Slate Arts gallery in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood is hosting an exhibition of my embroidery work throughout the month of September! Each Saturday at 8 p.m., join us for a **free** performance of storytelling and live lit by me and some of my favorite writers in the city. The show Gone, Country includes 20 pieces of embroidered artwork framed in repurposed barn wood, two banner collages, and a creative nonfiction book I wrote as a companion piece to the exhibit ($20). See you there!
The objects we use on a daily basis play a big role in our cultural story and memory. As writers, we know the importance of objects in terms of symbolism—and ensuring we are, when writing fiction at least, placing historically accurate objects into settings, character descriptions, and dialogue.
Your Civil War heroine with an iPhone is no bueno, bud.
That’s why tomes like “The Middle Ages In 50 Objects” (Cambridge University Press, 2018) are so helpful to writers doing research for a novel or screenplay in this time period. “50 Objects” features beautiful images of objects from the Cleveland Museum of Art paired with an essay that digs into its visual and cultural significance within the wider context of how the object was made or used.
The book is divided into four topic areas (The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and its Fictions; and Death and Its Aftermath) and loaded with fresh historical insights provided by the scholars Elina Gertsman (professor of Medieval Art at Case Western Reserve University) and Barbara H. Rosenwein (a medievalist who specializes in the history of emotions).
And though it was written in part to progress academic conversations about the Middle Ages—and recently made the High Brow/Brilliant end of New York Magazine’s approval matrix—this book is a visual and intellectual goldmine for arm chair art history lovers. <raises hand> Reading this book was like getting an answer key to some incredible works of art; like sitting in on a university lecture from the comfort of my aforementioned arm chair.
Example: Object 22’s painting of the Madonna and Eve on wood panel features inverted letters signifying the way Mary supposedly reversed Eve’s original sin; Eve’s sexuality is underscored by the Tree of Knowledge growing between her legs. (Which, if ever there was an ideal place for a tree of knowledge to grow, I’d say it’s there… She wouldn’t even have to stand up to pick out a new book to read from its branches! #teameve)
I had the pleasure of asking Elina and Barbara a few questions about the process of writing their new book, why they made the curatorial decisions they did, what objects in the book were most interesting to study, and more. Read their thoughtful answers below, then get your own copy of “The Middle Ages In 50 Objects” here!
The hard cover is coffee table chic.
***
Objects are not just things “out there” but agents of history in every way. They are created for reasons ranging from utterly practical to outrageously frivolous—but always in ways that are particular to certain people and places at particular times. As they come into being and use, they carve out their own meanings and interact with other objects—and people. Consider the scene of the Crucifixion (Object 43): the bottom of the Cross depicted there has been touched by pious fingers and lips so many times that the paint and ink are smudged.
The Middle Ages was a culture of the senses. Think of the incense perfuming the air in places of worship (churches and mosques alike), the music of liturgy and entertainment, the visions of color and light afforded by manuscript illuminations, the taste of the Eucharist melting in the mouth, and the invitation to touch offered by ivory and alabaster. Considering objects in all their materiality opens a royal path to this rich and little-known culture of the past.
We wanted to produce a book that would be both comprehensive and yet not overwhelming. We knew that each object we chose would be worthy of many pages of explanation, but we decided to limit ourselves there as well. The number 50 seemed a good solution: enough to cover several entangled cultures that had to be considered together in order to illuminate each one.
Joy is the right word. The book almost wrote itself once we had decided on the themes and the objects that belonged to them. We generally worked in relay. Elina lit the torch, as it were, by focusing on the objects, teasing out the network of associations they triggered, visual discourses they tapped into, and the ways in which they were viewed in the past. Then it was Barbara’s turn to consider the larger context, wrapping each object in the intricate web of events, patrons, social needs, and religious uses that explained its creation and importance.
There is no denying that medievalists have on-hand more material objects from the elites than from the non-elites. Patrons of the arts—both individuals and institutions—were normally wealthy, and we today prize the results of their largesse and taste—the astonishing delicacy of Books of Hours, emotionally evocative images of Saint John softly resting his head on Christ’s shoulder, or elegant tombstones made to mark the burial of pious Muslims. But it is also important to see and understand the material lives of others less well-to-do, for they represent the majority of people in every period. When we view an iron barbute (Object 37), we are brought into the world of the soldier.
Its pits and dents remind us of the everyday dangers and hardships suffered by men in the Venetian army garrison at Negroponte. Negroponte? What was Venice doing there, 1,200 miles from home? The barbute thrusts us into the thick of historical events, as Venice takes over an island that had long belonged to Byzantium. Surely, we must cherish it almost as much as the man whose life it protected.
