Posts tagged `Allison`

Go Western, young man!

Disclosure • This blog entry deals with a lot of people and a lot of places. Although nothing I could divulge has any reasonable expectation of privacy, I am still hesitant to include too much identifying information about parties who may not wish to be associated with this blog or its content. I am largely eschewing the use of any names beyond mine and Allison’s, including any relevant fraternities or sororities.

The Rising Action

I spent the past weekend in Macomb, Illinois, a little bucolic ‘burb in the middle of a vast stretch of corn and grass. In any other circumstance, this sleepy little town of about 20’000 people would be entirely unexceptional—it is quintessentially Midwestern, by which I mean that it is quintessentially dull. Officially founded in 1830, it didn’t gain its famous feature—Western Illinois University—until 1899. It enjoyed a brief relationship with the St. Louis Rams, who used WIU’s athletic facilities for summer training from 1996-2004.

I made the 3-hour drive west to see my girlfriend, Allison, who began her undergraduate studies there this fall, as you may recall if you read this rag regularly. We’d planned it for close to a month—I knew that visiting was a categorical imperative for me, but it was just difficult enough to remain an occasional thing. Sadly, no surprise visits or unexpected trips. Read more…

§1381 · September 27, 2006 · 2 comments · Tags: ,

This one’s for you

One week ago, I helped Allison move into her dorm at WIU. It’s been an interesting week since then for the both of us—she’s getting used to college and dorm life, I’m suddenly faced with an abundance that’s both nice and horrible, and we’ve both had to adjust to the long distance relationship paradigm.

Allison and I and her graduationI don’t know how people did it before cell phones and digital photos. For all the asking people did about how we were going to manage, I admit that we seem to be doing just swimmingly so far. Long distances change the dynamics of a relationship, but it’s not always a deficiency: when she comes home for a family reunion on Labor Day weekend, or when I go down to visit her in late September, or when we celebrate our 4-year anniversary in October, the meetings will be that much sweeter. What’s more, Allison isn’t the sort of person who goes to college to drink and wash out her first year, so instead I get the supreme pleasure of seeing her grow as a person, and it makes me love her even more.

I know you’re out there reading this, Allison: I love you. You mean the world to me.

§1340 · August 26, 2006 · 3 comments · Tags:

æm xii {a stormcloud, vanquish’d}

She is inexorable comings
of better things;
(like the laughter of children,
playing in the ashes of a stormcloud,
vanquish’d)
and She is a terrible pressure (and relief)
that fixes rivers gone astray,
turns brine to milk,
derives a brick or two of gæity
from walls of grief.

She is a holocaustic heat
which flares my dampened match,
and births a heaving heliotrope
with seceding burn of forge,
alight in writhing fire.
She is a conflagrating ring
that traces further aureoles
with bits of blinding white;
and mantle—pushing solemnly the breath—
beneath the bloodred spire.

She is an answer
to many things that never
deigned a question mark;
and pale halos of twilight
that flay pink strips from the stretch of sky;
that swear recidivistic stars
will touch the treeline once again.
but neither ray nor shade bely us:
whether argentine or aureate arcs above,
We will Love, She and i.

§1081 · April 14, 2006 · (No comments) · Tags: ,

That Toddlin’ Town

On Saturday, Allison and I took a day trip up to Chicago to celebrate our 3rd anniversary.

We began in downtown Joliet, boarding a 10:24am train northbound to Chicago. We picked up donuts and coffee on the way there, though during the trainride, I managed to spill a sizable amount of coffee on myself, though it simply rolled off my leather jacket and onto the floor. That’s why you never see any soggy cows, I guess. It’s amazing how big some of the train station parking lots are in New Lenox and Mokena, and how there aren’t any stations in places like Blue Island: people just board in the middle of the street. During the trip, we reviewed our plans for the day, which were carefully researched on the CTA’s trip planner. We had 1-day unlimited passes for the subway and busses, and sheets that said which bus to board at which location in order to get where we needed to be. I also had a shitload of cash for various tickets and for emergency taxi purposes (more on this later). Read more…

§820 · October 30, 2005 · 6 comments · Tags:

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