Riffing here.

I’ve spent my first full week in Seattle and my legs are sore. I’ve cycled up and down more hills than I have throughout my stay in Chicago over the past ten months. The muscles surrounding my shins are particularly tender, as I have my feet elevated while sitting in my imitation Eames chair. I finally got the second bedroom the way I like it, and beyond some leftover boxes and packing materials, I finally have a nook in this apartment that I can say is all mine.

I’ve struggled this past week, finding pockets of benevolence to appreciate while re-examining the decision that I made. I see Chicago now, overrun by ICE agents, in places that I grew up as child. A produce market, located on the corner of Milwaukee and Pulaski, was a spot that my father and I would frequent in late 90s/early aughts. My father once locked himself out of his sky blue Chevrolet Corsica, and on a particularly warm winter day, I walked the mile and a half from the Windy City Produce to our apartment, picked up the spare key, and rode my bike back through the slushy, melting snow. In one of his rare displays of gratitude, my father would let me rent anything I wanted from the nearby Hollywood Video (looking at Google Maps now, it’s reverted to a laundromat). I didn’t intend on telling this story but like all things: it found its way.

The night before I had stayed up late playing video games. It was a ritual that somehow made me feel less lonely. Playing video games right now, with my brother now 2,000 miles away, has produced a sunken feeling that makes it hard to look at the screen without missing his presence and camaraderie. That night though, I decided to flip through the channels and on broadcast WGN television, there it was: Toby Kaye’s 1998 film, American History X. I was riveted by the alternating black-and-white and color aspects of the film and Edward Norton’s indomitable presence; at the impressionable age of 13, it was unlike anything I had seen before, even in its comically censored form. None of it was engineered; all the moments were produced from circumstance and from that point on, my cinephilia took hold of much of my life.

And while I see the streets that I grew up now filled with tear gas as armed gestapo prey upon anyone with a brown complexion, today’s toughest decision was trying to fill the day by picking a spot to have a half-way decent sandwich. I feel as if I’ve abandoned my city. And that’s compounded with real fear for my friends, my brother, and everyone in the city.

This isn’t a manifesto or a formal attempt at conveying some list of guiding principles to my writing or way of thinking. I think the days of grandiose thinking and intense feelings have subsided. Like a litany of film characters that I’ve hung my hat to, whether it’s Llewyn in Inside Llewyn Davis, Paterson in Paterson, or most recently, Bob in One Battle After Another, I’ve endured enough drama and theatrics in my thirties to last a lifetime. I’m just tired. My lower back aches. My ribs and collarbone are still healing. My legs remain sore. And my mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be. But I write still, not as means of protest, or because I believe what I have to say offers anything to anyone (ideas that I believed in my most hopeful and stubborn), but simply because it offers me some measure of solace at my loneliest. And the fact is, as I observe the auburn leaves rattle and tremble in the cool Seattle wind, I know that the next few days, weeks, and months will only be more taxing, more stressful, and more lonely. This will be my buoy for the time being, as I navigate through the trenches. Maybe I’ll enjoy some films along the way.

A first entry

It was just an accident