Chicago, Dude

This was the question posed to me this morning by my big brother and I answered no, I don’t. After the call, I don’t know if I told the truth.

Looking back on my decisions in the past, I can say that I would have done different and probably should have done different. But, I didn’t do different.

I’ve always been conscious. I’ve always known karma to be real. I knew when I was doing right and I knew when I was doing wrong and I never blamed the devil or the people I wronged. It was me. I did it.

Claude says face the consequences of your actions with the same vigor as you had when you committed the action and I guess that’s why I don’t regret. I did what I did and now I live with the effects of my causes.
I’m happy with my pursuit of happiness.

I told my three year old that I would take her apple picking and now she asks to go every minute of every day though the trip isn’t for three weeks.

I realize that she has no sense of time and I began to wonder what joy that must.

I am so bound by time that I am constantly looking for the time. I look to my bedside clock, my watch, my phone, my microwave; I even glance occasionally to the lower right corner of my laptop to see the time.

I am a slave to this sixty second system.

I envy my daughter’s freedom. I long to be able to live each day to the fullest and not be concerned about the next one.

Maybe that is the goal in life. To break free from the bondage of time. Maybe.

If you know me, then you know that I was raised in Oakland, California affectionately called The Town by any and every good Townster. If you don’t know me, well you know now that I’m from The Town.

So, you may be asking, how is it that I am now the Chicago Dude?

I’m not.

It’s actually “Chicago, dude.” My official response to all those that have lost touch with me, reconnect, and ultimately ask me, “Where do you call home now?”

I love Chicago.

There really is no place like it. There is so much to love and so much to hate. You can’t find any place else with the perfect blend of change and the resistance to change like Chicago. In two words:

Soldier Field.

Every day, I awake with the certainty that I will come face to face with uncertainty.

Every night, I go to sleep knowing that this city has changed me.

How can you not a place like this?

Where do I call home?

Chicago, dude.