The Daley Grind

Today is Election Day in Chicago. To say the least, I'm not enthused.

There are aldermanic elections in all 50 wards, but my alderman is running unopposed. Or at least I think so. (If there is opposition, I haven't heard about it.) There may also be a referendum or two to consider.

And then, there's the mayoral race. If you can even call it a race.

Richard M. Daley is going to win reelection. That's a foregone conclusion. His two opponents--Dorothy Brown, the current Cook County Circuit Court Clerk, and William "Dock" Walls, a former aide to the late Harold Washington--have done the best with the resources they've had (i.e., virtually no money). And the two potential candidates who actually had some cash and could have put up a better fight--U.S. Representatives Jesse Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez--chose not to stay out of this fight. Only they know why. Maybe the new Democratic majority in Congress afforded them more opportunities. Maybe the poll numbers showed that though the various corruption scandals that continue to swirl like raw sewage around Daley's administration had wounded the mayor's reputation, they hadn't wounded him enough for an easy victory. Maybe they put their own best interests ahead of what would be best for the city as a whole.

And what would be best for the city as a whole would be to remove Richard M. Daley from office. For good.

It's not that Daley hasn't done good things in his 18 years as mayor (just short of the record set by his father, Richard J. Daley, who was mayor from 1955 until his death in 1976). Richard the Second has done plenty of good things for Chicago. He took over the public school system; granted, it's still not great, but it's in better shape than before he took it over. He's done a great deal to beautify the city. The public housing projects that had become vast stretches of institutionalized poverty are all but a memory. Navy Pier, the long-dormant stretch of concrete and brick jutting out into Lake Michigan like a middle finger, where dad and I used to spin-cast for perch when I was a kid, was revitalized under Daley's reign. Millennium Park has received much praise (locally, nationally and even internationally) and has become quite the tourist attraction. And basic services have run pretty smoothly (except, perhaps, for the Chicago Transit Authority, and even that's a more recent development).

Any good he has done, though, must be weighed against the bad. And, unfortunately, there's plenty of bad to be weighed.

He had the small lakefront airport, Meigs Field, demolished without bothering with public debate or even discussion. (In a move as cowardly as it was cunning, he had the runways destroyed late on a Sunday night, after the newscasts had all ended.) Millennium Park was years late and millions of dollars over budget, and the contract for the upscale restaurant in the park just happened to go to supporters from Daley's home ward.

That brings me back to the aforementioned scandals.

Numerous subordinates in the Daley administration have been accused, arrested and convicted for all sorts of hiring and contract-issuance irregularities. (I won't even bring up the drug-dealing in the Water Department--except, oops, I just did, didn't I?) Essentially, the impression has been created that only citizens with an "in" at City Hall can get a job, and those who do get a gig with the city don't have to work all that much (at least not at their city jobs; some went off to work at other jobs or sleep or do whatever while somebody else punched them in and/or out).

I know that impression isn't true. I know the city has many hardworking, honest individuals working for it. But the impression that jobs and contracts with the city were (and, for all we know, still are) for sale runs deep and far.

No one has yet accused Richard M. Daley himself of any wrongdoing. No one has said that he's guilty of any illegal activities. But an informed voter has to wonder: Given the mayor's carefully built reputation as a hands-on, involved administrator, how did he not see the corruption festering all around him? Or is the reality that he's really a hands-off, aloof manager who failed to notice what his direct subordinates were up to? Or, worst of all, did he see all the dealmaking and bribe-taking all over City Hall and turn a blind eye to it?

No matter which scenario in the above paragraph is true, the same conclusion can be reached: Richard M. Daley has fostered an environment in which corruption could not merely exist, but flourish, has irreparably breached the trust of the electorate of the City of Chicago, and no longer deserves to be its mayor.

Unfortunately, he's going to be reelected anyway. That doesn't mean I have to vote for him again.

I'll vote for one of his opponents. Or I'll vote for no one. One or the other.

And I suggest all of you who read this page and plan to vote tomorrow do the same, for a vote for Richard M. Daley is an acceptance of a perpetual atmosphere of corruption, unchecked greed and demonstrated lack of respect for the voters of the city he claims to love. I can't bring myself to vote again for someone who thinks so little of me as a voter, a citizen, a person.

I have more self-respect than that.

Oscar Hangover 2007

I never make it all the way through an Academy Awards telecast without becoming at the very least distracted, if not outright bored to the verge of coma.

