Clark  

Clark 

Clark Stacy at his best 

F%*&!#@ $#^&!

That's what has gone through my mind over the last six days. That's what sums up my emotions since I heard that Clark Stacy committed suicide on March 18, 2005.

I don't know how to describe the anger I feel over his death. I'm enraged another person has fallen to depression and accepted that stopping one's heart is easier to deal with than whatever lot God has given to them.

I'm so pissed and sad at the same time. Could this be a righteous anger? Righteous anger at myself for not probing him more when I had worked out with him at the gym? Righteous anger for not being a better friend or an R.A.? Righteous anger at knowing exactly what depression looks and feels like and not recognizing it earlier in Clark? Righteous anger at the community in which he lived in for being intolerant or ignorant of his true problems and for doing nothing? Righteous anger at being part of that community?

Probably all of the above but also none of the above. Answers in a time like this are harder to find than the guilty snowflake that initiated the avalanche. Answers always come slow (if at all) with tragedy or with understanding the multi-faceted disease of depression.

So many factors are involved in depression and suicide that they can only be understood after extended periods of doubting God and yourself; periods of knowing who God is and knowing who you are. There isn't any trick or guidebook on how or how not to be depressed. God created us all too creatively and with too much ingenuity to have some magic formula that would cure all people everywhere. If there was a god that simple, who would care enough to be in wonder of him or worship him?

An aspect of depression I've known is how alone you can feel. Yes, there's that community of believers, that congregation representing the body of Christ, that fellowship that exists anywhere two or more are gathered in his name. But those can all cease to exist when a person is depressed.

A scary fact to realize is that in the middle of all those things, a depressed person can want to have no part of any of that. Congregations or fellow believers are usually avoided because a depressed person has probably heard too many spiritual clichés from people who don't understand depression. The sick person might rather want to burn down a church around themselves rather than look for the God who is supposed to exist inside it.

And is that what happened to Clark? No one will know because, as some of his closest friends have said, he didn't show any signs of anything being wrong. Some depressed people can win Oscars for their portrayals of a person who has it together because they wouldn't just tell that person on the phone that they're planning to take their own life. It's just not your typical dinner conversation.

I don't know what kind of answers to give right now. I've cried and am sure I will cry, grieve, yell and say more things worthy to be replaced by asterisks, ampersands and exclamation points in the near future. I know that depression is a powerful beast that cannot be ignored. It can drive man to a violent death rather than listen to someone genuinely wanting to help. It can numb the most exuberant disciple into a fetal position, longing to catch a glimpse of the God he used to know.

I know that sometimes, God, in his usual omnipotent and omniscient way, will become real again and seem to be sitting right behind me. He will be more visible through relationships and fellowship and will wash over me in the honest words I exchange with friend. And until that time, I guess we'll see what my faith is for.

A Familiar Need

My day is brightened many shades when I can hear the 90s hour on local rock-stations. And luckily in Chicago, this comes twice a day, at 9 a.m. and at noon, thanks to the alliteration.

My mind is soothed to hear Chris Cornell scream through "Spoonman" or Scott Weiland wail through "Wicked Garden." These are songs I lived and matured by in high school and will always consider familiar. They represent a time in my life that I know intimately; a time that I look back on and instantly grow happy.

The happiness doesn't come from a lovely experience from that time of life (junior high and high school aren't times that I'd like to relive) but more just from being reminded of something I am familiar with.

That familiarity brings security. I know every guitar riff and bridge of "Cumbersome" by Seven Mary Three from repeated listenings. I know exactly what will come after the chorus, "I have become cumbersome to this world" and I can rest easy because of that. This is something I know. This is something I can follow and not get lost. I get exuberant knowing that the next line is "And my girl."

You wouldn't think that a successful college graduate would need such trivialities as decade-old songs to bring them peace in their lives. But I do. You'd think that a person could find this kind of familiarity and peace in a relationship with the Almighty, a significant other or congregation of believers. But sometimes some people can't.

And because of this, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' cover of "Love Rollercoaster" manifests a safe haven where a person can relax, because the listener knows what comes next. The listener knows the future, at least for another 1 minute and 36 seconds.

I know this kind of peace is utterly insufficient to meet any kind of real need but it does remind me of the peace and comfort I need to find in Christ. I know that no number of playings of any of 90s songs can bring any lasting peace, only the kind that make me yearn for the true kind that comes through the Spirit.

