Round II

A couple of interesting things happened today, like the set of lovely bamboo kitchen utensils I received from Cathy and Andrew in the mail (thanks!). or the huge dump truck overturned like some kid’s Tonka truck in the middle of the street I was driving down.

But there was also Chicago. again. a second trip that came, went, and was now on my mind.



Finishing up last Saturday, it was a job trip too -- and in part at the same institution as before -- and yet totally different

But first: the Approach.

Why? --because the experience of flight that is utterly mindblowing everytime. If it isn’t, you probably aren’t paying the attention you could. maybe the free pretzels are distracting you.

From the window of row 11 all the fields were visible in Indiana. crops various, this one farmer seemed to be growing modular homes in one hundred-acre patch.



I hope this one is a disciple of Washington Carver’s gospel of crop rotation, and once all those houses get harvested and shipped off, that they grow something nicer next year. Like okra or something. maybe soybeans.

Geography takes on map-like qualities at 30,000 feet. This is a “great lake” and yet it looks something not unlike the far end of a bathtub I'm sitting in, the very southern tip of Lake Michigan and it's bend a managable curve on the landscape of things.



Making the way to O’Hare, Chicago offered itself up as a Lego city. and I could even make out exactly where I was supposed to be in one hours time, down to the building.



Cities mean that there are many things to be negotiated. Like the nineteen bucks the ride was supposed to cost, and the very awkward fact that your taxi driver, Gabriel, wants your phone number so you guys can hang out later on.

...

and the job interview, that is a matter of negotiation too. of holding the cards to your chest, but not too tight. of close observation. this time you could feel like you have your game on, only to walk into what feels like a cartoon episode. The people talk almost with cartoon voices, they chase themselves around, and they say cartoon-like things.

Someone may try to even convince you of the idea that you are trying to duplicitously mislead them and question your ethical bearings (!) Or: take you to dinner, and talk about the exact number kidney stones they have passed in the last two years (and what subset of those actually hurt).

Not like it was all like that, but enough of it was. Enough that it makes you think that Rocky and Bullwinkle really weren’t all that unreasonable; that it made completely sense for Rocky to be a flying squirrel. wearing a flying cap.


I notice in the notebook I was making notes in that I had tried to start a dream journal in 2002 on some of the earlier pages. Uncanny as it is, there was an entry for the very day, exactly 3 years before. It read,

“March 11- elevator dreams: fast elevator, no walls, just a floor. Dr. Wong is lecturing me.”

And I find myself in an elevator here, considering the many buttons as possible options unbridled.



One reads “lobby,” another “14.” I look for the one that says “June” or “New Orleans” but have no luck. After all, this isn’t a dream, Andy. push a button and lets go.

…

Let’s go, for example, to Prairie Avenue Bookstore, an oasis. A cathedral of design and archtitecture books. I spent some time here, taking in the pages upon pages of glossy and mesmerizing images. like of the glass house on the hillside in New Zealand. You want to crawl into one of the photos, and mostly just fall asleep in the idea of a glass house. the idea of green hillsides.

But you opt for where you are. Listen to Dylan's "Corrina, Corrina" on repeat on your walkman (thanks, A.) and you see things clearer walking about the city. you notice where the the fabric of the city is pulling up a bit from the seam, like I mentioned in an earlier post. The reader might have understandably considered such a comment as so much hyperbolic metaphor. but oh no. This time my camera is on hand, and I can have photodocumentary proof of this very real phenomenon (lower right).



And you notice ice skater’s like this little girl in Millenium Park. Who on god's green earth strapped regulation hockey skates, each about half her total body weight, too her poor, small feet??



“Get me off! I am off! I’m done!” she said to her Adult Supervision.
Damn straight.

...

S. was generous of spirit enough not only to come up to the Loop from HP again, but also listen to me tell my Tall Tales of cartoon antics from the recent days: "Did I tell you Bullwinkle is actually quite a lot taller in real life than you'd guess, and that he has a unique view of the tenure system?" People nod and listen to you in your delirium, and that is a grateful moment.

and its nice to have the company of people who dress well enough that others notice. the waitress and S. compared bracelets, glass versus bamboo. The Margaritas she served were OK there, but where was the salt? I guess it was being rationed for distribution on the icy streets…



...

