“Pieced Quilt” by Phyllis Palmer and Ann Saunderson; 85’’ by 104’’. Plate 16, Quilts & Coverlets: A Contemporary Approach, by Jean Ray Laury, 1970.
I was working for some time on a post about the folks who hang out in my alley by the Lou Malnati’s Pizza dumpsters. More and more often they are there; there are more of them all the time as the temperatures fall.
But such a topic requires much thought and sensitivity and the post just isn’t ready. It’ll be done by tomorrow for sure, but for now, I’m going to direct you to my latest Quilt Scout column. This is certainly not some kind of sloppy seconds; my column for Quilts, Inc. is far more professional than the ol’ PG. I mean, Quilts, Inc. doesn’t have a monkey as a mascot for heaven’s sake.
The first column for December is about weird quilts and how much I love them (and you should, too!) I suppose the piece is also a book review, but the book came out in 1970: ten years before I was born. It’s a good thing there’s no expiration date on weird.
I’ll get more pictures. You can’t see it as well from this distance but I wanted to show you how much there is on any given day. Maybe I should start an Instagram account just for this! Photo and forensic-looking annotations: Me.
There’s mystery afoot!
Actually, it’s underfoot — and it’s time to blow this thing wide open. I’ve been intending to write this post for months. Here we go.
Every time — and I mean every single time — I enter or exit the southwest entrance to the Red Line subway at Harrison, fresh, multicolored chalk is present on the stairwell down to the trains. These crumbles of chalk are fresh: Without fail, random, chocolate chip-sized chunks of yellow, blue, pink, purple, and/or white pieces seem to have been (very) recently crushed into the tiles in different spots on the landing between the two flights of stairs to and from street level, every time I come or go.
Yeah, it’s weird. I know. But I’m telling you: Someone is regularly dropping colored chalk on the Harrison Red Line subway stairs.
But who? And why?
Maybe the delay in sharing this peculiar discovery with you is due to my embarrassing — okay, delicious — fear that these chalk droppings (ew) are some kind of sign or signifier for a secret society and by noticing it and then cracking the case, I’m essentially making myself a character in a Dan Brown novel: The innocent blogger heroine plunged into the sick, twisted world of…something weird.
The novel — the first in the series, of course — would be called The Chalk Leaver and I would be very, very beautiful i this novel and in grave danger, having poked my nose and my laptop into places it does not belong! There would be a smolderingly attractive, precocious-but-mercurial young man who has crucial information that could be the key to everything — but he’s trapped in the receiving room! I would be on the run from this secret chalk society and at some point, me and the mercurial young man would be trapped in an elevator together and probably kiss. The end of the book would end with me and the mercurial young man in Tuscany, seamlessly blending into a crowd on a piazza. We wear Ray-Bans and…a map. Or something.
The second book would be titled something like Chalkduster and this book would go deep into my psyche as a character but also we’d get a lot of information about the secret society that marks its paths — its secret paths! — with chalk markings. Someone would die. I’m not sure who. Not me. Actually, the main villain would die but it would be revealed that he wasn’t even the baddest baddie and now that he’s gone, the real bad guy emerges in a cliffhanger for the third book!
The third book, Chalk Is Cheap, would be the best one yet, according to the New York Times. I’d definitely almost die. There would be a new love for sure, maybe a tall German…doctor. Something like that. And some of it would take place in the Sahara so that I could wear gorgeous khaki items and Isadora Duncan-y scarves and a pith helmet. There would be something about jewels and stolen art in this book. I would definitely be able to fly a Cessna in this one.
Seriously, though, I am really curious: What’s up with all that chalk at the Harrison stop? Has any other person in Chicago who uses this stop regularly noticed this? It’s kinda driving me crazy at this point; I do want to know. It’s weird, that fresh chalk all the time.
I would like to close on a dramatic note in the spirit of the Dan Brown novel series that is clearly good enough to option for a movie by this description alone. You’re going to help with this. Please imagine me in some kind of physical peril, like… Picture me dangling off of some craggy precipice — or at least imagine me very thirsty and underfed. And I look really good and I have lipstick on. Got it?
Okay, your line is:
YOU: Why, Mary? Why did you ask about the chalk? Just… Dammit, Mary! Why did you have to go looking for trouble? You could’ve just — (You turn away and put the back of your sleeve to your face , ashamed to let me see you cry.)
ME: (Smiling, sweet and frail.) Never stop looking at your feet, darling. You know that. You never know what you’ll find if you don’t look down. I think… I think it’s time to look…down at the world, now…
YOU: (Whirling on me, you shake me; I”m losing consciousness.) NO!!!
Me and Butter! This photo is really a screenshot of a video because the lady who took it (Butter’s mom) had her hands full with Butter and took video instead of just a plain picture. I think it works, anyway.
It’s been awhile since I was a college student — ahem 15 years ahem — I forgot just how stressed out people get at the end of the semester. It’s pretty tense around here.