So it was last night. The fashions, the production numbers and Ellen Degeneres just weren't enough to hold my interest and, about 45 minutes into the proceedings, I stopped caring and started channel-flipping.

I did, however, catch two of the moments I wanted to catch in the first place. I wanted to see the presentation of the Best Supporting Actor award, because I had picked an upset in that category--Alan Arkin instead of the heavily favored Eddie Murphy. And Arkin won. I found it charming that he set his Oscar on the stage beside him as he read his speech from a crumpled piece of paper. (I know I sure as hell would need a piece of paper, crumpled or otherwise, to keep my thoughts straight up there.)

Maybe the Academy decided that Arkin's long career should be honored. Or that Murphy's performance, while good, wasn't Oscar-worthy. Or maybe the bad karma Murphy had accumulated through bad movies (maybe some of the Oscar voters saw Norbit over the weekend?) and all the homophobic shit he slung back in his standup-comedy days bit him in the ass. Or maybe the fact that Sailor J loves Little Miss Sunshine so very much tipped the scales. (It also won for Best Original Screenplay, so she must be doubly happy.)

Whatever. I'm happy for Alan Arkin.

And I got to see Jennifer Hudson win Best Supporting Actress for Dreamgirls. I thought she deserved it and said so when I left the theatre with Sister Dee. (I think my exact words were, "Just give her the damn Oscar, already.") I'm glad the Academy agreed.

I had hoped Peter O'Toole would finally win an Oscar, but that didn't happen. Not that I begrudge Forest Whitaker--he's always been a solid actor, and it's great to see him the Academy give him some long-overdue recognition. But O'Toole is elderly and reportedly in ill health, he really should have won one by now, and, by all accounts, his performance in Venus was indeed Oscar-worthy; it wouldn't have been a pity award. Would have been nice, is all I'm saying. Maybe he'll get nominated again. And maybe he'll win. Stranger things happen every day in this world.

At least Martin Scorcese finally won for The Departed, just as I'd predicted, but I was sleepy and today was a workday, so I was long in bed by the time he asked, "Could you double-check the envelope?"

One of these years, I'll guess right in every single category. Until then? Five out of six ain't bad.

"He Eats Alone"

Sunday morning. I'm not feeling my best. Feels like another cold coming on. No surprise. It's that time of year. Everybody's had it at least once. I work in a large office. I think we're time-sharing the same virus. "Whose turn is it this week?" Stress lowers resistance to disease, and work has been stressful of late. So...cough. Sneeze. Snurfle.

Still, I want to go out for breakfast. I don't usually go out for breakfast on Sunday. That's more of a Saturday thing, after an evening of V&Ts or pints of Guinness at Cardozo's. And I didn't go out Saturday night, except to Mom's house for meatloaf. (I know, I should stay away from Mom if I even suspect that I have a cold or the flu. But I've cancelled out on her so often because of my work schedule that I would have felt guilty for doing so again, especially on a weekend when work couldn't be blamed.)

I'm restless. Nothing in La Casa del Terror's well-stocked cupboards--soups, chili, peas, mac and cheese--immediately excites my tastebuds. So I armor up against the February freeze. I pull on the parka. Wrap my neck with a scarf. Slip on Dad's old leather mittens, which look and feel like welterweight boxing gloves. Head out into the cold.

About two blocks from La Casa, I find a adult-size green mitten lying on the ice on the corner. It's nice. And I tend to rescue such items. A single mitten, though? Even a nice one? Even I'm not that sentimental. So I leave it there...until I spot its companion half a block away, half-buried in the snow. I grab the left-hand mitten and go back for the right-hand one. They're nice. Maybe I'll use them. Someday. Not today. I slip them in the backpack and continue on my way.

The breakfast place closest to me is a cozy little storefront at a busy intersection. Seats no more than twenty, I'm sure. Sometimes, it's packed. Today it's not, though it's hardly empty either. There's a spot right next to the door where nobody likes to sit, especially on cold days like this. Nobody but me, that is. The cold isn't constant, and I'll be drinking hot coffee. I'll trade the mild discomfort for the opportunity to spread out my Sunday paper and relax for a few.

A young, sandy-haired waitress who appears to have multiple piercings (most removed during work hours) looks quizzically at my spot, which has four seats, and asks, "How many?"

Another, older waitress--the younger one's mom, I'm pretty sure--swings up behind her, coffee pot in hand, and corrects her daughter/co-worker. "No, he eats alone," she says, filling my cup with steaming black liquid.

