I’ve found myself a beautifully appointed Starbucks, and a window seat in view of the El station in the Bryn Mawr section of Chicago. It’s gray as an eraser smudge today, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem is unfurling day by day in my head. Yesterday, it was only the first three lines. Today, the fourth and fifth come with the weather:
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
I did fall in love here, in a different part of the city only a few weeks from now, only a few years ago. I took, what was at that point and may very well continue to be, the greatest leap of faith of my entire life.
It’s warmer today than it was yesterday, but Lake Michigan could not be denied, and I went down to the waterfront anyway. I took off my shoes, and stuck a toe in the water. It’s not enough to see the edges of land. I’ve made it my business to “poke” the waters. I’ve touched the Atlantic in many places, the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, Lake Erie while aimlessly driving north from Oberlin, the Pacific sometime during the tour with Dar Williams, and Lake Michigan yesterday. I’ve jumped into the Missouri River fully clothed (while others around me were entirely the opposite). And I’ve camped along the Chesapeake Bay, where I used the beach like an hourglass, sitting my chair at the water line and reading a book until the tide had sunk me, slowly, to the ground. I’ve crossed Lake Pontchartrain at sunrise, but I have not touched it, yet.
I am no swimmer, but I have always enjoyed being near water. There is something simple about where the land drops off: The colors, the lines, the divisions. Even the sound is without any meaning and requires no discerning attention, like a pleasant version of television snow.
Before getting up to much anything else – we’ve been in a damn car for too long and it’s time to go for a walk! We saw a really cool mosaic on the way in and we want to take a closer look. One of the fun little scenes within this under-the-bridge mosaic in Edgewater in Chicago, IL. A hidden friend in the mosaic. Cicadas, complete with red, glaring eyes!
So, I’m near the water and a teeny bit of my soul feels more peaceful. I wonder sometimes if I should not move to a waterfront town where no one knows me. And it would be like a baptism. I would just be reborn simpler, more calm.
I don’t want to think about myself. I am instead enjoying the intersection. It’s lunch hour on a Tuesday. A gray-haired couple is carrying across two large, slightly different bouquets of orange and red flowers, like still-life fireworks in the middle of the stony intersection. A sprinting girl in kelly green corduroy. A young mom in a brilliant red dress and lime coat, is loaded down on the right shoulder with bags (and I think even a cake box) counterbalancing the baby carrier dangling from the other arm. A woman with a blue milk crate of fliers keeps changing corners, looking for the best refuge from the wind that suddenly kicked up. I suppose if you live in Chicago, this is part and parcel.
If we’ve come to the bridge, we should get on down to the beach. Or if it’s “just” a lake, is it “just” a shore? Heather tests the waters of Lake Michigan and… …then Kristen shot us in the back.
The gray punches every one of these colors.
In the hour I’ve been here, business has picked up and rob is now across the table from me. And we look like we’re playing battleship with our laptops as usual. Both of us make note of the barista’s script tattooed around her forearm. I had already asked her when I ordered my coffee an hour ago. An homage to a father and daughter’s love of Chuck Berry: Hail, hail rock and roll.
