...In which our heroine doesn't know what to think.

Sometimes life surprises you, like last night.

I know I'm getting to be the age where marriages and pregnancies will start to become less shocking and more commonplace, but for the moment, they remain in the shocking category.

For those of you keeping score, my closest group of friends freshman year was Emily, Bugs, Lane, and Ben. Emily dated Lane, I dated Ben, Bugs dated Evan. All of those relationships have since ended, but we've kept it cordial, admittedly, ahem, some more than others, but we're still always glad to see each other. Last night was Ben's 21st birthday, and the first time we had all been together since my birthday, nearly a year ago. Lane has a new girlfriend, Brenda, and has moved back to Aurora. I knew something was up when she politely declined her beer at beer pong: Lane's going to be a daddy.

It could be the context under which I spent most of my time with Lane (read: smoking or eating or smoking more) or the fact that he dated one of my best friends for a year, but I just can't wrap my head around it. Lane still seems so young to me - he was happy about it last night, but my perception was slightly altered by a bottle of Tanqueray. They've only been together since May and are going to be parents. Brenda, who I had met one time previously, just straight up told me.

Maybe I should be less surprised or maybe I'm just glad it isn't me (have I mentioned what a beautiful, simple invention the pill is?) but it's still blowing my mind. I know peers with kids, but Lane is definitely the closest person I know with an impending little one. So many questions: are they getting married, moving in together, finishing school? None of them are my place to ask. As Bugs said after he mentioned that he'll be a gay uncle, he concluded with "Well this will be a fun little adventure to watch unfold."

Sometimes, I think I should join a nunnery.

Also, cold Domino's pizza does not pair well with the aforementioned Tanqueray.

When the fuck did we get so grown up?

...In which our heroine is back with a vengeance, just like you knew she would be.

So I lied. I said I was killing the blog, and I thought it was dead, but I cannot stay away. Consider this Katydid in the City a zombie of a version that it once was - unpredictable, bite-y, and hungry for brains  I have too much to write about, and it's the writing that helps me process my day to day activities. I can't promise frequent updates, or even meaningful ones, but I have to have this here when I need it to be. Briefly: kept my job until next September and am now the Joan Holloway of CCAP. Started junior year, can't even think about all the work I have to do if I want to go to LA next year. Started taking yoga to calm mind and body. Have a few new script ideas.

We had to write an autobiography of ourselves for Peace Studies about where we come from, where we are, and where we are going. I took that abstraction and ran with it -

I come from a stance between two worlds – one foot rooted deeply in Catholic guilt, the other placed in the baby makin' bluegrass of Hazard, Kentucky. I come from a home where matters of chief importance are best discussed over tomatoes grown in a newspaper-covered garden, and movie quotes become the chosen vernacular. I come from the place of imagination that being an only child can create, where the characters in books and stuffed animals on the shelf speak volumes. I come from late nights spent slaving away over pages and pages written about Hamlet, lest I graduate with something less than a perfect 5.0.

I come from nights spent in basements, garages, fields, homes with out of town parents where sipping grain alcohol and smoking out of a pop can seemed oh so sophisticated, and the merits of Led Zeppelin II are discussed in the most exhaustive detail. I come from strains of Neil Young on summer nights, midnight movies on couches in the winter, and tastes of spring in well root beer, the tang of salty popcorn on lips.

I am on a couch in this, my very first big girl apartment, in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I am wondering whether practicing the sun salutation from my very first yoga class this week should take precedent over the three hundred or so pages of reading I have to do. I am still feeling very something about sleeping with my ex-boyfriend this weekend - I care for him deeply still, as much as I don't want to admit it. I am feeling even more guilty that he has taken up residence in my thoughts, despite the fact that I met a perfectly nice, driven boy who should be there instead. I'm still wondering if when I woke in the dawn to him kissing my cheek he actually whispered “I really miss you” into my ear, or if it's one of those convenient spots my memory has tricked itself into believing because it wants to. I am looking up when the next information session is for the semester in Los Angeles – do I even want to go there? - and wondering how much a shitty studio would cost. Too much is probably the answer.

