Zen and the Art of Pumpkin Pie Eating

Dear Everyone Who Is Putting Christmas Decorations Up, and THAT DOES NOT EXCLUDE YOU, WHOLE FOODS: You are hurting my feelings.

We are only allowed to talk about fall and Thanksgiving at the most. Here is an example of an appropriate interaction this time of year, which in fact occured happened as I was typing via the text message:

Boyfriend: How many pumpkin pies should we have on Thanksgiving? One each?
Moi: Le duh, and one for each cat.

(I like to text in French.)

My homeboy Josh Ritter knows how to fall it up. I want this. Christmas is coming.

I know I have been mega neglecting this here blog, mostly due to this here blog. I sure have given you people enough new blogs to follow in the past few years (Kacie, I can only hope you deleted "Mari and Jesus" from your Reader), but I am dedicated to posting on this one every single day. Except Sundays. Similar to God, I need a rest. If you are not interested in men's fashion, nor Baltimore, it is not the blog for you. I suggest you read Feminist Ryan Gosling instead. Who would not be interested in a feminist Ryan Gosling? Nobody would not. That sentiment necessitated a double negative.

In October I went to Chicago. When I was not talking about myself ad nauseum to various loved ones, I did a lot of staring out of the El window, and feeling sorry for myself. One afternoon when I was riding past Roscoe Village on the bus, I got so nostalgic that I started crying. But then I realized I was singing out loud on the bus to Taylor Swift and it killed the mood a bit.

One of the best pieces of advice e'er bestowed on my head was Jon's reply to my question: "When it comes to my butt-crazy emotions, how do I just be zen about it?" Jon said in his Professorly Jon Way, "You say to yourself, 'Hm. That's a feeling. Now I gotta do a thing.'"

So, in the case of my visit to Chicago, whenever I'd start getting in a Monstrous Nostalgic Funk Fest for no reason, I'd think to myself, "Self, that's a feeling. Now I gotta eat a pie in a pumpkin."

Isn't it always the little things you miss about a place? Standing under the El tracks, for instance. Why on earth would I miss that strange activity? I was always worried about pigeons pooping on me. What a thing to miss.

I didn't really start loving fall until Chicago. When I was younger, up until college really, spring was my favorite. I still have a very special place in my heart for spring. I love Easter, I love rain, and flowers, and sunshine, and I cannot get enough of baby birds. It reminds me of that really beautiful scene in "The Secret Garden" when the garden starts blooming and a choir of angels or English girls starts singing and Mary finds herself, and if you know what I'm talking about, I love you.

Chicago made me love fall because I hated summer so much. Is that not a terrible reason to love a season? Sad but true. I was sweaty and upset during a midsommer El ride after my sophomore year, and I didn't understand why I was in such a  funk. Joe and Jon, in an effort to quell my quiet sobs, started telling me how it was going to be "sweater weather" soon, and I did not know then that those two words would hereby officially change my life. We started talking about the things that would be happening to us soon and very soon: Cider! Leaves! Pumpkins! SWEATERS! ("Sweaters" was a very important word to me in 2006.)

Now how I love this quiet season, the one which prepares the earth for new life. The one who rips the ground apart to keep the little lives of trees and snails warm all the long dark winter. The one who gives you shiny days to roam pumpkin patches, grey days to reflect and shut up and write in your journal about how you need to become a more grace-full girlfriend, a more reliable friend, a more thoughtful Christian, a more passionate life-liver.

Thank you, Chicago, for giving me this love of mine: this season which teaches me so much about God and life, which illustrates both leaving and coming home, which reminds me that things change and things become better. People change and people become better.

I worry a lot that I'm not changing enough, I'm not growing enough. All I really want to do is become more and more of myself, but I worry that maybe my Chicago Self is still in Chicago eating pumpkins in pie or walking around Graceland Cemetery, or buying gourds at Gene's to put around my Lincoln Square room or even taking the Blue Line back to my West Town room wherein I felt the first chill of fall through my window last year and it meant that everything was about to change dramatically.

Then I come back to Baltimore and realize that my self is altogether very much here, in this place where I had always thought I'd live. Even when I was an itty-bitty, I used to tell people I wanted to live on the east coast. Well, that's how I remember it. Maybe I used to tell people I wanted to live in a vat of macaroni and cheese. But in the memory of my posh continental childhood, I wanted to live on the east coast. Dream: realized.

My hot pink iPod is still on Chicago time. I thought it would change by itself, but it's a pretty solid midwesterner. I smiled when I looked down to see that it displayed the proper time as I roamed around Chicago. It seemed fitting that one little item in my luggage wouldn't want to leave.

There is no Chicago Mari still eating pies in pumpkins in Chicago. I mean, when I'm visiting, that's one thing, but there is no Alternate Me there right now. It's probably a no-brainer to you, but it's a bit of a jarring thing to realize. When I walked down Michigan to see a few new stores (Top Shop! Magnolia Bakery! Man, that Prairie City has gotten swanky!), I was surprised I didn't know about them, that no one had alerted me, that my internal Chicago Self would betray my own memories. There is no Chicago Mari Life to jump into and take off where I left. There is no Chicago Mari keeping tabs on new bakeries on Michigan Ave. Oddly enough.

There is only the Baltimore Mari. Baltimore Mari, who lives in a neighborhood where Poe roameth (roamethed? What is the past tense of roameth? KJV Online Bible, help me out?), with shutters and wrought iron fences and lamp posts and statues of colonial-types on horses. Baltimore Mari, reunited with the ocean (though with a different name), who bikes on cobblestone streets (ow) and falls in love every day with a different building (she's a player).

Baltimore Mari walks through a neighborhood that can only be described as the Wrigleyville of the Chesapeake (pink polos and all), actually LOVES it, spots a man drinking scotch and reading The History of Love with his dog outside a pub with a clipper ship logo, under the most beautiful apartment window seen outside of Pinterest, and thinks "What could be more lovely than this moment?"

For real.

Baltimore Mari misses the Sarahs.

I heard once, in Philosophy class, or maybe it was just outside Philosophy class, that to live this life means to always be lacking something. This world is far from perfect, this body far from whole, this soul far from complete.

But lacking anything, I find, brings a whole new something into my life. The night is the absence of day, but is also the addition of mystery, silence, solitude, pensiveness. (Or a dance party, if you are that way inclined.)The absence of warmth and bounty is winter, but it too brings on its own set of blessings: snow, light, life-affirming chill. Those in mourning or going through break-ups know that the absence of a person can make them all the more present.

Chicago, I am just now seeing the ways in which you formed me. I didn't realize until I left you that so many of my revelations came about while walking on your urban beach, that your trains gave me the best excuse to devote 1.5 hrs a day to reading or listening to music or thinking thoughts through, that your fall was the first fall I truly adored--and would set the standard high for all falls to come.

Good thing Baltimore has the most beautiful 68-degree red-leafed chilled-sun fall this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.