The night before last I met a rel­a­tive­ly new Tremont res­i­dent for beer and tacos at the Lin­coln Park Pub. We spent near­ly two hours chat­ting about the var­i­ous places we’d lived in Indi­ana, job prospects and how to fix Cleve­land. Yes­ter­day I was going to write more about this, but due to a pow­er out­age, I had no inter­net access. They end­ed up send­ing us home from work at 11, after near­ly three hours of sit­ting in the dark. So, I did what any red-blood­ed Amer­i­can man would do with an extra 4 hours of time in a day; I went shop­ping. I final­ly found a replace­ment hood­ie, even though it is brown, not black, slight­ly dis­tressed and from a com­pa­ny called Amer­i­can Rag. At least it does­n’t have a logo on it and I am now warm. It does have an inside breast pock­et which will be per­fect for my cam­era when I’m out and about.

When I got back to Tremont, Rafiq need­ed a ride out to E.91st and St. Clair so I took him and a friend out there and spent a sol­id forty min­utes talk­ing poet­ry and the artis­tic process with the friend. I’ve for­got­ten his name because I’m a jerk. Friend is going to LA for a few months for some inten­sive writ­ing with a cre­ative part­ner in crime and from the few glimpses I had of the work he has done and has planned, he’s going to cre­ate some fierce stuff.

The weath­er yes­ter­day was the sort that only appears in the fall. Brisk and most­ly cloudy, most­ly nim­bus but ragged in shape and errant in move­ment that light from the sun kept leak­ing around them all and mak­ing the whole day into a fleet­ing gold­en hour.