I look over the menu. Settle on a ham-and-cheese omelet. Sip my coffee and gatefully take a refill from one of the owners. They're a middle-aged, Middle-Eastern couple. At least one of them is always there. Both of them are usually smiling. Both take turns apologizing for how cold my spot is. I don't mind, I say. The coffee keeps me warm, I say.

So I drink my coffee and look at my omelet like it's too beautiful to eat (because it is) and pull the Show section from the Sunday Sun-Times and try not to think about what the waitress pointed out to her daughter.

"He eats alone," she said.

And she's right, of course. I usually eat alone. Drink alone, too.

I didn't always feel comfortable doing that. And I don't always. Sometimes friends join me at dinner or Cardozo's or the Davis to catch the latest blockbuster. But that's not usually the case. Usually, I do whatever I do--eat, drink, shop, breathe--alone.

That's how it is when you haven't had sex in eons. Been in love in years. Or even kissed a girl in a while. (The last time I did kiss a woman, she said I was "a great kisser." So at least that's something. Not much, but something.)

Not that I've completely given up hope. My travel reading of late has been a book titled The Lowdown on Going Down, a guide for giving better oral sex to women written by a speech therapist. (You're never too old to learn--or, in this case, to learn how to do something better.) When I bought it at Virgin Megastore, the checkout clerk found it fascinating, and an alternachick clerk--short, cute, pierced, tattooed--who'd taken care of me in the recent past flipped through it while the first clerk rung me up. The alternachick nodded approvingly--"Eye contact, yes, very important...hmmm. Very good." She slipped the book into the translucent Virgin Megastore bag and handed the bag to me. "Have fun," she said with a smile. "I will," I replied, smiling even more and, I'm certain, blushing furiously.

Lately, I've even lit candles to St. Jude on behalf of my sex life. Not my love life--my sex life. Of course, I still want to fall in love again someday, preferably with a woman who wants to fall in love with me. But JB has said more than once (and less than 500 times) that I'm too damn young and attractive to be going without. And would I reject a one-night stand at this point? Or even a quickie? Hell to the no.

But not this Sunday. This Sunday, I'm sitting in a small storefront cafe, sipping coffee and tucking into the ham-and-cheese omelet (no matter how beautiful it is) and compare my Oscar picks with Roger Ebert's and find that we agree on some choices and disagree on others. I look out onto the bustling intersection and sip my coffee some more.

And, for now, I eat alone.

Wintersongs

It's cold in Chicago tonight. Not just chilly. Not just frigid. Cold. The kind of cold that doesn't respect parkas or mittens or scarves of any size, shape, pattern or fabric. And it's been this cold for a couple of weeks.

I know. It's winter in Chicago. It's supposed to be cold. And it's far worse elsewhere, like in New York state, where they've had the same bitter cold, but with more than 100 inches of snow. Here, we have only couple of inches lingering on lawns--depressing, but not opressive--but not on streets, where there's more salt than snow; it is, after all, just weeks until the mayoral election.

In the spirit of the current weather, which the more competent forecasters predict will hold for at least another week, here are five short poems, three of which deal specifically with winter. The other two are more in line with Valentine's Day, but since February 14 usually leaves me shivering in a corner anyway, I've thrown them in anyway.

Enjoy.

One: On the Way Back from Catsitting
Outside the Popeyes
at Broadway and Wilson
the nosferatus cross
the street at will,
pay no attention to
the lights, the colors,
the ranges of gray ice,
the presence of buses
or cabs or snowplows,
instead seeing nothing
but the color of the
traffic jam inside.

Two: Seen from the Brown Line
He's sipping a forty
at eight in the morning
in the alley out back of DePaul.
His hat's tilted sad,
but he's not even mad
he's nothing to do at all.


Three: Observation
after all
these years

i just now
noticed

how much a
strawberry

resembles a
human heart

Four: Three Roses
There are three roses
in the vase on my table.
Only one is red.

Five: February
There are very few
days without clouds. But the sun
is still behind them.

Light the Way

When I was unemployed from September 2005 through February 2006, I did the usual things to try and change the situation. I sent e-mails. Made phone calls. Answered want ads. Networked.

Toward the end of that dark period, I also did one unusual thing--unusual for me, anyway: I lit candles.

