Oh, Please Don't Drop Me Home, Because It's Not My Home, It's Their Home, And I'm Welcome No More

--"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (cover)", The Dum Dum Girls

More than a few years back I wrote a poem called "Arcady" about a couple visiting this pristine beach and having their first, best romantic encounter there. Then, many years after the woman of the piece has died, the man returns to the beach to find the beach a mere shadow of its former self. When I wrote the piece I hadn't experience the phenomenon myself. I thought it was a neat conceit that I had seen done before in other works of literature and wished to try my hand at it. I had never experienced that sense of loss. I had never gone through that questioning of my memory. The whole exercise was purely conjectural.

I'm a romantic idealist; that's been said before. Therefore, before I could have very easily seen myself experiencing the same range of emotions as the narrator of the piece given the circumstances. I would dearly miss a beloved place if it all fell to ruin just as I would miss a beloved person should they slowly succumb to illness.

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This past weekend I went to Chicago for the second time in my life. I went with my friend Cara to see The Elected to play there. The last time I was in Chicago was in 2007. The last time I was in Chicago I was complicit in the act of adultery being committed. The last time I was in Chicago it completely felt like I was running away from real life and running towards a dream that I knew I would have to wake up from. The last time I was in Chicago I left practically in tears because there was an immense sadness that had filled in my heart.

It was also some of the best six days of my life.

Going back, I was let down from the get-go. There was no anticipation, no feeling of impending joy. What I felt instead was the sense that no experience was ever going to match that of the original journey. I mean--like the poem says, when you've already been to Paradise and been forced to leave, what really is the purpose of going back? What you had there will never be had again. What you felt there is something that's been locked away in your heart and going back isn't going to pull that feeling out. It was like walking through the pictures of a former dream devoid of all sense of motion and emotion. I just couldn't put myself into a place where I could see this trip as being something separate from the original trip.

I know that doesn't say a lot of my powers of separating memory from real life. But sometimes I think my memories are the world I really want to live in and real life just the time in-between my moments when I'm back there again. Chicago this past weekend is not the Chicago I want to remember. It was just a postcard sent from the real thing.

No, the real Chicago will always be the one where I was happy four years ago and that's the place I long to go back to someday.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers