| (no subject) |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|02:17 pm] |
Forcing myself to write again. On some level the desire is still there, but something has sapped virtually all of my will to do so. (I suspect the job.) I have been trying to recount my last day of class/Manifest 2009 and my graduation in The Black Book, but this is taking far longer than I had anticipated. I had expected it to take no more than a few days at the very maximum to write, but it is stretching on now for several weeks. At the time, I was filled with such sadness that my college years were over as this essentially meant that I had failed and that my life was over. The classroom situation allowed me to meet new people (by the fact that we were all scheduled/obligated to show up at the same place at the same time for fifteen weeks). Instead of having a one-off introduction and failing to make an impression on them or to get an impression of them, I had the time to get to know people and vice-versa. This was a comfort to me because it gave me the luxury of the idea that I could possibly “meet someone,” but when the last day of class came around and that the full realization that in five years this had not really happened once, I knew that I had failed in my one true hope. My time had run out. This had not happened and would not happen. My life was, for all practical purposes, over.
But now, at the beginning of what—my third week after graduation?—all of those things seem impossibly distant. College is all covered by haze that I find difficult to penetrate. I have been at work for four days this season and already that is all there is. My brain is shutting down; I feel as though this is all there is. I’m having difficulty remembering that there even is anything else! This has left me in a constant state of stress and dread. After only four days of work I have a strong desire to be killed. My body aches and I can barely remember any of my yoga. I hated high school and have sworn up and down that I would rather die than go back, and yet, this is exactly where I am. Most of the guys in the Parks Department are all stuck in high school, no matter how old they are. Fortunately, I only really have to see them in action when I go to clock out Tuesdays through Fridays, but that is more than enough.
Training for speed skating was yesterday. This was the first Sunday session of the season, the training with Sam Polous in Northbrook. Not a very difficult training session (as the “first” it is designed not to be) but still a little tiring. Afterward, of all things, I went to hang out with Gertrude at North Avenue Beach. Earlier she had insisted that I go in the water “at least once” and I had made my mind to do so, but when I made my way over from the North & Clybourn subway station (caught the wrong North Ave bus—the one that terminated at Clark instead of going all the way to the beach) I found that the weather was a bit chillier than I had anticipated (training in Northbrook had, for a while, increased my perception of the temperature) and I decided not to take a dip. It turns out Gertrude had decided to refrain as well. We spent the entire time at the beach on towels in the sand talking about a limited number of things. I talk too much about nothing.
Eventually Gertrude decided that she was hungry and wanted to leave to get some food. (The food provided at “the boat” is overpriced.) I had mentioned something about Chinatown or Chinese food and it apparently got stuck in her head. She wanted ribs but neither of us knew any rib places within a reasonable distance in the city. She repeatedly mentioned some arts and crafts place in the Humboldt Park-Wicker Park-Logan Square area that apparently served food of some kind (hot dogs and hamburgers or something) but neither of us cared enough to make a decision as to where to go. We walked to Sedgwick to load some more money onto my transit card and since we were already in the station, decided to go to Chinatown since the other place would have required taking a bus.
Again, I say I talk too much about nothing. On a lot of the trip out and back I talked about the “L” as it was. Much of this—as she pointed out—I had told her already. In Chinatown, in the restaurant, I must have sounded like a slightly arrogant professor. Come to think of it, I probably sounded like that the whole time. Discussing the history of Streeterville, Logan Square, the Great Chicago Fire (and its relationship to Logan Square), the nature of the sand on Lake Michigan’s beaches, the history of the “L,” and tidbits of the unification of China. The world would probably be better off if I cut my vocal cords.
We parted in the subway so that my mother would not have to wait so long to pick me up. I had “hung out” with someone, but only found it mildly entertaining at best. Work still hung over me like a dark shadow, possibly putting a damper on my enjoyment of the situation but possibly not. Perhaps I am just not capable. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 27th, 2009|08:24 pm] |
Woodstock is 1283 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 769 days old
The nameless chicks are 32 and 31 days old
I am becoming increasingly convinced that my original assumption is correct: now that I am done with my undergraduate studies, my life is over. Without the forced environment of a class, I cannot meet people. What is my life to consist of? I will wake, go to work, and return home to prepare for the next day’s work. I was not enough of a person previously to expand upon this and I have not grown. I eat, drink, and rest to work. What is the purpose of this existence? It is not my own. It does not benefit me. It does not benefit anyone else. It serves no purpose. My life has been reduced to that of an easily replaceable cog in a failing machine.