I should have talked to my mom for longer today, told her more about my classes. I am looking forward to my usual Tuesday morning conversation with my father, when he'll tell me some old song to listen to, taking his Townes Van Zandt and Nancy Sinatra records and finding a spot for them on my iPod. I am craving my grandma Daisy's french silk pie, and my grandma Mary Alice's pork roast with mashed potatoes with a stick of butter. I am still stuck on “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” and I wonder if it is just strange enough to be true, and if the necklace of tongues was truth or fiction – probably a little of both. I am in love with the chill in the air and the possibilities of fall – the horror movie marathons, the homey taste of my mom's pumpkin squares, not pie, and my twenty-first birthday.

I'm going to do my laundry tomorrow, because I'm out of clean jeans to wear and almost out of quarters. I'm going to find out about that semester in LA meeting, really, and make Leah come with me because she has the great ideas and I have the great words to express them. I'm going to finally pay that urgent care bill when my paycheck comes on Wednesday, even though I would much rather buy some pairs of jeans so I can have to drag my laundry up five flights of stairs less often. I'm going to get really tired of watching Monday Night Football with my roommates, but it is certainly going to help me write this. I'm going to make plans with the perfectly nice boy this weekend, because it's a smarter decision. I'm going to apply for that internship doing the summer camp with Facets Cinematheque this summer, and get to tell kids all about why they should love Citizen Kane even though it isn't in color. I'm also going to try and tutor at 826CHI because I think my real passion is working with youth, and I think it makes up for the bad karma I try my best not to generate.

I'm going to figure out more ideas for screenplays, even though everything I come up with sounds banal and trite in my head – I'm going to have more faith in my writing abilities. I'm going to smile and nod politely at work on Wednesday when I have to make individual copies of sixty parking receipts belonging to my executive director at work, even though he could do it just fine on his own, and I know he really, really needs that $87 reimbursement on top of his $100,000 salary. I'm going to get through the stack of twelve “to be read” books eventually, even if it takes me five years. I'm going to succeed where my parents haven't because nobody likes living paycheck to paycheck, and those $80,000 (and counting) in student loans certainly aren't going to pay off themselves. I'm going to visit where I come from – the chilly green countrysides of Ireland, and the coal country of Hazard some day, and think about what my grandparents thought when they left there. I'm going to have a child by age thirty-three, even if I'm not married, because being a mother is the only thing I've ever known that I really, really want. I'm going to stay in school for as long as I can, because there's a safety in writing papers and turning them in on time that doesn't exist in the so-called real world.

I'm going to take things as they come to me, and ride all of the bad decisions out with the good, and be thankful I can tell the difference between the two. I'm going to stop worrying about a career or those questions my parents friends ask me and just be happy that I can make such choices, that I don't have a four-year old or a drug problem or a full-time menial job, like some of my friends. I'm going to take a moment each day to take some big yoga breaths and be content with being here now, writing this paper, with this chill in the air, and all the possibilities that are lie ahead. 

So I'm back. Even if this is the only entry I make in the next six months, I'm at least back in the head space of writing again. Maybe you're back too, and even if you aren't, at least know that writing this always makes me feel better.

...In which our heroine bids a fond farewell.

So, friends and readers, it's come to this: I'm thinking about killing Katydid in the City. Posting has gone from infrequent to pretty much non-existent, all the comments I get are spamalicious, and Chemguy, Achilles, and Calen are the only other blogger folks who seem to update with any regularity anymore.

I think this blog has served its purpose. Let's look back at some of the first post, shall we?

"So I've finally decided to give this blogging thing an honest go. I feel that its a good time to start as some things in my life are ending and a lot more are beginning. What's to know about our illustrious blog host? Well I graduate high school in less than a month, which is dually fantastic and horrible. In the fall, I'll be attending the only college I really wanted to go to, Columbia College, which is in Chicago. I am going to pursue my passion for film there--lately I've been thinking Cinematography for a concentration. So stick around if you'd like to read about the pratfalls and successes of my first year away from home, in a major city, as I try to swim with sharks. Should be fine. I hope."

