Me being in Chicago in the summer has become kind of a joke. My friends all laugh. So he’s back. For now. Like I couldn’t help myself. And they laugh again when I say I’m going to say. He’s said that before. It makes me feel stupid. Has this whole life been a mistake?
I got stuck. It wouldn’t let me go. I wanted to find work and stay the last two summers. I tried. But something always went wrong.
I wanted to get out of this lifestyle. I wanted off this crazy ride. They all think that it is very fun to be free. It isn’t. Or I’m not free, or something. I am scared and poor and broken and the world moves by too fast. I can’t even hide how scared I am any more. I shake like a leaf. Maybe it is just diet.
Art and writing will never be some miracle solution. I was wrong about that. I will never be able to get over myself to be the kind of artist that I would have to be to make money and solve my kind of problems and even if I did I lost interest in the whole pursuit when I look out at these crazy people and this disgusting world they chose to live in and how there is no room for art anymore. Not inside of people’s minds. Silly thoughts don’t pay the bills. That is what scares me the most. It scares me because I believed so hard, and that belief was stupid.
It’s like finding out that God isn’t real all over again.
We joked on the Paper Trail that some day the Moon Ladder would come.
The moon ladder was the ladder that hangs from the moon that we’ve been waiting for. It’s a silly symbol of the slow crawl away from society. It’s the impure hope for fame and money. It is the escape from the rules and regulations of this planet.
DCam would get angry at us because we sounded unprofessional and the curators would think we were taking this whole thing too lightly and all that just made the joke funnier. It was a code. The art world was bullshit. We came for the booze and the money. It is the secret that nobody wants to tell you, so they blather on about the meaning of their pieces. The meaning of my pieces was always very simple: this is Hell. And they called me whimsical.
Anyway, this joke became a philosophy. All of a sudden I was using the terminology with a serious face and a serious heart because I know that I am waiting for the Moon Ladder in every way that I could. I am preparing myself. Sharpening my skills. Building a stronger, governmentally funded financial scheme.
BUT!
For all of that to work I have to survive here in Chicago. I need for this landing to stick. I need a break here. I cannot take this much longer. I have kept myself intact for the most part but I no longer have what it takes to make it “on the road” inside of me. This is where I have to wait for the Moon Ladder. From a grimy studio with a beater and a screen printing set-up.
If it never comes that sounds like a good enough life for me.
The list of things that could go wrong this year is pretty full between waiting on the VA for multiple papers and ratings. There is the looming danger of finding out how to afford going to school for one month without being paid to do so. Then there are the things that can happen which nobody could count on. The kind of things that make you drop cheese on the floor in the grocery store and then pack everything up and go somewhere else because everywhere reminds you of somebody who isn’t there any more. When those things happen it is inevitable that drinkers will drink, smokers will smoke, and runners will run away. And I am all of those things.
Please wish me luck. I need very much of it right now.
Love,
Otis
The Paper Trail 
It’s funny, I was feeling down about something stupid (love) about two months ago and said the same thing about “it feels like finding out God isn’t real all over again.” like those words out of my mouth. But then things were Ok again.
I’m still not good at surviving. I get bored doing one thing. I just lucked out with a low cost of living.
I wish you were here more than anyone, I wish that I had the ability to bring you here magically, you’d probably be pissed at first but then I think you’d like it ok. At least I wish you could come here because I’d feed you but it’d just be like, Tater tots.
Would it make you laugh to know that I’m dating a sideshow freak? He holds a Guiness Record for most clothespins (the wooden sort not the plastic sort) on his face. He has unusually stretchy skin and an obession with putting found/stolen objects in the secret rooms under overpasses. Tonight we snuck away at 10pm to put a 5 foot tall plush rastafarian banana (originally won at Circus Circus according to the tag on it) that he found in a thrift store in the overpass rooms. To go with the voodoo shrines and jellyfish made of fabric on the celings and stolen lawn and road signs and I think I have really weird taste in men.
I also found a secret park last week, but it was really hard to hike to. They built a wealthy private fenced in burb-clave over the entrance and then the state of California conveniently forgot about the park, but I got in. Supposedly there’s a ridge full of fish fossils at the top but never got that far because the trails were not kept up anymore and it was also really hot out. I found a dozen birdhouses that had fallen down and a really pretty grove where i think there used to be nature classes. I think it’s fucked up that rich people can deny everyone access to a public park because the entrance road happens to pass through their private land. Fuck that I just hopped the fence.
Sorry for Hijacking your Blog.
Luck!
Good luck, friend. See you on the streets of Chicago, maybe. I need luck too.