We made it to Illinois, a little bit north of Chicago, in Waukegan. Tom Waits mentions the city in one of my favorite songs by him. Tom Waits will be the next to go, He writes about the difficulties of love from a man's perspective. That type of toxic masculinity will soon meet its match in the rising tide of venomous femininity.
Myself, I can't wait for the sexual revolution to finish its business in correcting injustices. I want women to be in charge and to know that they're in charge. It's the only possible way forward. If men are wrong then the reaction to their wrongness as embodied in females can only possibly be correct. Correctness as far as the eye can see, that's the elixir. Victims are always morally superior to their oppressors, and require no self-examination whatsoever. That's just science, or engineering, or math - I forget. Whichever field has the most women in it. That'll be the only new truth - psychology.
But we can hold off on my desires for the time being.
Today we will go have our memorial for Rachel's father. We will put his ashes in Lake Michigan and maybe Wrigley Field. There will be a thing after where people get together and talk. Rachel and I have prepared the soundtrack for this, songs her dad loved. We have explained to Rhys that music is a powerful way to love and remember people.
I will meet the members of Rachel's family that I have not yet met for whatever reasons. I sat up with a few of them last night, chatting and drinking wine. They were having Old Fashioneds, or maybe Manhattans. We listened to the rains outside and felt the cold breeze coming in through a crack in the kitchen window.
People from the midwest are unlike the people I know from Florida, or from either of the coasts that I have lived on. They are suspiciously nice, nearly bereft of snark, and patient in conversation beyond comprehension. I will study them at length today and unravel the secret of their mysteries and nicenesses. I'm hoping that the key to their confounding pleasantries are wrapped up tightly in easy to digest metaphors for baseball, like sausage in a pork beer brat waiting to be bitten into. I suspect that beer and whiskey might help unravel the casing a bit, after open heat has been applied, nestled in a bun, lined with mustard.
If my suspicions turn out to be true and I discover their undoings, don't worry... they'll probably never even let me know. They're that polite. I'll need to be very careful. They let me talk as much as I want, which is always a danger when doing undercover reconnaissance work of this kind.
Will need a disguise of some sort; should have practiced some patois; where the fuck did I leave the Bat Belt....
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