End of the year! End of the year!

I'm sick. I think I am developing the flu. I am hormonal. I am fresh off the press of my best friend's wedding. I am in love with life. Giddy for no apparent reason. Exhausted. Maybe my giddiness has to do with delirium from the fever.

I am hungry. It is the end of the year! The end of the year! My brother is convinced that this is our year. I am too. I was all smiles and friendliness on the plane and made a plane friend. I was all smiles and friendliness on the train after the plane. Especially when the street performer got on. I knew him.

I'd seen him for years on the streets of Michigan Ave, in all his silver statuesque glory. He was an ok MJ dancer, but his commitment to standing still was impressive. At first, I wondered why his silver costume was so thick and heavy, even in the summer, but eventually I got used to it.

Ten years I think I have been seeing him....which is why when he got on just a couple stops after O'Hare I was inclined, in all my happiness, to talk to him and thank him for years of delightful entertainment and for building for me a Chicago downtown experience full of nostalgia.

But before I could open my mouth he began to speak. His voice, heard for the first time by me, was resonant, easily carrying over the full but not crowded train car. Was he asking for money? Not entirely surprising, but a small disappointment. But no, he was not asking for money. He was preaching, and we became his unwilling subjects.

I began to feel trapped as he insisted on my evilness...he spoke of being saved and how the only way we could go to heaven was to accept JC as our savior. Not the false gods Buddha, or Muhammad or Mary. Who was Mary, he asked? He talked incessantly, each minute seeming an hour. The couple behind me, also fresh off a plane and loaded with suitcases, looked amazed to be having their very own Chicago crazy experience. They hid smiles behind their winter gloves and determinedly continued to stare at their subway maps.

He kept mentioning that by the time we were in our graves it would be too late, and we would NEVER get out of that place of double hockey sticks if we died before recognizing JC as the only God...and I felt....really dirty. Because it really was hatred and ignorance being spouted, intolerance, really, and judgment, and assumption. And I found it hard to stay connected to the Love of God in that moment. My world was shattered a bit because I never would have thought this man would be so....black and white and forceful about his world and opinion. I did not think I would ever be fearful of having a conversation with him because he might remind me of what an awful person I am.

Suffice it to say, my happiness was dampened for as long as it took for me to get home and into the warmth of my own apartment. I still have it with me....the happiness. Along with the flu....

Happy Holidays!