I am not Filipino.

I'm not.

I mean, I am. But really, I'm not. I don't speak Tagalog. I enjoy the food, but can make nothing but mediocre adobo. I don't know the cultural customs. I have never visited. Hell, I don't even have a particular plan on if or when I am going to visit.

The reality of the situation for myself, and for most people, is that we are American with ethnic ancestry. Most people haven't visited the countries their relatives/ancestors came from. Most people don't speak the language. Most people don't really know the culture of their home countries.

I am not really Filipino, or Polish, or Spanish. I am American. I just happen to be brown.



PS. No, you are not 1/64th Cherokee.

I have to get out of Logan Square.

"Who you with?"
"No one."
He demanded to know again. "Who you with?"
"No one man."
He leaned out, so his back was to the aisle, and he kept pulling the hood of his sweatshirt closer to his face, so to make sure no one else could see him. "Don't lie to me Nigga. I know. Who the fuck you with?"
"Really, no one."
"Bullshit, nigga. I'm a King. I can tell."

He was bald, about 6'3". He had a thin mustache, and some hair on his chin. His stare bore into me, his pupils huge from some sort of drug. His head was cocked slightly to the side the whole time, and he struggled to keep his eyes completely open.

"What are you listening to?"
"Rodrigo y Gabriella."
"What the fuck is that?"
I told him it was Spanish guitar. He wouldn't like it.
He leaned his head very close to mine and "I want to hear it" escaped from clenched teeth. He never took his eyes off me.
I handed him my headphones, but didn't hand him the player. He listened, and asked what else I had on it.
"Not much."
"I think I'll take it, and find out myself."
He tried to reach into my pocket to grab my mp3 player out of it. I grabbed his wrist firmly. "No."
"What motherfucker?" Suddenly his eyes opened all the way. His pupils became a little smaller. His focus was tangible.
I told him that he, in fact, was not taking it.
He looked at me, unsure of how to react. He decided by throwing my headphones back at me. "Keep it bitch. But get the fuck up. We're getting out. We gonna fight."
I slowly placed the headphones in my pocket and met his gaze. "Alright."

"What nigga? You wanna fight?"
"Of course not." I'm not sure how steady my voice sounded. I stood up.
"You don't wanna fight? Then why'd you say okay?"
I stared at him for a second before giving my reply. "If we're gonna fight, we're gonna fight. Ain't nothin I can do about that but defend myself."
He pointed to the door, and said "You first."
Instead of getting out the back door of the bus, I slowly walked to the front of the bus, and just stood by the door. He didn't follow me, but stood by the back door. Waiting for me to get off.

So we waited. A block went by. Then 2 more. We picked up some passengers, and still I stood by the front door. He sat down, but didn't avert his look.
A few blocks later, and we hit some traffic. He was looking out the window. He looked out, then to his side, then to his back.
As he was looking back, I asked the driver if I could just get out here. He said nothing, but the door opened, and I slipped quickly out. I took a few quick steps til I got to the corner, and made the turn.

I didn't look back until I had sprinted halfway down the street.The sun was setting, and I couldn't tell who the person was, walking down the street toward me. I turned back around and continued my hard sprint. Around that first corner, and I kept running. This block was empty. I got halfway down the street, and turned back to look again. Still empty. I slowed my pace, but continued to jog to the next street, looking over my shoulder two or three more times. I turned left, and slowed to walk. As soon as I got to the next busy street, I leaned on the streetlight. Finally, after I caught my breath, I walked slowly to the train station. I didn't see him again.



I'd have thought eventually I'd get used to situations like this. But I haven't. I don't think I ever will.

9/24/07.

My favorite concert ever started like most concerts I've been to. You show up a little late, to avoid the terrible opening bands. You find the optimal standing room taken already, so you do your best to maneuver to somewhere in 'the middle,' and wait as the last opening band finishes up their lackluster set. As they do, the handful of friends they have at the show cheer maniacally, but every else just sort of settles in, to await the main act.

You stand, and you wait in relative darkness, as more and more people file in. You notice the space around you get smaller and smaller, until someone is dangerously close to your ass, while you're dangerously close to someone else's ass. You shift your weight from foot to foot, wishing you had arrived early enough to snag a seat, or a good wall or railing to lean against. You start to sweat, but only on the inside of your shirt, and it drips slowly down your body, but there is no way to cool off, except to fight your way through the now full venue and lose your valuable standing space.

So you wait. And you get thirsty, wishing beers weren't 9 bucks, and waters weren't 4. And someone around you smells. Not just of alcohol, but of having not showered since last night, and you can't figure out who it is. You see an occasional person walk across the stage, checking sound levels, making sure all the wires are plugged in. Every time someone new walks across the stage, you crane your neck to try to see around the tall guy in the hat who decided to plant himself in front of you. A group of Asians chats excitedly and quickly somewhere behind you.

