michigan avenue

A few weeks ago, I managed to procure a small, faux leather writing notebook. I plan to occasionally transfer writings from it to this little blog, although, granted, what I pen in a writing notebook may be a tad more personal than what I have been posting. However, have no fear: I do not plan to become one of those blathering bloggers who uses the internet as a tool to express angst, insecurity, or other sentiments that they would never express to other people. I consider my blog readers, few though they may be, to be on approximately a "middle friend" basis. This means that those who read what I write here will be privy to thoughts that I would not share with an acquaintance; however, do not assume that I reach the same depth in my ramblings here that I would while out to dinner with a close friend. It just won't happen. If it does, I need to be checked, maybe even clotheslined.
I wrote the following while chilling at the Caribou Coffee on Michigan Avenue.


I have been walking too far today. Getting lost in the crowds on Michigan Avenue on a spring day, rediscovering warmth with the thousands who now eagerly rush to meet the day--it is good for the soul, but as with any activity pursued too long, it can overwhelm and exhaust. This is mostly why I am sitting here with book, notebook, and pen, not speaking to the person who is sitting across from me. The raw, inarticulate emotion of the afternoon accumulates in me until I must take moments to refine it, carve out phrases, and smooth the rough surfaces of experience and memory. That's why I have to write something down.
I have been reading Garcia Marquez' brilliant novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The first time I read it, I was something like 13 or 14. Thematically, stylistically, and symbolically, I probably understood less than fifty percent of it then. That is why I brought it to the check-out counter at the library early this week. I want to experience it again and gather what I can.
As I read, I was overtaken with the simple, sweet contentment that only a good book can provide. I leaned forward in my seat, parallel to the large window next to me, as if to more physically know the words of Marquez that caress the pages with the enchanting and fantastical objectivity of magic realism. And while leaning over my book, I happened to glance out of the window. In an unanticipated moment of revelation, I looked outside and I saw spring flower before me with all of the immediacy of a Narnian melt. It was as if I hadn't noticed before. I saw the tulips extend their petals above the ugliness of the concrete and the delicate white cherry blossoms curtain the trees in the park across the street. It all makes me draw in my breath with both rapidity and gentleness.
I wish that someone would look at me in the way I look at the fresh beauty of spring. Although I am generally content as I am, there are times when I wish it was different. Sometimes feeling both beautiful and alone is positively bittersweet. If no one hears the tree fall, it makes no sound. And if no one sees me as I walk along the sidewalk with both my scarf and hair softly brushed by the wind, then I am not beautiful, and effort is a waste.

embarrassing entertainment

One of my aunt's good friends is a board member of a small theater here in Chicago, which, for some reason, I'm going to leave unnamed, although the quality of its productions is unassailable. This kind lady decided to procure, unsolicited, two tickets to 9, their most recent musical endeavor and gave them to my aunt. My aunt asked me to come along, and I gladly agreed. However, when the day rolled around a few weeks ago, Becky was feeling tired and rather disinterested in a theatrical performance. She told me this a little before church, only a few hours before we were to be on our way towards the stage. It was my job to find someone, and quickly. My first thought was my friend Laura, but then I recalled she had some family thing going on--birthday, mom, something or other. I wasn't quite sure who else I could ask from my church. Quite honestly, I'm a bit nervous about inviting people from my new church to partake of modern media or culture. I don't know what they enjoy, what they consider frivolous, or scandalous. While mentally debating with myself, I thought, what the heck, I'll just mention it to Laura and see what she says. Little did I know how glad I would be when she said she would come along; her mom's birthday was going to be celebrated in the late evening.
We traversed to a particular yuppie neighborhood in downtown Chicago and enjoyed exploring its streets before the play because we were there pretty early. Unfortunately, we walked too far and had to book it back to the theater to get there on time--I took off my shoes and ran/walked real fast on the sidewalk. Laura and I slipped into our seats just as the director stepped on stage to begin introducing the play. I should have known something was up when I looked around and only saw one child--a girl of about 12 who was sitting with her mother.
The play is about a writer/director/actor/philanderer who finds himself in the midst of personal and professional crisis. Not only can he not commit to his wife because of the 8 other women lurking around the corner, he can't seem to pull together a movie for a writing/directing/acting contract that he signed without any ideas for said film. Yes, there are 9 women dressed in black whose presence is constant in nearly all scenes. After the first song, these women pulled away the white sheet covering a large object on stage to reveal a rather graphic painting of a completely naked woman. This painting remained on stage for the remainder of the play. But it gets worse.
A few songs into it, one of the 9, reclining in only her underclothing, is rolled on stage in an antique bathtub. She is on the phone with our hero, saying lots of--ahem--suggestive things. At one point in her monologue, a few of the other women came up and poured water all over her. It was ridiculous. Laura and I were rather embarrassed, evidenced by the fact that we kept laughing, hiding our eyes, and exchanging shocked looks. I can't imagine my reaction if I was with someone from my church, or, may God help us all, a boy. I probably would have covered my face the whole time, or his, and apologize profusely the entire time.
Fortunately, the play didn't sexually escalate from there. The tub scene was as bad as it got. The thing even had some therapeutic and moral conclusion. Good for it. Good for our morally degenerate hero.
The food afterwards helped to repair some of the mental scarring. Apparently Laura and I were two of the very few citizen patrons that day. It was the press opening, with over 100 newspapers, online journals, etc. represented there. We greedily partook of the black bean dip and little sandwiches.
Even better was meeting the musical director of the play, and seeing the actor who portrayed the object of the 9 women's affection. The latter was surprisingly shy and unslimy in real life. Ah well. It takes all kinds.
With the naked painted woman at our backs, and food goodies in our hands, Laura and I left this theater, graciously thanked my aunt's friend, and wondered at our luck, both in the opportunity to see the play, and also in attending with the right person.

