this is 606

where you're caught for an instant in the brightness

2011-10-28T19:31:00.002-05:00

Don't tell me you've never dreamed of this –
of waking in a room with a wide open window,

the air clear and ringing after night rain;
of needing no other reason than a sky

the unbelievable blue of which
sends you flitting deftly through the house

past the year-old jar of nails and flies,
the pile of dishes in the sink, and out the back door

where you're caught for an instant in the brightness
because the future's so much easier than you'd thought –

slipping your heart under the rosebush like a key,
everything you need in the canvas bag

resting lightly at your hip
and life as simple as turning left or right.

"As I Walked Out," Esther Morgan

[Ukrainian Village]

ticking like an electric fence

2011-10-26T15:50:00.000-05:00

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,
A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

"Human Chain," Seamus Heaney

[Chicago Avenue at Damen Avenue]

spirit is a far cry

2011-10-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

What do you call
the muscle we long with? Spirit?
I don’t think so. Spirit is a far cry. This
is a casting outward which
unwinds inside the chest. A hole
which complements the heart.
The ghost of a chance.

"Twinflower," Don McKay

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

full of ghosts tonight

2011-10-07T16:59:00.002-05:00

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)," Edna St. Vincent Millay

[Chicago Avenue east of California Avenue]

a blue light radiates

2011-10-06T14:36:00.001-05:00

A blue light
radiates from my clothing.
Midwinter.
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border.

"Midwinter," Tomas Tranströmer

[Damen Avenue at Chicago Avenue]

shirtsleeves the whole night

2011-10-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

The train stopped far south. It was snowing in New York.
Here you could go about in shirtsleeves the whole night.
But no one was out. Only the cars
flew past in their glare, flying saucers.

"Oklahoma," Tomas Tranströmer

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

a sort of bloom on them

2011-10-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

The dog barks, the caravan passes on.
The words had a sort of bloom on them
But were weightless, carrying past what was being said.

"Grand Galop," John Ashbery

[California Avenue west of Chicago Avenue]

memories in groups

2011-09-23T19:50:00.001-05:00

Lone chimes speak silence, memories in groups beneath the trees,
cows sad in the dusk. Behind the young shepherds a cloud
was bleating at the sunset.

"Engraving," Yannis Ritsos

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

out so early

2011-09-22T21:16:00.002-05:00

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago I met a little girl with a book under her arm. I asked her why she was out so early and she answered that there were too many books and far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”
~ Tove Jansson

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

blue nights

2011-09-17T03:18:00.001-05:00

"Vanish. Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her. Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes. Go back into the blue... I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost... The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her."

"Blue Nights," Joan Didion

[Thessaloniki]

acquainted with the night

2011-09-15T14:44:00.000-05:00

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

"Acquainted with the Night," Robert Frost

[Armitage Avenue looking east at Spaulding Street]

most delusive

2011-09-11T15:52:00.004-05:00

‎

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

~  George Bernard Shaw

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue; Damen Avenue and August Avenue]

i just don't have the time

2011-09-10T16:08:00.000-05:00

The odd thing about my life is that I have three full-time jobs and none of them really mix. In the theatre I'm known as a playwright. In Hollywood I'm known as a screenwriter. At the BBC I'm known as a writer of "quality TV drama". None of the people I work with know who the other people are or care. It's like bigamy. I have three jobs which I try to do all at once and it's sometimes hard to explain to people why I might be busy in LA or New Mexico or Shepherd's Bush next week, and therefore unavailable. In my house in Somerset where I write, I don't have a phone, TV or the internet. It's annoying, I admit, and it drives people crazy, but I just don't have the time.

~ Joe Penhall

[66 CTA bus, west of Western Avenue]

the only response

2011-09-06T00:07:00.001-05:00

The only response
to a child’s grave is
to lie down before it and play dead

"Minor Poem," Bill Knott

[Damen Avenue at Chicago Avenue]

2011-09-05T00:26:00.002-05:00

How little we know,
and when we know it!