I ask myself, “Why do I continue to exist?” There is no reason. Should I exist to work to work? I find this to lack all sense of reason. I am an American by birth and it is the American way to live to work. Personally, I have never understood this ethic. It has always seemed to make more sense to me to work to live. As is my understanding, this is the ethic in Europe. However, in my case, this is impossible. As I exist without a life, I am working to not-live. This is the same as working to work. I do not want to work. As I do not want to work and my life is apparently nothing but work, I do not want to continue in this existence. I will not say “I do not want to live” as “living” is preferable, it is just that I am not living. I do not know how to and I do not even know how to find out how to. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2009|09:02 am] |
Woodstock is 1282 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 768 days old
The nameless chicks are 31 and 30 days old
I have been neglecting this journal again.
I guess today is, for all practical purposes, my last day of “freedom.” Having graduated last week and receiving all of the honors (if not the actual document) of a Bachelors of Art, I am done with classes. Done with all sorts of “good stuff” that never happened to me anyway. Tomorrow I start my first day of work, real work. Work where I go and do not because I am doing for school, or as an intermediate of school. I go to work for work without the possibility of getting an early parole for the start of the semester. It weighs heavily upon me. I am returning to a job that I could not stand last year for the sole reason that it is one position I know I can acquire in the job market.
I must try to remember that I am being punished and that my whole situation is punishment. Atonement is almost certainly not possible so the closest I can do is to bear the punishment and continue.
For whatever reason Gary wanted me to start work on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day—the first day of the pre-season. This Tuesday now becomes my last day of freedom before my eighty-or-so years of solitude. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|09:35 pm] |
No, I'm not dead. (Probably should be, but that's an entirely different story.)
The Evanston North Shore Open was yesterday. Skated as the only competitor in Senior B and therefore "won." Ended up being combined with Senior B Ladies. Skated four distances: 777m, 500m, 1000m, and 15000m. The 1500 was surprisingly easy.
Today it rained and the streets flooded. Water began seeping in through the basement and we closed the valve. No water out to the sewers means no washing dishes, no showers, no brushing teeth, and no flushing the toilet.
Strangely lethargic. Would have gone in to much more detail about the race but I'm far too tired. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 13th, 2009|01:11 pm] |
Woodstock is 1149 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 635 days old
As written yesterday in The Black Book:
Frustration. I intended to spend today writing, but I have failed miserably. It was my plan to rewrite the bullet story to bring it to publishable quality and to then begin the process of submitting it. I've read through it twice and made some minor alterations to it, but it still lacks a strong visual quality that I feel it desperately needs and, as Sean Shifflett put it, it isn't a story as is. It is more like a connection of strange events that don't really culminate to anything. Yes, the character causes the death of a man at the end, but it happens without meaning.
I could look for all sorts of reasons why, but that would produce nothing of worth. I can see what needs to be done so clearly that it is astonishing, yet actually doing it and getting those things on the page manage to elude me. I do not understand it. I am certain the constant interruptions by my father—who is now retired and in the house all day—do not help in any way. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 27th, 2008|10:26 am] |
Woodstock is 1132 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 618 days old
Nothing good is good anymore.
After several days of snowing and several days of sub-zero and near-zero temperatures it finally warmed up. Yesterday it got up into the 40's and all the accumulated snow and ice finally began to melt. Today is even better, being in the 50's. Of course, all that melted snow and ice has to go somewhere. Or at least it has to go somewhere if it can go somewhere. Given the situation of almost two feet of snow all melting at once, it comes as no surprise that everything is now flooded. There is no separation between the street and the sidewalk anymore. It is all just water now. And making the situation even better is the fact that for some odd reason, it has now decided to rain.
Normally I'd be very pleased with all of this water. It doesn't often reach 50 degrees or rain in winter in Chicagoland. I remember it raining very briefly in I believe January about four years ago and thought it was the most beautiful thing. Now I am forced to believe otherwise. The water is coming into the basement, and to stop it we've had to shut the valve. The sump pump is working overtime, for whatever that's worth. With the valve closed no water can come up through the drainage system. This also means that we can't send any water down through the system either. No washing dishes, no brushing teeth, no washing clothes, no showering, and--this is the kicker--no flushing the toilets. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 24th, 2008|12:02 pm] |
Woodstock is 1129 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 615 days old
Christmas Eve.