Traveling thoughts

Today, while riding on the CTA, I wrote the following two first drafts of potential essays. It seems to be a somewhat metaphysically tinged day:

Getting ready for the day

Not unlike a machine of familiar kitchen necessity, I seem to only have two settings: clean or off. If I wake up in the morning and decide to present myself fresh and gleaming to the world, I do all that is possible to clear away the sleep, sweat, and imperfection from the day and night before. I scrub, moisturize, powder, and apply meticulous eyeliner. After these ablutions, I select clothing that suggests both non-chalance and polish. There is no turning back at this point. I must carefully pluck off lint, a stray eyelash on the cheek, and other unacceptable foreign objects.

As I stand at the drizzily train station, I firmly draw the top of each leather shoe against the back of alternate pant legs, sloughing off unwelcome rain water and flecks of gravel from the streets.

I fight the law of entropy, hoping that, in a few hours, I will win and look as clean as I do now. I may very well succeed, I determine, silently assessing the potential progress of the situation from my interview, to the CTA commute, to dinner at Wicker Park with my friend Laura.

I secretly hate that I care that, once prepared, I cannot allow myself to become rumpled. I am not like the sky blue plates in my kitchen, which come out of the dishwasher, are checked for remnants from previous use, and placed in dark cupboards. I venture to meet the world, one which leaves its indelible mark on you, no matter your pristine efforts.

On board with Keats

Nearly every literary personage who is worth his or her salt has recognized the reality of suffering in human existence, regardless of time, place, or economic circumstance. However, not all pay homage to the heightened pleasure of joy that is experienced after a particularly menacing bout of blackness. While I am no author, I join with the doomed Romantic poet, Keats, when his eternal pen scrawled the following lines:

"But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine..."

-"Ode to Melancholy" by John Keats

Once one has experienced the swirling, all-consuming, confusing black hole that is depression, the light at the end of the tunnel shines all the brighter. Perhaps that is why some who struggle with the stigmatized illness become manic for a few weeks in between the descending curtain of mental darkness. Damn. Who wouldn't stay awake for weeks, painting, singing, working in the garage to salvage and hoard bits of life before they are plunged back into self-hatred, listlessness, and acceptance of a dusky lens upon the outer world of normalcy?

I have been so fortunate as to not know the threat of unending cycles of sadness. One round was enough for me. The emotional intensity of those few weeks mimicked electroshock therapy to my brain. It has now been trained to vomit back all absurd feelings of worthlessness. I no longer allow them to penetrate past the first door in the long and twisting hall of my psyche. Quite honestly, I have known enough of depression to not care if the thought of having nothing to offer is true. I would rather delude my neurons with past successes and memories rife with overly inflated self-esteem.

The sheer joy prompted by such mental gymnastics transforms my vision until, may Ezra Pound rest in peace, I don't merely see "petals on a wet, black bough" in a rainy train station. It is as if I flick back an opaque second eyelid, similar to an amphibious reptile, like a frog or crocodile, and see the world for both its beauty and ugliness. I see other passengers on the journey we all must take, waiting to get somewhere, see someone, and savor the sweet aloneness of a slow trip along the rails. The rain that falls steadily today is intended to drip through the dirty floorboards of the platform and quench the thirst of the soil beneath the bare trees on the street, the solid wooden beings whose limbs burgeon spring leaves, flowers, and the promise of home to small birds returning after their escape from the harsh, frigid Chicago winters.

chicago summers

Please don't be disappointed in the cliched structure of this post. The reality is, I want to write something, but I'm too dang lazy to actually construct something with paragraphs and some recognizable form. So, look out Dave Letterman, here comes another top ten:

Top ten things I'm looking forward to in Chicago
during the summer (in no particular order)

1. Ice cream at open air restaurants.

2. Music festivals.

3. Beach parties at the home of a certain person.

4. Free orchestra concerts at Millenium Park.

5. Movies in Grant Park. All About Eve is the first for this season.

6. Dancing lessons in the park.

7. Outdoor reading...good almost anywhere.

8. Architecture tour of the city.

9. All things associated with the lake. Running, frisbee, reading, boating...

10. Not hating my life when I go outside. Not having to wear a scarf, gloves, heavy jacket, and boots. Not having to wear shoes, period.