The swimming with sharks has gone splendidly: This will be my third August in Chicago, and I'll be a junior/senior at Columbia, working on a BA in Film & Video: Screenwriting. I haven't been back to Cincinnati in almost four months, which is a new record. I live in a lovely 4th floor walk-up in the Lakeview neighborhood with Emily Krieger, who is the most unlikely BFF ever. I was helplessly in love with Paul Cocco when this blog began. After finally giving that up, I was helplessly in love with Ben Montgomery, who was my first real boyfriend. I survived freshman year in a haze of marijuana smoke, found out that the ectasy is aptly named but makes you feel like death in the afterglow, and that yes, magic mushrooms do in fact produce and I quote, "majestic crystal peacocks." Ben broke my heart, and I spent last summer taking some much needed time to wallow in the hurt that both he and Paul caused. From that hurt, I finally figured out that my own happiness was paramount, and I was pretty fucking tired of settling for guys who turned out to be not so swell.

HOWEVER...last summer was a turning point for me. Amazing things happen when you aren't stoned everyday! I found my passions revived with a little help from Don Draper, and in three weeks, I wrote my first screenplay, "Sharp as a Razor, Soft as a Prayer." On a whim, I applied for a job as a "teaching artist apprentice", whatever the fuck that was. Through that, I was introduced to Joanna Barrios and the wonderful folks at Columbia's Center for Community Arts Partnerships, where I've been working as an administrative assistant since January. Mentoring with kids from the lower income neighborhoods of Chicago and using art to help them with academics has made me realize that my bullshit is not so important, and they're are more important tasks at hand. I wrote another screenplay, "Of Tangled Roots," and found a writing partner in the divine Miss Leah Williams, a Bob Evans hostess of Cleveland, Ohio. I spent every day this fall and winter with Heidi and Telly, only to have Telly move back to Maine, and then have find out Heidi was the most dishonest person I've ever met. I moved out of the dorms in May, and love being in an actual neighborhood. I've had a great love affair with myself and all of my delightful weirdness, and save for a few classy as ever friends with benefits escapades, been totally happy without a boy.

I got rained on with Flaming Lips confetti, and just plain rained on at Fleet Foxes. I stood ten feet away from my love Jim James in Columbus, Ohio, with the two most decent males I've had the pleasure of being friends with since high school, Nathan Artrip and David Albertz. I belly danced with Cassandra Gallagher on night two of seeing my favorite band, the Pixies, at the Aragon. I even let my mother drag me to a Pearl Jam show, and even sang along. I got to eat real deep dish pizza on the floor of my new apartment with my dad, and a heavy metal cheeseburger with the best chemistry teacher in Ohio, or at least Cincinnati. I cried my eyes out at Up, The Wrestler, In the Mood for Love, found that my passion for cinema was greater than I even expected. I learned what mise-en-scene and eyeline match meant, and how to shoot a 16mm film on a Swedish camera from the 1960s. Being in a field that is 93% men, I figured out the best way to deal with their chauvinist vulgarity is to simply one up them. 

The future? Giving the real screenwriting business a go in Los Angeles? Grad school at DePaul? Becoming Mrs. Jim James? Who knows. I do know that now, this girl, on a bed in Chicago, Illinois is a happier, older, and much less green lass than the one who started this blog on a mattress in Cincinnati, Ohio. She's living the big city life she's always dreamed of, become with her broken hearts indeed, more adventurous, and still remembers where that Katydid can hop back to, the people and places that have brought me to right now, this moment: too hot, drinking blood orange soda, and waiting for True Blood to come on.

So, thanks for reading my ramblings, my confessions, my pop culture obsessions. Thanks for the comments and the support that has cheered me up on many a Sylvia Plath day. Tumblr has taken over, and I REALLY encourage you to come find me at Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon. If for some reason that isn't enough, there's "Faceplace," as my boss calls it, or that electronic mail all the kids are talking about.

Thanks for reading Katydid in the City, I've quite enjoyed the writing. It's kept me sane on many days. To you especially, Chemguy, Calen, Lakes, Emily GV. I hope you've gotten an insight into the crazy little space I call my brain.

I end with this, written the night before I left for college. It applies to me just the same as it did that day as it does now: I lived all the thrills and spills of a life coming into adulthood. And tomorrow, the adventure really begins. As Penny Lane would say, "It's all happening."

Love,

Katydid

...In which our heroine has the goods.

Somewhere, the newest film from my imaginary BFF Sofia Coppola. Is it December yet?


Centurion; Or, Michael Fassbender is really sexy and sometimes I need some gratuitous going medieval on one's ass testosterone fueled violence. 


