Chicago: An Epilogue

After a short train ride, too much time in airports, and a couple of plane rides, I return from Chicago. On the final flight, I find myself seated to a woman who is from Ohio, and we spend a few minutes discussing the previous day's presidential election. She says that Mitt Romney seemed absolutely stunned that he'd lost, but that since she had been in charge of "counting the votes" for years ago, she could have told Romney that he'd lose Ohio. We talk a bit more, and I stop her because I have to clear something up: "So," I say, "does that mean you were Ohio's secretary of state?" We talk about politics a bit more, and then we discuss our children and jobs. She says her oldest daughter attended the Berklee College of Music and, having "the soul of an artist," supports herself as a jazz singer. It's a nice thing, the woman and I agree, to make a living doing what you love to do. And after we land, I show her where to pick up her luggage and where to find a taxi, and I apologize for making her talk shop on the airplane. "It was fun," she says, and I tell her I agree. Then she is off to the Best Western, and I am on my way home.

The day before, election day, started out cool but sunny in Chicago. After breakfast, I walked the city for a few hours, then boarded boat for an architectural tour on the Chicago River. The cool morning had lingered, but the sun had not. Not long after the boat pulled away from the dock, those of us who were seated on the open, top deck were treated to a chilly breeze. I pulled my coat from out of my backpack and put it over my other coat--now fully dressed in pretty much all the warm clothing I'd packed. The tour itself was enjoyable, and the tour guide seemed to know what she was talking about. The longer we cruised, the fewer people remained on the deck--the others had descended to the warm, wind-free interior and were probably drinking hot chocolate purchased from the onboard bar. A light rain--more of a mist--began to fall. "It's only you and me now," the tour guide said, and when I looked around and saw that she was right. My exposed hands and face were cold, but soon enough we were again moored.

After a pizza-and-beer lunch at Pizzeria Due, I stopped in a nearby movie theater to stay warm and dry and to watch the movie Flight, which was enjoyable but also as predictable as the next day's election results. Thematically the script was a bit heavy handed, as well, but I am here to neither praise nor bury a movie.... Outside again, the sun was gone but the drizzle of rain was not. I continued walking, the my water-repellent jacket just repellent enough to keep me dry. Finally, on the gray cusp between melancholy and low blood sugar, I picked up a sandwich in a small grocery store and headed back to my hotel room. Along the way, strolling through Millennium Park, I stopped and used my phone to take this photo:

Later, while watching the election results on TV and eating my sandwich, I thought about the young woman who, the day before, sat down at a table beside me as I ate breakfast. "Anyone sitting here?" she asked. The table she had chosen was large, and I assured her it was empty. She asked if I was from Chicago. She told me about the boat tours on the Chicago River (I didn't tell her I planned to ride such a boat the next day). "You look tired," she said. "I do?" I said. "Yeah, you look tired." I told that I was not, that I was simply old. She then asked if I knew where a certain intersection was, and I said I did not. Next, she asked if I knew where South Bend is. "Indiana," I said. She said she needed eight dollars to get there, that she was leaving an abusive relationship and was kicking a drug habit, so she needed to get to a half-way house in South Bend. "That's where I'll stay until I have the baby," she said, and I was amazed that she'd hit the trifecta. I actually did not have that much money on me, and I told her so. Moments later she was gone, and I kept eating.

I would meet another young woman later that day, someone involved with poetry. Several times since I'd begun walking Chicago, I came across signs and placards announcing the 100th anniversary of the Poetry Foundation, which publishes Poetry. On this day I happened upon the Foundation's offices, where I examined the stacks and stacks of books--all poetry. I photographed some of the stacks and sent the photo to one of my writer-friends, and we both had the same reaction: the place reminded us of the poetry library we had, at different times, discovered in Edinburgh, Scotland.. The woman I ended up speaking to gave me a bit of history about the Foundation (much of which I knew). When I asked how she'd come to work there, she said that a year or so earlier she had finished her MFA at Chicago's Columbia College, and the Foundation needed someone, and....well, that's the story. I would think of her again when the woman on the plane told me about her jazz-singing daughter.

All in all, I suppose the trip was uneventful, though being somewhere other than a cubicle is always good. There were other people I encountered but did not meet: the two men talking advertising strategy in a coffee shop; the three men talking about education and world travel at a cafe; the group of workers (whom I imagined to be doing something creative) seated around a large table, talking and reviewing something displayed on a large screen.

It is good to get out, to see and hear things, to challenge myopia and provincialism. Then again, it can be quite dangerous.