On The Road Again: A Weekend In Chicago

:: What's a boy to do? DJ, my roommate, loves to travel; and I hate to disappoint him. So when he says, "Let's drive to Chicago for Thanksgiving Weekend [Columbus Day for my US friends] to visit my grandson Joshua", how can I have the heart to disappoint him? Hence I am now blogging in the burbs (North Shore Holiday Inn, Room 205, in Skokie, Illinois, to be exact) on a very pleasant sunny, but chilly, Sunday afternoon. DJ is off at church and brunch (Joshua is eight months old); I've just got back from the mall (!) and am settling in to some coffee and surfing on his laptop. Holiday Inn has low cost WiFi here -- US$5 a day. They said it wouldn't work from our room but the signal is good enough.

(I'll be posting without pics, and in smaller chunks, just in case the signal gets flakey. But I was listening to CBC Radio One this morning with good success ....)

So it's still a very nice day and I've surfed around and had some chips and coffee. :-)

Best of all ... I ordered tickets to "Naked Boys Singing" at the Bailiwick Theatre for tonight at 8 pm. Wooohoooo! Eight naked guys sing their hearts out for $10 a tic! For some reason, this very popular show has not made it to Toronto. DJ will be very pleased. :-)

Last night we had a FABulous greek salad (wih anchovies! yahhh!) and then strolled up and down Halsted St (Chicago's main Boystown, also known as Northalsted), checking out the sex stores and novelty stores (Hallowe'en is almost here) and three bars.

Roscoe's was too busy to get into when I was last in Chicago -- Market Days, August 2002 -- but this time we got in. What a lovely collection of sexy young men, many watching the baseball game (the Cubs won). Later we hit SideTracks -- an amazing space with many different cruising areas, heading over to Gentry (a piano bar) where we had a nice chat, and shared a cigarette with, Angelo, who was one very cute man. Yummy!!

The night before we had spent in Lansing, Michigan and had a late night pint at Frank's Press Box -- 100 str8 guys and babes watching about 20 TVs -- again the pre-World Series match, and again the Chicago Cubs won. I was struck by how str8 men do NOT bother to take care of themselves. The gay boys at SideTracks wouldn't be caught dead looking like those slobs at the str8 bar. Don't women care if their guys are hot? Gawd, I am glad I'm gay!!

Posted by Sensualpoet at 10/12/2003 02:12:00 pm | Static Link |

Tuesdays with Tao: Four - Limitless Tao

This week, the limitless nature of Tao is invoked, as it will be a number of times in coming chapters. Consisting of everything, and beyond everything, it's a concept we can't quite grasp because for us as humans, we define something partly by what it is not. Tao is something like snow in a snowstorm on a moonless night; hard to see because there nothing other than snow to look at. ;-)

Four - Limitless Tao A yawning limitless abyss, Tao is never filled yet never drained -- so deep! So stratospheric!
A container for everything in the vast, expanding world, it will never reach the brim.

Embracing, taming all, with an ever-quenching, inexhaustible abundance, it:
  Softens sharp edges;
  Resolves all confusions;
  Tempers glare into gentleness;
  And unites the loose with the whole.

Whence comes Tao? Before infinity itself began!

Comments welcome!

Posted by Sensualpoet at 10/07/2003 12:37:00 pm | Static Link |