In whatever apartment I've lived, I've lit candles, usually of the scented variety and usually appropriate to the season at hand. (Pumpkin Spice for Halloween; Evergreen for Christmas.) Sometimes, I light only one or two. Occasionally, I light enough that I don't need to turn the lights on. Once, on my 40th birthday, I lit 40 candles atop the kitchen table that once belonged to my great-grandmother--and, in the process, singed most of the hair off of my right forearm. (I would have made a lousy pyromaniac.)

My point? Lighting candles is, for me, part of daily routine anyway. What was unusual was that I was lighting the candles not for fragrance, illumination or celebration, but for the sake of sending word out to the world (and beyond) that I needed, at the very least, guidance.

I'm not particularly religious. I didn't grow up in a worshipful household, and the few church services I went to as a child bored me stiff. I do, however, believe that something watches over what we do and how we do it, though I'm not entirely sure what role, if any, whoever (or whatever) is watching over us plays in our daily lives. Maybe he/she/it/they guide every step we take, every decision we make. (I sure hope that's not the case, because that means that the Great Whatever has a pretty sick sense of humor.) Maybe there's no guidance at all, but merely observation--the ultimate reality show. Or maybe there is participation, even intervention, but on a more selective basis. Who's doing the selecting? And how? Or why? Beats me.

At first, I just lit the votives I already had hanging around La Casa del Terror, putting the flame of the short, slender, metallic green Zippo to the wicks in the kitchen and saying to myself (and whoever/whatever might be listening), "Please, help me." I later switched to actual devotional candles--the long, tall glass jobs one can find in many grocery and drug stores (in Chicago, anyway). The first ones I bought had guardian angels on them, more because I like angels than because I believe they watch over me. I even found a little Hispanic grocery store in my neighborhood that sells vanilla-scented guardian angel candles, so I could say a prayer and hide the smell of the cat litter at the same time.

Later, though, I switched to candles devoted to St. Jude, the so-called "patron saint of lost causes." (Not that I ever really believed that finding a new job was a "lost cause"; it just sometimes looked that way through the veil of despair.) I'd light the candle, watch the light flicker behind the sticker with St. Jude's face on it, and ask for whatever help I could get.

And help did eventually arrive--first in the form of a part-time, short-term warehouse gig, and then, a month later, in the form of a full-time job downtown.

Now, do I believe that my prayers (if you can even call them that, given my lack of formal religious faith) alone made things happen? No. There were many friends praying for me as well, and that wealth of positive energy may have had an effect on the fabric of the universe. Or maybe lighting the candles altered my frame of mind, made me more hopeful, and maybe that changed the way things were. Or maybe it was just one big honkin' coincidence.

Whatever the case, I got a job and have stayed employed throughout the remainder of the year. But that doesn't mean that I stopped lighting candles. I still flick the Zippo at least once a night, no matter what time I get in, for a variety of reasons:

Sometimes I light candles for friends or family who are in ill health, like VB and Dee, both of whom have spent time in the hospital this year, and also Embee, who had a stroke in July and is still on the mend. I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. There isn't jack I can do for them medically, and that's a pretty helpless feeling. I can, though, light the candles and hope for the fastest, most complete recovery possible.

Sometimes I light candles for friends who have gone through a romantic breakup. Sometimes I hope that they get back together. Sometimes I hope that they don't. (Some breakups are for the best, for both parties.) Either way, I'm usually friend to both the splitter and the splitee. Breaking up with someone you loved (or may, in fact, still love) is never easy, and it's worse during the holidays. I know four couples that have recently split or are in the process of splitting. I feel for them all. At the very least, I can wish them peace of mind and heart; when I light the candle for them, I do just that.

Sometimes I light candles people no longer in my life, like Red Secretary, whom I haven't heard from in more than two years and never expect to hear from again. Why, you might reasonably ask, would I bother lighting a candle for her, especially given that her life is pretty fabulous right now, what with the memoir she got published earlier this year selling well enough to merit a paperback reprinting that hit bookstores this week (I saw it in Borders Thursday night) and the screenplay she wrote due to start filming early next year under the direction of that guy who did Thank You for Smoking (which was probably the best movie I saw this year, so this new movie stands an excellent chance of being not just good, but damn good)? Because I hope her life stays fabulous. Just like it always should have been.

RS and I aren't friends anymore. Maybe we will be again; maybe we won't. I can still wish the best for her, though, now and always.

Sometimes, I even light candles for people I've never met and likely never will.