At the School of the Art Institute (SAIC), “Critique Week” is, I’m realizing, only the half of it. There are still papers due, presentations to make, big projects to turn in, and if you’re studying painting, I suspect you’ve got some painting to do, too. Blech: painting under deadline. Sounds lousy — kinda like quilting under a deadline. I’ve been there, Picasso. You’ve got this. Just take it daub by daub.
The Student Programming Board at SAIC knows that everyone’s freaking out a little bit — Irena who works on the school paper with me has three papers due tomorrow! — so a few years ago they made the final week of school “De-Stress Week.” The Board provides “pop-up” activities around school to help students relax for a moment or two in this busy, anxious time. There was a hot tea bar yesterday, for example, and they’ve served “Breakfast for Dinner!” at the Neiman Center, our student union-y place.
And today? Today, they offered three hours of “animal therapy!” There were pups to pet! I got to pet pups! At school!
I should’ve done undergrad here, too. This is the life!
There were three therapy dogs at the Neiman Center today and I got quality time with two of them: a Golden Retriever named Sedona and Butter, the Irish Wolfhound in the photo. All the dogs were trained as canine companions. As I stroked Sedona’s soft, rust-colored hair, I felt the knots in the shoulders of my very soul melt away. Petting a dog is sogood. As I watched Sedona’s belly rise and fall (she was laying on the floor, the epitome of chill, while four of us students ooh-ed and ahh-ed and stroked her) I asked her handler about what it means for a dog to be trained for therapy.
“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “They have to learn the usual commands: sit, stay, and so on. But they also have to learn not to grab for things like medical equipment, for example. Tubes, machines — sometimes those things look like toys or interesting objects to them, you know? We don’t want them to lick too much. And they have to be okay with strangers.”
I was a stranger to Sedona and Butter for less than two seconds. That’s how they both made me feel, anyway.
Wanna know a secret?
I’ve been thinking seriously about getting a pet. More later.
Mmm. Chocolate-y and hot and vanilla-y. Photo: Wikipedia.
WARNING: This post is full of admittedly lame stereotypes (e.g., women love chocolate) and also conclusions drawn from non-scientific data. Enjoy!
You will often find me enjoying a hot beverage in the afternoon. Sometimes, I drink alone. Sometimes, I will have female company, such as a sister or girlfriend. Other times, it’s a fella I’ve got with me as we order drinks and then try not to burn our mouths on our drinks.
Maybe I’m at a rehearsal and a male colleague and I pop over to Starbucks for a quick break. Maybe a hot beverage occurs because a gentleman and I are on a date in the afternoon and we decide to do something cute, like walk, and a warm drink sounds like a good addition to the moment.
Yesterday, because I was with a dude and we got hot drinks, I realized something:
Dudes like hot chocolate. It’s a thing.
I’m making this claim because I have a ton of anecdotal evidence to support it. (Please add your own evidence in the comments and let’s see if we can really give this silly, useless-but-still-interesting-slash-endearing observation some legs.) Here are four examples of guys liking hot chocolate. I’d like to call them Choco Case Studies.
Choco Case Study No. 1
Technically, my first date with Claus was when he saw me performing onstage at the Green Mill and we stayed up talking until the wee hours. But our first official “Do you want to go with me to _____?” date was at a restaurant on Michigan Avenue the following afternoon. I, being hungover and a lady, ordered a kir royale — and Claus ordered a hot chocolate. This struck me as adorable, especially after my second kir royale. Over the course of the next 18 months, I would see Claus order many hot chocolates.
Choco Case Study No. 2
My friend John? Hot chocolate-holic! He’s always drinking them, even in warmer weather.
Choco Case Study No. 3
Juan Carlos, a new friend I’ve made at school, suggested the other day that I could come hang out at his photography studio and work on my big project for my Design For Writers class while he finished preparing his critique. “We could get a lot done,” he said, then: “We could have hot chocolate.”
Choco Case Study No. 4
Why, just yesterday I had a bite to eat with Brian, another new school friend who also works at the newspaper. When the waiter put down our mugs — it was the brunch hour — mine was full of coffee. “What did you order?” I asked, eyeing his cup’s foamy top. “Hot chocolate,” he replied, and took a swig. This is when I realized a pattern was emerging.
What is it with dudes and hot chocolate? I don’t know any woman who orders hot chocolate unless she’s ice skating or carolling.
Personally, I don’t order hot chocolate because I usually have some kind of chocolate in my purse, which means I’ve probably recently had some chocolate and I’m good. This always-at-hand chocolate leads me to order a black coffee, for example, when making my hot beverage selection. Do men order hot chocolate more than women because they have low blood-chocolate levels? If this is the case, we need to fully support these hot chocolate orders.
