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I'm in love with the planet I'm standing on

I woke up, 10 o'clock this morning, swaddled in the virgin white sheets of the most luxurious, enveloping bed I can imagine. I was downtown at the Lumiere, Marc's bachelor party was the night before. A properly classy affair -- burgers and beers at the Morgan street Brewery (dodging tourists and hopelessly drunken Landing skanks), a little casino time, and a couple of drinks and cigars (well, I chomped on mine, smoking one would make me ill these days, but I love the aroma/texture once in a blue moon) on the 8th floor terrace of the very fancy Four Seasons (aka the Neon Mohawk). It was brilliant -- good friends, a relaxed, thoughtful and fun night, good food and a few drinks. Brotherhood. That's what it felt like. I hope everyone else had as fantastic a time as I did.

So I awoke in this hotel bed, my head sunk back in a downy pillow, hazy sunlight oozing into the room from a crack in the drapes. My week long bout of anxiety and the unshakeable tension in the pit of my stomach had evaporated. Entirely! Don't get me wrong, I was a little bit worn out -- six and a half hours of sleep after staying up till 3:30 in the morning, four or five beers over the course of seven or eight hours. It wasn't a real hangover, but a hangover lite. The best kind, the kind that I find invigorate me the next day if experienced in great moderation. I feel compelled to live my life to its fullest on those occasional, pleasantly and vaguely drowsy Sundays. I rarely drink more than a beer or two at a time anymore -- I loathe a hardcore hangover. I refuse to have them, and I prefer moderation in all aspects of my life, anyway. But I digress. I was shaken up and shaken loose. I threw open the drapes and stared out on the city skyline, looming larger than it actually is, yet also revealing the smaller, yet more intricate and historical buildings, that the glass & steel skyscrapers usually obscure. It felt nice, and I felt renewed and ready.

After a light lunch and saying goodbyes to my friends, I strapped on my backpack and headed out. I walked through the city's comatose Sunday downtown, past the random tourist and unidentifiable goings on in the vast, unnecessary space of Keiner Plaza. I walked down past the bank towers near 8th and Pine, down past the recently spit & polished Federal Reserve, past the Old Courthouse and turned up onto Market, gazing up at the ornate tip of the Civic Courts building, past the dilapidated yet stately City Hall. I bought my metro ticket at the arena station, got three bucks in dollar coins back in change (a favorite of mine, for some reason -- maybe cause it reminds me of having a pocket full of pound coins in the UK), and miraculously only had to wait a couple of minutes for a westbound train to amble along and take me back to Grand. I walked the couple of miles down Grand, cut through Tower Grove and back to my 'hood, catching up with a few put-off phone calls from the spaztastic week prior. I got home, threw down my pack, grabbed the weeks-old "Best of STL" issue of the RFT that I'd been saving to savor, and headed for Mokabe's. Back down my street, past my landlady leading a walking architectural tour of the neighborhood, and along to Arsenal, past the southern boundary of the park and the kickball leagues playing games, drinking cheap canned beers, and laughing with delight.

I arrived at Mokabe's, at the corner of Grand and Arsenal, what I always think of as the center of the beating heart of this city. I ordered a nonfat latte (a bit fancy for me, but hey) and tipped the barista well. Karma matters. Not just with coffee, but in general. Maybe that's the three years in California talking, but it's something that I think about constantly these days. Perhaps it's simply a variant on the old "golden rule", but either way, it's how I try to live my life. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. But I digress...my frothy cup of coffee slid out onto the counter, and I headed out to the front patio to leisurely sip the cup, and read the behemoth RFT "Best of" issue. Cars, bikes, and city buses rolled by, mixing with the chatter of the groups outside at umbrella-clad tables. I occasionally glanced up from my paper with a smile, a bit of froth on my upper lip, and filled with happiness at the sight of a couple eating and reading together, or few tables occupied by solitary college girls engrossed in studying for grad school entrance exams.

I finished my coffee, took the deepest breath I'd had in a week, rolled up my paper and turned the corner onto south Grand, down a block past the bookstore and the pawn shop, before making another right onto Hartford, past the Mekong, its Vietnam-outline neons, and empty bevvy of sidewalk tables, and back west towards my place.

It was at this point that I was hit by an overwhelming sense of joy! Contentment, maybe. What it felt like was my life slipping into place, my edges falling into the grooves of my surroundings. The changing leaves were rustling, their fallen comrades crackling under my feet as I strolled down the sidewalk. October is the best month to be in this city: fall is sliding in underneath summer's tag -- crisp mornings coexisting with warm, indian summer days, the tree-lined streets ablaze with color. The stately brick of the brownstones on the neighborhood streets were whispering their well-kept secrets to me. I had never in my life felt as much a part of something as I did then, and as I do now. I felt like I had found my niche. That's how I feel a lot right now. I pondered this as I washed my hands in the bathroom at Mokabe's -- St. Louis is my size. I'm not a oversized personality, I'm not a New York or Chicago or San Francisco. Those places dazzle me, but they're not me. But I'm not a small town guy, a country guy, or even a sleepy small city guy. I need some combination of big and small, and that's what this place feels like to me, especially in the last five or so years. It's finally figuring out what it is, what it was and what it can be. St. Louis isn't a world-class city, but it's a wholly unique place, and it fits me. I fit here! I'm not a faceless entity, I'm a functioning part of the society. I'm a neighborhood resident, I'm a writer supporting local music and the local arts scene, a photographer documenting the environment. I was filled with an immense sense of pride, relief, and happiness at seeing my first batch of album reviews published on the Playback site. It's not Rolling stone, but who the fuck cares? I'm proud. Of myself and of my fellow writers, of the editors and everyone who works to make this thing happen. It's immensely fulfilling, and it adds to my overall sense of belonging. I just can't get over how well this is all going -- I love being able to hang out with Steve on a regular basis, and that Hinge and Marc and my sister are a hour or two away. I love parties and concerts and lazy weekday late afternoons on the Loop; I love making new friends via Flickr and Playback and meeting them at great city pubs and talking music, politics, art, urbanism...everything. I don't know exactly what to call all of this, but it feels like life, and it's so fulfilling! It makes me feel whole, like an entire person, balanced between the technical and the artistic, the regimented and the loose. I feel myself becoming a better person -- not perfect, not by a long shot. I'm deeply human, deeply flawed. But I try to live my life in a way in which I attempt to improve on a daily basis. It doesn't always happen, but there are definitely net gains. I feel like if I'm not moving forward, not trying to push myself, not striving for self-improvement...well then I'm not living. And I can't think of anything better than living, than life, than breathing in and out, than being here. Makes me think of The The, Lonely Planet. "If you can't change the world, change yourself." See, I think you can change the world, but you can't affect the world until you first work on yourself. Wide scale change is brought about through small scale, incremental changes. If you improve yourself, you might improve your neighbor, they might spread that along to their neighbors. It spreads virally. Again, it comes back to karma. Do unto others. The tip jar.

It's early Sunday evening, I'm tired from last night's festivities and from walking six miles today. Tired but satisfied, ready to kick back and while away what's left of this day. Listen to a few more albums for review, eat a light dinner, watch the sun set and dusk descend. Iron a few shirts for the week. I think again of Matt Johnson -- "I'm in love with the planet I'm standing on."

then / now