not really anything serious—I know I'll be visiting this summer, and living up at school again come August. But the day-to-day experience of not having them around is... weird. I can't run upstairs and say hello to Matt and Mike; I can't bug Ben and Adem to watch Scrubs with me. No one's clustered around the TV at 4:30 to watch Jeopardy—these are default interactions that I became accustomed to during the year, and not being able to fall back on them is a little surreal.
I do talk to people online, and there's been some scattered interaction on Facebook, which is nice. It isn't as though I'm completely cut off from my friends—far from it! But there's a different flavor to online interaction than offline, and most of the people that I talk with all the time up at school don't have the same kind of relationship with me online. We didn't when we were living in the same city, and we don't now. (When we lived in the same building, what kind of online relationship we had didn''t really matter, did it?) It's funny that after all of the people I've come to know and love through online interaction, it can be so difficult to build that kind of relationship with someone I already know in person. (Not surprising, maybe. But funny, just the same.)
It's kind of funny, again—the loneliness really only hits when I'm talking with people online. Just because of the difference, I guess—I think about how different the conversation would be if we were in the same room, and it makes me kind of sad. Not that I want to give up chatting with my friends—not by any stretch of the imagination. But it leaves me in a weird place when I do talk with them. Happy that we've got that contact, but almost desperately sad at the same time. I'm a little concerned that I come across as always being upset, which I don't want. I also don't want to take myself too seriously, so I end up joking about any serious comments I make. ...Which I think leads me to act more a little more bouyantly than usual, which i think probably comes off as being flighty and obnoxious—overcompensating, much? And then I worry that they're annoyed by me, and it's all some kind of downward spiral.
The entire previous paragraph is an example of just how much I've been overthinking every single thing I do, lately.
The light pollution in the Cities really is impressive. I've always thought of stars as being countless—I think most people have, just because of the references around us. The stars, we're told, are innumerable. It's funny, though, because sometimes they aren't—I can look around some nights up at school and count all of the stars I see...and the total will be something like "seven." It's not a very impressive number, and it probably screws up the meaning of lyrics in many a love song.
And I know that my hometown isn't exactly exempt from it, either—compared to skies I've seen up north, the celestial ceiling of my city isn't worth mentioning. But even so, it's so much better than what I can see during the school year. It really is beautiful.
And right now it makes me think of the friends I have scattered across the Midwest, and what they see when they look up. I know two of my good friends are in the Cities right now, and it's kind of funny in a sad, sweet sort of way—those two probably care more about the stars than anyone else I know. It's funny what the stars can mean to different people, and just how much they can mean, and how much longing there can be when they aren't visible.
I wonder if anyone from a big city ever really wants to grow up to be an astronaut.
It's night, January, winter, in Minneapolis. It's cold and crisp outside, beautiful. Even in the heart of the cities, with all their burning, glowing light pollution, there are a handful of stars overhead.
I'm walking across the Washington Avenue bridge, crossing the Mississippi River. Down, below the bridge, lights shimmer—reflected in the moving river, the thin ice that coats the surface here and there. Behind me, to the other side, the Weisman shines in all its reflected aluminum glory. Walking to West Bank, looking at the city ahead—the skyscrapers glow against the night sky.
It's so cold outside that my fingernails hurt,
and all I can think of is how beautiful everything is,
and how much I love Minnesota,
and how happy I am to be here.
I love living in Minneapolis, just because it's such a fun word to say and type. Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's almost lyrical, isn't it? Every time I write my return address, it's like a little poem in the upper left corner of the envelope.
I'm home for the holidays, back in southeast Wisconsin. I love it here, too, of course—I grew up here. Here, with the Lake, the Farm, and the Racine Zoo. (Someday I will tell you of my child's love for Lake Michigan, but today is not that day.)
Right now I am missing Minneapolis. Not the city, really (although I love that as well), but the friends I have there. Of course, "there" is a slightly inaccurate term—I do have friends there at the moment, yes, but many of the people I term my "Minneapolis friends" are, like me, home for the holidays. I miss them.
I'm here with my family, and I love them, and that's wonderful. And I'm happy to be here with them. But part of me is also scattered in pieces across the Midwest. (Oh, dear. That sounds horribly dramatic, doesn't it? It's not meant to.)
I'm looking forward to getting back up to the Cities and seeing everyone again. Especially the guys from Club 522—staying up til three a.m. just isn't the same without them.
What are your plans for the holiday weekend?
As I walked off the plane in Minneapolis, one of the flight crew—perhaps the pilot, or perhaps one of the flight attendants—said "Enjoy your holiday." Because, of course, it is Labor Day Weekend.
I'm not on holiday, though. Basically, I'm here for the opposite reason: I'm in the Cities again because yes, it is once again that frenzy-inducing time of that retailers everywhere refer to as "back to school."
I'm spending my holiday weekend settling back in to the dorm. I met my roommate this evening, caught up a bit with some friends, and am going to spend the next few days doing back-to-school activities like res-hall sponsered Target shopping trips, welcome-back-to-school hypnotism shows, and other exciting things.
And then, to class!
