...a Twin Bed in a Guest Room in Wauconda, IL

There are people in this world that make you absolutely certain of your worth. Noelle is one of those people. Breakfast today was wonderfully relaxing and strange, the way most of our interactions seem to be. She has dreams that only few people get to hear and I'm really fortunate to be one of them. We're two people with a perpetual force called 'tension you can cut with a knife' but we manage to balance it on our heads like the women carrying water buckets in Nairobi.

After we went our separate ways, I drove around the area looking for places to waste some disposable income. I went to my favorite clothing stores, the mall, best buy, even target... didn't spend a penny. I'm quite proud of the fact.

I also stopped by a cosmetics store at worked at through high school to find that Kay, a retired school teacher,who used to work with me in fragrance is still working there. It was nice to see her, of course, but she looked a little bit worse for the wear. Also, she was telling me about her nearly finalized divorce from a husband she called a 'lazy bloodsucking bum' and it stung to hear her talk about him that way. I say that because, years ago, when I worked at the store, she would talk about him with such pride... describe all the things he was working on and to see that relationship turn sour hurts somehow. Either way, I hope it's for the best and that she'll be happy now, she's a sweet woman and certainly deserves it.

I keep hoping I'll run into people I know here at the stores or in the streets. Maybe it's because so many people who start here never get too far away from their beginnings. Most people who grow up in these suburbs stay around for the rest of their lives. It's so different from the city, I think, because even a person who lives their whole life in the city has dramatic changes every few years. The city has a different world every few blocks, and my Spanish Harlem years are nothing like my Washington Heights years, just like my Upper East Side years are nothing like my Brooklyn years. Maybe it's just an urban bias rearing its ugly head, but I think I need the city to survive. Not necessarily New York City, but... the city.

That's all for now.