AugustWisconsin diary -- Chicago

Saturday
(this post contains numerous pictures, two haikus, a list with two sublists, a couple of cultural/philosophical musings as well as a plea for prayer and *gasp* no puns?? -- read on!)

Erin woke me up around seven, which seemed rather unreasonably early to me, and now that I think about it, it was five in the morning on the West Coast, so I guess my sleepiness was justified. But I had a good reason to get out of bed -- we were taking the train for an adventure in Chicago!
I first found myself in Chicago at the tail end of 2003 and was fascinated by how completely freezing and mythically vertical it was. I was excited to revisit again in pleasant weather.
Nothing on the west coast compares to the metropolises of the Midwest, of which Chicago is of course the largest. Los Angeles isn’t even a proper city in comparison, just the sunbleached stripmall at the end of the world, and only the cultural capital of the country only in terms of quantity – Orson Wells, Craig Thompson, Bob Dylan, Ray Bradbury, Charles Shultz, Iggy Pop, Walt Disney, the Smashing Pumpkins, many of our greatest and most innovative artists hailed from the central soul of this nation, not its bawdy frontier. Even if most of those artists eventually relocated to the West Coast, the Midwest was always in their art and I think I could recognize Chicago before I even knew what to call it. It was the Great American City, our common urban reference point (New York was something else entirely – the absurd, breakneck and massive pinnacle of our culture – when I make it over there I’ll let you know how the myth stands up); and even if I had no direct experience there, I was familiar with it from other people’s memories.
And yet it seemed so much bigger in person.
I mean really, really big. I can’t keep repeating that over and over again, but it’s hard to make the point otherwise. Walking between towering building after towering building on a crisp black and white widescreen Chicago night on my first visit felt like something completely different than the reality I had lived in up to that point and I realized that the Big Cities I’d imagined since childhood, were actually three times removed from their source, a truth much bigger than my brain could contain. It was like seeing a dream come to life in all the staggering nuances of reality.
So I would certainly rouse myself from a deficiency to sleep to experience it again.
…
The Train Ride!
You can get a weekend rain pass between Kenosha and Chicago for a measly five bucks. It may be the best deal in public transportation that isn’t free! Erin and I have a history of not sitting still on transit trips, and this ride was no different. Although I took a few brief naps, we probably spent more time taking pictures of each other. Mush mush mush. These are just a few:

Erin's seat was taller than mine, and I think she rather liked the fact that she towered over me for a change!

…
Chicago was still huge, as expected. Some of it was familiar from a year and a half ago, which was somehow surreal to me because it meant that Chicago and I now had a history together. I never really expected to have a history with Chicago I guess.

Here is where we went, roughly in order:
1. Across an old bridge that went over the Chicago river:

Saw some tourists,
Old theater and took pictures
Were tourists, too

2. The Chicago Cultural Center:

Erin thought, quite reasonably, that the name meant we would be learning about the culture of Chicago, but as it turns out the “Chicago” only describes the location of the museum, not its content. There are rotating contemporary art installations there, featuring local and international artists, which I found to be of varying quality.
More impressive in general, was the architecture of the building itself, which was built in 1897 (!) as the city’s first permanent library, and features stained glass domes and beautifully ornate and book-related décor – including quotes carved on the walls in at least a dozen languages, including Chinese and Hebrew.
We enjoyed wandering the open, mostly empty rooms and staircases, stumbling into an art gallery every once in a while. There were a few families, a handful of hipsters, older patrons, and the rare wedding-party refugees spending the afternoon there as well, but I was surprised there weren’t more people hanging out, as I fancied I’d like to come every day to write if I could.

(note how much I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame in that second picture!)



Here are the exhibits that impressed me the most:
a)
Sustainable Furinture
Kind of like the old Cars of the Future exhibit I remember from Disneyland, except with chairs and tables instead of cars, and personal visions instead of corporate ones. The designers all took different routes on what sustainability meant to them, and a lot of the pieces and ideas filled me with hope for a positive direction in the future.
b) Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin
This was a very gothy exhibit. The sculptures features stuff like chandeliers draped in lace and black rose petals embalmed in wax. Very baroque and visceral – there was so woven detail that I don’t think a written description could do justice. The fact that it was all in an ornate, dimly lit room with red walls and huge ceilings just amped up the creepiness factor. It probably wasn’t the artist’s intention, but it also kind of reminded me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, except, you know, serious? The picture at the link looks like it’s from an exhibition at a more typical white box gallery that just doesn’t have the cobwebby atmosphere we experienced.

hmm. wow, I just compared both art exhibits to Disneyland. I need to get out more???

3. Millennium Park:
I guess they just finished this massive and expensive park in 2004, and Erin still hadn’t been to check it out, so of course we had to pay a visit. It was just down the street from the Cultural Center and buzzing with people relaxing, strolling the gardens, splashing in the water and listening to live music, so although it was apparently quite costly to the city, it looked like a success to me.

Parts of the Park:
a). Shiny Glass thing!

They were working on this while we were there, so we thought it was just shaped like a globe. Gift shop pictures, however, showed that it actually is a giant mirrored kidney bean or something!
Good for more photo ops.


b). Gardens/walkway
Not sure what sort of gardens they were, or if it’d be any fun in the winter, but it was pleasantly bustling and felt vaguely Japaneseish? The pathway paralleled a tiered series of waterways where people were dangling their feet, which was pretty rad.

c). Amphitheatre

Struck me as the biggest thing and the center of the park. Since there wasn’t a concert going on at the time, the huge lawn was open and being frolicked upon. We sat down in the shade of some big arch things going over the lawn and I attempted a map while Eri read some of the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck collection I’d brought. There were at least two other couples sprawled out or cuddling on the lawn, and at least one sunbather.

