Chicago Day 3

So here I sit in Caribou again. I will be out 10 hours, due to my hosts not being home until later this evening. The problem -- one which was unexpected in both cases -- is that in Chicago and New York there is not really the tradition of coffee shops apparently, which is why there are so many Starbucks and Caribous and other chain coffee shops here. Manhattan, which has everything under the sun, did not have an extravagant proliferation of local coffee shops and I have not found that many here in Chicago either. Then again, haven't felt well enough to venture out too far off the beaten path this trip. I know there are a lot of readings in coffee shops here, but they seem to be farther between than say, Minneapolis, where there is virtually a coffee shop of some kind every three or four blocks, and NOT just a Caribou or a Starbucks! Minneapolitans are snobbish about their non-corporate coffee shops!

Afraid to leave Caribou. I have this heavy computer on my back and I have a lot of work to do. Also, I am still a little bit sick and am at the stage where I am in the bathroom every half an hour, water pouring out of my body as if it has been three days since I was allowed to pee, not thirty minutes. So far, I am not making the most out of this trip or this city, but I do have 3 or 4 more days here, plus an overnight wait for my bus on the return trip. I am trying not to be anxious. This does not come easily to me. I have at once too great a sense of my own mortality, of the possibility that I may not come back this way again, and denial of my own mortality, the side of me that eats junk food and makes jokes while having chest pains and headaches. Today is my first day, or at least first few hours, without a headache in about two months, I realized while sitting in Caribou waiting for the next pee pang to hit me in the bladder.