Connor Coyne

It has been a long time since I’ve posted here, but of course, these “intermissions” are not unheard of in the history of Blue Skies Falling, and they have become lengthier and more frequent in the last few years. In the first few years that I kept this blog… basically from 2003-2005 and from 2005-2007, I posted a great variety of content with few interruptions. There was a long interruption in 2005, 2007, and a six-month break in 2008. There have been more breaks since then, and the current lapse is, I believe, about three months.

I enjoy blogging and given the current line of work I am doing, media consultation, it is not unhelpful to my career. But it is also very time-consuming, and with so many major life changes underway, I have to rank this a somewhat low priority.

That said, a lot of the damage has been in the sheer disarray of the last several months. From around Thanksgiving efforts for the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia kicked into high gear, and I didn’t really have time for anything else through mid-December.

After that had concluded, there was actually a lull that lasted for about a week, but I wasn’t going to spend it blogging. I was enjoying the fullness of a long and mild autumn giving way to a white and wet and gorgeous Chicago winter… I was reading books, watching movies, catching up with my friends. Dealing with very important preparations for not-so-future events. And getting ready to move. There was a trip for Russian food. There was a trip to see the Nutcracker. There was a Christmas tree which I bought and dragged home even though I had only gone out for a wreath. There were meetings and consultations with new clients (that’s right, now I have “clients” instead of “bosses”).

In the two or three days leading up to Christmas, I packed two years of frenetic and memory-drenched things (like the first season of Taxi) — I’ve been back in Chicago for almost as long as I lived in New York — so that when my parents arrived for a visit on Christmas day, the furniture was all rearranged and the boxes were stacked high. Early the next morning, the movers came and we absconded to the new place in glamorous Edgewater Beach.

The week between Christmas and New Years was completely consumed by moving. There was a lot of stuff to clean and take care of in the old place… the purple and blue and shamrock green and salmon pink walls had to be painted back to the same shade of dull bone white. By by the time New Years Eve rolled around (and after a particularly dizzy all-nighter), I was sleeping in very late, and the old place was locked for good.

New Years Eve and Day were a delight, surrounded by friends from Chicago (where I haven’t celebrated that day in years) and a good friend from Flint who made the trip down for the holiday. We celebrated from a loft in East Garfield Park with a spectacular view of the Skyline, but got home easily. The next day, we met with friends for brunch, a trip to the Garfield Park conservatory, and pizza and games. Two days later, a two day trip to Kentucky. Two days later, I had a hospital procedure that has knocked me somewhat out of commission for the last week. Although I did manage to make it down to Hyde Park last Saturday for a magnificent 16-hour marathon of the extended version of the Lord of the Rings movies.

It was worth it.

This isn’t just a prolonged excuse… or even mainly. I know the numbers show that not many people stop by here anymore, and it isn’t likely that any of these excuses for my hiatus will ever be read.

But I also think it is important to document times like these… the frantic, inescapable, mazey, insomniac times that (thankfully) only seem to crop up for a couple months once every year or two. The feelings that bubble to the top when you move around heavy and fundamental things deep down are, of course, a very peculiar sensation and they generally preserve the atmosphere of these times far into the future. But the actual steps involved… the craziness from one day to the next… this is also worth remembering.

It’s worth taking the time to write down for that reason alone.

Sometimes, if I get onto the CTA platform and an outbound train is waiting with no inbound train in sight, I’ll hop on the outbound train and ride north, and catch my train to work further up the line. It’s fun. It adds a little variety to my morning. It means I’m more likely to get a good seat, and if someone looks like they need a seat, I can always offer it to them (something many passengers are not always inclined to do). In the past I’ve ridden as far north as Thorndale, which is three stops out and about two miles away.

This morning I added a bit of a gamble to this game. An inbound train had just left, an outbound train was waiting for me, and the next inbound was just setting out from Bryn Mawr, less than a mile away. I hopped on the northbound train, got off one stop up at Berwyn, and caught the southbound train just as it pulled into the station.

It didn’t save me any time.

But it was fun, and that’s what Fridays are for.

Navel Gazing:

This has been the fifth cycle of four years since I started giving years names. High school and college made firm the pattern of lumping them into four years (maybe each year approximates a season?) but life events have, for the most part, had an odd way of conforming more or less closely with this. The first cycle was maybe the strongest exception. I started out in one city and ended in another. I started out having been home schooled for over four years and ended by going into the third school building (after elementary school and junior high) in three years. But the second cycle of years conformed neatly to high school and the third to college. The fourth cycle was marked by low-paying temp work, a lack of career focus, and the frustrating shuttling back-and-forth between Michigan and Illinois. The one steady stream throughout the whole thing was my girlfriend who, appropriately enough, I married at the end. We didn’t plan our wedding with this in mind; it just fell out that way. After Belize and a trip to New York the next cycle started; early marriage. My wife and me against the world, so we divided that time between Chicago and New York, and I got my MFA and she got her own degree and now we’re expecting to add another human being to our family. Again, we didn’t plan the timing this way… this “major event” once every four years. But here I am and things are just heating up as another cycle of four begins. When the sixth cycle ends, my child will be four. And I wonder what I would have thought as a child, as a fourteen year old who decided to give each year a name, if I had know what those names would be and what they would portend.

