jiveturkeysuckafool

So I'm blissfully done with the poker on my trip - good god am I sick of cards. At this very moment, I'm sitting in a bar in downtown Champaign, Illinois, drinking:



I haven't lived here in almost 5 years, and the degree to which some things have changed (both predictably and unfathomably) juxtaposed with certain static elements is pretty fucking surreal.

There are new businesses and buildings everywhere in both downtown and campustown, but the periphery of the town conveys a stagnation that's all too familiar in the midwest. The new condos just being completed downtown on the hippest corner in the county will run you $150,000-350,000, but the well-kept, 60+ yo, 4+ bedroom home across the street from my buddy's place 3 miles away will barely squeeze 6 figures from its next buyer.

Walk into a bar downtown on a mid-Saturday and you'll find well-dressed, moderately-educated folks talking about a wide variety of engaging topics, while at any dive bar 2 miles away the third shifters at the pungent Kraft plant are creating a scene that makes Moe's look like Studio 54 in its heyday. It kind of reminds me of the movie Gummo. And let's not even talk about the obligatory black ghetto; it's called the North End here. It's really a microcosm for most American cities, I suppose, but it's so condensed and proximate here that it really slaps you in the face.

Most people that I used to know down here have undergone a sort of excommunication of the soul. They are still largely puerile, despite being on the jumping off point of their 20s, but lack whatever it was that made them engaging 5 years ago - this might be as much about my own changes as their lack thereof, but I'm thinking it's more about the cocoon of false security and worldview-stasis of small-to-mid-town mid-America to which they've decided to subject themselves. They all work dead-end jobs or no job at all, some live at home, a few have married (and are accordingly miserable and lacking fidelity), many have directionlessly spawned a time or two, some have had complete breakdowns.

I guess what's grating on me is the same as always - the big picture is predictable and the details are mundane. 5 years ago I could have (and in many cases did) predicted which of my friends would move to NY, which would go to law school, which would go to non-vocational grad school, which would fester in this cesspool, which would immediately move on to a career track, etc. Where they are in their lives was utterly foreseeable at that point, and filling in the white noise with "content" was as meaningless as it should have been. For those of my friends that chose the path of remaining here, it really hits home on how placidly unexciting it all really is.

, , etc., etc., etc.

On a side note, I am flatulent beyond all things reasonable, and I see no reason for this to change in the near future.