Explanations and Excuses

A selection from a longer story/fragment collection I'm calling "Elevated Stories" from my (continuing) time in Chicago.

Two days later I woke up with a lunge, as I do quite frequently, realizing that my alarm had gone off an hour ago and I had gone back to sleep.
“Shit.” I whispered to the window, watching tiny specks of white drop almost imperceptibly across a grey sky. The snow did not surprise me, it’s just that I’m very vulgar while I’m waking up. This would be the second relative I had left waiting at the airport for me if I did not immediately get up and walk out the door, and I knew that I was not going to immediately get up and walk out the door. I peeled the covers off of me one by one, bracing myself for the chill that had already swept down my back. In preparation for my morning grogginess I had left a trail of post-its across my tiny apartment. The alarm clock on the windowsill had told me “You can only hit the snooze twice, you lazy asshole.” But I hadn’t listened.
My nightstand said, “There is no refuge in rolling over.”
The bathroom door said, “She will buy you breakfast.”
The mirror said, “Makeup is for morning people.”
The toilet tank said, “Don’t push play.” I had a third alarm clock in the bathroom, gifted to me by my father’s girlfriend. Hello Kitty lay across it, with a pair of headphones on and an iPod in her hand. It was glittered with pink and yellow stars, and so as to help you relate to Hello Kitty, you could plug your iPod in and wake up to whatever you wanted. I loved this thing. It really rounded out the collection in my bathroom; although I must say my Hello Kitty preferences center on the more bizarre: whale-riding Hello Kitty held my toothbrush, Hello Kitty the ballerina danced with chandeliers on my shower curtain, and a sun-browned Hello Kitty Hula Doll watched over me from above the mirror. The aunt I was meant to meet at the airport had brought that one back for me from Waikiki.
Oh right, my aunt.
My teapot told me, “You don’t have time for tea.”
The door told me, “Don’t forget your phone.”

Wine Flu: fun new code for a hangover

What an exciting moment in time! Holy crap guys! I'm not graduating on time or anything. I'm kind of glad. If I had that going on, on top of everything else, my head would probably explode.

1) It's finals!
2) My BFF moved back to Seattle yesterday! BOO!
3) I have a huge black eye!
4) Also a cold!
5) I'm moving neighborhoods next week!
6) THE CHICAGO SWINE FLU OUTBREAK IS STARTING RIGHT HERE IN ROGERS PARK!

I think this is what is traditionally referred to as a "shit show."

¡SI SE PUEDE!

{MY NAME HERE}

*Update*

from: Kate Carlyle <"Mom">
to: Alicia Atteberry
date: Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:46 PM
subject: congratulations

to you and your generation for standing up and making a change.
I hope you are in grant park right now.

Halloween

"Under the Bridge"

"Beatniks Out to Make It Rich"

Spare Change

Last night on my way to and from The Green Mill, I ran into all kinds of crazies. I'm pretty sure I saw a member of a mildly famous rock group giving an autograph, at the Lawrence stop one guy jumped onto and over the bench I was sitting on 3 times between pacing back and forth crazily, a man emerged from a staircase and began yelling loudly at me (or maybe it was an invisible entity just next to me) - repeatedly asking if I was a demon and calling me "nigga," and then, finally, the crowning moment of the evening...

Halloween was over, but still a few passionate souls carried it on into Saturday night. A crowd of young people about my age and race, dressed as a Deal or No Deal girl, pack of skittles, yacht club member (maybe?) and ... guy in pajamas(?) respectively, entered the Belmont platform followed by an older black gentlemen (who, lord forgive me, I have assumed was not with them originally) in a Cubs uniform which said "Obama 08" on the back. Awesome.

The group and the elder gentleman began conversing shortly thereafter, and about five minutes passed before the old man began yelling, "Obama! '08! Obama! '08!"

Haha! We all thought (all of us on the platform, that is). Yes! Obama '08, indeed. Obama is awesome. Halloween is awesome. 2008 is awesome. This old man is awesome. He kept crying out, in perfect rhythm, "Obama! '08! Obama! '08! Obama! '08! Obama! '08!" and between each exclamation the young people and a few others on the platform would shout out "Wooh!" in solidarity with him.

At first.

But the old man kept shouting, ceaselessly and in perfect time, "Obama! Wooh! '08!" for the next 5-10 minutes that I was standing on the opposite platform. Everyone began to look around at each other, smiling and laughing a little. Then we all stopped. Then another minute or so would pass, all of us getting used to it:

"Obama!
Wooh!
'08!
Wooh!
Obama!
Wooh!
'08!
Wooh!"