When the outdoor thermometers begin to read above 60 degrees Farenheit consistently, people get happy, including me.

running with scissors

I suppose I haven't yet mentioned that I often watch two beautiful, funny, caring, behaviorally challenged seven year old children. Their family situation is rather unique, extremely so in fact, but I won't trespass on their privacy by providing all of the complex details. Suffice to say that they are adopted, biologically unrelated African-American children who are now happily settled with a married couple--finally. With the instability and trauma of their early lives has come consequences. They are hesitant to attach to people, which makes sense; they test you, see if you will yell, speak condescendingly, or leave. Sometimes they thrive on conflict. One will pick up a mere scrap of conversation, twist it to melodramatic proportions, and try to get things to escalate. (When I, or some other unfortunate adult, tries to correct the situation, usually the other child will jump in to defend the offending one. "You're being mean!" "Why are you talking to him that way?" "He just wants to be left alone...jeez.")

Perhaps the best example I have of conflict-mongering comes from a few weeks ago, when I noticed that the little boy had gotten a haircut. When I asked him about it, he seemed to get frustrated. He went over to the CD player, and turned the volume up to 25. "Why are you frustrated with me right now?" With only the slightest hint of a whine, he responded, "Because no one is supposed to notice my hair. It's just for me and my family to notice." Rather puzzled, I decided to drop the whole thing. "OK. Well, will you please turn the music down?" He responded negatively, and covered the volume dial, just daring me to try to pull his hand away. I didn't, but repeated the request. "I don't like you. I'm frustrated with you...I'm going to cut your neck off." My face showed only mild surprise and amusement. "Oh really?" "Yes. The next time we go ice skating, I'm going to wait until you fall. Then, I'll take my skate and cut your neck off." I've been threatened before, but never with a beheading. It took some strength not to laugh. I had to put on my serious, adult face. "Even so, I still need you to turn the music down. Also, I can tell that you don't want to be around me right now. Your sister and I are going to the other room. When you're ready to be around me, you can come too."

Five minutes later, he hopped onto the couch, cuddled next to me, and asked me to read him a story. No prob bob.

Fortunately, their erratic behavior does have occasional natural consequences. Quite honestly, I never wish for these consequences to come; I rarely think about it. But when they do come, I suppose I'm somewhat grateful for them. As the children have learned to trust me, we seem to have fewer and fewer bad days. Wednesday was an exception, however. After diligently completing their math lessons during the first forty-five minutes, they became hyperactive, deranged monkeys for the next hour and a half. They weren't interested in reading Hatchet, the Gary Paulsen classic, as indicated by the fact that it took us an hour to finish two short chapters because one of the children was more interested in throwing trail mix around the room, chasing the dog, telling bathroom jokes, laughing hysterically, and asking questions about everything. I finally sent him to his room, telling him quite blatantly that I was frustrated with him, could no longer take interruptions, and needed him to go calm down elsewhere. While he eventually complied with this request, within five minutes of his return, he, and his sister, wound themselves up again. I finished the chapters and announced a trip to the park. Surely some running around would do them good.

I was kind of sort of wrong. A wrestling match broke out between them after an all too brief period of normal play time. Twice I asked them to stop, telling them the second time that if I had to say it again, we would leave. When they knocked over an innocent two year old while rolling around in the mulch, that was it. "OK ya'll. It's time to leave." I started walking. They know it's business time when I start walking. The boy started crying. "I'm really sorry. Why can't we stay longer?" I explained to him, but he continued to whimper. Then they tried the physical blockade technique. Both stood in front of me, put their palms against my stomach, and tried to push me back. The girl said, "I'll keep you here all night if I need to." When I informed her just how inappropriate this was, and how easily I could get away, they extended their palms to me in a gesture of goodwill and said, "Well, can't we just talk about this like reasonable people?" "Sure," I said, "I like reasonable people."

Of course, our conversation resulted in my firm insistence on immediate departure from the park. Realizing they had lost, the little boy tried one last act of defiance. He stole the children's book that I had been carrying under my arm, and began running around with it. His sister thought this called for a game of keep-away, and began yelling at him to give it to her. She was so busy running, yelling, and looking at him, that she didn't notice the large tree looming in her path. Before anyone knew what was happening, she ran, full-tilt, into it. She immediately began screaming and collapsed into my arms...and then onto the ground. All of the suburban housewives with their tidily clad children turned to look at me, a white woman with two unpredictable black children. I didn't look back, but picked up the screaming child, handed the little boy her discarded blue jacket, and began the trek towards their house. Everyone was suddenly very sober. My initial medical assessment was just a minor scratch above the eye. However, when I set her down at the house, I saw that a large lump had begun to grow right at her browline. I was shaking a bit, and almost started crying when she did. As I ushered her into the bathroom to apply the dreaded hydrogen peroxide, I told her not to look in the mirror. Unlike most children her age, she agreed with me. She knew it would only make things worse.

At any rate, all of the mischevious rebelliousness stopped the second that she smacked into the tree. One of her parents said to me later, "I secretly wanted to say to her--that's why you're supposed to listen to the babysitter!" But that would be like saying, "I told you so," and the kids are smart enough to know that isn't fair.