Erin looks like she wants to eat me in this picture! look at her eyes!

d). Giant Video Sculpture Fountain thing!
Certainly the oddest and most striking thing in the park, perhaps all of Chicago. Two forty foot pillars facing each other. Usually you can’t say that pillars are facing each other, but in this case each one was acting as a video screens, with huge faces of people on them. The faces were of all sorts of people, male and female of all ages and ethnicities and rotated every few minutes. But while each person was up there on the pillar you could chart those few minutes of their life. Though they held still, the still breathed, blinked, occasionally changed expressions, and then, eventually, they would purse their lips together and shoot water at the anticipating kids splashing between the pillars. Yes, these were video screens that sprayed water! After the video was over, water would rush down the whole thing, drenching anyone waiting for such a moment, and shrieks and laughs could be heard. Then a new face would appear and the ritual would begin again.
It seems rather ridiculous, and in a way it certainly is. Forty-foot-high faces are certainly a bit disconcerting at first. But it’s also undeniably playful, and with the constant anticipation of new faces and water sprays, remarkably captivating. And, after watching for a few cycles, I found that I was actually quite moved by the whole thing. The dual pillars of course bring back memories of 9-11 along with dual feelings of vulnerability and solidarity, but instead of exploiting them for patriotism or as a rallying symbol for vengeance, they’d made a monument that honored Americans instead of simply America, and also made it a gift for our children. Unlike most memorials, and I suspect, the eventual memorial for 9-11, this one wasn’t about mourning what we lost – it was a celebration of what we had. The mood wasn’t solemn, but joyful!
I didn’t think I’d approve of forty-foot interactive video screens, but it turns out that, I did.



4. After walking through the park we sat and talked by the lakefront.

Across from Michigan
A lake as big as an ocean
Traffic between us


5. Thai food!
We'd eatten the food we'd packed for an early lunch at the cultural center (Which also had a cafe and offered free weekly concerts!) but after all that walking, we were hungry again, so around 3ish we headed to a Thai place we'd spotted earlier for a Spanish lunch (Spanish as in that’s when they eat lunch in Spain – we aren’t quite crazy enough to go to a Thai restaurant and expect Spanish food). We shared some Pad Thai and stuffed crab thingies and were getting close to finishing up the meal when a woman suddenly appeared in front of our table and started begging for something to eat.
I have been panhandled before and been fed plenty of sob stories and am starting to get jaded enough that I don’t automatically feel compelled to help out (although I usually do). This woman seemed genuine, though – and she wasn’t asking for money, just food.
I called the waitress over and the begging woman asked for some teriyaki rice or something without even really looking at a menu. The waitress seemed suspicious, but I was paying, so she couldn’t argue too much I guess.
The woman sat down at the small table across from us and put her head in her hands. Erin and I sat in silence and tried to resume the meal normally. We were sitting on the same side of the table, so there was nothing between her and us but space.
She put her head in her hands and started to cry. We had nothing to do but watch.
That’s not true. We couldn’t just sit there and watch. Who could? Who could sit politely and eat lunch across from a broken woman while she wept?
I went to her table and asked what was wrong, if there was anything I could do.
She rubbed her hand across her face and drew out her words, “oh I’m just emberassed.” She was a black woman in a loose white tee-shirt, her hair pulled tightly away from her face, which looked thin and hollow.
She told me that she’d run away from her husband because he was beating her and she couldn’t take it anymore. She was from somewhere further south (I don’t remember where now) and didn’t know anyone in Chicago, had just ended up there. The women’s shelter wouldn’t take her, I assume because she wasn’t a local.
She also admitted to me that she’d run off and left her two children with their abusive father. The guilt, I could tell, was tearing her apart.
We talked for a little while, mostly me asking questions, trying to get a better handle on her situation to see if there was anything I could do to help. In the end, all I could really do was listen and give her a little money for a hotel.
That’s not true either. I prayed with her, something she really seemed to appreciate.
Then she got her food, I returned to our table, and she thanked Erin and I, and then walked out onto the street to God knows where.
We still couldn’t really finish our meal.

6. A comic book store.
On our way back to the train we stopped at a comic store, just because I like to check them out. I spent enough money at the San Diego convention that there wasn’t even a temptation to buy anything. They had a good selection, good music playing, and were rather clean. I guess I’d go back.

…
We caught the 4:30 train back to Kenosha, which was a bit cramped. We sat knee to knee across from another young couple and quietly debriefed about the Thai restaurant situation. I felt helpless and rather ineffective. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for a stranger before, and I’m not sure that I’m even very good at praying. Others are so much more sensitive than I am, and I felt like I failed in really making a profound, life-changing impact on her in my prayer. Other than that, I was just doing what any decent person would do. Perhaps Erin and I had tided her over for half a day, but I didn’t feel like we saved her. I didn’t even know what we could have done differently TO save her.
But as we talked through it, I realized that my attitude was wrong. I was concentrating on ME, my own ego and desire to save. But it wasn’t about me, and if she was going to be saved, it certainly wouldn’t be through me alone.
We’d had the privilege to serve her and share a little bit of Jesus. And that was a reason to rejoice, not grumble! God was in control and could certainly use our encounter in some unforeseen way in her life, which was another reason to rejoice.
I hope that she gets her life back on track, although I don’t expect to ever know in this life if she does. Either way, I know she could use any prayers you can give. I think her name was Shenine.

The next entry shouldn’t be so long. There was just a lot to say about Chicago.
xxoo