Good-Bye Chicago

Today I left Chicago for a long time. There will be no going back for at least 12 weeks, and in the mean time, I will move to a new state, meet with "industry people", and, hopefully, come closer to achieving my dream of becoming a film maker. The ride back on the train was a strange one. I left at three on the California Zephyr--a train whose last stop will be my new home in just 9 days. The superliner trains like that, they travel quietly. It was like watching the Midwest and its Mecca pass by me through a veil. The windows were a little dirty, and that sound, or that absence of sound made me feel invisible. I fell asleep for a bit and woke to the sun setting red over the cornfields and wind farms and a text message from my mother. The one time my train is on time, she's running late. But it's for the sake of change. She's applying for a full-time job and a chance to break away from the smallness of Rock Island. I love her.
I am experience so much right now, sitting on my bed writing this. A little loss, a little sadness, but also overwhelming excitement and happiness--I will finally get sunshine and a chance to be who I want to be--a mover and shaker of my culture. And I feel so much love. These past four days I've spent with friends have been amazing. In the three semesters I've spent at Columbia, I have met some of the most wonderful people. People who liked me as I was where I was, and people whom I could love for their creativity and kindness. Today and yesterday, especially, I understood that devout thanksgiving of which Emerson spoke. I will miss these people every day, but with the wonderful knowledge that they will not cease to be a part of my life. They will continue to make me laugh and smile. They will continue to amaze me with their creativity and wit. And, hopefully, I will remain with them as well.
So perhaps it is not loss that I feel. Perhaps I'm a little sore from expanding my horizons and my heart.
My friends, if you read this, I love you. I love each and every one of you, and I will try my hardest to remain with you, even from "my cottage in the Western night."

Wow, this is exhilerating. I'm writing again, I have a voice again, and it's all because I've stopped being afraid for just a moment and counted my blessings.

I'm attaching Part 3 of Ginsberg's Howl. I think it's appropriate in its sentiment, and, partially, in location. I am in Rock(Is)land and soon I will be west. Love it. Chicago, like Rock(Is)land, is an asylum. Get out and join me, Comrades.

                   III

      Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
             where you're madder than I am
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you must feel very strange
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you imitate the shade of my mother
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you laugh at this invisible humor
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where we are great writers on the same dreadful
             typewriter
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where your condition has become serious and
             is reported on the radio
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
             the worms of the senses
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
             spinsters of Utica
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
             harpies of the Bronx
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
             losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
             abyss
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
             is innocent and immortal it should never die
             ungodly in an armed madhouse
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where fifty more shocks will never return your
             soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
             cross in the void
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
             plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
             fascist national Golgotha
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where you will split the heavens of Long Island
             and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
             superhuman tomb
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
             rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where we hug and kiss the United States under
             our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
             night and won't let us sleep
      I'm with you in Rockland
             where we wake up electrified out of the coma
             by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
             roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
             hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
             lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
             spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
             here O victory forget your underwear we're
             free
      I'm with you in Rockland
             in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
             journey on the highway across America in tears
             to the door of my cottage in the Western night