"Like A Sentence," John Ashbery

[Chicago Avenue at Hoyne Avenue]

debauched irreparably by hollywood

2011-09-04T18:05:00.000-05:00

"[I]nterspersed randomly throughout all of this, action shots from various poster advertisements for Technicolored and black-and-white movie epics wherein mayhem, sex, blood, torture, sadism, and skulduggery had reigned supreme—the bachelor's pad of a man who had been debauched irreparably by Hollywood..."

"A Fan's Notes," Frederick Exley

(Patio Theater)

[Chicago Avenue east of Hoyne Avenue]

a man with a fin-tailed car

2011-08-31T15:52:00.000-05:00

"Some people have more gadgets than others. Naturally you consider a man with a fin-tailed car more successful than the man who's driving a model five years old. It's false to judge people that way."

~ Nelson Algren

[Western Avenue above Chicago Avenue]

a frenchman in chicago

2011-08-18T04:24:00.001-05:00

[Sofitel]

so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope

2011-08-13T21:53:00.011-05:00

“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years! And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there's no fate, but there is, it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn't really. So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel cherished, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay, just to get along! I don’t know why. Maybe because... no one wants to hear about my misery... because they have their own. Fuck everybody. Amen."

The priest's monologue, "Synecdoche, New York," Charlie Kaufman

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

slow as a cloud

2011-08-12T00:27:00.000-05:00

One day
she fell
in love with its
heft and speed.
Tough, lean,

fast as light
slow as a cloud.
It took care
of rain, short

noon, long dark.
It had rough kin;
did not stall.
With it, she said,
I may,

if I can,
sleep; since I must,
die.
Some say,
rise.

"The Monosyllable," Josephine Jacobsen

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

the hand holds no chalk

2011-08-11T22:49:00.020-05:00

"Its existence
Was real, though troubled, and the ache
Of this waking dream can never drown out
The diagram still sketched on the wind,
Chosen, meant for me and materialized
In the disguising radiance of my room.
We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant. One feels too confined,
Sifting the April sunlight for clues,
In the mere stillness of the ease of its
Parameter. The hand holds no chalk
And each part of the whole falls off
And cannot know it knew, except
Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time."

"Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," John Ashbery

[Chicago Avenue west of California Avenue]

a bicycle that glitters like the wind

2011-08-10T18:36:00.005-05:00

This girl
Waits at the corner for
This boy
Freewheeling on his bicycle.
She holds
A flower in her hand
A gold flower
In her hands she holds
The sun.
With power between his thighs
The boy
Comes smiling to her
He rides
A bicycle that glitters like
The wind.
This boy this girl
They walk
In step with the wind
Arm in arm
They climb the level street
To where
Laid on the glittering handlebars
The flower
Is round and shining as
The sun

"Girl, Boy, Flower, Bicycle," M. K. Joseph

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street]

some specific something that's no longer required

2011-08-09T18:35:00.003-05:00

Necessity being one of invention's many mothers, I have a certain faith in our ability to repurpose almost anything, provided it becomes sufficiently necessary. Then again, I suspect we've abandoned cities in the past because they were too thoroughly built to do some specific something that's no longer required."

~ William Gibson, Scientific American, September 2011

[Damen Avenue below North Avenue]

sentence

2011-08-08T15:06:00.008-05:00

"One can summarize a plot in one sentence, whereas it’s fairly difficult to summarize one frame." ~ Raymond Durgnat

[North Avenue east of Milwaukee and Damen Avenues]

every time you watch a movie

2011-08-07T23:50:00.004-05:00

"Every time you watch a movie you become part of its moment, whenever it may have been, and you live the moment over again rather than simply remember it."

~ Steve Erickson on Monte Hellman

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

a perpetual setting forth

2011-08-06T04:23:00.004-05:00

"Barthes' preferred way of presenting his hypotheses was in the form of linked aphorisms, and, as Susan Sontag noted, 'it is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding.' The paradox, then, is that this man who liked first words (and adored paradoxes) offered his provisional findings as if they were the last word. Needless to say, this last word was always susceptible to further elaboration and refinement, to further beginnings. This is how Barthes' prose acquires its signature style of compression and flow, a summing up that is also a perpetual setting forth."

