Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Thinking into the box

Packing. Sad again. It’s dull gray today, perfect for indulging ze melancholie; how convenient! We finished Six Feet Under last night (had to squeeze in that closure-inside-the-closure) and yes, I bawled at the end sequence, all the old and dying Fishers. I will see my mother die, my father die. And I can't even handle leaving a place I've lived for less than 10 years.

Moving requires a sorting-through of the past; it forces you to confront who you were and are. It results in reacquaintance with a lot of past loves. Todd puts on Gish, which--absurdly enough, I know--makes me sadder still. I was such the little pothead when I was into this album. And to think: it came from Chicago! I was about to move to Atlanta. About to return, more or less, from whence I came, after having left for the North. I’m doing the same thing now. Will the pattern repeat?

Todd and I came to Chicago apart, but at almost the exact same time, late summer, 1998; we leave together now to go back to a region that’s our shared homeland, but to a place altogether new to both of us. I guess in certain ways that's perfect. But I wonder if we should’ve just stayed put, made our home in the place our lives dovetailed. That could’ve been perfect too.

When the Smashing Pumpkins were breaking out, Todd was listening as a high school student in Rock Hill; I was listening as a college sophomore in Middletown, Conn. People in Chicago—in what was I guess still a rough Wicker Park (god, to have known it then!)—were listening to Smashing Pumpkins and--I guess?--feeling proud of their export.

By the time we moved to Chicago, Corgan was less hero than joke.

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