And then suddenly noticing again, realizing how absurd this was - but how exciting and how Chicago, how irrational and emotional and stirringly populist! So we looked around and laughed with each other again.

Then some people started to just be annoyed. Maybe they didn't really see it like I did. The kids next to him laughed nervously, no longer joining him at all, one of them saying "He's the frickin' energizer bunny!" as if in apology.

"Shut up!" Someone less witty yelled.

"Stop it! You're being counter-productive!" a man with his headphones still in yelled.

But he kept going anyway, he didn't care. He faltered in his pattern for a moment:

"Obama!
Obama!
'08!
Wooh!"

But he spun around on his heel and picked right back up.

The train approached on my side of the platform, and the man who was so concerned with productivity cried, perhaps in additional protest of the CTA, "Finally!"

At the Hyde Park Walgreen's. Hyde Park is the neighborhood where Senator Obama lives.
The cards opens and plays "The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" by Timbuk3. Awesome, right?

What I'm Doing Instead of Updating This Thing

Oh, heyyyyyy...

Yeah I'm having a pretty rough semester. I think maybe I am at a turning point now, but I'm not making any promises. I'll just throw a bunch of crap together here for a second.

I am sitting in the Information Commons at my school. It's this fun new part of the library without any books! The East and West sides are made entirely out of windows, one of which looks out at campus and the other directly into Lake Michigan.



That is from earlier this semester, before it got shitty outside! Well, it's not really shitty yet. Just very windy today. They actually pipe in the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, it's weird and kind of distracting - especially since there is a walkway between the lake and building where people go by shouting as if nobody can hear them. I don't think its a widely known fact that the noise gets inside the library. They can turn it on or off, which is nice, but I have NO IDEA how. This building is so high tech compared to the old part of the library (which has almost NO windows), it's like studying inside a robot. I dig it, though, and that's good because I've been here until close for the past 3 days. It's pretty relaxing, and getting out of my house is becoming increasingly necessary as I am basically incapable of doing work there, it turns out. I am learning so many things about myself. Ah, the journey of youth.

ANYWAYS.

Since my last entry I have developed an eating disorder, cured cancer, gotten over the eating disorder, and inspired a Lifetime Original Movie. Last weekend I founded a sovereign nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, of which I declared myself President. Only one of the preceding sentences was true.



In the real world, I am in a Research Methods class that is kind dominating me, although I think mostly because I had/am having so much trouble with my topic. Doing a huge project you aren't excited about is frustrating. I'm also in two Anthropology classes I like a lot, but I always like those. Here is what I've been doing for Writing Systems of the World lately:


I'm taking both Arabic 101 and Spanish Advanced Grammar this semester, so that's not at all confusing. This is the Spanish pronunciation of my name, in Arabic:

RoPa and The Beauty of Holding Still

The chiming of the ice cream man floats in the window every day, and as I'm descending the stairs on my way outside I hear it, too. When I'm walking down the beach or just lying in the grass doing whatever I do in my lolly-gagging hours, he walks by yelling about ice cream, cold water, and how much they cost. Once he was standing right outside my front door talking on his cell phone when I left. I smile at him, although I've never bought anything from him. He also once told me to tuck a ten dollar bill back into my pocket, presumably fearing for its safety. I guess you aren't really supposed to smile at strangers, it makes you seem overly trusting. I never made eye contact with that creepy tall man with the raspy, long blonde hair and the Highway 420 t-shirt, but he still asked me how my drawing came out as I passed by him and his pal wielding tallboys at the park entrance. The creepers will creep, so I'm going to go ahead and smile. Just not at them.

Walt enjoying Loyola's springy new astro-turf field.

A friend and I went to the movies at "the ghettoplex" across the street from my apartment. There were free samples of deodorant sitting on the end of the snack counter, and the ticket man encouraged us to take as much as we wanted. "We've got cases of it in back," he informed us. We took about 12 between us. Later we got beers at a liquor store on the same corner, I like to refer to it as "the David Lynch liquor store," on account of how every time I go there I'm kind of freaked out but kind of entertained by all of the weirdos hanging out. There are always at least two employees, generally including an extremely intimidating man in a cowboy hat behind the counter and a strung-out looking old fellow sitting in a wooden chair next to the door. He seems startled every time I come in, and I realized one day that I've never seen a woman inside. While Friend and I were there, a twelve-year-old boy followed us around the store, making sure we didn't steal anything.