Supposed to be a day of some importance in the culture, Santa notwithstanding, and yet here I am sitting on my ass waiting for my father's gift computer to arrive so that I can sign for it. It is snowing, and that is supposed to be of some importance as well (though I never understood the significance of frozen precipitation on one specific day of the year). It isn't even really snow anymore. Its better described as "falling slush." In addition to waiting around for this package I'm supposed to go "plow" the snow. This should be good. There's about a two inch layer of actual snow and beneath that is about seven inches of wet, saturated slush. If I can ever get the snow-blower started I expect the sight of a stream of slush pouring out of this thing to be quite comical.
Of course, I'm sitting around procrastinating because, no matter how comical this might be, I really don't want to do it.
Yes, I have been neglecting this journal just as I have been neglecting The Black Book. The Fall 2008 semester was insane in terms of work required, effort given and work actually produced. It proved to me that I am not strong enough to go for the BFA and should just stick to the BA. Overall, the semester was kind of a waste. Had I known I could have taken a Photo History class without Art History II, I would have finished up my degree and gotten the minor all in the summer and have been done with everything on time. As it is I've just discovered that I'm a terrible excuse for a person and can't deal with the workload most people have. I have no social life whatsoever, I have no job, I have only class and yet that work alone almost destroyed me. It makes me ponder the reason for my continued existence.
I get the feeling that I'm writing this solely for the sake of writing something. I think it is time for me to stop this and get to work clearing the sidewalks. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|06:02 pm] |
Woodstock is 1081 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 566 days old
Unworthy of the writer's salvation. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|12:37 pm] |
Woodstock is 1072 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 557 days old
"I took a 3hour
shit in here and
to show of it I only
have this stupid tag."
-graffiti on the inside of a bathroom stall |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|07:59 pm] |
Woodstock is 1071 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 556 days old
Life gets stranger. Falling hoplessly behind in some/one class(s). (Had I been born/hatched as any other creature on this planet, I would have died long ago.) Found yet another bird. A ringneck dove. This makes seven. |
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| Finished |
[May. 15th, 2008|03:17 pm] |
Woodstock is 907 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 372 days old
As written in The Black Book:
I saw her again today. Once again, the encounter happened by pure chance. She was sitting by the stairs near the entrance in 623 S. Wabash with a female friend. This time, at least, I recognized her and stopped to talk.
It was a brief conversation, mostly full of standard bland pleasantries which mean (or say) absolutely nothing. Yet at the end I did do something worthwhile. I apologized for leaving her at State/Lake so abruptly on June Second. (I didn’t attempt to give her an explanation of my actions for as much of the fact that she was not alone as that it would be too complicated to even try.) She seemed not to recall the incident in any case.
It was only then that I came to truly realize the truth of the matter. In the three years (almost three years) that I have carried her in my heart she has become idealized, perfected. There was absolutely no way reality could ever compare with the fantasy. She would have always ever come up short against the perfect version I carry with me. But then again, seeing her face to face was the end of the dream. The reality had shattered it.
The reality could never compare with the dream and the dream could not exist when confronted with the reality. They annihilated each other and I need no longer to go on counting. |
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| My elusive Ginger Nymph |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|04:46 pm] |
Woodstock is 892 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 357 days old
From The Black Book:
I am still haunted by my past mistakes.
This past Monday while walking toward Studio East to prepare for more still lives when I saw her. She was walking north while I was walking south. It was her red hair that I noticed first and, ironically, this may have been my down fall. I thought at first that she was someone else, someone in my studio class who also has red hair and who bears a striking resemblance to my elusive ginger nymph. I took this person to be the other, the not quite identical duplicate. I had seen this other numerous times recently and it did seem as though she was coming from Studio East, so naturally I assumed that it was her.
I smiled at her in passing. She smiled in return. That same wonderful smile that I discovered on Lake Street—the one that has haunted me. Yet something seemed wrong with the exchange. The face was different—not quite the face I was expecting. The freckles should have given it away. I found myself stunned out of speech and action as my mind raced to put the pieces together and I realized in full who I had just seen. I turned and watched her walk away from me, still trying to decide if it really, really was her and—if so—what to do or say. My first thought was to run and catch up with her. To stop her and say something. Yet I found I couldn’t think of the right words, or any words to say to her and so I let her go.
