Marian.

Well, it could be her name. There’s a small chance. And an even tinier chance that she’s thought of me.

$2.20 for a few late DVDs and a book. This happens constantly; I’m just doing my part to support the Peoria Public Library system. She wouldn’t take my money, but she did laugh at my desperate questioning and pointed me to a machine that wouldn’t smile back. I paid $5 and the hunk of steel called it even.

She’s a regular, this girl. I’m usually jamming on a keyboard, scowling. Her? An expert at shelving. A Dewey Decimal damsel.

There are days that this is all that keeps you going: straight dark hair midway down the back, a multicolor horizontally-striped shirt, brown cords, shoes and socks.

Hi, Marian.

I went and saw “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” over the weekend and wasn’t disappointed. Purposeful camera work showcasing the gaunt, shadowed faces of the spy world, top-notch acting chops by Gary Oldman et all, and a haunting musical score. Alas, it was more confusing than it should have been – as Roger Ebert explains in his review.

But something stood out in the end and made me uncomfortable (and it wasn’t the crappy seats.) In the orchestral piece playing over the ending credits, a leitmotif centers around strings marching angrily in arpeggios. Sound familiar? Maybe this will help:

Dario Marianelli – “Briony” (click for HQ)

Marianelli won an Oscar for this soundtrack to 2007′s “Atonement.” Melding the sound of clacking typewriters with astounding piano work, it certainly deserved every last accolade.

Now, back to “Tinker Tailor”:

Alberto Iglesias – “Esterhase” (click for HQ)

Any questions?

To my New York friends-

This is a long shot, but do any of you possess an unclaimed Columbia rain jacket? I may have left it behind during my visit. It has no name, but is gray in color and sports a hood.

In an event soon be known as the “Monday Miracle,” I received this reply from Eric just one minute later:

I HAVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I THOUGHT IT WAS A GIRL’S JACKET SO I WROTE ALL THE GIRLS WHO HAVE BEEN TO MY APARTMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TOO FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL CAPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve learned a lesson here somewhere.

And so it is with the wind howling permeating my porous pre-war (alliteration!) apartment that I welcome yet another year.

But first: two parties.

First on the NYE tour was a basement party / band sendoff. The only rule stipulated by the invite? “Don’t be stupid.”

We stumbled down some stairs and into darkness. It was like some sort of psychological torture chamber: hands groping for balance, pulsing music, strange smells. I brought along my only weapon, a new Fuji X10, and it was did well as a camera but quite poorly as a defensive weapon. I was barely able to get 1/4s at 12,800 ISO in that pit. My eyes didn’t fare much better. Occasional breaks were taken top-side.

About one of the party hosts – if I was ever forced to follow just one Twitter user on a desert island, it would be Nate. After recently breaking a chair in his own home, he left it in the middle of the floor and chalked a crime scene around it. That chair soon received a mate just in time for 2012.

We threatened to leave (not because of the chair, mind you) and he broke out a harmonica. That was obviously the last straw, so it was on to the next party.

This group was decidedly better dressed than the basement crowd: not quite Great Gatsby, but a mixture of 30-something former bandmates and their now wives/girlfriends. Throw us all in a festive house generously opened to us by the Maags and it was a remarkably fine finale to the evening.

Somehow, in the midst of prepping with noisemakers and booze, we missed the actual transition to 2012.

But to you, dear readers, I’ve been gone a whole month.

My flight back to the doldrums was no cakewalk. 90 minutes aloft, in what resembled the agitating action of a high-efficiency front-loading washer. Turbulence, constant and hellish.

Before each and every one of you jump on my back in a race to call me a wussy (or worse), let me assure you that this was different. ‘Twas that famed “clear-air” variety, which sounds a lot more pleasant and refreshing than imminent peril. And although I’m no pilot, ours seemed big fans of using the rudder in a perfect mimicry of a car skidding on ice.

I made one critical mistake. While gripping my tray table with dual vise grips, fully convinced that a parachute exit would be preferable, I notice the flight attendant at the front of the cabin. She picks up the phone after hearing the familiar DING DING of the cockpit’s call, then spends a good 60-90 seconds just listening and saying very little.

While still on the phone, SHE STARTS PEERING OUT THE WINDOW.

That’s when I lose my shit. The phone is set back in the cradle, then she stands there looking very deliberately around her work area. 30 seconds later, she picks up the phone again and manages to squeak out something about seatbelts and their importance before the plane pitches down and my stomach finds its way into my throat.

I distinctly hear the cartoonish “dive” sound you hear in old war movies – rrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR! We’re still a good 45 minutes away from O’Hare, but a decision has been made to bring this baby way under cruising altitude. The very same flight attendant now has her flight manual out, flipping through what I imagine to be the emergency evacuation procedures.

Some people never learn from their mistakes (see figures A, B and C.)

A 2009 tornadic storm dipping and weaving through farmland south of Peoria.

You may want to skip this. Nobody likes hearing about dreams.