And Chicago light. It is a peculiar winter light. made that much moreso because of all the tipping-tall windows and narrowed streets. sun coming down on a broad Midwest plain simply has nowhere else to go.



The reflections refracted, and refractions reacted. The Carbide and Carbon Building was emanating an especially bright and black intensity. It looked like a huge stick of graphite, a giant pencil lead. I rubbed my hands along it, and they slid and slipped. my palms covered in dark, slick powder.



This is a ghost city gleaming and I am a ghost person, all the ageless buildings and their light shining through me like my eyes weren’t brown or body not solid. that is what you call Architecture.

...

And tarmack time. that two hours you wait, sitting in the row 11, for your plane to be de-iced. you look over notes of what you learned during your visit. some of the people you met and things you saw during the interview were positively wonderful and inspiring. but you also wonder if some of Them are keeping similar notes to yours, together with the fingerprints they lifted from that water glass you were drinking from.

I myself make "Pro/Con" lists in such cases because they are helpful in making at least something in life seem black and white. because the are hopelessly reductive and ridiculous, and yet infinitely comforting to the mind. but word choice itself communicates more than simple place in a "good/bad" column can. meanings inherent to certain word choice can burn away and obviate the sentence wrapped around it, and so say whatever it is going to say for itself, quite regardless of anything else. Those are the things to try to pay most attention to...

bridges: apex, apogee, vernal, vertices

I am great believer in Spring. as a notion, sure. but as a visceral fact, better still. I am even a more earnest believer in believing it might be Spring. Sunday might have been the start, the honest-to-goodness one. or maybe. Two things in particular press themselves as sure symptoms in my mind: (1) daffodils blooming in the yard, and (2) the urge to casually bicycle around indefinitely without destination.

With this working assumption, me and the Sears bicycle took off around the ‘hoods. Down Lakewood towards James St., some questions prepared for this trip included: Do other houses have flowers going on? Who’s hanging around outside? Is that dumpy little street Cecil Rd. a dead end or what?



…
Today’s route brought me passed the Apex Street Bridge, a small but high concrete and steel structure that is now only a pedestrian crossing, cement pylons put in the middle. But I don’t know how many ever really cross it, over the old train tracks-cum-bike trial.

If you look up the phrase “other side of the tracks” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, there is a photograph of the Apex Bridge. nothing more epitomizing of the idea exists, no sharper a gradient, I am pretty certain. But of course, there is a historical society organized around the bridge. and I found this out just now, the internet told me so. These folks seem to have a pretty certain take on the two sides that are connected by the ASB, though :

“One community, soon to be designated a historic neighborhood that surrounds a park; the other of which suffers from boarded up houses, rampant crime, and blight.”

I’m curious to see what happens to this idea of the “community of the bridge” this historical society has in its vision. Will preserving the bridge really do something for engendering that possibility of a community there? I’m doubtful, but I want it to be true; at least truer than it has been for like minded projects around Durham.

...
A new crossing also caught my attention this trip. my bike homed onto it, and I saw something shining past the trees in the park mentioned just above, Forest Hills Park. You see, they re-graded the stream that flows there, and put new bridges to span it.



This one, the shining one, was quite a fancy number. Unpainted and unvarnished, from a good 20 feet away you could actually smell the wood. Pine. so strong a smell, I wondered if maybe the thing was still breathing and moving sap.

It is a very nice bridge, and I can tell you the following about it:

--it is fragrant.
---it has 6 sets of posts that anchor the handrails.
----it takes me exactly 18 paces to cross it, end to end.

Since it is a bridge, the next logical question would be: Is their a troll living underneath it?

I can tell you this: No. However there was occupancy, use, and some presence apparent. the tracks along the mud tell us the raccoons have been around, poking at the night water, shuffling their feet in the cool soil.




…
From around the bridge, things sure looked like Spring. It is almost a postcard, with it green grass, gentle curve of the water, the light.



I crossed the shiny bridge, repeating the sound of the word “bridge” in my head with my steps, inducing my memory to think of Die Brücke (the Bridge), a german artist movement that made me realize that block-printing is the bomb. Apparently they named it so with intimation that the movement was to be “their bridge of common interests and their link to the future.”



