bah.
i bought a bicycle. it's an old Schwinn. little and pink and impractical, as the chain only has one setting, and it doesn't have real brakes; you just pedal backwards to lock the wheels. the man i bought it from said it was "vintage" and that he should charge me a lot of money for it, but i told him i only had $40 and he sold it to me for that. so that's what i do now; i roll my little bicycle out the front gate, i put my headphones on, and i ride through all the alleys.
i try not to spend much time at my parents' house. it's become uncomfortable; the whole city has become uncomfortable, really. i try to sit in the park instead, but i can't. maybe it has something to do with the utilitarian nature of parks in Chicago: they're very much specifically designated for children, dog walkers, basketball players. whereas the parks we sat in in Berlin and Prague, especially in Berlin, just say: here is a public space with grass and benches to sit. or maybe it's because, when i sat in that square in Zizkov, reading my book, i could watch the children standing a few feet away from me talking to each other (speaking that slangish Prague sort of Czech that i was slowly starting to understand; when i first heard people speaking it sounded monotonous and droney, indifferent, but then i realized that it was the obvious counterpart to the excessive, drifty nature of the language) and keep reading, because i had the protection of my foreign book and foreign self.
***
bah. i'm not so much depressed as static. i need something, someone, tell me what i should do, where i should go. i am not good with these great expanses of time.
i try not to spend much time at my parents' house. it's become uncomfortable; the whole city has become uncomfortable, really. i try to sit in the park instead, but i can't. maybe it has something to do with the utilitarian nature of parks in Chicago: they're very much specifically designated for children, dog walkers, basketball players. whereas the parks we sat in in Berlin and Prague, especially in Berlin, just say: here is a public space with grass and benches to sit. or maybe it's because, when i sat in that square in Zizkov, reading my book, i could watch the children standing a few feet away from me talking to each other (speaking that slangish Prague sort of Czech that i was slowly starting to understand; when i first heard people speaking it sounded monotonous and droney, indifferent, but then i realized that it was the obvious counterpart to the excessive, drifty nature of the language) and keep reading, because i had the protection of my foreign book and foreign self.
***
bah. i'm not so much depressed as static. i need something, someone, tell me what i should do, where i should go. i am not good with these great expanses of time.