I have a borrowed computer, and a few minutes of warmth and quiet before I set out for the trains and the suburbs and the final days of my visit. I started this trip with a lot of unconfirmed plans (including where I would be sleeping some nights!), wobbly health, and the sense that maybe it was time to end this New Year’s tradition. After all, my first Chicago New Year was the Millenium, the great ’99 cosmic odomoter rollover. So much was freshly behind me then – college, the break-up of (to that point) the only romantic relationship of my life, my first attempt to live away from the family homestead. Only weeks before I had begun the script-reading internship which eventually became my Hollywood development job. I had finished exactly one screenplay and one full-length stage play. I didn’t know what was ahead and I feared all that I had lost. But I got to see a city I loved, and take comfort from dear friends who wanted the best for me.
There has been so much living in the decade since. Technically there have been eleven New Years’ celebrations in that time. I have spent eight of them in Chicago, and every time I have been able to draw strength and joy from those simple things – the place and the people. I have come here happy, come broke, come broken. But I always leave better.
I don’t know that the numerical roundness of it, or the gray hairs creeping through my beard, are enough to end this tradition. I know it’s colder than it has ever been on one of these trips. I know that my father’s old overcoat doesn’t fit me anymore. I know that my group of friends here has evolved – some of the ones most important to me now I never even knew at school. And I know that something about these trips puts me in touch with the best part of myself, and re-fuels it for another year of life on the sunny coast of Fantasia.