A link to the future! what a sense of optimism. Could such a thing be accomplished in just a simple 18 paces? The Red Queen told Alice you need to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. Surely, no truer now than ever - a casual 18 paces might still land me firmly in the past – or at best the present. The present is a “community of the bridge,” and now is a matter of successfully making it from then, with a stream of a single moment to cross on the way.

What are the chances then, that when - every 10 seconds or so- one blinks their eyes, that upon opening Here will still be here? The chances are very, very high, no doubt. but I maintain it is a probability nevertheless. Certainty left you about 2 minutes back as dusty historian fodder.

You cross and think about all the bridges you build through the day, or through some course of years. And there are a number I wish all concerned had taken more seriously, as much so as the Apex Street Bridge seems to be. then the others I now regret not having just torched with more of a conflagratory abandon, to see the big fast flames. otherwise, some of the bridges just seem creaky.

I guess the sturdiest and most flexible are those suspension bridges. but even then, as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge taught all of us inexcusably awake for the film in physics class: better to “cut once, measure twice.”



I’d prefer to cut twice and measure once, personally. I rather have two goes minimum at most things. Because my eyes were closed the first time. because I forgot to try harder. because I simply want more.
As for bridges, just remember there may be a giant fish, or pirate treasure underneath. so whatever else you do, always take the opportunity to look down.

a windy place - Chicago

It is Sunday. you wake up, disappear into the sky, and then come down.
I just happened to come down in Chicago this time.


O’Hare was difficult. but it is worth it, if only for the fact its concourses make you feel like you are traveling through some wrinkle in the fabric of space.



It had been two years since in this city, when I was visiting both Seb and Ehab. but they’ve moved on since. From that time I remember how cold it was. I remember the yellow seahorses at the Aquarium, and also that Seb sang in the choir on Sunday, but I couldn’t see him because they were standing up by the big organ.

That time I took the bus everywhere. This time E. picked me up from the airport, as she was in the city for the weekend. It is Chicago, so I assume this is a function the luck of the quarter Irish in me. Also just the generosity of friends you don’t see often.

I had bubble tea the night before this day. But that tea couldn’t compare to the purple concoction my Sunday companion was now was drinking, which exactly matched her sweater in every nuance of color & hue. that simply doesn’t happen by accident, no, it simply can’t. “It is like drinking a flower!” E. said. and I could tell. it was very fragrant. like a bee, I could smell it from across the table.



…
As E. drove me around the city and various old haunts of hers, it became clear that to get to the bottom of a place, it is often good to view from the top.



Why pay 9 bucks to go to the observation deck of the Hancock Building when on the floor below you can buy a martini for the same price and sit for free? This logic seemed impeccably sound to me, and better still on the 95th floor with vermouth massaging my veins.


wonderful.

peering down, things looked simply manifold.


Cities are expansive, the experiences folded in each inch of space like tangled thread. Sometimes you can see where the stitch lifts from the fabric a bit, as in the case of this flyer posted in a mailbox in Boystown.



The flyer said a lot, but read in part:

Lost, looking for an old friend named Desiree.

I don’t know her last name. I was last with her 1982-1984 at bus stop of Clark and Belmont. It was 3:00 or 4:00.…. She looked at me as I got my arm stuck in the C.T.A. bus door, as I hung on for life! And late for work. Now thinking about it now, I would have stayed right there, talked, and got info and stayed connected. that was a big mistake….

brian@yahoo.com

When you are lost, it seems to me looking for a friend is very natural. That the friend is named Desiree makes me suspicious of whose short-story narrative I happen to be stuck in at this Mailbox Moment. But either way, we see how the time between 1982 and 1984 is in the same ballpark as three or four o’clock; Experience makes a mess of time and simply mashes it up like raspberries in jam --- She looked at me, my arm stuck in the door, I hung on for life (and late for work). Now thinking about it Now, I would have stayed there, talked…

And I wanted to stay there in that Place. and talk. I wanted to reconsider all my recent small mistakes as possibly big ones. and vice versa. And how can I get my arm out of this damn door? the driver sees me through the glass, but doesn’t stop. hang on for Dear Life. brian@nowbut-I-wishItwerethen.org

I all can think is that I hope she gets in touch.


