Eighteen-One-Twenty-O-Eight

Three years ago today, at this precise moment, I was almost in Chicago. I was there for work yet again, but I had taken some days off beforehand, so that I could have a gander and enjoy the magnificent city, its blue sky, the iced lake, the very brisk -20C or thereabouts and the generous sales. I had only just started this online diary and I certainly regret that in its first few weeks, I was not that forthcoming in updating it. I could have written so much during my days in Chicago, but I was wrapped up in work and in the PhD and I had not yet discovered the immense value of recording one’s life, even the plain, the mundane, the painful.

So much has happened over these past three years that I cannot quite believe I really am talking of three years. On second thoughts, it’s not what has happened that strikes me as incredible but rather what has changed. I still live in the same house and wear the same clothes (more or less… but it so just happens that today I was out in exactly the same knitted dress and puffa coat and long boots I wore in Chicago on this day), but I am a different person. I don’t think anyone who knows me can quite tell the difference, but I can, in that subtle way in which we look the same in the mirror every morning but pictures from weeks before look immensely different to ourselves.

The most remarkable change is one that has nothing to do with the way I look or feel though. I am different because I’ve learnt about the importance of keeping track of my everyday doings. I have a paper diary, as usual, this site and another site as well, and now that there are so many applications for the iPhone, it’s remarkably easy to keep track of every single little thing that catches my eye. So I am a little despondent about my last trip to Chicago, when I was so sparse in the cataloguing side of things, but as my key word for 2011 is FORWARD then that’s what I should focus on. And next time I am in Chicago, I won’t skimp on recording everything.

On This Day

BBC said that today is the year’s most depressing day. I never knew there was such a thing until a few years back, when I first came across an article on BBC News Online talking of Gloomy Monday, apparently a day that falls towards the end of January when the Christmas hangover is finally dissipated and worry, depression of various degrees and winter blues set in. These may be dictated by a number of concurrent factors, stupid things such as short days or having over-spent at Christmas. It’s no wonder Gloomy Monday never quite registered with me; I love winter in all of its manifestations and find that a slow January is the best way to ease oneself into new doings, even when the fog may have set in. Navigate through it baby, there’s always light on the other side.

Today has been a gloomy day though, weather-wise. I woke up in darkness, exercised in darkness and went out in semi-darkness, the sky a never-ending cement slate stretched low above my head, with near-incessant rain and razor-like wind to boot. Blimey, what’s not to like, right? You’d think this could be the perfect scenario for a Gloomy Monday, except I’ve been very efficient in many ways, biking it until I hit 800 spent calories, cutting net time to a mere quarter of an hour worth of email checking (three seconds, no emails) and news reading (if you can call Vogue the purveyor of news, and I do) and setting off at lunchtime to run errands, including a reading/writing stop at Starbee, of which you’ve got proof right here.



Yet, yet, yet, I cannot deny to have spared more than just a fleeting thought to where I was a year ago, life-wise and especially place-wise. So I flicked through iPhoto and looked at some of the pics I took in Chicago on this day. Was that Gloomy Monday? I think it was a Saturday if I am not mistaken, perfectly placed as a Gloomy Day anyway, for it too was a 19 January, even though I cannot imagine anyone on earth to feel depressed, worried, stressed or narky when the landscape offers so much cobalt blue and icy stillness.






And now it's like I am trying to go all doom and gloom on myself. The first two months of last year were so exciting and promising from a travel perspective that the draught ahead appears even more painful to live through. If 2008 was indeed my life-changing year, 2009 sets out to be one of consolidation and consolidation, everyone knows this really, is another word for limbo. When you consolidate you don’t really feel like you are leaping ahead; you’re just still here, clearing decks, sorting out the old, physically shredding the past, spring-cleaning life for a whole twelve months or thereabouts.

To consolidate means to re-group and re-grouping has never filled me with shivering expectation somehow. I leapt into the unknown last year; this year I am due to land in it and I cannot say to be excessively thrilled by the flight, especially when I haven't got a set of new blue pictures to show. Still, not going anywhere at this time (or indeed not planning to go anywhere) does not mean that I will never go again. However, try as I may to brainwash myself into New Age positive thinking, all that remains is that a year ago I was having a fabulous time and today... well, not so much. But few places compare to Chicago in winter anyway.

The Toddlin' Town

I don't know why but on Friday I packed my camera in the hold, ended up with only the mobile in my bag and, of course, I could not turn this on as the plane glided towards Lake Michigan and the city rose in the distance. I am disappointed because I would have taken fantastic shots of the gently corrugated silvery blue water underneath me and of the vast spread that is both downtown and the great many suburbs which patchwork the land until one can see no farther.

I have seen good weather in many places, but the light and the sky one gets in Chicago when it's sub-zero are something else. I know that some will argue that 'the light at the poles' or that 'the light at the equator' or that 'the light in my back garden', but all of this and more cannot take away the most fantastic cobalt blue sky set off by reflective buildings that make a child's scrapbook look gloomy and sad by comparison. The blue haze embraces everything and everyone, reflecting itself tirelessly from every surface and exploding up and across and against everything, sky, lake, buildings, in a city so deeply bound to air and water. Grand and powerful, spreading out and up like a gigantic, 3-D stamp, and equally swaggering and swaying in the wind, with transparent buildings and flapping flags at every street corner, I harbour stronger, uncharted feelings for Chicago than I ever cared to give it credit for.





To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, I think I have found the lake I wish I could skid away on.