Speaking of going medieval on one's ass, greatness in the future from HBO. A Game of Thrones, the deliciously intriguing and violent nerd fantasy books I love.


And Boardwalk Empire, from Scorsese and Sopranos writer Terence Winter with a killer cast.


John Prine featuring some guy I kind of sort of like doing "All the Best" from Letterman.



 A stream of the John Prine covers album, Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows, featuring the above as well as covers from Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, and Drive-By Truckers, from NPR.

This is the cutest thing you'll see all day.

Except for Don Draper in the first official image from Mad Men season 4.

 The week in media: Upgrades on Almost Famous and Leon in Blu-ray, new purchase of Beetlejuice. Blake Snyder's screenwriting bible, Save the Cat is on its way and I think I have a new idea. Probably not going to Pitchfork anymore. Looking forward to The Criterion Collection release of The Thin Red Line in September, announced today.

In other news, carrying two weeks worth of laundry up five floors on an 80 degree day is the fucking pits.

...In which our heroine returns to form.

"Protection" by Massive Attack is one of my favorite songs and this is the first time I've listened to it in over a year. I'm typing this at an awkward angle, laying on my chest, feeling my delightful pangs of carpal tunnel. Watching Mad Men kill JFK tonight made me realize my uncle was born two days later in 1963 - why doesn't anyone ever mention this? Why is it so hard to delete people on Facebook...there's so many people I despise for their updates in my news feeds yet I can't commit. What a strange form of voyeurism. This little boys Cubs shirt is my best clothing purchase of the past month. Nothing I ate today was wholly satisfying. Perused eBay for cat eye glasses frames - don't wanna look like a grandma, but also don't want some bullshit modern retro-y frames. At work on Friday I read through tax returns for non-profits and found out that giving to health organizations and religious organizations seems to be mutually exclusive. I don't update this or write in my journal enough anymore, except for the good dreams. I've been lucid dreaming in the mornings lately, and it forces me to stay in bed another hour, in the hopes that some great fantasia will happen. This building is so old I can hear the floors creaking from downstairs. I almost felt bad for screaming at the television during the Blackhawks game tonight, but the country music usually drifting through the floorboards made me reconsider. "Rebellion (Lies)" is such a great song title, though the new Arcade Fire tracks are disappointing in the worst way. My job might change to be assistant to the work infatuation, which is now strictly an infatuation, no longer a crush. That plays into far too many issues than I need bring upon myself. A movie a day is keeping me mostly honest. I need to read more, tackle my huge pile of books. And better work clothes. Two songs away from 4,000 on iTunes. Why is the first picture of Chris Farley on Google of him dead? MORBID, even for me. I've been sleeping a lot lately, but eating better and walking all over tarnation. There's beer in the fridge and Blu-ray discs on their way from the UK. I won't be going back to Cincinnati until late July, and this should bother me more than it does. I never finished Mean Streets. He said he would call tonight, and he didn't, again. I turned on the MTV Movie Awards for about five minutes and it was fucking intolerable. The only movie I'm still excited for this summer is Inception. My Morning Jacket in August probably means to Pitchfork? I don't know.

...In which our heroine finds a home.

"Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread. Through shadow, to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight.  Mist and shadow, cloud and shade, all shall fade... all... shall... fade." - Pippin Took, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

The notion of home is an odd one. Cincinnati is one - in the living rooms of my grandmothers, in the pulpy smelling comic shops I visited with my father, the earth of my mom's tomato plants. Chicago is another - in rooms 2602, 2714, and 813, in late night diners, in my now sparsely decorated new Lincoln Park living room. I don't think a person can have simply one home: we make it wherever we tread, hopefully, and there are many places where we can find a home.

I knew this was a new place to call home on Sunday. I went on a trip to explore the new neighborhood, and amongst the bitchin' vintage stores, eateries, and baby/dog army, I found a used book store called Bootleggers. Used book stores and I go way back, and I've struggled to find a decent one in Chicago. Now that isn't the case. I perused the dog-eared fantasy paperbacks, the film books, the vinyl in the back, the smell of paper and the elevator jazz welcoming me home.