Fool. Ass. Thrice cursed am I. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|07:16 pm] |
Woodstock is 880 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 345 days old
Off my medication again. Feeling utterly [nauseous] and tired.
I am afraid I am getting away from my writing. Done an absurdly little amount of writing in the past few months. It feels so very wrong.
From The Black Book
Feeling extremely depressed and pathetic. Probably my normal state which is usually suppressed by the medication. They are pills of lies. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 23rd, 2008|11:10 am] |
Woodstock is 794 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 259 days old
I am getting old. Not old in body, but old in mind. I just had a Dream about Road America. RA as it was.
Strangely enough, it opened with the Simpsons. A strange absolute blending of animation and the real thing. The kids (Bart and Lisa) were racing along the twisting, winding rural roads of Wisconsin. They drove in a line with many other drivers who were all going to the same destination and, because of the nature of the roads with their many curves, this caravan became a race (a friendly race) across the countryside.
Their destination, it turned out, was none other than that track of my youth: Road America. While there, it was usual for the family to stay in the small rural town which they passed through just before arriving at their destination though they did not stay together. They stayed with various local residents. (And now, it seems to me that I have been in this town before. This fictional dream town. I cannot rightly remember when, but I do remember the houses and the landscape. There was some sort of conflict going on, which I was or became a part of. A gunfight.) Once they arrived at the track, Bart was saddened to hear that he would not be staying with the family that he had believed. There was some illness or other that a family member had and Bart, by virtue or possibly by the lack thereof, was not immune because he didn’t get the malady earlier on in his childhood.
It was at this point that the dream shifted seamlessly. No longer were the Simpsons present in their perfect meld of the two dimensional and the three, but now I was there with my parents. The track was strangely changed. It was regressed into an imagined earlier form. My parents too had grown younger though I remained the same. It was a beautiful place full of many small woods and twisting, charming access roads. Nowhere present was the barren, sterile, overcommercialized Road America of today.
We walked up a small hill where there was a wooden structure, painted white, with tables. This small eatery my parents knew but I did not. It was before my time. As I walked with them I tried to get a grasp on the situation. Was this the past or was this an older version of a reality that was somehow laid on top of the current version? Had we traveled “backwards” or “sideways”? My parents were young, but I was not. They recalled all that had been (or would be, if this was indeed the past) and they knew and remembered me though the track that we now visited was an RA from before I was born.
These questions I asked my parents and they began to explain (they obviously had a clear understanding of what had happened and seemed to be enjoying it) but before they could we arrived at this concessions stand on the hill. It was swarming with mosquitoes. Or if not mosquitoes (for they didn’t look quite right) then some other small biting insect. Many fled when I began swatting at them to clear the area, though an equal number remained. I smashed six of them into the table when they began to bite again and more fled the scene.
A woman somewhere on the far end between youth and old age came forth to get our orders. Again, my parents knew her though I did not. There was a sealed loaf of cinnamon raisin bread beside me on the bench. I looked at it and the woman began discussing the situations and tales of people I knew not. One old woman had apparently eaten some bread a few weeks back and had to be taken to the hospital. Before it could be announced I knew the malady: diabetes. Apparently the bread changed her blood sugar levels enough to send her in a coma and she died.
With her tales ended she set to take our orders. I looked around for a menu chalked on a wall somewhere as I did not know what they served here but I did not find one. My parents ordered without needing to think. Before I could explain my situation to this woman, she announced “Fried wontons” and left to prepare our food. My father looked at me from across the table and said “See? We’ll take care of you.”
We got up and walked a little ways away from the table. I looked around at the track. It was marvelous in ways that camera crews, and big name sponsorship, and money could never make.
“They ruined this whole area,” I said, referring to the way it exists today.
My father looked down at me with satisfaction and a twinge of nostalgia. “If it wasn’t for” (some reason which I remember not) “I could hug you.” |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 22nd, 2008|07:52 am] |
Woodstock is 793 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 258 days old
My life is utterly uneventful and I’m really quite sick of lamenting it. Perhaps it would be better if I was dead. No wingless angle can come and show me any differently.
On January 16th Sycamore laid her very first egg. It would see that Woodstock was not “man enough for her” but Blondie seems to have made quite the impression. I sat in the studio and actually watched her lay the egg, quite dispelling any thoughts I had about her not being female.