Year 12 (when I was 11) was the year of Stellar Fire.
Year 13 was the year of Summereve (whch I did not know was the name for a feminine hygiene product).
Year 14 was the year of the Trampoline.
Year 15 was the year of the Mask.

Year 16 was the year of the Storyteller.
Year 17 was the year of the Broken Mirror.
Year 18 was the year of the Counterflood.
Year 19 was the year of the Agit.

Year 20 was the year of the Power Sack.
Year 21 was the year of the Hunter Divides.
Year 22 was the year of Delving.
Year 23 was the year of Conjunctisylphistry.

Year 24 was the year of the Horizon Divides.
Year 25 was the year of the Bossy Big Toe.
Year 26 was the year of the Synchopated Sailor.
Year 27 was the year of Deep Wells.

Year 28 was the year of the Shark’s Lullaby.
Year 29 was the year of the Hidden Rain.
and year 30 was the year of the Magnet Castles.

The year that has just passed (mid-June 2008 until tomorrow) is officially named:

THE YEAR OF SOMEWHERE SOMETHING

1. RADIOHEAD – MY IRON LUNG
2. MOBY – EVERLOVING
3. WALL-E – DOWN TO EARTH
4. ELISABETH BLAIR – DUCK DUCK GOOSE
5. TING-TINGS – WE WALK
6. NINE INCH NAILS – THE GREAT DESTROYER
7. THE GO! TEAM – LADYFLASH
8. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES – ENDING THEME
9. WEST SIDE STORY – SOMEWHERE
10. JOHN CAGE – 4′33″
11. THE SMASHING PUMPKINS – G.L.O.W.
12. THE WHO – WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
13. THE SWANS – LOVE WILL TEAR US APART
14. CANNIBAL CORPSE – I WILL KILL YOU
15. THE PRODIGY – VOODOO PEOPLE
16. PAPA WEMBA – YOLELE
17. SUFJAN STEVENS – STAR OF WONDER
18. LOUIS ARMSTRONG – WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD
19. THE BEATLES – DEAR PRUDENCE
20. PRINCE – COMPUTER BLUE
21. KATE BUSH – CLOUDBUSTING
22. SPARKS AND SPOOLS – GARDEN
23. LOU REED – WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
24. THE LEMON PIPERS – GREEN TAMBOURINE
25. PATTI SMITH – BREAK IT UP
26. THE UTAH SAINTS – SOMETHING GOOD
27. LAURIE ANDERSON – O SUPERMAN (FOR MASSENET)
28. AIR – RUN
29. BJORK – EARTH INTRUDERS
30. BJORK – DECLARE INDEPENDENCE
31. WILL SMITH – MIAMI
32. EMINEM – SAME SONG AND DANCE
33. APHEX TWIN – AGEISPOLIS
34. RICHARD WHALING – THEME FROM “PAINT SMASH”
35. LADYTRON – DEEP BLUE
36. PEARL JAM – OCEANS
37. MADONNA – SKY FITS HEAVEN

10:30ish tonight. I think there’s a $7 cover. You know, at the corner of Larry (Lawrence) and Broadway: http://www.greenmilljazz.com/

The Patricia Barber Quartet: http://www.patriciabarber.com/

Feel free to show up if you want. Or bring anyone you want to. Or don’t show up at all.

But whatever you do, have a lovely day!

~ Cx31

An abundance of squirrels. There are millions of them. I’ve never seen so many as this year. About a month ago, I noticed something; when I visit Michigan, squirrels are prime candidates for roadkill. But I never see roadkilled squirrel in Chicago. So have the Chicago groups evolved (or learned) that cars are common, and deadly?

Raspberries on a tree in an overgrown vacant lot in Canaryville. They were gooooood.

Countless lightning bugs. Amazing bugs. The Michigan farms win, because there’s nothing as magical as a thousand fireflies lighting up over a fallow field. But it’s pretty cool to see them flash bright by the dozens in front of brick tenements.

Noisy birds nesting.

My pepper plant has sprouted bell peppers.

But (alas) the days are growing noticeably shorter. Chicago summer is brief and bitter this year. Bitterish, but not bitter.

Buzzing mosquitoes.