here is a secret:
Sometimes, when I’m feeling dreamy and lonely and happysad (the kind of mood in which a rainy day and Sufjan Stevens feels appropriate), I read the Missed Connections on Chicago Craigslist. The writers are all so genuine and encumbered, and this one instant – the publicprivate writing of an experience of a missed connection with a stranger in a public place – exists so completely in the tiny specific space created by an intersection of the wholly intimate and the wholly anonymous. I read the ones from Chicago because they are the best, and because I know the places the writers are talking about. A disproportionate number of Chicago missed connections seem to happen in Wicker Park, which is a neighborhood I am keenly familiar with. And it fills some intimate and anonymous place in me to think of them, all those mulleted skinny-jeaned hip twentysomethings missing connections on the train and in Gallery Café and walking down Division Street. Underneath their sneering and pouts, they are wistful and yearning, hoping to catch just one more glimpse of that adorable brunette eating a salad on the Blue Line, or have one more conversation with the boy with the beautiful green eyes, who talked about Proust.