That was all typical at the best concert I've been to. But that moment when things suddenly get a little darker, and everyone cuts the conversation...that was just buildup. It started out slow. A few flashes of light, a low meandering bassline.

Then, it started.

I can't describe it very well. Honestly, I was rather overwhelmed. The first song had video with old 50's style Russian Industrialist/Communist propaganda video.

Link.

I admit, the Chemical Brothers are not my favorite band, and the Riv is not my favorite venue. But man. That night, was something else.

Chance.

I've always been interested in chance. Specifically not probability. But rather the chance that brought everything together the way it did.

Imagine, if my mother did not have something to do tonight, I'd be doing her taxes. But, as chance stands, she does, and I am going to spend the night catching up on cleaning. Very boring, both in terms of what I'm doing, but also in terms of the grand scheme of things.

But, imagine again if instead of Barack Obama's parents meeting, they never did. And this recent election never would have happened.

Or if Thomas Paine had been claimed by childhood disease as was not uncommon at the time.

Or if the first primitive humans hadn't migrated in a certain pattern which allowed them to discover agriculture.

Or if billions of years ago, atoms arranged themselves slightly differently, and the solar system as we know it, and consequently us, do not exist.



Trillions of things happen each second to make things the way they are. I don't believe in predestination, or fate, or the hand of god. My own belief is something like that of Occam's Razor. Things happen the only way they can. If they could have happened differently, they would have. It's just interaction. Interaction of molecules forming cells forming sentient beings forming society forming civilisations forming humanity.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Nowhere really. But an infinite number of chances had to happen for this to be our world, and an equally infinite number of things have to happen for it to exist in the future. Why though?

I don't know.

Really, I don't.

http://www.nucleartoast.com/2007/11/mcpizza.html

Misspelling.

The English language is such a bizarre language. I'm a pretty damn good speller. But, on a fairly regular basis, I'll type a word and stop for a second. "Wait, is that really how you spell that?"

Sometimes I'll cock my head to the side like a confused puppy, and ponder for a second. Usually it's right, but the very fact that I have to wonder about so many words makes me really hate the spelling eccentricities of this language sometimes.

The suburbs.

There's something about the suburbs that always unnerved me. And I think, as I write this, I'm just figuring out what it is.

The city, like humanity as a whole, is mixed. It's diverse. Not just in ethnic makeup, but in terms of zoning, more simply, where things are.

Housing, business, residence, industry, commerce. All together, in varying degrees. To get home, you pass the little store on the corner, the laundromat, the lawyer's offices, a strictly residential building, duplexes, houses, gas stations. All these things can exist on a single block. And to go from home to school as a child, and home to work as an adult, you must, on the most basic level, pass them, if not interact with them on a personal level.

But the suburbs are completely different. In one part, you have houses. No little stores, no barbers, no things linking families to the businesses. In the next part, you have strip malls. In these strip malls, you have your shops. Built en masse, 15 stores move in at once. Chains, mostly. Then next to this strip mall, you have your other strip mall. And down the block, another strip mall.

And the exurbs are even more defined. It's not just residential and commerical. It's subdivisions looking at other sub divisions from across the street, or down the block. Park Oak Glens sits across from Shady Pines Vista and every person has their own prefabricated house which looks exactly like the other 64 houses in the subdivision. And strip malls are secondary to the big box stores like the Wal-Marts and Home Depots, and flank them in their own strip mall complexes, and you can even do away with some of the more popular small chains for the homogeneity of the "Every Day Low Prices™" of a single store.


The further out you go, the more physical space you may be able to afford in terms of acreage and square footage, but the less it's actually yours. Obviously you physically own it, but it's exactly like your neighbors. And his neighbors. And the other 62 people with the exact same house in your subdivision. And the fewer stores or restaurants around you, the less you actually choose what you can consume/buy. And if there's the chain strip mall/big box stores, you're really limited in the kinds of products you buy, as are all your neighbors. And independence of how much you can wall yourself off becomes greater, but the amount you interact with humanity as the whole becomes less.


But really, it's just a personal preference. Maybe it'd be different if I had kids. Or if I wanted to buy a nice big house and drive an SUV, and care about things like golf. But I really don't. Regardless of how much money I have or don't have, I don't think I need a 5 bedroom house with a family room, sitting room, dining room, and finished basement for all the kids' toys because they just couldn't possibly fit into a regular sized room. But really, I'll take a city any day of the week.