One of my favorite blogs to visit is written by actress Pauley Perrette, one of the stars of NCIS. It's not about her job, but about her life and the lives of those around her (friends, pets, significant others, etc.), and even though she writes everything with line breaks (like a poem), it's still all pretty entertaining.

Recently, she wrote a post about her friend Katherine, who had unfortunately been on the pedestrian end of an automobile-hits-pedestrian accident, and was not doing well at all. "She has been in ICU for days," Paulie wrote. "It does not look good right now."

"Sorry to impose," she continued, "but I know there are so many readers from around the world here who pray. We need a miracle. We need prayers." So I wrote an e-mail to Pauley, told her about my candle-lighting ritual and promised to light a candle each night for Katherine, her husband and their families. (I did not get an e-mail back, nor did I expect one.) So I added a candle for Katherine to the group I was already lighting and hoped for the best.

Les than a week later, Pauley posted the following: "I got a message today saying that Katherine's improvement was "nothing short of miraculous" in the last few days. Yup, that's right...I KNOW EXACTLY what it was...All of you beautiful people praying around the world. Thank you so, so much." A couple of weeks later, Pauley reported that Katherine had gone home from the hospital.

I'm not going to break my arm patting myself on the back (or, as JB's Dad would have said, "pinning a bouquet on my ass") over Katherine's recovery. After all, I was just one of many people in many places all over this big, sometimes beautiful globe of ours who was sending best wishes her way.

But I can light a candle. Or two. Or five. I can send positive vibes out into the ether and hope that's enough. Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe nobody's actually listening. But do I really believe that? Do I believe that sending all this positive energy out into the Great Whatever is just a colossal waste of time?

No. I do not.

Tonight, it's New Year's Eve. As has been my custom for the past few years, I'm staying in, ordering a pizza from Marie's and drinking a few cans of Red Dog. I'll pet the cats (at least until the gunfire starts at midnight, when they'll both disappear, likely for the remainder of the evening), watch vintage movies (usually something with Fred and Ginger or Groucho, Harpo and Chico) and wait for 2007 to arrive.

And I'll light candles. For friends. For family. For people I don't even know. For myself. And their light will keep me warm.

Happy New Year, everybody.

The Christmas Scarf

I admit it, freely and without coercion or threat of violence: I have, marbled through my core, a streak of sentimentality so lengthy and stout that, were it to be extracted from me and laid at length, it would put the Great Wall of China to shame.

At any given time of the year, this sentimentality can manifest in myriad ways, such as taking the form of rampant bouts of anthropomorphism. I feel sorry for inanimate objects, such as action figures or stuffed animals lost by the children who played with them and, without thinking or knowing, drop them in the street; more than one have made its way to my home or place of employment by my hand. (There's a small, vinyl sea turtle atop my workplace computer monitor that could attest to this. If it could, in fact, speak. Which it can't.) I once hopped down into the hollowed-out foundation of a building being razed to rescue a large teddy bear lying in the mud; I washed it down, dried it off and found that, aside from a rip here or a split there, it was a perfectly fine large teddy bear; it now rests comfortably in my kitchen.

I feel remorse when I accidentally break an object, like the evergreen votive holder I knocked over with an errant forearm and shattered on the cracked tile of the bathroom floor of the old La Casa del Terror. It was a bother to find every fragment, chunk and sliver of glass, to be sure, but more than anything, I felt regret for having ended the existence of something that had cast such bright, warming light and contained and shared with the air surrounding such varied, soothing fragrances over the many years it graced my Christmas displays.

This sentimentality can be especially pronounced at this most emotional and sentimental time of the year, when memories of all that has gone before, joyous and less so; of those loved ones absent either from my life or from life altogether; of all that's gone right or wrong in the year preceding crowd in with sharper, more determined elbows than the most aggressive holiday shopper ever could.

So when I haul out the figures of elves that Grandma kept confined to the decorative tin behind the space heater in her kitchen, the aluminum tree still in its original box, or the small artificial tree that I used to stand on my shelf at work, I feel remorse and even guilt if even one of these festive decorations isn't put on display, which has meant much self-imposed remorse indeed these past few Christmases, when I did not have the warmth of season to spur me to display more than one or two small ornaments. (And even with the new apartment, not everything can be put up; a whole storage container of ornaments remains, lamentably, in storage.)