We didn’t want to do the West first, then the Islamic world, then Byzantium, or anything of that sort because those cultures were too intertwined to be conceptualized in that way. Nor did we want to divide the book by chronology, as if it were a textbook. We chose, rather, to work with themes that cut across the whole period and united all of the cultures.
All of the objects turned out to have surprising twists and turns. But we especially enjoyed working on objects that opened up many different paths to explore. An example is the miniature from a Mariegola (Object 21), which required us to research Venetian guilds, anti-Jewish stereotypes, ideals of poverty, and the realities of untold wealth.
There is no question that sensitizing ourselves to the objects that mattered in the Middle Ages helps us understand our own. But beyond that, some of the same themes and uses have distant echoes today. This goes beyond obvious similarities, as for example the persisting image of the Crucifix. Consider depictions of Death as a skeleton (see Object 50) or contemporary gestures of prayer, which derive from the medieval practice (see the hands of the Virgin in Object 43).
Barbara: I’d choose the Apple Watch, which is a fashion accessory, a practical conveyer of time and information, and a good symbol of our desire to be constantly in touch without touching.
Elina: I’d choose a pair of boots: shoes are always a powerful symbol of presence and loss, and the last century or so has been deeply fraught. Shoes are intimately tied to memory, often terribly so: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum displays thousands of shoes, taken from the prisoners at the Majdanek concentration camp. Just two months ago, countless pairs of shoes were placed in front of the Capitolio in Puerto Rico, to mark the absence of men and women lost in Hurricane Mari and unaccounted for in the official death toll.
Barbara: In a small 12th-century church in Saint-Dyé, France, I heard an incredible concert that combined ancient instruments and songs with compositions by a living composer. The music worked together seamlessly, making the past present and the present past ways I could not have imagined. It was truly inspiring.
Elina: I am reading Paul Auster’s splendid “4321”—complex, sensitive, always stirring, dark at times, but somehow always jubilant. I’d recommend it without reservations.
Barbara: This is tough. I’d love to have a good dinner conversation with many people. But I guess I can narrow it down to one party in which the guests might compare notes and (let’s hope) learn from one another. I’d invite Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife, who was billed as a nasty shrew by Xenophon; Christine de Pizan, a late medieval feminist who supported herself and her family by writing witty books for wealthy patrons; and lastly Catherine Dickens, best known as the unhappy wife of Charles Dickens. My first question to them would be: What place should women have in society, and what attitudes, institutions, etc. would be required to get them there? And my second question: If you could choose a different time and place to live in, what would it be? If I dared I might pose a third: What do you think of the LGBTQIA movement, and what do you think it portends for gender relations in the future?
Elina: I’d invite Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German visionary; Voltaire, an 18th-century French Enlightenment philosopher; and Andrei Voznesensky, an extraordinary Soviet/Russian poet, who died just a few years ago. I’d love to hear them talk about poetry, politics, and everything in between.
From Jennifer R. Hubbard’s essay “What’s This Doing to My Brain?” Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Spring 2018.
“We now routinely interact with one another in ways that were impossible for most of human history. Kenneth Goldsmith goes even further than Heffernan in celebrating cyberspace, finding the handwringing of naysayers to be overwrought. In Wasting Time on the Internet, Goldsmith contends that the web is social, not antisocial; after all, we communicate through it. As for fears of shrinking attention spans, he argues, ‘When I look around me and see people riveted to their devices, I’ve never seen such a great wealth of concentration, focus, and engagement.'”
It’s been one year since leaving my full-time job as a copywriter at an agency to work as a freelance writer M-F/24/7.
The gig life isn’t for everyone. It requires a lot of speed, adaptability, and discipline. Oh, and contacts. I’m so grateful for the network of contacts and connections I’ve made at full-time jobs before now; they’ve supplied me with the majority of my assignments this past year.
As the freelance/ remote work life becomes more and more feasible, especially for those of us in creative or tech-driven fields, I get a lot of questions from friends and colleagues about how it’s been going. Do I like it? How do I find jobs? Would I recommend it?
Here are three things I tell all of them.
I used to worry about work and, more specifically, money all the time. It was a constant stressor. That’s common, but I think it was exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis. I graduated from college that year, and though I got a job in my field immediately following my big cap and gown moment, it was a really nerve-wracking time. I watched so many friends struggle to find work in what they had studied (and were now trying to pay tens of thousands of dollars for). I watched my industry (journalism) crumble as job opportunity dried up. The stress made me sacrifice everything for work, including my health, my time, everything.