I purchased a vintage, kind-of-crappy-but-cute bike this week. It's a Schwinn "World Tourist" with a clown horn and pedal breaks. Um. I may or may not look like a clown riding it around, but I may or may not look like a clown most of the time anyway. I'm more concerned about my ability to stop suddenly. Honk! The world looks different on a bike: the neighborhood looks smaller and people look more like things you are going to run into. Side streets look safer, sidewalks look thinner, the sky seems less available for gazing.


This is my fourth year in Rogers Park, counting a semester abroad and one summer between dorm rooms. My second roommate moved in yesterday, and today we rode around getting my keys copied for her and going to the grocery store. She's new to the neighborhood, a transfer student, and as we zipped along the alleys and side streets west of Sheridan and pulled up behind the hardware store, she expressed amazement at how well I knew my way around. I guess I do! I thought. All of a sudden I've been here three years. It can be so nice to hold still. My first week back in Rogers Park the 7-11 guy looked up as I approached the counter and said, "Long time, no see!"

Here are some Chicago Summer pictures. Only the ones above are in Rogers Park. I get around, you know.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2008, Union Park

This is actually in Michigan, at the beach in Chickaming (?) Township

Movies in the Park Festival 2008: The Blues Brothers, Millenium Park

Uh, a party. Sweet ceiling. Wicker Park.

The Language Barrier

Argentina has a pretty distinct accent. Some people might go all the way out and call it a dialect. In addition to the Buenos Aires slang called lunfardo, Argentines as a whole along with many Uruguayans pronounce ll and y differently from the rest of the Spanish speaking world: somewhere between a j and sh in standard English. This worries me. I thought I would leave Buenos Aires able to mimic this accent easily, but now I actually speak Argentine Spanish. I don't know the accent, I have the accent. Even with that in mind, I may have failed to mention here that in the 4 months I was in her class, my Spanish teacher, Inda, yelled at me literally every class for 3 months about not being able to understand me.

Me and "Boris", the house cat in Teatro Callejón.
He had no trouble understanding my English or Spanish.

I was indifferent about it at first, figuring I just needed more practice and that she would eventually cut the 5-minute lecture down to a reminder - "¡Mas fuerte!" replacing the repeated speech about needing to speak louder and open my mouth and practice vowel sounds and have more confidence and be a better person, generally. As it turned out, either Inda was afraid I didn't understand her the first 25 times, or she is a very very persistent instructor. I received this speech almost word for word every class until the last few weeks, at which point she cut it down for presentations (my critique, however, was strangely familiar) and presumably because I made some noticeable amount of progress. At first she had thrown in the comment "Your conjugation is almost perfect, why are you afraid?" but toward the end she really honed in on the negative. For a while I hated her, and for a while I wanted to cry thinking about going to class and opening my mouth, but eventually I just got used to it and (sort of) appreciated the honesty, however excessive and redundant.

I mumble, you see. Not only in Spanish, but in English. It's been a long-running problem for me, one that comes and goes depending on how much time I am spending around other humans, what kind of humans they are, and how much caffeine I've had in the last 4 hours. If I'm not mumbling, I may or may not speak at the speed of running pumas. Sometimes I combine the two habits. I don't know where this came from. My father is from Texas, and while he doesn't exactly drawl he certainly isn't a speed talker. For a long time it was his job to counsel people over the phone about software problems. My mother is an educator (currently for students who are mostly using English as a second language), and also speaks very clearly. Maybe I am just a freak. A friend of mine has theorized it's because I don't want anyone to hear me, which may have some validity, but I'm going to wait until I have a professional present to get into that.

I think it might be a matter of comfort level. My teachers are evaluating me and that makes me uncomfortable. In addition to Inda, my theater professor Susana gave me similar lectures and seemed to think I was at a much lower level of comprehension than I actually was. She also generally threw in something about confidence and strength and did an impression of me that involved putting her hands in her pockets and shuffling her feet. With random people, in the street, I had few problems. On occasion I even gave people directions, often with my hands quite snug in my pockets. My host family was always quick to denounce criticisms of my Spanish when I mentioned them : "¡Pero, que bien hablas! Ella habla muy bien, no?"

"¡Sí! Tan bien! Re-bien!"