But I guess I can’t claim that my life is entirely without incident. A week or two ago Woodstock had some chemical drip on him from the florescent light fixture above his cage. Of course it only spilled where he likes to sit and so nailed him by freak occurrence. There was a bad odor of something burning about the cage and I caught him dry-heaving. We attempted to wash this substance off with shampoo and warm water as, whatever it was, it was clearly not good for his health. My father was afraid it was PCB’s (whatever those are.) A visit to a veterinary hospital in Niles which treats birds (a rarity in itself) fortunately turned up that there was nothing wrong with him. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 2nd, 2007|03:33 pm] |
"... could not transmit the ideas to the medium."
Ah! How brilliant these words ring! These are the words I have sought for so long. |
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| Jazz Night |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|07:45 pm] |
Woodstock is 719 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 184 days old
As written in The Black Book…
Went to a jazz concert last night at DePaul with Adrien. Arrived late due to interlocking problems at Howard and consequently missed a good portion of the first group. Unfortunate considering that the first and third groups were good. Second group’s arrangement seemed nonexistent. Complete disharmony. Too many solos overall and the drummers needed to be toned down a bit, but otherwise good music.
Went to Clarke’s afterward because I was hungry. (Clarke’s on Lincoln, not on Belmont and Wilton.) Talked about doves, ketchup and other inane things. |
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| I remember... |
[Oct. 31st, 2007|08:26 pm] |
Woodstock is 710 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 175 days old
I remember…
• my mother voting in the election that put in “Daddie Bush”
• the strange second moon that appeared in the sky
• visiting the Anti-Cruelty Society and seeing a shivering dog in a cage
• the rubbery texture of my grandmother’s skin as she lay comatose in St. Francis Hospital about two weeks before she died
• that the apartment I originally lived in had a twelfth floor and a fourteenth floor—but no thirteenth
• the fantastic curve on Sheridan Road around Calvary Cemetery on the approach to Evanston
• thinking the original Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation were in production at the same time
• my cat—“The Puss”—being the coolest person I knew
• getting bitten through the palm by my first guinea pig the day I got her
• an awestruck fan asking Shani Davis if he was indeed Shani and Shani telling her he didn’t know
• a girl in my acting class exposing her breasts to me one night that I was at her house during my freshman year in high school
• thinking my grandmother was crazy or stupid when she suggested that I punch a pillow instead of beating on her walls when I’d heard that my cat was dead
• smoking a paper towel tube with the rest of the non-scrubs in Troop 16
• wondering what this “Edgewater” was that the signs kept talking about
• the random Loyola chick on the ’L’ with eyes that were both green and brown
• masturbating for the first time
• messing around with the plastic vents on the heater in the apartment
• Manfred telling me his mother made the cape for his costume “from scratch”
• hallucinating my crusty, mountainous skin while sick with the flu
• riding the Ravenswood to the Merchandise Mart
• Jason taking me beneath the Oakton bridge to show me the dirty mattress and beer cans which “the teenagers” had sex on and drank |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 15th, 2007|02:12 pm] |
Woodstock is 694 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 159 days old
It is truly frustrating at times. I hate this so-called life that I am leading—I hate the person I have become. And there are times when an attentive listener will honestly want to know what’s wrong with me. So I explain my situation in brief—no need to bore this person with the full weight of my troubles—and they can’t understand what is so bad about it.
We don’t compare trivialities. This mistake I have already made on numerous occasions. I compare trivialities based on overhead conversations and pearls the subject lets slip in conversation with me. Those rare occurrences of mine can never stand up to the substantial trivia of the greater whole. And should they be compared, the little things are brought forth and made to stand on a broken leg. They pat me on the head and say, “See? Be happy about that.” Yet if the positions were reversed, there is no doubt that they would not be satisfied with such a pitiful performance.
It leads me to think that I am a Lesser. I must emanate this position from myself in radiating waves. I have been and always shall be here in this grand section of a cramped life.
I want out. Out of life, or at least out of this life. This existence is pitiful. It is utterly worthless. My position brings me nothing but misery and want. And of course, this is my only resource. My only place to turn.
I need to be free. Free of the chains of oppression of the mind. I need air. I need light. Water, warmth, comfort, companionship, thought, travel, space… these I need. Plain and simple. I need.
The more I say the less I can talk. The words dry up. Things become clouded; cohesion is lost. Thoughts break down, patterns randomize. The will is lost. |
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| Mt. Carmel work |
[Sep. 14th, 2007|02:06 pm] |
Woodstock is 663 days old
Blondie and Dagwood are 128 days old
It has definitely been a while.