Because of all of that insecurity, in which the reality of drowning seemed mere days away, I’ve always tried to have multiple streams of income. While I was a journalist, I worked second and third jobs to pay off my student loans and, let’s be honest, simply pay my rent.
I think I’ve mentally needed those multiple streams of income, even after moving into marketing, paying off my student loans, and finally starting making contributions to my savings account. Freelance has given me a chance to relax. Ironically, not having a full time traditional job has made me less concerned about my future of having one.
I feel like I now have more peace of mind in knowing that if the economy fails or if the job market I’ve chosen faces an unforeseeable blow (ie. if changing net neutrality rules limit the need for web content, thus drying up a lot of my freelance assignments), I’ve got the education and experience to be valuable to all kinds of employers.
That’s not just because of freelance; part of it’s related to age and adding notches of experience to my work belt. But as a freelance writer, I gain a comprehensive skill set. I’m able to write for an entire range of industries, work with companies of all sizes, and learn myriad project management and CMS tools instead of simply the ones my current employer operates with. I’m learning industry-standard work across every industry.
I feel really confident in my ability to land on my feet in the future. Because I have to land on my feet everyday as a freelancer.
It’s not always easy. Some days I have to work 16 hours, especially if assignments overlap. And on days like that, I have to really stay on top of myself to stay mentally focused on each task—because each job requires and deserves my best work, no matter what.
It’s worth it. Every. Time. With Justin working nights as a stand-up comedian, freelance work allows me to be flexible with when I work during the day (unless, of course, I have a meeting or deadline in the day). I can travel with him as he commutes to out-of-state gigs, using my phone’s hotspot in the car. It’s freed up time to work on my creative writing, too, which is enough to have made this all worth it. Not having to commute to an office saves me at least two hours a day. That’s two hours I now put into personal writing projects.
I feel more in control of myself than ever before. I feel in charge of my destiny, not beholden to a job market or one person at the top of the work food chain. I’m technically not working for myself. I’m not my own boss. But I am my own director. I choose what I do or don’t take on and have to live with those choices. I decide how much to take on. I determine how successful or unsuccessful I am. And all of that makes me work harder. Better. More creatively. Freelance is freedom for people who crave independence.
And I’m not so terrified of work anymore. Which, go figure, makes me even better at it.
Clean your workspace. Set up a file system. Buy a better, faster computer. Whatever you need to do to make the workflow happen like a well-oiled machine, do it. And do it before you book your first job.
Start documents for the following items and save them to your bookmark bar now:
I tried freelancing full time about five years ago, when I left the journalism field. It didn’t work. Not because I wasn’t willing to work hard; it didn’t work because I wasn’t ready for it yet. I needed to beef up my skill set with a traditional employer. I needed to make more contacts. I needed more experience. I needed to get better at writing and managing my time. I needed to confirm that writing was my dream career.
You’re risking a lot of financial stability when you go freelance, and if you’re not ready for it yet, you’re going to be hurting fast. I started down this full-time path only a year ago, and that was after almost five years of working the freelance hustle and building up my own business on the side of my full time job. I also waited until I had paid off my student loans and had enough saved to pay off our wedding. I know it’s easier to live this way, too, because Justin and I don’t have children. I can work a 16-hour day guilt free because I don’t have anyone’s little heart dependent on my attention.
Freelancing, working remotely, living that gig life can also be a little lonely. If you’re an extrovert who gets creative and professional energy off being around other talented people, this might not be for you. I’m an introvert with extrovert tendencies, so I find myself eagerly awaiting human contact via video conference calls. But only occasionally. For the most part, I write better when I’m alone.
I know how privileged and lucky I am to get to live this lifestyle. It’s involved a lot of good timing (landing the right jobs before this, making the right contacts, building genuine connections with people) and universe-given talent (shout-out to whatever muse makes my writing bones dance whenever I come-a-knockin’ on ’em). But I’ve also worked really, really hard at a long game to get here. You can as well, even if it’s not a gig life. I hope you find the work situation that is best for you—so you’re not just working, you’re living too.
You know how they talk about finding your people, your soul tribe? The type of soul tribe Anthony Bourdain belonged to felt like it overlapped with the soul tribe I belong to, if you were to venn diagram it all out. He was my favorite kind of person—so sour and cantankerous and sharp-edged, but he had more heart and intelligence and perception in that quick-witted tip of his tongue than most people can hope to have in their whole bodies. I loved him, and his writing will go down as one of the best of a global American generation.
