Dear Chicago

I don't know why I let myself look at blogs. I don't have a husband to rave about or perfect craft creations to promote-----enough. No more looking at blogs. (No offense. And I don't mean I don't have things to write about because of course I do, everyone breathing has things to write about, but I'm tired of blogs that make me think me and my life of breathing are not enough. George Banks is saying no.)

Once upon a time before I was disillusioned, I attended the BYU hunger banquet (this was also before the hunger banquet became the super sized and morally uncomfortable production that it is now) and purchased a small braided bracelet for a small sum from barefoot girls with pity full eyes. As I slipped the bracelet on my wrist, I thought of the phrase, "The poor are always with us" (name the movie and I'll give you the bracelet). The brewing cynic within hollered over my intentions to remind me that poverty is not a trinket you remove when you wash your hands, nor can I purchase an understanding of it.

Oakland is another story, another voice in the city scheme, and with a timbre unfamiliar to my ears. Today: I saw a man's bare bottom as he rooted through a trash can next to the bus stop. I heard a teacher scream her voice away as she supported an injured child down the hallway to the office. I saw students come to school three days after one of their classmates was shot to death by another of their classmates. I saw The Soloist at the movie theater and recognized Robert Downey Jr's arrogance as my own (clearly the solution is to bring my lifestyle to as many people as possible--integrate them into my reality, rather than integrate their reality into me)...

And I resent myself, even as I write this, because it's still just a bracelet on my wrist. I feel slightly proud of my "inner-city" experiences and the way my eyes are opening to the "harsh real world" outside of "the bubble." Please. I'm as far from the man sleeping on my curb as I've ever been. I like to say that the distance is mostly fear and lack of resources, but I'm afraid it's not.

This topic is depressing me, so I'm gonna throw in some pictures of the mortuary I visited on recommendation (thanks Bob!). This was my first mortuary visit--if you've never been, it's kind of like strolling through a giant library of old books. Only the books are full of human ashes. (I don't mean any disrespect. That's as accurate a way as I can think to describe the place.) I both smile and cringe at the notion of a literal human library. I used to think that my family members weren't cremated because of the resurrection, but it doesn't seem right that millions of people won't get their bodies back because they didn't know they were supposed to keep them in human form, not to mention decay and deformity. That is the craziest miracle I can imagine, thousands of books of ash converting into people.