Hello, Chicago, Goodbye: Part 3

Three really is enough, so this is the last of installment about my journey to the Midwest. Just as I've run out of reasons to go there, I think I've run out of things to say about it.

There were dreamers everywhere. I could tell by the way they were dressed, by the way they walked. They were natives of that city element, to steal and corrupt a line from Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use." The streets were full of them, and full of Uber drivers, too: anonymous owners of automobiles connected to anonymous people who needed rides. It's the Internet of Things, you know: that collection of whims marketed as necessities. You want to have your drapes open automatically every morning? There's an app for that.

I walked as much as I could while in Chicago, venturing into a few places I'd not been to before. That's how you get to know a place--on your feet, your legs all the Uber you need to become intimate with even the city of the broadest of shoulders. That's how I learned all that I did about London and San Francisco and Portland and Reno, too, sometimes choosing a route by which way I could cross a street, which building I spotted in the distance.

But, still, I don't know Chicago, only the general grid, only the diagonal streets that delineate paths Native Americans traveled for a long time before Daniel Burnham master-planned the city. What don't I know about Chicago? So many things: what happens at night; where the locals actually spend their time; which areas to avoid for any reason you can think of. 

I've been home for just over a week now, and each day since I've wished my stay had been longer. And I'd like to think that I'll return soon, that circumstances, chance, or planning will get me there. Maybe I don't need a reason to go, after all.