Crouching What?!

There are many hours of the day where I have to listen to a police scanner and hear cops relay incidents that happen in the city.

There's always calls of "shots fired" or of a 10-1, which is a cop calling for backup. Some of the dispatchers who talk to the police and relay the messages can be enjoyable to listen to, as some receive ridiculous notifications. "Mrs. Adams called and said that some youngsters were outside playing loud music and misbehaving."

But the other night, a dispatcher relayed a call of "Crouching tiger, hidden prostitute."

Crouching what?

Yes. Apparently, someone called from a cell phone to say that a lady of ill repute was crouching behind some bushes and the caller wanted to report it to police.

Hearing that got my hopes up of hearing other possible calls. A gang disturbance in one of the larger hispanic neighborhoods (La Vallita) called in as: "Big Trouble in Little Village." A person stranded on a boat in Lake Michigan: "Seabiscuit." And so on and so forth.

Grow Up

It seems that growing up means realizing more who you are and knowing your own faults and habits and then working to function well in spite of them.

For me, I've come to realize that I'm lazy and will always settle for whatever is "good enough." Conversations with my mom help me to see that it runs in the family. Conversations with friends help me to see how much potential I have. And conversations with those closest to me help me to see how much it affects others.

So in order for some college graduate to be able to move on into the next stage of life, be it adulthood, a better-paying job or more fulfilling relationships, then it seems I have to stop being so lazy.

I could put my talent to use (besides just blathering on in some blog) and write novels, screenplays, free-lance articles that could land me better jobs and help me grow up a little. I could write that stereotypical Great American Novel and get published at the young age of 20-something, insuring cash-flow and a much-coveted income so I could continue to write passionate books that tackle life as we know it today.

But then I'm sure I would get lazy again, since I could roll out of bed any time I felt like it. Have my private Italitan chef Gianluca whip up a greek omlete that melts in your mouth. Try to find something to watch for a half-hour on my satellite television (even though it takes at least 45 minutes just to get through all the channels or watch the preview channel).

I'd lounge around in my papasan chair with a White Russian in one hand and an electronic solitare game in the other until I fell asleep. That would be soooo lazy.

So maybe I won't write that passionate, enthralling novel and condemn myself to a life of excess and laziness.

Maybe I'll just keep writing a blog and use my time better. Maybe I'll not watch so much T.V. Maybe I'll read a little more for fun and write a little more fun. Maybe I'll be a more proactive in my friendships and in finding a better job. That will be more than "good enough," I'm sure.

Under the Radar

The other night I followed a story that would never make it into the papers due the nature of the crime and the result.

The police scanner sqauwked about a possible burglar running around in the gargantuan Merchandise Mart on the Chicago River. He had apparently robbed some store on the fifth floor and maced a couple of security guards.

Police requested multiple canine units to the Mart to track down the burglar. The burglar was first spotted the burglar at 10:30 p.m. one night. They searched for him all night and at one point had cornered him, armed with mace and an automatic handgun, in a stairwell on the eleventh floor.

The scanner didn't provide further details and security guards in the building said all night long that police had not found the person. The search was discontinued at around 6:45 a.m. the next morning because they had not found the man.

In the morning, the police were still lingering around the Mart, and were even holding up Chicago Transit Authority Trains at the Merchandise Mart stop, forbiding anyone from entering the trains at that stop until 7:45 a.m.

Being that the whole fiasco sounds like a scene from Ocean's Thirteen, and that Chicago Police were made to look like good ol' flatfoots, the story was not picked up by any of the news media.

It's Rolling Rock Time!

I recently spent over an hour sitting in my car with a friend of mine talking and bonding outside his apartment building. Afterwards, we both agreed that we should have just gone to a bar and talked there, rather than steaming up my car windows.

That would have been the perfect time for a Rolling Rock, Sierra Nevada or Blue Moon straight from the tap or in a chilled stein. Such a time of fellowship would have been greatly enhanced by a dark room, some rock music playing in the background, and little bit of moonshine to loosen up our minds and tongues.

I'd take of swig from a green bottle and consider what a true friend this guy is because of his honesty and vulnerability. He's telling me stuff he hasn't told other friends because I'm a guy who has been one of his longest-lasting friends.

And then he throws out his surprising opinion on one of my current relationships. I didn't see that one coming at all but appreciated it all the more just because he felt comfortable enough to put it out there; a possible grenade between friends that could end all conversations and send us each running in opposite directions.