So when, last Christmas Eve, I was walking to the local Pallid Poultry against a rain that came down frigid and sideways and turned what remnants that remained of the last snowfall into irregular patches of frozen gray, it should come as no surprise that, while stepping off the curb to cross the busy street that would lead me to my shopping destination, I paused. I paused because when I looked down at the torrent of gray water rushing along the curb, I saw, in the middle of that torrent, an obstruction: a relatively small, misshapen lump around which the stream struggled to flow to its ultimate destination, the sewer adjacent to the parking lot of the conjoined small neighborhood grocery store and chicken shack.

As I say, I paused. I leaned down to examine this obstructive lump more closely. And I found, as I suspected upon first glance, that this wasn't merely a bit of debris carried sewerward by the gray torrent, nor a leftover snow bank, formerly elegant, now reduced to a slushy bump in a slushy road, but a piece of fabric of undeterminable length, texture or even color (other than the gray that seemed to color everything under the light of that late December sky).

It was, I believed, a scarf.

This should have come to no surprise to me. I'd found scarves before. I've found them since. People drop scarves, mittens, hats, etc. all the time. I think it was the pitiful state of this particular winter accessory, combined with the aforementioned seasonally augmented sentimentality, that gave me pause more pause than usual.

It made no sense whatsoever for me to even touch the scarf at that moment; I was, after all, on my way to buy groceries, and dragging a sopping-wet scarf along for the ride seemed, at the least, impractical. So, with regret, I left the scarf where it lay and went on my less-than-merry way. When I returned the same way with my supplies, the scarf was still there. Of course it was. Why would it have moved? If its proper owner were coming for it, he/she would have collected it ages ago, and the impromptu river of dirty water wasn't flowing swiftly enough to dislodge it; and even if the current were strong enough to move the scarf from its resting place, it would never make its way through the sewer grate without someone actually shoving it through.

I shifted my groceries to my left hand and scooped up the scarf with my right. It was heavy with water, as I expected, but it was also covered with grit and debris; it was like holding a cold compress infused with pumice. I held the scarf at arm's length away from my body (to keep the nasty, nasty water from dripping on me or my groceries) and walked the block from the busy street to my (now-former) apartment building. By the time I got there, though, the fingers on my right hand were bright red and nearly numb from holding the cold, not-quite-thawed scarf, which I slung into the bathtub as soon as I'd made my way inside.

Once feeling had returned to my digits and my groceries had been properly put away, I turned my attentions back to the damp gray mass in the middle of my bathtub. There was now what appeared to be a tether of filthy water connecting the scarf to the drain of the tub, the slender stream staining the white porcelain as it flowed east to the tarnished brass fitting.

I propped my elbows on the edge of the tub for a moment and regarded my new find. What, exactly, was I going to do with this thing? Ring it out? No, that might squeeze whatever color remained out of it and refreeze my hands in the process. Throw it in the washing machine? Again, no. Since I didn't know what the fabric was (Wool? Acrylic? Some type of blend?), that method could just as likely hasten its disintegration as provide its salvation. Soak it in a bucket? Not a bad idea, really, but it would have to be cold water at first. The idea of plunging my hands into an ice-cold bucket on an ice-cold day had little appeal for me, but there was no way around it: it was either that or give up. And I'm not one for giving up.

I emptied the pale blue bucket I used for cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floors, ran water through it to clear away any remaining dirt from the last mopping, plopped the scarf into it and ran it full of cold water. I didn't even want to chance adding a drop of detergent. Not yet. For now, I slipped my hands into the frigid water, worked the fabric up and down for a few painful moments, and withdrew to the sink, where I rinsed with warm water. The scarf was no longer visible in the bucket; the grime already loosened had obscured my view. I dumped the bucket; the water that now filled the tub was almost black, and the scarf didn't look any cleaner. I filled the bucket two more times and dumped it two more times, each time finding the water filthy, but less so with each pass.

Finally, I wasn't seeing a dirty lump; it now looked like an actual garment. It even had a pattern to it: a gray (how appropriate!) checkered scheme with what appeared to be a streak of peach straight down its middle. Most importantly, I could finally read the label: the scarf was made in Italy, was acrylic and could be hand-washed in warm water. So I filled the bucket one last time, added a bit of detergent and gave the gray checkered scarf a proper washing, after which I draped it over the showerhead to dry.

As I said, this wasn't the first scarf I'd found, nor was it the last. It probably isn't even the nicest or most elegant. But because of the day I found it, I always think of it as my Christmas scarf and wear it to all holiday occasions.

