for you dan

you have made it through, spongy and magneto, horse and pig. you were among the first packed and now you are unpacked, sitting amid santa and missus claus salt shakers and thrift store kittens one without a cranium and used to store matches. this place has shelving and plant life. there are onions present. i can listen to any cd i can hunt for, because any semblance of order has been taken from them, an illustration of the futility of a life spent organizing cds. we had a party for the abandoned monkey, and the monster bowling pin left behind and unthought of. yesterday an orphaned wheelie pal, a caterpillar with the artifice of four wheels to improve on evolution's foolishness in not bestowing caterrpillars without wheels, made it home in a plastic storage cylinder, a bug in a jar. i am glad i am here because i belong here. i moved to this neighborhood at the terminus of last century because the rent was cheap and because it was the perimeter of the old wicker park and here i am again, as a renter, feeling at home and in place. i have met strange echos from the past in the form of my downstairs neighbor, who moved out as i moved in, who was my old cta companion twelve years back, and remembered my face immediately. while i was off getting married buying a house and having a baby here she was all those years with george, her husband, who had the mifortune of dying a year ago and has now managed to neglect the gardening, being dead. i promised her i would garden this place and carry on his legacy and the task of removing their old possessions from an old haunt bothered her exactly one iota, give or take an iota, less and now i must plant ferns and bulbs. i have crossed the x axis, i need to be here.

you are a welcome friend wise one.