I have not forgotten to write, I have simply neglected to.
Things have progressed as well as could be hoped. My website, GreatThirdRail.org, launched as planned on July 3rd, 2007, the fiftieth anniversary of the Aurora & Elgin’s unexpected shutdown. Response has thus far been pretty good. Once I fixed the broken link enabling instant emailing (that is, the ability to email without having to copy the address and paste it into an already open email letter) I began to get a number of questions, comments, memories, etc. about the site. It’s all very encouraging.
At the same time I’m still working at the ass-end of Evanston’s lakefront: the Church Street Dog Beach. We were supposed to be working weekdays and weekends until Labor Day and afterward we would go to weekends only as has been done for years now. Jim Ferrera decided to change that. After Labor Day no one would staff the gate. This upset a great number of Dog Beach patrons who wanted the security they paid for at least on weekends. They complained.
But they complained to the right person: the head of the recreation department. Suddenly we’re back in business for weekends, but our staff has been cut in half per shift (down from two to just one) and a shift has been cut down as well (from seven hours to five). This has gotten to the point of stupidity and considering that the semester started last week and I now have a taste of what my workload will be, I’m ready to quit. This will probably be my last weekend working there.
Quitting will do more than just give me time to work on other endeavors; it’ll allow me to keep some of my sanity. There’s just too much jumping around for me to keep straight in my head anymore. I’m beginning to forget things, simple things, and I just can’t keep track of anything anymore. It’s time to simplify. (And considering that the skating season will be starting very soon my time seems to be dwindling away.)
But my time isn’t completely gone yet. I’ve been doing some continuing work on the Aurora & Elgin. I’ve done “enough” research on the Mt. Carmel/Cook County branch to be able to write a definitive piece on it. My problem is actually writing the damn thing.
Trying to accomplish the potentially simple yet undeniably daunting and frustrating task has led me to break up the “article” into three sections: the introduction, the pre-story, and the story. I could very easily make the task much simpler than it needs to be and write a long essay conveying nothing more than a conglomeration of boring facts. I can’t do that though. It would be a severe injustice. It would also be a waste of my time. My work must be interesting. If it is otherwise, how shall I ever hope to introduce with any success the great old railroad to those who know not of it now? No. I can’t let it be boring.
I must make it interesting. This is essential. But my approach must be carefully devised so that what is interesting (at least I find it interesting) must not slip into the boring, bland, dry history that it seems intent on becoming. So, at least for construction purposes, it has been broken up. The “introduction” and “story” sections are fairly straightforward in terms of what they’re supposed to be. (I know what the introduction is, I just don’t know what exactly to say there yet.)
The “pre-story” is currently where my problem is. The whole pre-story is essentially the story behind the rationale to build the little branch. It is so deceptively simple in nature as to be laughable. At the same time it makes me want to rip my hair out. I’ve got to explain the situation of March 11th, 1905 in a full, yet simple and concise manner which isn’t boring.
Well, what happened on March 11th? 1) The Aurora Elgin & Chicago Railway began operating east of 52nd Avenue over the Met’s Garfield Park branch and main line and terminating at the 5th Avenue Terminal in the Loop. 2) The Met extended its Garfield Park rapid transit service west from 52nd Avenue to Desplaines Avenue, replacing the Aurora & Elgin as the provider of the local service on this stretch (Desplaines-52nd) of track.
Put that way, it seems so simple that it’s just stupid. Do I really need to say that the Aurora & Elgin was required to build numerous, closely spaced stations through Harlem and Oak Park as mandated by their franchise agreement to operate through Cicero Township? Do I need to say that the high-speed interurban didn’t want to provide such service and that it was a great boon when the Met took over such things?
Now that I put it that way, the answer is no. The most important thing about the “pre-story” is the fact that rapid transit service got extended west over part of the Aurora & Elgin’s line to Desplaines Avenue, a location very close to Concordia and Waldheim Cemeteries, and that the Met ran with the idea. The other stuff is important, but it isn’t all that important to this story. It needs to be omitted. It adds information, but it makes things more confusing than they need to be (particularly for me!) and it also makes the piece longer than it needs to be. I’m not writing about the Met. I’m writing about the Aurora & Elgin!
Lose the excess baggage. Yeah… and it only took me about three hours of writing to figure that one out.
My own stupidity amazes me at times. |
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