But it didn't. The comment did the opposite and solidified the friendship even more. Such honesty would surely have been magnified if we both had a blood alcohol content of .o1 or .o3. I'm sure situations like these are why God let human beings create such an atmosphere as a bar and such a drink as beer.

Discombobulated by Normalcy

I woke at 8 a.m. this morning and I didn't know what to do. Somehow I've gotten on to a normal person's schedule and I don't know how to act.
Should I go back to sleep since I have to work tonight? Should I make the most of my conscious time?
I hate being in such a dazed state. You can't quite settle in to doing something normal and I almost feel like I have to just entertain my brain long enough to get tired and go to sleep again.
Besides getting a 9-5er, anyone have any ideas of what to do with the odd hours of consciousness that come with a vampire's schedule?
O, Sweet Normalcy. Come back to me.

MAN SHOT 9 TIMES IN GOOD CONDITION

(The following is what would not make it into the papers about gang initiation in the city.)

Over the weekend there was a report of a young man shot 9 times.

The story unfolded little by little until it was discovered that he was more than likely initiated into a gang.

Saturday night the police scanner squawks out that a person was shot 9 times. He was shot twice in each wrist, four times in the buttocks, and once in the elbow. He was in good condition at a hospital after he "flagged down a passing car and got a ride to the hospital."

The person's description of the shooter was a man wearing a black ski mask and all black clothing, which is not especially common for a city with many, many street gangs. This person would be easy to find, seeing that no one ever wears black ski masks while doing something illegal or wears all-black clothing at night.

Something else very odd was that live ammunition was found at the scene along with spent shell casings. So maybe the shooter happened to absent-mindedly empty out his ammunition sometime during the shooting.

It was later discovered that a way for young punks to get into a gang would be to get shot in the foot, buttocks, or some other non-lethal area of the body. Police see it all the time and almost laugh when a young guy in his 20s shows up at the hospital with a non-lethal gunshot wound. The "victim" usually is not transported by ambulance but by a friend who will drive them to the hospital. The "victim" also is beligerant and refuses to give a good description of who shot them (more than likely because it was a fellow gang member that did the deed or because it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound).

This is just one of the many unsolved mysteries of Chicago, like the city's $225 million dollar debt and a $415 million dollar Millenium Park recently finished.

On Becoming a Vampire

I woke up today at 11:15 p.m. for the first time in my life. My new schedule of working overnight is beginning to set in. There's been many a time where I stare in disbelief at the alarm clock in my room but it's usually because it says something like 6:45 a.m. or 10 a.m. But not 11:15 p.m.

The transformation to becoming a vampire is almost complete for me. I start to cringe at sunlight, go grocery shopping at 3:30 a.m. and try to call people before I go to sleep in the morning. Now I just have to develop a taste for the blood of young, beautiful, Victorian women.

My vocabulary changes a bit as 'late,' 'early,' 'morning,' and 'night' cease to hold any real meaning and wither away like the some truly effective simile that can't come to mind at 3:49 a.m. I begin to truly understand existentialism since all that is real is the immediate atmosphere around me and the last two or three hours since I woke up.

An all-night Starbucks becomes my outlet to feeling like I'm having some human interaction after the rest of the Chicago goes to bed. Even though I sit in a corner, and speak only a few words the couple of hours I'm here. "I'll have a tall coffee." "Yeah, leave some room." "Okay, I can move while you clean this section of the store." "No, thanks, I don't know how to play chess." "No, I can't give you money to get into the Vietnam Vet's shelter because the rum on your breath tells me not to. Was that Malibu or Captain Morgan that you just had?"

The Starbucks is the best option to keeping my schedule since I already know what it takes to win at Elimidate and how I can make thousands of dollars by buying and rehabbing old homes. Late night television can't occupy the restless mind that is used to interacting with people and being stimulated by human conversation.

And since I know of the no great independent coffee house that stays open all night, Starbucks will have to do.

And hopefully sometime while I'm here, I'll have one of those moments when the coffee kicks in; when my minds seems to clear up; when I can suddenly see the bigger picture of what's happening in my life. I understand why I feel like God has been disappearing little by little from my life. I see what sucks about my job and what is truly to be cherished and held on to like a true gift from the Provider. Why human interaction and true fellowship is so necessary and as nourishing as an all-natural, vitamin-packed slushie from some colorfully decorated juice store chain.