Perhaps men like drinking hot chocolate because it’s an historically manly thing to do. I did some research (e.g., googling “what’s the deal with guys and hot chocolate?”) and it turns out, history is full of stories of conquistadors and explorers drinking great quantities of hot chocolate on their travels and pillages. Robert Falcon Scott trekked through Antarctica in 1912 and survived (at least for awhile) on stew and hot chocolate. Before that, Aztec heavy Montezuma drank something like 50 goblets of it a day. Even if a goblet is not that big, that’s a lot of cocoa.
Maybe “guys” don’t drink a lot of hot chocolate at all; maybe I just happen to know a bunch of guys who do. Maybe I’m dealing with grave confirmation bias.
Or… Oh, dear. Maybe all the Choco Case Studies I cited are flipped around entirely and I’ve really got this whole thing wrong. Maybe Claus, John, Juan Carlos, and Brian have all thought at one time or another, “Why is it that when I’m around Mary Fons I want to drink hot chocolate?”
From Wikipedia: “Spc. David Kocian from the PA National Guard’s 28th Combat Aviation Brigade teaches a yoga class at Camp Adder, Iraq. The 21-year Army veteran began teaching yoga during the 28th CAB’s mobilization when soldiers showed significant interest upon discovering he was an avid student of yoga.”
I have committed myself to doing a difficult thing. I didn’t want to say anything here until I had actually begun the thing because I suppose I needed a head start or something. Here goes, for accountability’s sake:
Today was Day 2 of my 30-Day Bikram yoga challenge.
Bikram yoga, for the uninitiated, is a 90-minute yoga class that takes place in a room heated to 105-degrees. There are 26 postures and two breathing exercises; you do everything twice. The room has mirrors at the front and side. Everyone basically wears slingshots and hotpants because within 60 seconds of practicing the yoga, you are positively drenched with sweat. To say something is “hard” is to make a qualitative, subjective statement, I realize. But Bikram yoga? S’hard.
If you’ve been reading this blog from way back, you know I used to be a real Bikram nut. Almost daily, you’d find me in the hot room. I once did 100 classes in 100 days straight just to prove I could do it. I also did it because there is nothing, nothing like the feeling you have when you finish a Bikram yoga class. Even the ones that almost kill you — especially those. And I believe that several of my surgeries went better because I was doing regular yoga. Who knows? It didn’t hurt.
So why did I stop? In the past eight years since I found Bikram yoga, I have ceased my practice twice.
The first time I stopped was because something really awful happened. It’s so awful that it’s hard to say it but I am so buoyed and encouraged by the past couple days’ post comments, I truly feel like I can do anything — and that nothing feels better than telling the truth.
The first time I stopped my practice was because my ostomy bag leaked in class.
Yep, I did hot yoga for a number years while I had my ostomy. (I talked about it a couple times including in this post.) It was a pain. I’d tape it up with athletic tape and the top of my shorts would come up over it and I got so I timed when I ate and when I practiced so that nothing would be, um, active during class.
But accidents happen. I was doing the spine series, which meant we were all on our respective bellies doing locust and cobra poses and things. Well, I had a leak. When I got up to flip around and do the next posture, I had leaked onto my towel and mat. It could have been so much worse. But it happened. I just quietly gathered my towel and held it against myself, grabbed my mat and gave the teacher a, “I’m okay, but I am leaving now” look — I still remember what teacher it was and where I was in the room — and I didn’t come back for a long time. Maybe a year?
It wasn’t just the leak. I was probably burned out, which means I was probably doing the yoga for the wrong reasons or something, I don’t know. But I was so tired of being afraid that my worst fear would come true that when it finally came true, I had an excuse to rest. I think that’s called “giving up” and you know what? Sometimes, we give up.
But not for good! I returned! I was once again sweaty and half-naked in public while I was living in NYC and it was good. But then everything got so sad and tumultuous with Yuri. I tried to practice when I got to D.C. but I just didn’t have it in me. This yoga is the best medicine for anything — heart, mind, head, body, all of it — but it takes commitment and determination. All I could commit or dedicate myself to in D.C. was trying to learn a new world and let go of Chicago. I’m thrilled I gave up on that one.
So why now? Because I miss myself.
I miss hanging out with the me that can stand on one leg in 105-degree heat as sweat pours from the top of her head down into her eyes. I miss seeing that girl in the mirror. I feel like I’ve been making choices lately that aren’t serving me at all: late nights, too much wine, stuff like that, and I feel bad and sad about that a lot lately. It’s gone on too long. Besides, my shoulder still hurts terribly bad and my knees, too. I’m a jalopy right now and Bikram yoga is a body shop. In 30 days, I’ll walk out of there looking and feeling like a Maserati. Trust me. I’ve done it before.
So, yes. Every day. Thirty days. I promise I will not write about yoga much. But I’m doing this. For me. And now there’s no turning back the cat’s officially outta the hot, sweaty, bag. Gross!
p.s. Is there a Bikram studio near you? Wanna do this with me?? Woah, that would be so cool!!! There could be prizes!