…
The next day found me in a suit and tie, talking to people about the possibility of work, and exchanging pleasantries concerning what constitutes “spring weather” in a place like this. It snowed all day, like “TV snow.” You know, the kind the falls slowly and finely enough, but in thick flakes. that makes you think maybe you are in fact in some one else’s head, and they are dreaming of snow, and you are in their dream. it was that kind. by evening though, the air was cooler it would stay on the ground enough to slide around in.



And I did exactly this with S. What is good about having even one friend is that they have friends, which means you can meet perfectly charming strangers like S. in an unfamiliar place and enjoy the slippery character of snowfall with them. as well as the simple pleasure of trespassing in the Hilton on Michigan Ave. You see, it has these massive ballrooms, and they aren’t good about locking all the doors of them (yes!) We felt grand, and stupefied. maybe this was in fact also the architecture of someone’s sleeping dream? nothing else could explain that behind one ballroom was only another twice the size of the first, with as many lightbulbs in number as a mathematician might posit in sport.

All On. Everything Empty. a place for lying on a Versace-esque carpet, and wondering how S.’s thrift store umbrella might do a lot for self-conscious décor that seems still a little insecure about its proper degree of pretension.


It is so perfect to have a perfect evening, when everyone and thing around is unknown and new, but you feel more comfortable than you typically do in your own rented house. am I right here, or am I right?
You know I am right.

…
And at the end of formal Chicago responsibilities, Tuesday afternoon meant that the Free Weekday at the Art Institute was dessert. I saw so much that to try to say much would be to say nothing. But it makes a strong impression to walk into a room of famous paintings only to overwhelmed by the smell of fresh paint. Was I experiencing them somehow quite differently and more immediately for once? Was Magritte touching up a part he wasn’t satisfied with right there on the spot? Looking to the floor explained the smell piling off the walls.


Ah, Exhibit preparation. I wonder though if Picasso also used Thybony paint, even just once? then I thought, maybe it is just a contemporary installation piece, and I was so completely missing it. or getting it.


I ran into Gauguin again, and I think I have a thing for his painting I never realized before. They are beautiful.



This one was titled “Why Are You Angry?” to which I wonder, why was Gauguin so nosey? I mean that is a question of such intimacy, constancy, and everydayness that you could have titled the painting, ”What it’s like to be breathing.” Because why are you angry anyway. and so often? why am I? I don’t know, and neither do you, and isn’t that just a fine pickle.

Moving onto Chagall’s blue windows meant only being asked the same question, but more gently.



the heart of the mattering matter. Why are you so angry. As far as our human drama goes, I think it is the answer you could give to any Jeopardy question, and always be correct. I’m thinking free art on Tuesday means swallowing a spoon of medicine, and that’s just the way it is. Beautiful, color sculpted spoons of knowing, of some Adam’s apple that tastes so good that it leaves a lump in your throat. and, damn, what a lucky thing that is. lucky. most difficult. lucky.

…
Flying back to North Carolina found me in seat 14D. In this same seat arriving a few days earlier I had seen a first: a young girl using an airsickness bag on an airplane across the aisle. she was so discreet that it was only amazing chance I noticed. she couldn’t have been more graceful and quiet about it than if an invisible magnet was directing the incident. I was floored.



Now heading back a dark man with a thick brown hand-woven cap sat next to me. I thought he looked like pictures of people I had seen who come from Bhutan or there around, his features framing the space around is face without any sort of hesitation. He carried a bag that said "RDU" in blue marker followed by a series of numbers, and "OIMI" in big block letters.

Google tells me OIMI is an organization for resettling immigrants, and the large number of people waiting for him past the security gate seemed to confirm some new home was being made, that arrival was happening. I can’t even imagine what that transition must feel like. I’m Chicago to Durham, and oh-the-drama. This fellow next to me is essentially landing on Mars.

It is Tuesday. you wake up, disappear into the sky, and then come down. This time it happens to be here. and what a place that might be.



...

p.s.

I was told Chicago is welcoming and the kind of place that makes you feel like you belong there. The CTA buses were clearly doing their part.