His suicide was a real punch to so many of our well-fed guts. He represented the type of American a lot of us want to be: Open minded but opinionated, humble but confident, idealistic but realistic, brave in the face of bullshit with a keen eye for spotting it (his rants against Donald Trump’s idiocy were the most recently hilarious/ cathartic). He also, in a lot of ways, represented the type of writer every modern writer wants to be. Bourdain’s style was impeccable, and he was a master storyteller.
I keep this excerpt from a piece he wrote for Lucky Peach #5 at my desk. It’s a perfect example of his ability to tell stories, even when they weren’t his, with humor and heat (which is what, I’m assuming, made him so great in the kitchen too). I’ve kept this piece in my desk drawer for a while now. I pull it out and reread it sometimes, mostly when I need a reminder that even the most basic piece of writing can tell a great fucking story. And it’s better when it does.
That Bourdain no longer is out in this world somewhere, learning, eating, meeting others, means there’s one less good and powerful voice speaking for so many of us. A good and powerful voice that was also incredibly entertaining. God speed, my man.
THE HEAD OR THE FILLET
By Anthony Bourdain
“Back in the day, when wealthy merchants used to travel across China in caravans, they were, from time to time, set upon by organized gangs of bandits and highwaymen. These enterprising free market enthusiasts would ambush columns suddenly and without mercy, quickly slaughtering guards and escorts, then stripping the members of the party of any valuables before killing them. The head man, however, they always saved for last.
Dragged kicking and screaming and begging for his life from his litter, forced to kneel on ground still soaked with the blood of his bearers and entourage, he would find himself at the feet of the chief bandit. The Chief Bandit, inevitably a fearsome-looking fellow, would offer the trembling merchant a whole cooked fish. Steamed, grilled—it didn’t matter. But it was always whole.
‘Eat!’ the Chief Bandit would command, pushing the fist in the direction of his prisoner. There would be a hush as the other bandits took a break from looting, disembowling, post-mortem violation, or any totemic preservations of remains they might be engaged in to move close to the action for what was clearly a Very Important Moment.
If the terrified merchant’s fingers or chopsticks moved straight to the fish’s head, tunneling into the cheek, perhaps, or tearing off a piece of jowl, there would be much appreciative murmuring among the Chief Bandit and his colleagues.
By choosing the multi textured, endlessly interesting mosaic of flesh buried in the fish’s head, their captive proved himself to be a man of wealth and taste. Clearly a man such as this possessed more wealth than what he and his caravan were currently carrying. This man would no doubt be missed by his family and his many wealthy friends, at least some of whom would likely pay a hefty ransom. The bandits would spare his life in the reasonable expectation of future gain.
If, however, the merchant chose instead to peel off a meaty chunk of boneless fillet, the bandits would jerk a cutlass across his neck immediately. This nouveau riche yuppie scum would be worth only as much as he carried in his pockets. Not worth keeping alive—much less feeding. Nobody would miss this asshole. The minute he chose fillet over head he proved himself worthless.”
Check it out, friends! My artwork has made its debut in the, fittingly enough, debut publication of the Chicago Writers Association’s Write City Review. It’s so exciting to see my name and work in there that I could burst. I know this isn’t a big deal, like, at all, and I’m used to seeing my journalism bylines, but having my creative writing and embroidery published is a rad new development that feels awesome and I’m totally humbled by it.
Eeeee, let’s celebrate! Get your own copy at Printers Row Lit Fest or join the Chicago Writers Association today.
I’ve been looking forward to this month all year for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Justin and I bought all our summer clothes in, like, March. We’ve been excited for summer.
Our New Year’s resolutions included going out more in our city when it’s nice outside and to spend more time together doing fun stuff. It’s not that we don’t spend a lot of time together, it’s just that sometimes, most of the time, life adds up and that free outdoor festival sounds like a monotonous, mountains-away drag when you can just nap in each other’s arms with the fan on at home. And just like that your life is a “16 There’s Still Time For You” song without a hint of irony.
We do watch a lot of TV together. Sometimes, most of the time, I’m reading while we do this. (Unless, of course, it’s an episode of “Dawson’s Creek,” which we’re re-watching from start to finish… If you’re looking for a hint of irony, you won’t find it. That show is like mysterious candy. Still. Even with the shitty new theme song.)
Fun fact: Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli—I learned this while reading—says time isn’t real and there are “actually no things at all. Instead, the universe is made up of countless events. Even what might seem like a thing—a stone, say—is really an event taking place at a rate we can’t register. The stone is in a continual state of transformation, and on a long enough timeline, even it is fleeting, destined to take on some other form.”