And yes, I'm well aware that there are greater concerns in the world in general and in my own life in particular than a scarf found on a street. I don't pretend otherwise.

As I also said, I'm sentimental. And, I believe, all the better for it.

The Move, Part Four: The Long Goodbye

I had thought it would be better to spread the move over several weeks. That way, I wouldn't wear myself out on any given day and could get the whole thing done with little trips after work and on weekends.

But I was wrong. Sweet flamin' Jeebus, was I wrong.

Instead of moving everything in one day and wearing myself (and all of the friends I would have needed to recruit) out just that once, I wound up being worn out every damn night.

Part of the overall problem was work-related. It's been getting busier and busier, and I've been leaving later and later. And who wants to haul boxes and bags and furnishings after a 12-hour shift? That's right: nobody. Much of the work was thus shifted to weekends, which meant that the time I would normally spend resting up for the coming workweek was spent lifting and carrying and dragging and shoving.

Another part of the problem was sheer volume. Even with everything I threw out or left behind (more on that in a moment), I carried enough over to the new place for three people, and I'm still unpacking (and likely will be well into the new year).

But even interminable moves must end, and so did this one.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. The only things remaining to be moved out were my bicycle (which I haven't been on in years, and which now sits unused in the basement of my new apartment building) and my helmet (which, should I ever ride my bicycle again, I'll definitely wear). Everything else that remained--books, DVDs, videotapes, kitchenware--was being left behind for my now-former landlords, a couple in the midst of an unpleasant divorce, to keep, throw out, sell, whatever. (Of course, my now-former landlord called me a few days later and asked, "Um, you've still got a lotta stuff here. I just wanted to know if you're renting for another month or what." Never mind that everything I left behind put together wouldn't have filled half of one closet; yep, that makes it worth renting for another month. Except...not.)

I rolled the bike into what had been the living room and parked there for a minute. The place looked strange with next to nothing in it. Sad. This had been a large part of my life. And I could still see it as it had been for so long:

Over in that corner sat the faded fuchsia recliner, left there by the previous tenant, where Lottie used to curl up for naps. By the windows sat the futon, sold to me by a then-friend, The Duranie at a steep discount as payment for watching her cats over the holidays. (She later dumped me as a friend without explanation--not the first time that's happened and, unfortunately, not the last.) Against the walls were the loveseats, bought at Ikea and drivel home for me by Mr. and Mrs. Fluffy, on which many a Halloween Movie Bash was enjoyed. In the middle sat the coffee table my brother made me as a present. On the walls, the shapes of the posters for The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist were still visible, along with the holes where the nails had held them aloft.

All gone now.

I don't mean to oversentimentalize (is that even a word?) this whole experience. This was, after all, just my apartment. It wasn't perfect, by any means. The kitchen sink leaked, the ceiling was cracked, the bedroom windows were drafty, the linoleum in the kitchen was badly cracked, the wiring was ancient and both the front and back doors were a pain in the ass to open. But it was home for more than a decade. I can't just shrug that off.

And it's not like my new place is Nirvana, either. The toilet leaks at the base (I put way too much putty on it, which is how I repair everything that needs putty). The wainscoting doesn't always meet the floor, the hot water is really, really hot. There lots of spiders in in the building--I don't mind seeing one every once in a while, but I shouldn't wake up in the middle of the night to find one standing on the forehead of the Christopher Lee Dracula figure atop my TV, should I? And the boiler just beneath the living room floor not only keeps the pace toasty warm without any of the radiators on, but it roars either like a plane taking off or a nuclear explosion in the distance, depending on my mood at that moment.

But it's home now. This bare and desolate place wasn't anymore.

While I was taking that last, long look around, I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the first time that had happened during the process of moving out, though this would certainly be the last time. I couldn't tell you what it was. Maybe it was the shadow of a tree branch waving in the breeze outside. Maybe a bird flew past the window. But in the corner of my eye, for that briefest of brief moments, it looked like Lottie coming around the corner from the kitchen as she had so many times--and as she should have many more.

I looked down at my watch. I'd been standing there for 15 minutes. Enough. Time to go.

I put the helmet on my head, rolled the bike out the front door (my now-former landlady was out back, and I didn't want to talk to her again if I didn't have to), and said "Bye, Lottie," trying to wrestle the door shut before the tears could get a chance to start flowing.

Then I turned, picked up the bike and walked it down the stairs, not looking back again. Not even a glance.