I was living in something approximating the offspring of a mobile home and a house tent. Warnings of a dire storm had me battening down the hatches, zipping any windows and walls shut.

I turned around to survey my humble place; clearly visible through my front window, the inky black maw of a tornado churned with abandon. The idea of being paralyzed with fear seems so ridiculously silly until your body slows with hardening cement and your heart works to dislodge itself.

After an eternity or 2 seconds, I frantically grab a nearby camera with fixed 20mm lens, aim and fire.

Two frames of that twisting wreckage through my window, probably blurry.

One frame of flames licking across the eaves of the house across the street. My roof feels absent.

Two frames of the tornado rushing forward, enveloping said house in debris. I’m still inexplicably ignoring my motor drive.

Three frames of the house exploding, birthing a bright fireball of hell from blackness. My brain is a full 500ms behind what my eyes are relaying.

And then it’s upon me. I dive into a closet, wrapping myself in a pile of clothes, and know deep inside that I’m not going to make it.

All I feel is disappointment. I’m an idiot. And now I’m finally going to die from being one.

Then, amid the din, voices. I quickly crawl toward them, shouting to ask if they have a basement.

They do.

But I’m outside in the open air and it is silent. The funnel has moved on, leaving a terrible void where the neighbor’s house once stood. Dark clouds hang like shredded cotton in the air, stable at last.

One of the voices belongs to a friend’s mom. She’s asking if I have any good photos.

I flip on the screen; there are the half dozen frames that I remember. And then there’s the dozens more that I don’t, awful shots of people pulling away from the tornado, their faces taunt in nauseous agony.

Wake up.

____

So what does it mean? I count four things.

1. I briefly chatted with Lauren right before I fell asleep in my chair. She’s the friend with the mom.
2. I read this yarn in Esquire last week
3. I really enjoy my Panasonic GF-1. It’s my knock-around camera of choice.
4. I need to get much more sleep.

The author as a senior, trying to keep his cool. Uniforms were mandatory.

I‘m going to tell you that I’m in Wichita for the express purpose of attending my 10-year high school reunion. And you’re not going to believe me.

I may have a screw loose.

This is the whole enchilada; tailgating at the Bishop Carroll homecoming football game against our crosstown rivals Kapaun Mt. Carmel, a campus tour of buildings unfamiliar, and a swanky formal at a downtown art gallery to cap the weekend off.

Never in a million years would you have caught me even considering this idea. But I’m unable to find any downsides.

I’ve heard “Yes Lord” nearly 300 times. “Thank You Jesus” repeated a meager 230 times. She points to the ceiling like a football player after a touchdown. “That one made it to heaven,” she says to no one in particular.

Suddenly, she pauses: “Can you hear me?” We wonder if she’s addressing God or Verizon.

6 minutes later, the call is finished. And she begins singing.

Chicago Theatre marquee, 1952 (Hoagy Carmichael Collection, Indiana University)

Hoagy Carmichael croons from my apartment like he hasn’t since the ’30s and ’40s. What prompted that? This McSweeney’s video mixing writing process with roasting beans.

Our farmer’s market is hot – no, torrid – for a Saturday morning. I still don’t understand the appeal of hosting it on a parking lot, but I deal with it. No fruit, sadly, but veggies are becoming plentiful. I pick up a half dozen ears of sweet corn, along with a couple of squash and cucumbers. A loaf of cinnamon-chip bread rounds out the bounty. I eat a filo-bread breakfast without eyeglasses. Oops.

There was a double-feature at the Apollo Theater in downtown Peoria. The Blob & The Girl Can’t Help It. I like both.

I sit down at the bar, but not for a drink: I’ll take a hamburger with Swiss, please. The bartender is cute with a dash of punky, and I’m out of practice in flirting. Or I never got into practice in the first place. The place is relatively dead, but I sit there silently after a quick high-five from another bartender that I’ve known for years. The recognition feels great, but I’d be lying if I said that I felt happy.

Back to my apartment with my hamburger. I fire up a Garrison Keillor podcast and devour every bit of it.

I’ve been on the porch long enough to notice the moon sneaking sideways across the leaves. There’s a man who keeps walking back and forth on the street, checking his phone and occasionally dropping loose change.

My citronella candle continues to flicker, mixing with both the moonlight and sodium vapor streetlamps, and I’m a content old man.

Writing-wise, I share things on the page that would mortify me if they came up in casual conversation, but these seizures of self-disclosure are triggered by the imminence of tongue-loosening deadlines and vertiginous health insurance premiums and should therefore not be confused with me at the post office, where I tend to study my boots and mumble.

- Pg. 159 of “Truck: A Love Story” by Michael Perry

I just finished this book and feel lost. Not because it was a bad book; in fact, it was folksy and comfortable like any summer reading should be. But where do you go from here? I have the intimidating “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace on loan from a coworker… but that just doesn’t work well with ice tea on a porch, does it?