Cool cool cool.
Can I use that as an excuse next time I miss a deadline?
A few years ago at a backyard barbecue, a friend’s birthday party, one of the stoners, mid-bite of his veggie patty, told me that déjà vu is something we experience when we are in the exact place we should be. Like, the universes have aligned, man. I responded that I hadn’t had déjà vu in a long while and felt deathly depressed so perhaps he was on to something. Then we did some fire spitting and went home.
Even if time is a fluid human concept, there’s no denying the extent of which its very-very-realness impacts the lives of us non-physicists and/or potheads. It’s the great equalizer. The thing of which we never seem to have enough of, gently slipping through our well-worn fingers.
That’s why I’m also looking forward to this summer: I’ve been buying myself some time.
I’ve been working extra jobs since January in an effort to save up enough money to comfortably take this summer off from professional gigs to spend time on myself and my personal writing.
It’s my favorite aspect of freelancing—you decide how much work to take on, which means you can overload yourself to the point of exhaustion in order to reach the promised land of free time. When you freelance, you can be as successful or unsuccessful as you want, depending on how hard you’re willing to go.
The night before this all-hallowed summer season begins, I’m sitting in my apartment watching the national championship spelling bee. We meant to turn on the Cavs vs. Warriors game, but had the wrong station.
Have you ever watched a championship spelling bee before? On the screen are these perfectly precociously adorably brutal children being 1,000 times smarter than you despite the fact that you’ve got them beat by several decades during which you could have been studying the dictionary.
Nerds.
(Nerds I will happily freelance for one day when they run the world.)
Fun facts:
It feels like just yesterday Justin and I were watching the Cavs play the Warriors at a nearby bar as Cleveland clinched its first championship in what felt like forever. It wasn’t yesterday, but it was two years ago.
Maybe I’ve been thinking about time so much because just like that, I’m 32, which is the age you officially start eye rolling 25-year-old Millennials blaming their ennui on a “quarter life crisis,” just like I did seven years ago. I’m such a Millennial, I Millennialed first, kids. Get off my rent controlled apartment’s avocado-strewn lawn.
Even LeBron “The GOAT and Still Smashing Records” James has been fielding questions from reporters about whether he feels his age will slow him down. He’s 33.
(Note: LeBron once felt a million years older than me, as did the characters on “Dawson’s Creek,” but, as I realized today after watching the jaunty little senior prank episode, I realized they were mere seniors in high school when I was a freshman. … See? Time. The great equalizer. Now we’re all just grief-stricken and stumbling and thoughtfully passive adults who can have reunion features in Vanity Fair.)
Truth is, I don’t give a shit about Roseanne being cancelled. And I watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” not because I think it’s important as a cautionary social justice horror story, I watch it because it’s cathartic. Seriously, watching June try to disassociate her mind from her body after being brought back to Gilead tapped into some deeply buried relate-ability. Growing up girl around people in power who condescendingly make you feel like your body is not your own, and with boys trained in this environment to treat you like shit, your mind can start to do the same thing. (I know it’s not the same as being raped systematically after being kidnapped, but we also don’t have intergalactic battles but empathize with and see ourselves in Luke Skywalker, so let a girl have her indulgences, OK?)
But most of the trauma I’ve experienced in my life happened to me a long time ago. Time (and sobriety) has healed its residual wounds and I’ve found ways to demand better—from men in my life and society as a whole. I, in essence, feel in control of myself and my reactions. I feel like I can help others going through the same thing and I try to, which is half of the healing process anyway.
So now, I’m living in the flow state of life’s ebb and flow. Things are moving forward but mostly I feel as if I’m waiting. For what? Can I really just not enjoy the peace? Do I always have to be on the lookout for what’s next? Is that a survival technique?
Or have I been conditioned to do this? To move so fast? Haven’t we all?
Apropos, here’s something else I recently read.
It’s a passage from Henry Kissinger’s article in this month’s Atlantic about human society being unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence. Titled “How the Enlightenment Ends.” Yikes.
He writes, “Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth, many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity.”
He has a point here. (Honestly, this was one of the few points I could understand in his essay, which is why I will not be running for president in 2020 and neither should you. We all need to just hold on to our tits and wait for those spelling bee kids to graduate from Yale.) But it seems reductive for me to blame all my dread about time’s passage on social media’s speed.
Markers of time: Reading google reviews of cereals to find the one that contains the least amount of sugar and the most amount of fiber but doesn’t taste like cardboard that’s been sitting in the puddle behind the Dumpster. (Check.) Walking the long way around the park as to avoid the packs of primal high schoolers spraying pheromones in each other’s direction. (Check.) Hating social media but knowing it’s not so black and white an issue/ experience as to sign off of it entirely. (Check check check.)