But this isn't the important part of the story, no. For about two years, I've been trying to recover something I lost. Maybe "lost" isn't the right word - I know who has it - but it's something I can't ever get back. I never should have let him borrow it in the first place, before spring break our senior year, and it's been gone ever since: my favorite book ever, the first edition hard cover copy of Stephen King's The Stand. 

I first read the book when I was fifteen, and its narrative was so rich, so compelling, I promised myself I'd re-read it every five years.  Seeing as age twenty is half-over, I was getting discouraged. I refused to settle for a paperback or abridged edition - I wanted exactly what I used to have, the same copy.

There it was at Bootleggers, the book I'd been searching for, staring back at me from between some of King's lesser, more recent works. It was $11.03 with tax, my lucky number. It's staring at me from the coffee table, one Emily pilfered from her old apartment, like the huge tome that it is. It has a dust jacket. There's are penciled initials on the first page, "RM." The red foil men on the front are more worn than my copy, but the gold lettering on the edge isn't.

No, it isn't the same as my copy, but it's the closest thing I'll ever find. I'm thinking about how very different of a person I am at twenty than I was at fifteen - I was reading it around this time, the very beginning of summer. I'm thinking about who I gave it to, how it isn't truly lost, but even if I were to get it back, I don't want it. I'm thinking about what'll be like to start again. We need help, the poet reckoned, says the first page.

Home is in all kinds of places.

The smells of hot cocoa on winter mornings and the ants that swarm on purple peonies in the summer. The rats that scamper from my dumpster when I heave a bag in.

The late night conversations at Waffle House, or the midday ones at the new diner hangout, Golden Nugget.

On a couch in Cincinnati, Ohio, after school. In the pages of a book read by a girl who had never kissed a boy or been to Chicago. On a couch in Chicago, Illinois by a girl in her very first real apartment, who needs to tackle a pile of laundry and to ask the boys across the hall for some help on her television, although she could just as easily call the cable company.

The book begins with a page announcing "The Circle Opens," and tidies itself up nicely with "The Circle Closes," on the last page. Within the book, one of the generals mentions that lovely quote: "Things fall apart, the center does not hold" before eating a pistol. These things are certainly true, and while I live in the city now, you'll find me using the phrase home interchangeably for both here, and Cincinnati. Lots of things have fallen apart since I first read The Stand, circles have closed, forever irrecoverably damaged. But, now, in this, Oakdale Avenue, Apartment 4, that circle seems to be quite open. And still, there is Randall Flagg, threatening to give me the creeps before bedtime, though I know the creeps from the real world are much scarier. However oddly enough, I take comfort in this.

"To the one I now know most, I will tell them of your ghost like a thing that never, ever was."

...In which our heroine is back from the dead: Return of the Living Heroine Part 3

It's been a while. A long enough while that I'm typing this is my new living room, in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, where I'm technically neighbors with Jeff Tweedy and Roger Ebert. Things are in general chaos, but I have a bed, and food in the fridge, and books on the shelf.

I feel like doing a paint by numbers of the past month or so since I've been away is a little ridiculous because so much has happened. But here are the CliffNotes:

-The semester is finished. Got righteously trashed yesterday starting at 2PM with my 30 year old co-workers, and continued the party well into the evening. I hate to play that card, but I needed it.
-109 page screenplay is complete, for the moment. Won a pitch contest in Screenwriting II. Got a 98 on my script analysis final and he liked the paper so much he asked for it as an example. A on Biology final...it was a busy, but great semester.
-Lots of great film stuff I didn't get to mention! Eraserhead, Gas Food Lodging, Kick-Ass, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Pink Flamingos, and The Doom Generation are all wonderfully weird and fantastic.
-My Morning Jacket did not disappoint. "Dondante" was the single best song I've ever seen live. The collaborating with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band was fantastic. And Mr. Jim James was even more beautiful in person. Also had a great time eating great food over great conversation with Emily, Nate, and David.

There's so much more to talk about, but those are the major things. Goals for the summer include: tackling Stephen King's The Dark Tower, catching up with Dexter, going to Pitchfork, making friends with the cute boys across the hall, improving my foodie skills, and working my way through the Netflix list.

As always, I continue to update Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon. It's blogging on an ADD scale.

I'm really happy right now. I feel like this is going to be a great summer. How are you, friends?