Ben Bonkoske

  • Dancing Words

    It’s interesting how time passes. I thought it was Sunday and it was only Friday this week, but then again I do too many life altering drugs to be aware of my surroundings. I haven’t written on my blog in awhile, there are plenty of reasons (first and foremost is I’m a piece of shit), I’ve been really busy with work, life took some casual left and right turns yadi yadi yada.

    I write to you not because I have some brilliant news or a revelation, but simply because I enjoy the act of writing. I used to laugh and feel bad for my favorite author J.D Salinger who said by the end of his life he didn’t write for anyone. He wrote simply for his own pleasure. I thought the idea of an old man sitting alone writing page after page was depressing but nay, it’s inspiring. When one writes they are allow the true intimacy of an art which knows no bounds. It’s like curling up into bed and finding the sweetest coolest crevices along your blanket and having a crooked smile awaiting your rest, and then to dream where only your psyche can control your utmost fears and desires.

    I don’t know if I want to write and just share my life story with people who don’t care, but I am assured that my life will consist of many pages and revising of what it means to be an author. I’ve admittedly gone crazy…on two accounts now which have landed me naked in public and in the hospital. I think art is meant to be taken out of a page, out of your mind, and acted out through the world. You are only as good of a writer as you are a poet, or hell, a dancer! Since it is what melds the world together that makes people understand your words and feel them as though they are theirs. If I solely spent my time typing, there’d be nothing to write about.

  • President

    May 4th 2016,

    I’m a poet. This means that to walk around and immerse myself with life is poetry. It sort of looks like a black and white movie but everyone is replaced with words. Every month I write a collection of poems which sometimes I send out in a mass email to some of my close friends and family. This idea was inspired by one of my favorite writers. Dostoevsky, the brilliant author of The Idiot. He would have collections of writing which he would send throughout his town and people would enjoy his writing. However today it can come off as a bit odd to send people your poetry and is a system I still haven’t mastered, much like the art of poetry itself.

    Truly, and I really mean this from a honest part of my heart, is that I really try to engage in the most amount of gratitude throughout my day and with people I meet. Make everything feel important and everyone feel welcome. And to be a poet means to have to pay specific importance to detail with everything you want to be put on the page and have a critical ability to make someone understand exactly what you mean. Or you can blog and just write whatever you wish to ramble onto your page. This tactic of saying whatever you will on live television is the excuse of a leader that the Republicans will have as their leader with Donald Trump.

    You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose” Mario Cuomo. Take this from someone who was elected as a freshman and sophomore class president, The ability to sway what people think and ultimately believe in you as a person shows no sign of what you can do in a position of power. Although I am not the biggest supporter of Hillary because I know it sounds crazy but I have a concern about how America’s influential power will change with a woman in the office. Hell, I was worried about how it would change with a change from Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders for that matter too (Even though he was my favorite contender next to John Kasich).

    The fact of the matter is that there just isn’t that many good candidates for president next year. Donald Trump has an angle that nobody else ever has had before and I am interested in what will happen, and am more interested in the hypothetical outcome of him winning.  I don’t know if this came off as biased or anti-feminist. I just have a little bit of trouble stomaching the idea of Trump being one step closer to president. 

  • Chi City Time

    May 3rd 2016,

    I hate to admit this but I’m writing this from a Starbucks (I’m not buying anything). I hate this chain more than life itself…except for their apple cider which I used to get when I was 8.  Even as I write this some chick is blabbering on her boyfriend’s cell phone, and I don’t think I am going to finish writing this here.

    Starbucks was recently in the news for getting sued because their iced coffee’s put too much ice in their drinks leading buyers to be mislead about the amount of oz. of coffee they are buying.  Personally I think it is a stupid charge and could easily be fixed by asking to go easy on the ice but suburban mothers gotta have their coffee, and apparently by any means necessary. The suit is going to be  be worth 5 million dollars all over some ice.

    I love to longboard. I got one when I was fifteen and before that I borrowed my friend Tony’s longboard. They are the smoothest form of transportation and so much fun to ride. I went all the way to Belmont, downtown Chicago and back. I longboarded because I needed a good excuse to get out of the house since I had off work, but I visited work anyway this morning when I did my run to pick up the tips I earned. A little bit over $100. I spent a little bit of it down in the city at some of my money on an Iced coffee which had way too much ice in it.