~ Geoff Dyer on Roland Barthes

[Sofitel]

days before the injury was expected

2011-08-05T04:09:00.005-05:00

You might remember trying to read
The notes scrawled on the decaying leaves
Of the branches whizzing upwards
As you tumbled down the yawn
Between mountains, irresistible
As the urge to bandage your chest
Days before the injury was expected.

"And About Time," David Lehman

[Chicago Avenue west of California Avenue]

a minor light, a cooling star

2011-08-04T01:04:00.003-05:00

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end."

"The Corrections," Jonathan Franzen

[Haddon Street at Damen Avenue]

constantly lapsing into oblivion

2011-08-03T23:21:00.003-05:00

"I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on."

"Austerlitz," W.G. Sebald

[Damen Avenue below Haddon Street]

figureless landscapes drenched in the light worked through the presumption of sentimental memory

2011-08-02T19:41:00.001-05:00

“Just how powwrful is art? Can it put you off your food the way love or grief or fear does? Can it slam the brakes on the relentless business of life, fade out the buzz and cut straight through to our most basic emotions: anguish, desire, ecstasy, terror? For most of art's history, it was assumed that if you pitched the stakes that high you would need stories, or at least figures, to deliver the poetic rush of feeling: weeping Madonnas; voluptuously vulnerable nudes; soulful self-portraits; embattled heroes laid low. Even figureless landscapes drenched in the light worked through the presumption of sentimental memory, briefly passing felicities. But Mark Rothko believed that tradition was all used up; that figurative art no longer had what it took to connect us, viscerally, to the human tragedy. In the century of mass incinerations, who cared about a few darts in the side of St Sebastian? The problem of modern life, especially in consumer society, he thought, was that unspeakable things had been done and contemporary culture’s answer was to dull the pain with distraction, with the daily satisfaction of the appetites. The problem of modern art was how—with such elementary material as paint and canvas—it could throttle the relentless chirpiness of contemporary life and reconnect us with the strenuous drama of the human condition... Only a completely new visual language of strong feeling, Rothko thought, could wake us from moral stupor.”

"The Power of Art," Simon Schama

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

no moon and the stars sparse

2011-08-01T13:52:00.005-05:00

Long ago in Kentucky, I, a boy
Stood by a dirt road at first dark
And heard the great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them
There being no moon and the stars sparse.
I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.
It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore, they were going north.
The sound was passing northward.

Tell me a story.
In this century in moment of mania
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.

"Audubon: A Vision," Robert Penn Warren

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street]

a perennial social imperative

2011-07-06T16:13:00.001-05:00

"Kitsch-making (the urge to generalize and sentimentalize) is not the personal defect of some American professor or any one person, it is a seduction that comes out of the collective unconscious; a command from the metaphysical prompter; a perennial social imperative, a force. That force is aimed not at art alone but primarily at reality itself... it throws a veil of commonplaces over the present moment in or that the face of the real will disappear."

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Milan Kundera

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

well advised

2011-07-05T16:32:00.003-05:00

“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.”

~ Joan Didion

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

by the bay and bay

2011-07-03T18:54:00.004-05:00

BlackBerry photo of a Michael Bay perspective on a skyline shortly to be under attack at the theater behind me.

[Illinois Street east of Michigan Avenue.]

constant jeopardy of decay

2011-07-02T07:46:00.001-05:00

"Against the constant jeopardy of decay there is the necessity of constant renewal."

"The Unforeseen Wilderness," Wendell Berry

[Chicago Avenue and California Avenue after June 30 hailstorm]

beauty makes sex sex

2011-07-01T07:31:00.000-05:00

Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty.
As I would again
if he came near. Beauty convinces. You know beauty makes sex possible.
Beauty makes sex sex.

