Life is a minestrone

Soundtrack: 10CC, but who knew that?
I thought it was Weird Al… most odd

Some members of the audience will understand the title… for the rest of you, well google is key to your age. I promised you a blog a week while I’m here, and already I’m behind. Sorry about that. I’m also already behind on my class work so this is going to be brief tonight. Chicago is amazing. The temperature has gone up and down a lot – hot, cold, cold, cold, hot and back to cold. Apparently the hots have to disappear before they turn the heating boilers on in my apartment building. However, despite the chill my apartment is sorted and somewhere in the next couple of weeks my Australian possessions will arrive and create familiar chaos.

When I’m not in general panic or overcome by loneliness I’m really happy. Routine is starting to arrive: my class schedule is settled (albeit having changed more times than my underwear this week). Tuesday after class is apartment cleaning time, Thursday is washing and cooking day (hence my clean underwear and the minestrone). I will catch up on my reading, although Durkheim and his fascination with Suicide as a major first week’s reading would never have been a therapist’s recommendation for intelligent people, mostly single and without spawn, who’ve just had a major life change. Anyone who’s read it will know the only additional “risk” factor Emile describes is being Catholic. Small mercies I’m spared.

Monday night is choir rehearsal (not in the Chapel) and so next week I’m joining the “Lady Tenors” in the University Choir. Not fully sure I can be a Lady, should be a hoot. My online shopping this week’s been similarly edifying: 5 performances at the Lyric Opera, 7 performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Tallis Scholars. Loving this cultured life, meant to be here to study. Sigh.

And the seat of learning
And the flush of success
Relieves a constipated mind
I’m like a gourmet in a skid row diner
A fitting menu for a dilettante

Who knew 10CC wrote stuff like that? So anyway, tonight I made me some minestrone, topped it with parmesan cheese that wasn’t, it was something else from Wisconsin but hey it was magnificent, and so was the soup. Here’s hoping it’s a portent. (The blue mugs have lids, and go in the freezer for microwaving on future nights of chill that are not Thursdays). Love, W xox

Author: Wendy's Out of Station

I write as a way of processing and reflecting on experience, and as a way of sharing that experience. When I travel I used to write email journals back to friends, family, anyone who’d read and risk immersing themselves in my reality for a while: writing for them was a way of writing for me. Borrowing from Graham Greene in a flip of Travels with my Aunt, I imagined writing letters to my nieces, as their travelling aunt. Crafting the sentences became a way of extruding the experience, giving it birth, drawing its meaning from my soul, nurturing it into something tangible with a life of its own. The aim of my blog is to open the world to my thought-children, to let them out of the safety of my friends and family and let them experience the world. And in the process I get the honour of taking a larger group with me when I’m wandering around India and beyond, or just reflecting on parallel truths, thinking thoughts that take me to new places new beginnings. Please journey with me View all posts by Wendy's Out of Station