My hosts, Delfor and Cristina

*****

Walking through the Houston airport, the other people from my program and I discussed being back home.

"Everyone will be speaking English!" Someone commented.

"Except that we're in Texas," I said, as an overhead announcement repeated itself in Spanish.

Later, a friend and I discussed his euphoria at being able to communicate more easily, while we sat in a food court eating scrambled eggs and bacon for the first time in months. Actually, I was eating breakfast tacos. He was excited to be back "where you don't have to work to be understood."

"Hmm," I said.

*****

The other day Mom and I went to a taco chain that only exists around here, called Taco Casa. It's like the Hill Country equivalent of Bojangles (for those of you familiar), same color scheme and everything - but with tacos. I ordered for both of us, because I am slightly less afraid of the world than my mother. There was this skinny teenaged guy behind the counter wearing a hilariously oversized uniform, he looked like he was trying to be hip-hoppish but I don't know if it was on purpose. In what I thought was a fairly clear although very rapid pace, I ordered "two super burritos, two super tacos, one lemonade and one iced tea."

He blinked and said, "Uh. Two super tacos?"

He looked down and began punching buttons on the register, and I repeated more slowly, "Yes. Two super tacos, with two super burritos."

"Uh, OK." He pushed more buttons.

"Did you get the drinks?"

He looked up and creased his brow about as slowly as he spoke, "You didn't order any drinks."

I smiled at him and clasped my fingers together around my car keys. "Well yes, I did, but it was very quickly. I'm sorry. One lemonade and one iced tea."

He clearly thought I was an alien, but I also got the impression that he was not the brightest crayon in the off-brand box. I sighed and thought of Inda as I took a few packets of taco sauce out of a plastic bin.

Volver

I am back.

Across the street from the house my grandparents have owned since I was 5, there is a green water tower planted in the landscape like a gigantic golf tee. If you were lost in town or the stretches of fields and hills around it, you could turn slowly until you see the green globe sticking out above the trees and head off in that general direction. It even looks like one of those pins in online mapping services - but permanently situated, in real life, at the one place in town I always have to get back to. Printed across the top is the name of the town in capital letters, like every other small town in possession of a water tower. This town is called “Comfort,” and so the giant green pin says “COMFORT.” Since it is across the street from my grandparents’ house, right on the other side of the front yard, we all sit there on the porch watching the dogs run back and forth with a huge tennis ball looming above them, reminding us that we live in comfort. We live in Comfort; we live in comfort.

*****

We didn't pick Helen up from the airport, as she had driven herself there and her car was waiting. She got back late at night, around midnight, and walked into the living room without my ever hearing her come in through the studio. The dogs were in the other end of the house and didn't notice her arrive either. I was alone in the middle of watching Inland Empire, a David Lynch film (with all that implies), and it was extremely spooky for her to suddenly appear behind me.

Uncle James came out from his room to greet her. We three sat in the kitchen drinking beer and reviewing the time we had missed from each other's presence. As usual, the pale underside of a lizard appeared on the kitchen window, and as we talked it slowly worked its way to the other side. A moth was out there too, flapping around the light from the house, mesmerized, and the lizard was stalking it. In the middle of the conversation I saw it snap at the moth and pointed, yelling out - "That lizard is attacking a moth!"

We all stopped immediately, rapt with attention as if ourselves moths staring into a flame, and cheered on the lizard, who snapped again.

"It's like a Godzilla movie!" I yelled.
"Oooh, almost got him!" said James
"No, oh, he lost him..." sighed Helen.

The excitement in the air died when the moth disappeared and we turned back to continue talking, but I looked back and saw that not only had the moth returned to the irresistible glow of the window, but another greener lizard had appeared.

"Oooooh, it's back, and there's competition!"

We were back at attention as the lizards snapped intermittently: one! two! three!

"Ah! YES! Godzilla got him!" I joyfully shouted. The newcomer snapped at Mothra again as it wiggled in the mouth of the tiny pale lizard. Godzilla backed away slowly and wrestled with the insect, who continued to flap its wings and try to fly from the lizard's jaws, which are surely much weaker than those of his namesake. The greener lizard came forward, snapping again and darting off with a mouthful, but Godzilla swallowed the rest whole and we watched his belly swell.


"That was so exciting!" I said. We all laughed, then paused.

Looking at me sideways over her beer, Helen asked, "So, ready to get back to Chicago?" and we laughed some more.