"Beauty of the Husband," Anne Carson

[Damen Avenue above Rice Street]

comic complication

2011-06-30T00:32:00.000-05:00

[California Avenue and Chicago Avenue]

an only child above the measured thunder of the cars

2011-06-29T00:13:00.004-05:00

By nights when the yellow salamanders of the El bend all one way and the cold rain runs with the red-lit rain.
By the way the city's million wires are burdened only by lightest snow;
When chairs are stacked and glasses are turned and arc-lamps all are dimmed.
By days when the wind bangs alley gates ajar and the sun goes by on the wind.
By nights when the moon is an only child above the measured thunder of the cars, you may know Chicago's heart at last.

"Chicago: City on the Make," Nelson Algren

[Chicago Avenue at California Avenue]

anybody live here?

2011-06-28T20:43:00.002-05:00

EXT. MYERS HOUSE - NIGHT

A police car pulls up in front of the Myers house. Brackett
and Loomis get out and stand by the front gate.

LOOMIS
Anybody live here?

BRACKETT
Not since 1963, since it happened.
Every kid in Haddonfield thinks
this place is haunted.

LOOMIS
They may be right.

HALLOWEEN, John Carpenter & Debra Hill.

[Oakley Boulevard below Chicago Avenue]

in a good mood

2011-06-27T20:36:00.001-05:00

"I can't tell my jokes if I'm in a good mood."
~ James Fritz

[Chicago Avenue at California Avenue]

a handful of dust

2011-06-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

"The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot

[Chicago Avenue At Damen Avenue]

the shunting of trains far away in the freight yards

2011-06-25T12:18:00.000-05:00

"He walked down into the main square, where he could hear the fountain gurgling. In the middle he stopped indecisively, his coat unbuttoned, his hands pushed to the bottom of his trousers pockets, where they encountered nothing but the cloth. He listened a long time to the gurgling of the fountain and to the shunting of trains far away in the freight yards. 'An' this is the war,”he thought. 'Ain't it queer? It's quieter than it was at home nights.' Down the street at the end of the square a band of white light appeared, the searchlight of a staff car. The two eyes of the car stared straight into his eyes, dazzling him, then veered off to one side."

"Three Soldiers," John dos Passos

[Chicago Avenue at California Avenue]

the pub crawl that stops, looks and listens

2011-06-24T18:01:00.001-05:00

At dusk on the second-longest day of the year, a Ukrainian Village pub crawl sponsored by the Chicago History Museum, paused across Chicago Avenue to take instruction. They were unaware there was an impromptu meeting of the Chicago Man Kilt Club at their destination.

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street.]

ingen blandade allt annat än whisky och öl på tug & maul

2011-06-23T17:54:00.001-05:00

Ingen blandade allt annat än whisky och öl på Tug & Maul. Att be Antek för en martini hade varit motsvarande be honom om en kyss.

~ Nelson Algren

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

we don't get tornados in these parts

2011-06-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street.]

puerco, pollo, queso

2011-06-21T20:28:00.003-05:00

The man drew a wad of bills from his hip pocket. He'd gotten back from months of service in Iraq, he said, his full commitment, he'd cashed out his discharge settlement. He quickly had a beer and a whiskey in front of him, and he tipped the doorman 20. He tipped the bartender 20, more. Hundreds poked out from among the 20s. The man wasn't from Chicago, but from downstate, something about his discharge left him alone in the city for the night, into Tuesday morning. He stared into the distance, outside the window onto the street, took a civil sip of the Heineken. The Tamale Man's car arrived, lurched to a stop in the loading zone. The man looked toward Claudio's approaching hand cooler with a child's wide eyes. The pair trade words in Spanish, regional Spanish that appeared to take the Tamale Man by surprise. A handful of bills are exchanged, Claudio handed over tamales — puerco, pollo, queso? — in their Ziploc bag. Claudio moved into the crowded storefront, searching for familiar customers down the room, getting hellos and hugs from along the bar. On the windowsill, the veteran field-stripped his tamales, laid neatly on folded napkins as if he were working a sushi counter, as if he were making bento for a child's lunch the next day. He arranged the three kinds of dipping salsa neatly among them. He took a bite, another. He ate efficiently, quickly. He stared off toward the street again, across the street, toward the distance, past the distance. These were good tamales.