Now if only I could get the baristas to change the Muzak playing over the store's stereo so I don't have to listen to every single song Norah Jones ever sang.

True or false

Would this really happen in Chicago or is it just a guy trying to pass the early morning hours? You decide and post.

A car driving erratically on the South Side led to a shootout in which police shot and killed a murder suspect from a three-month old homicide.

The car fled police as officers tried to pull it over. The suspect car then sped onto the express lanes of the Dan Ryan expressway and crossed all four lanes to veer into the local lanes, during which it hit a sand barrel, side-swipped a semi truck and then rolled over onto an off ramp. Police crossed the expressway to arrest the driver, who dropped a revolver onto the ground after climbing out of the crumpled car. Police tried to use an electric taser gun to apprehend the hefty driver until the man pulled out a semi-automatic MAC 10 gun and fired at the officer.

A gun battle ensued on the expressway until backup officers arriving at the scene shot and killed the man. No officers were hit in the exchange of gunfire on the expressway.

The suspect was first misidentified at the morgue and found to be a non-criminal. However, police later rightly identified the man and found he was wanted for a three month-old homicide.

Hmmm. Sound like something from a John Woo movie or an actual police shootout?

A would-be bank robber at a Far South Side bank was shot and paralyzed by a bank rent-a-cop while trying to rob the place with an accomplice.

Would a rent-a-cop have that good of a shot?

A man who didn't want to pay a cab fare died after leaping from a moving taxi on the Kennedy Expressway and was then hit by another car.

Are there really people that stupid living in Chicago?

A truck with Mexico license plates was found parked in a private parking spot. Sitting on the front seat was 50 pounds of marijuana in a black trash bag. On the rear bumper was a sticker that read, "Report all drug smuggling to U.S. customs."

Too ironic to be true?

A woman came to a police station, claiming that police had arrested her son for cutting off a tracking bracelet from his leg. The woman didn't realize that Chicago police don't give leg bracelets, which are controlled by the Cook County sheriff's. She became extremely belligerent after the desk officers repeatedly told her that the bracelet was not handled by the Chicago Police Department. Police had to threaten her with a taser gun to get her to leave the station as she refused to listen to them, insisting that officers had beat her son.

She began praying loudly in the lobby for her son, whom she thought police had beaten. She then began to pray against the police officers and that the blood of her son would be stained on all the officers in the station. She came within two minutes of being arrested by officers for no reason other than causing a disruption at the station.

Too imprecatory to be authentic?

BORED WRITER WRITES

Chicago--Chicago world wide web servers crashed on Jan. 1 when a record number of readers accessed the Internet to read the newly-published Beach Picayune online.

Internet service providers worked for fourteen hours on the first day fo 2005 to restore an overstressed system that shutdown at 12:01 a.m.

"It was like Y2K fear, only real," said Roger McSturm, CEO of SBC for the Chicago land area. Hundreds of millions were reported to have accessed the Beach Picayune website at the stroke of midnight, causing an evenutal shutdown of the internet.

The shutdown continued for nine hours as each time zone in the United States attempted to access the Picayune website at midnight.

"We just underestimated the popularity of this middle child reporter and his website," McSturm said. "Who would've guessed that people would want to read what some bored writer writes about as an armchair critic."

"I just couldn't wait to read the news in the Beach Picayune," said Susan Housewife, of Des Moines, Iowa. "The sharp reporting on the role of the religion in everyday life is enthralling. And the editorials are so affirming to middle children all over the country."

Chicago area readers remained in front of their computers Dec. 31, rather than patronize a New Year's Eve celebration or watch the fireworks launched near Navy Pier. Millions sat with mouse buttons poised on the "Refresh" button to restore the web page which was unavailable until midnight.

"I've seen enough fireworks in Chicago," said Rogers Park resident Stan Stanislaw. "I couldn't wait for the fireworks that would burst into my heart after reading true or not-so-true stories of what goes in Chicago police stations. And what better way to support a bored writer than to visit his website and stroke his creative genius ego."

"I'm still amazed that the Beach Picayune could shut down the Internet for fourteen hours," said McSturm. "I may even start reading it just to see what everyone else is reading. I get the feeling that anyone who is in the know will be reading the Beach Picayune on a weekly basis, even if there's been no new articles posted for a month."

SBC plans to spend millions to strengthen it's networks to better support the Picayune wesite over the coming months.