If everything, as the mad physicist says, is in a constant state of transformation, what is happening to me during this unspectacular time?
You know what I think might be contributing to my worry about time, too? The fact that I feel really good right now. So good, in fact, that 1) I have nothing else dramatic with which to soak up my brain cells, so left to their own devices they plan ahead, and 2) I wonder why I don’t have more of the things I want in my life yet. Where’s the house, the couch, the baby, the book, the MFA?
See, this is why I can’t truly hate Kim K. It’s so human—steadfast transformers that we are—to want more than what we have, despite having just earned some incredible things we wanted for a long time (i.e. a wonderful and supportive relationship, Chicago residency, stable work-from-home/ work-from-anywhere/ choose-your-own-adventure lifestyle, sobriety).
Trying to balance ambition with the gift, the privilege, of living in the present is tough.
The best Pinterest wisdom I’ve found about defeating jealousy, which can often drive our ambition, is the imperative to not compare yourself to others and instead compare your current self to who you were yesterday. With that in mind, I’m my life’s god damn Karthik “Commitment” Nemmani. (Winner of the 2018 national championship spelling bee. And actually he won spelling “koinonia,” which means Christian fellowship or communion. Congratulations, Karthik. I’m totally not j-e-a-l-o-u-s.)
So far, my best life advice is to always check the store-bought strawberries for mold before popping one into your mouth (a lesson hard won by experience) and to remember this too shall pass, even the calm and especially the time.
It just that ugh, sometimes, most the time, the waiting fucking sucks.
It’s only when life’s ebbs start nudging you in the gut again or throwing you upside down, head first, seatbelt off, into the next roller coaster ride of your life, that you appreciate how nice, soothing even!, it was to just stand in line.
As I write this, I realize I’ve had a lot of déjà vu recently, which could mean I’m exactly where I need to be. That’s a nice thought. Too nice though. Instead, this is the though I’m more likely to when I experience when déjà vu strikes: WHY IS MY BRAIN REMEMBERING THIS SEEMINGLY UNIMPORTANT MOMENT OF ME EATING MY FIBER RICH BREAKFAST? IS SOMEONE ABOUT TO DIE??
As the Cavs and Warriors went the locker room for half time, Justin and I looked at each other. We had planned to go out to a bar to get some food and watch the second half of the game. But our mutual look said that sounded like not as much fun as it sounded five hours ago.
We ended up staying in. After all, we have all summer.
I take the long route to the bus stop to stretch my legs and simply be outside. The brick house on the corner has its windows open, jazz puncturing the screen. The helicopter seeds dance in the early morning breeze. The music sounds how waking up before 9 a.m. makes me feel. Adult, aware, kinda sad, mostly hopeful, prone to chaos.
**
Apartment for rent. They’ve bumped the price down from $1,400 to $1,100 a month and put up a black and white computer drawing of the floor plan. They call it a “loft” but it’s just your garden variety studio garden apartment with one cool window. And two exits. All apartments here are supposed to have two of those. Just in case. Chicago is also adult, aware, kinda sad, mostly hopeful, prone to chaos.
**
I wait for the bus to pick me up, determined not to check my phone again to see how long my wait will be. It was six minutes, like, five minutes ago. I stand with my bookbag at my feet, craning my neck down the street like a child waiting for a beloved parent to pick her up from school.
**
The Chicago public transportation system is my favorite thing about this city, occasional pee smell, long waits, and deranged passenger aside. I sold my car as soon as I got to this city. In a place like nowhere-but-everywhere-at-once, a place like Chicago, independence takes new forms foreign to me before now.
I go to the back of the bus, where the seats are elevated and I can watch everyone inside and everything that passes by. In grade school, the cool kids, which meant the older kids, always got first dibs on the seats in the back. You could share secrets and candy and/or/sometimes kisses better back there. I used to ride home from elementary school with high schoolers. I was always in the front but would try little ploys to reveal my maturity to them, with a subtlety that belied my desperation to be like them.
In third grade I became proficient at writing in cursive, which seemed so elegant and adulty to me. So adulty, in fact, I would sit on the edge of my bouncing, hot plastic seat and write in my notebook little stories using cursive’s curly cues. The story I was writing didn’t matter. What mattered was that the older kids who got off the bus before me, with their perfume trail and confident stomps, would take note of my writing and think, “Oh she knows cursive! That means she must be of a certain age! Shall I invite her to the back of the bus tomorrow to tell her all my magical secrets?”
