July 2nd, 2025 An ode to a broken down Arb clerk

I wrote this sitting on my balcony the night of my fifty-ninth birthday. The perfect nightcap to an uneventful day.

An ode to a broken down Arb clerk

I daydream about drinking a Sazerac in the French Quarter, quoting Baldwin or Bukowski to the ghosts who belly up at the Carousel Bar. The stool spins under me as I search for someone, anyone to hand my heart to, unwrapped and still beating. Just like most back alley routes, it ends in another dead end. Another boarded-up window where chances once flickered under the tavern sign.

We walk past invisible people every day. Then one morning, we wake up and we are one. Just a ghost in the glass, trying to tear out a page or two from our own biography, hoping for a fireplace big enough to burn the whole encyclopedia set.

I never caught the Illinois Central down to New Orleans, but I did take the CTA to the ballgame with my mommy, clutching her hand like it was the last holy relic left in my tiny world. The past and the path not taken... they don’t fight each other.

They slow dance to Preservation Hall, playing “Mack the Knife” for a crowd of Yankee tourists who only hear the notes and not the ache beneath them.

There’s no streetcar here in the Divorced Dad District. Just the glow of a first quarter moon sliding over rooftops and lighting up the slivers of wood on my balcony.

Across from Jackson Square... those iron railings hold stories.

Here on Lincoln Avenue... my porch holds the promise for one last glance at the tattoo runner and his lean for restitution.

Frost said happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length. He wasn’t wrong. I still duck beneath the same branch where a mourning dove croons like a widowed lover. I step over the crack in the sidewalk that I once tried to fix with silly putty and pastel chalk. I chase those smells that won’t die... GoldBond on a humid July morning, Vicks on a February night when everything felt broken.

If only Mom’s hug could still fix it.

I never stopped trying to make my parents proud. I’m ticking closer to them now. They don’t care if I’m just the guy chasing one last sunset or hunting for one more encore in a half-empty bowling alley.

The clank of the CTA over Lake Street is my hymn. The candy factory air is still holy. Maybe there is one more kegger in the forest preserve, one more one-night stand in the produce aisle…

…before I sit at the counter in the 24 hour diner just off Division Street, somewhere between memory and heaven’s gate.

July 1st, 2025

 We are always getting ready to live but never living.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We spend so much time planning or drafting the life we want and prepping the moves that we will make once the conditions are just right. When we are not planning, we are waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the right sign, the right everything. Waiting to make it feel all alright.

Here is where the problem begins...

...while we are doing all of this planning and waiting, we miss the living.

We chase desire so hard we forget to feel the ground beneath our feet. Sometimes, preparation isn’t necessary anymore.

Sometimes, it’s just time to let go and show up unprepared and not give a flying fuck. Time to embrace the present and enjoy the active process of noticing shit do stuff.

The present moment, that is the real work. That is where the joy is. We started living years ago, whether we knew it or not. The world keeps evolving, and we keep growing with it. The trick isn’t to grow old, it is to grow older.

So go dribble a basketball. Throw a ball against the wall. Sit on a bench and let your ice cream melt a bit and go reread a book you cracked open in your younger years.

Let the words meet your experience:

“Call me Ishmael.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“Stay gold, Ponyboy.”

“Beware: for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Go back to those lines and feel them land again. The difference this time will be felt with a lifetime of experience. That’s how you’ll know you are making progress through this magical shitshow.

It is another new month, Chalkheads.

Go get the Gusto and feel the sun’s smile upon your brow.