1) My attachment to the city of Chicago is downright neurotic. Being away from Chicago for any long length of time has always left me feeling lost and depressed.
2) I am certain the great love of my life is behind me. That I met the perfect person even once is remarkable. Searching for someone else like her would be like trying to grab hold of the moon.
3) I spent several years as a political activist, but ultimately realized I had the wrong kind of kind of personality for it. Effective activists have to be organized, gregarious, and outgoing. I am more the slovenly, surly, reclusive type.
4) Over the course of my life, I have probably poured more booze down my throat than Al Capone ever smuggled across the Canadian border.
5) When I was six, I had a dream I cannot remember waking up from.
6) I hate places built around cars rather than people. One of the things I love about Chicago is I do not need to drive here.
7) I have never cheated on anyone.
8) I speak fluent Spanish. Tambien lo puedo leer y escribir, pero nomas un poco.
9) I have considerable talent as a writer, but have accomplished little thus far because I never learned the discipline it takes to be successful.
10) I have often hurt people's feelings, but never out of malice. It has always been out of thoughtlessness, insensitivity, and stupidity.
11) Broadly speaking, there are two types of Rogers Parkers: New School and Old School. New School Rogers Parkers search for the heart of Rogers Park somewhere around the Heartland Cafe; Old school Rogers Parker know it actually beats on Devon Avenue.
12) I love children, but am far too selfish, neurotic, and irresponsible to ever be a father.
13) Most often, what attracts me to a woman is her possession of some positive personal quality I wish I had, but don't.
14) Whenever I hear someone use "upscale" as a term of praise, I have to fight an almost overwhelming urge to walk up to them, plant my feet, unzip my fly, and pee on their shoes.
15) I am a weird dog.
16) Graduating from college cum laude was my greatest personal achievement.
17) I finally feel as though I am on the cusp of some major break-through as a writer, but I am not sure what that break-through will be.
18) The truth about quitting drinking is no one ever does. Not completely. A "reformed alcoholic" is simply a drunk who has learned to make his or her binges so infrequent--sometimes years or even decades apart--that they are able to live a normal life.
19) I am not at all career-oriented. All I want from a job is that it pay enough to live on, that I not hate it, and that it not require me to do anything harmful to anyone.
20) My high school years were a nightmare. Even now, I try not to think about them.
21) My last two years at St. Henry's grade school were among the happiest of my life. For years afterwards, I could summon up a warm, nearly narcotic wave of nostalgia just by thinking about them.
22) In my experience, how you treat people has almost no influence on how they treat you in return.
23) My brother is the most decent, loyal, and trustworthy man my own age I have ever known.
24) I still feel more at ease perched on a barstool in some hole-in-the-wall tavern than anywhere else on earth. And I suspect that will always be true, even if I never take a drink again.
25) Much of my writing these days is driven by melancholy, the gnawing sadness I feel as I watch Chicago--my Chicago, city of secrets and shadows, memories and dreams--get buried beneath an avalanche of chi-chi restaurants, trendy bars, overpriced condos, and Starbuck's coffee franchises. I have this desperate need to capture in words, before it's too late, a city that once was, and still is, but may soon no longer be.
Having kids is overrated and underestimated!
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