Imagine feeling like you can’t wait to grow up. Try to remember how far away where you are now once seemed.
**
The library smells like books and coffee. The air tastes like poster tape and the back of a stamp. It just opened and is yet to fill with the heavy exhaust of exhausted humans. Libraries are the last real place you can be indoors as long as you want and use the restroom one/two/five times without someone asking you to leave or pay for something. Well, except maybe now Starbucks.
As I walk to the bookshelf of holds, where tomes peer toward the entrance like kids waiting for a beloved parent to pick them up, I pass a little boy who is sitting at the public computer. I catch him staring at me and I smile. He is dressed in red gym shorts and a black tee loose around his belly that’s the shape of childhood, a malleable shape of something arrived too early waiting for its moment to stretch out and settle in.
He reminds me of my husband, what my husband may have looked like as a boy, and I recall a quote from a documentary we watched together once. “Adults are just children who survived.” Maurice Sendak said that, I think.
I pass the boy again as I leave and wonder if he’s pulled up the news site he’s looking at in hopes someone like me, maybe me specifically, the cool old woman in the halter top who smiled at him, will notice… Will notice and will think, “That gentleman must be older than I thought, what with his well-curated morning news perusal?! Perhaps I shall invite him to the back of the bus and teach him cursive.”
**
I take the 80 bus three neighborhoods east and get out one mile from my next destination. I start to walk.
A man passes me and says, “Beautiful girl on a beautiful day,” and I don’t hate it, despite the “Everybody Dance Now” blaring from the phone in his pocket. That’s not a euphemism.
Another man passes me talking on his phone. “Is it diaper time?” he says to the person on the other end. I pretend he’s not talking about a kid and giggle.
Women in sundresses.
Dogs with dopey grins.
Breezes with a lick of lakeshore’s chill.
Sweat softening every place where my skin melts into fabric.
Summer has officially begun.
**
I was reading recently about lobsters fighting for dominance and how, when one loses very badly, his brain basically dissolves, unable to cope with what has happened to him and adjust to the new state of things. I think of this passage as I watch a woman wearing a trashbag push a shopping cart down the sidewalk. The neighborhood I currently live in has a man like this who’s always hanging around a particular intersection, usually screaming indecipherable things. Justin and I call him Yelling Guy and we and the other neighbors generally let him go about his business of scaring people who haven’t been there before and walking harmlessly up and down the street. I wonder what monster melted their brains, who or what hurt them.
**
The first fews months of college, which marked my first extended stay away from a place I spent 18 years of my life, I kept seeing people I thought I knew walking around campus. On the quad, in the dorm, right outside class. “Oh it’s so-and-so! What are they doing here?”
My mind connected these strangers’ facial similarities to people I’d seen all year long, every year until now. It was like seeing ghosts.
I used to live in this neighborhood where the 80 bus has deposited me. I see some of the same people: the woman who lives in the brownstone walk-up doing her daily walk, a family herding its toddler sheep to temple, the cashiers at Walgreen’s. I keep an eye out for the weiner dog in the weiner dog-sized Cubs hat, a staple of these sidewalks.
**
And there! Right as I’m about to head to the bus back home, through the windows surrounding the bar stool where I’m finishing up lunch, I see him. The neighborhood weiner dog who wears the Cubs hat. A fan favorite. A happy boy. A good boy. Tongue out, saying hi with a waddle-wobble strut that teeter-totters his little body left to right like a puppy pendulum: Same. Old. Same. Old. Different. Older.
**
My time spent watching the hatted weiner dog and sitting in the good feelings of my good fortune of having spotted him in this neighborhood overrun by regulars and tourists alike, I remember I packed some shoes to take to the cobbler up the street.
I hand over my heels and sign my name on the receipt. It’s the only time I write in cursive anymore.
Ad coming soon.
Find the dick!
You do you, wall.
Black Velvet, White Jesus is the name of my new fake band. 
As seen at the AIC. 
As seen waiting in the dressing room line at Forever 21. I’m a creep.
So hot, in fact, we can’t waste any time doing spell check! To be fair, it makes sense to think extremely would start with “extra.”
This building is a physical manifestation of me in relationships in my early 20s. “YES. NO. YES. NO.”
I just love this for some reason…
As seen at the SafeHouse restaurant in Milwaukee. Everyone picks their own agent name. I keep giggling at this one.
Rudy Not For Sale.
Michael McCormack’s new book, Born Fanatic: My Life in the Grip of the NFL, began as a letter of complaint to his father, who was a world champion football player (Cleveland ftw! For once!), NFL coach, and hall of famer also named Michael McCormack.
