Time Warps and Cheeseburgers

Ann Arbor to Chicago. I'm sitting in a high rise hotel in Chicago this morning, big fluffy pillows, too many of them. They are all small squares and really, way too fluffy for comfort. The room is artfully Euro styled, minimal and chic. Browns and light greens. There's a chaise lounge. I wonder about the choices of furniture in these hotels. Does anyone really use the chaise lounge? I sleep and shower in my hotel room. I don't hang out. If I'm checking emails, I'm sitting at the desk or bringing the laptop in the bed. I guess one might linger over morning coffee with the Chicago Sun spread out on the chaise lounge in their bathrobe. Maybe. I wouldn't. I'm just coming and going here.

Ann Arbor. The Ark. One of my favorite rooms to play. Great sound, friendly and supportive volunteers. Good wine. And popcorn. What's not to love? An old college roommate showed up and we ushered in the morning catching up. 

Chicago. The Uncommon Ground on Devon. Another nice room, more of a stage set up in a restaurant, so you can't help but sometimes feel like you're only a few steps from Dinner Theater (and when I was an actress I made a proclamation that I would take almost any job with the exception of 2: Rennaissance Faires and Dinner Theater).  The silverware clanging.  It is a lovely room with good food (amazing mac & cheese). Two more college friends showed up. Haven't seen them in almost, yikes, 20 years. Again, hung out, catching up.

So I'm thinking of the past a lot as I'm driving through time zones, back and forth, losing an hour, gaining an hour. That space in between. My old friends haven't changed a bit and yet, everything has changed. Its tempting to get idyllic and look at the past through rose-colored glasses, wanting it all to match some guidebook like the cover of the Amherst College Alumni magazine, fall colors around Johnson Chapel on a perfectly groomed quad. But it isn't that. It was that once in a while, and then sometimes it just wasn't. Michael my friend last night said that its amazing how all of us are just fucked up in our ways and I said, well, if we're all fucked up, then we're all just normal, so maybe we should stop calling it fucked up.  He also mentioned a boy that I had a crush on who never asked me out had a crush on me. People are stupid. Scared and stupid. Missed opportunities out of fear. Makes me want to pick up the phone and end a long-standing silence with an old friend. Bury the hatchet. Makes me want to go back to that quad and take my shoes off and twirl in the grass, unafraid if its cool or not. 

Today back over the time zone warp to Michigan. That's a photo of the band at the diner in Ann Arbor eating cheesburgers before the show. I should have eaten. It would have helped stave off that wine hangover from the night with my roommate, hanging in her backyard drinking wine until 4am. But I think the hangover kept me quiet and reflective the next day, suffering in the back of the van. I got to look at some old memories, turn them over like a page of a photo album.