    Nothing is more satisfying than just observing the interesting parts hidden among the city of Chicago. Loyola, Rogers Park, Wilson, Boy’s town, Belmont. All of them have their perfect coveted spots where you can chill out at. Roger’s park is known for some of the best coffee and open mic’s at Royal Soul’s coffee. As I made my way down, Boy’s Town has a great Threadless shop. By the Argon Theater there is an old factory which was huge and just made me think of a time when many jobs in Chicago came out of factories like that one.

    By the time I was  coming back the sun was beginning to set so I stopped by the public beaches of Chicago. I went down by the water, took a seat and put my feet in. I listened to some of my favorite musicians Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s. I laid back and looked up at the beautiful sky and watched the birds fly past.

    40 day dream

    Let’s get High

    Home

    Life is Hard

    Janglin

  • Never Stay Comfortable

    May 2nd 2016,

    Never stay comfortable. This is a big idea and to be honest a hard one to keep under one’s belt unless they live in New York City and then still some. Life is just too trivial for you to not get caught up in the comfortability of it all. Between Youtube, Netflix and T.V, the couch and much more, too many people tend to just get sabotaged by media and pizza and not be engaged with their lives. I am not that person… to a degree. I probably have spent a whole month at a time in my life on the couch “Slooching”* but this new job I have has kick-started me into action which hasn’t left me stuck watching reruns of Seinfeld.

    I bring this up this idea of trying to get outside of my comfort zone because tonight at dinner my dads brought up the idea of moving. I’m not completely against the idea but at first I wanted to stay in my comfort mode. I have moved before and it’s obviously notorious for not being an easy process. I lost my mother in a fight with colon cancer almost 3 years ago and as a result I moved to Evanston, Illinois in 7th grade.

    This is a perfect example of a time when I stepped outside of my comfortability and had to undergo what was (at the time) a radical change in my surroundings. I was born and raised in a little town known as Hinsdale. A perfect town. Seriously, if you ever get the chance, or have the feeling to visit the 1950s. The downtown area is white suburban “comfortable” as it gets. This, contrasted with Evanston, which among all of my high school sports divisions was known as being the most ghetto of all schools and northern suburban cities.

    Evanston isn’t a city but that is where I might be moving. Somewhere right in the middle of the city of Chicago. When it was first brought up as I said I was hesitant, but the more I think about it, it might be right in the next step in my life. All of my friends, which took me a long time to accumulate and find the fit for who I am as a person live in Evanston (Except for the Homies in Hinsdale Shoutout!) So I was worried about how I was going to see them. Hopefully I earn enough this summer to buy a car. RANGE ROVER…psych.

    Anyways, we will see what happens and I plan to keep a positive attitude towards change in my life. Today while I was working my boss told me that he was thinking about promoting me to be a waiter, but then continued “If you shave that sh*t off your face. So no shave May may not be a thing.

    *Slooch – To lounge around

  • Whatever MAY be, MAY be

    May 1st 2016,

    I’m going to write this as though it’s a blog, and hell it MAY just be uploaded to my wordpress as a blog anyway but there is no need to rush to conclusions with these things. I’m not exactly a professional at discerning what would be best for me to know and for you to never find out. I guess there isn’t too much to say about me but trust me, I could go on and on and ramble forever about what is going on in my life and the world.

    But, I think for this May I’m going to not shave as well as try and write a blog every single day. There should be a focused idea behind each one and have at least a plot. I can’t just get on the page and say “blah blah blah, today is a new day nothing is new.” I want to delve into the world’s issues and maybe write about a specific topic or news article that I find interesting and share my opinions about them.

    This one is about me.

    A little bit about me is that I was born a writer, and a dancer ,and a public speaker. These are my passions and I plan to fulfill them to my greatest content. I also do a little bit of stand-up comedy and am an Avid reader. I am almost done with my first Volume of books or the original books I will always have read and will endear as my classics. Most of which consist of J.D Salinger- my favorite author. I’m deeply invested in poetry too.

    I just started a job working as basically a waiter, but try to find the time to volunteer down on Howard street in Chicago. I went to College for one semester – partially loved it, partially hated it (which can be a discussion in my future blogs) – at the University of North Carolina Asheville. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but I took this last period in my life off to pursue writing a book and a few collections of poetry.

    Well, now that you know a little bit about me, let’s get this thing on the road and see where this takes me. I hope I am given some suggestions or someone tunes in (maybe gives me a suggestion on what to write about), but even if this is just a remedial experiment I think it’s just as well to see what happens and what this is like. I should’ve been doing this years ago. As I always say, “Try something and you’ll probably fail at it, and now it can be on the internet for people to really not care about either way. “
    Ben Bonkoske

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