But he never envisioned what writing his story would turn into: A balm of healing for some of the wounds left behind by their dissonant relationship.
Similarly, Born Fanatic is a football memoir, but it’s much more than that. It’s a tale of father and son, country and game, money and love, addiction and recovery.
McCormack’s painfully honest retelling of his family’s football fanaticism and his father’s abuse and its influence on his own addiction is destined to pay that healing forward. Readers will find threads of their own story woven throughout the tough pigskin of his.
It will also offer hope. The pair slowly began to mend their relationship through their undying love of football. As McCormack wrote, he began to understand his father better. In this is an important lesson: Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean you think what happened was OK.
Set for release on April 24, get your pre-order today. I watch football for the tight pants and still found a lot to love in this book. McCormack, who works as a lawyer, writer and speaker in Seattle, answered a few questions about the book in anticipation of its release.
He signed off his email, “Be well.” I think he wants that for everyone.
***
I didn’t set out to write a memoir. Rather, in the aftermath of my father’s death, I ramped up my journaling, trying to sort out life-long confusion, pain and anger. Then, several off-field pro football stories motived me to consider the work as a memoir told from the perspective of an uber-fan. Even once I started down that path, I had no idea where I would end up.
Now in the aftermath, I’m reminded of a metaphor to help explain what’s become most important to share: Providence puts a diamond in our pocket because it knows that’s the last place we’ll look. In the challenge of searching for it, we learn to treasure it more. I’m moved to share how my search unfolded and what my diamond turned out to be.
Writing it meant feeling it. All of it. That included feeling my own complicity and dysfunction as a son, a football fan, and a person. I couldn’t have written the book without facing up to some responsibility, but there were many, many moments when I REALLY didn’t want to do that. I came close a couple times to deleting all saved versions of the manuscript and burning all paper copies.
The most rewarding experience was the most surprising, namely that in writing, I discovered forgiveness. That discovery led to the diamond in my pocket. That is, my father’s legacy and what I intend will be my own.
I have felt a lot of both, anxiety and excitement, over the past year as we prepare to publish. Sharing the project with my mother and siblings was not easy, and that’s still a source of heartbreak for me, as the memoir displays. But the anxiety and excitement have given way to something more valuable: gratitude. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned about myself and my father. In terms of publishing the book, I’m grateful for the people with whom I’ve worked and for the conversations with fans, media, and journalists like you. If we don’t sell a single copy, it was worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears.
Understanding that I’m no clinical expert, and there’s a lot to unpack here, I offer this from personal experience. Addiction does not come from a desire to use per se. It comes from having only two choices: Use or Die. Within the throws of addiction, the option to live a full life free of substance abuse isn’t on the table. Life in that sense is a blind spot altogether.
PS – Fanaticism at its most extreme is an addiction.
Spot on observation! At one point, the memoir was twice as long as it is now. That was two years ago, and after two years of work. I was certain at that time I was finished. I walked away for a week, came back to the manuscript and realized I was not done for the very reason implied by your good question. With the help of a patient and persistent editor (Bryan Tomasovich of The Publishing World), I lashed myself to the mast of one theme: the relationship triangle between my father, pro football, and me. Everything not explicitly within that theme had to go. Looking back over the last two years, I bet I undertook that process of walking away, returning, then cutting fifty times more after I was certain the book was done.
I had to stick with my day job as an attorney. And even though that involves a lot of writing, it’s a much different style, which was not helpful. So, finding a routine for creative writing proved difficult for a while. Things flipped when I committed to making my creativity the most important thing in my life. As soon as I woke (sometimes, many times, at 3 a.m.), my personal writing came first. It also helped when I quit judging the quality of the words when they first hit the page. I would just write, then organize and clean it up later. I also tacked to the wall a quote I found on the internet: It’s not that good writers have a particular gift. They just write. A lot.
Wood, water, stone, air, and fire. My wife and I are on the cusp of an empty nest after raising five kids. So, I have more time for listening to nature. I want and need more of that.
Abraham Lincoln has always been at the top of my list for questions like this. According to history, he overcame a lot of failure in business and politics. He was challenged by depression. And yet despite those challenges – or maybe because of them – he made obviously positive contributions to a greater cause.
Second, I’ll pick Brazilian writer Paulo Cohelo, author of The Alchemist, an all-time favorite, although I’m most smitten with his work The Fifth Mountain. I would have to learn Portuguese though, I bet.
Last, I would invite my father. He and I have some unfinished business.