[California Avenue and Chicago Avenue]

two parallel red lines

2011-06-20T17:58:00.000-05:00

Weekends are long and white. Snow drifts against the door. Distant threads from the piano downstairs. Deneuve washes her glassware. Dries it. Hours slide. In the hotel room it is dusk, a girl turns, I have to confess something. This is mental. Two parallel red lines of different lengths inch forward, not touching.

"Weekends," Anne Carson

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

a city filled with streets and sewers

2011-06-20T14:41:00.005-05:00

a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers
filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,
filled with banality and booze,
filled with rain and thunder and periods of
drought, a poem is a city at war,
a poem is a city asking a clock why,
a poem is a city burning,
a poem is a city under guns
its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,
a poem is a city where God rides naked
through the streets like Lady Godiva,
where dogs bark at night, and chase away
the flag; a poem is a city of poets,
most of them quite similar
and envious and bitter…
a small music from broken windows...
a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,
a poem is the world...

"A Poem Is A City," Charles Bukowski

[Damen Avenue and Chicago Avenue.]

willingness to be happy

2011-06-20T11:14:00.011-05:00

O'Hara finds a thousand things to like. Ballet dancers fly through his verse. Taxi drivers tell him funny things. Zinka Milanov sings, the fountains splash. The city honks at him and he honks back. This willingness to be happy is one of the things for which O’Hara is most loved, and rightly so. It is a fundamental aspect of his moral life, and the motor of his poetry.

~ Joan Acocella on Frank O'Hara

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue.]

often silly

2011-06-19T17:15:00.001-05:00

"When will we hear once more the pure voice of elation
raised in the nightwood of known symbol and allusion?
Oh, far from Mother, in the unmarried city,
you contemplate a new ode to Euphrosyne,
goddess of banquets; and in the darkest hours
of holocaust and apocalypse, cheap music and singles bars,
you remind us of what the examined life involves –
for what you teach is the courage to be ourselves,
however ridiculous; and if you were often silly
or too “prone to hold forth," you prescribe a cure
for our civilization and its discontents
based upon agapé, Baroque opera, common sense
and the creative impulse that brought us here,
sustaining us now as we face a more boring future."

"Auden on St. Marks Place," Derek Mahon

[Above Lee Street east of Damen Avenue]

urban falconry

2011-06-18T18:21:00.000-05:00

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

the new chicago style

2011-06-17T17:24:00.005-05:00

After a discussion of what constitutes "The New Chicago Style," advertised on the cover of ACM magazine (Another Chicago Magazine), editor Jacob Knabb shares thoughts on the meaning of the rubic on the sidewalk outside the Stop Smiling storefront. 16 June.

[Milwaukee Avenue below Wood Street.]

hence the horizon's blade

2011-06-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

Darling, you think it’s love, it’s just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles “Oh, stop it, Bernie,”
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail.
Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller.
Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells.
Still, you can tell yourself in the john by the spat-at mirror,
slamming the flush and emerging with clean lapels.
Only the liquid furniture cradles the dwindling figure.
Man shouldn’t grow in size once he’s been portrayed.
Look: what’s been left behind is about as meager
as what remains ahead. Hence the horizon’s blade.

"Seaward," Josep Brodsky.

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street]

raptured

2011-06-05T21:36:00.002-05:00

Bryan Wendorf introduces THE COLOR WHEEL at Chicago Underground.

[State Street south of Couch Place]

his aim is true-ish

2011-06-04T21:32:00.002-05:00

Filmmaker Bill Siegel.

[Lake Street east of Union Park]

some girls never learn

2011-06-04T01:38:00.001-05:00

Filmmaker Jerzy Rose after premiere of his feature of the same name, opening night 2011, Chicago Underground Film Festival.

[State Street below Couch Place]

while i am waiting, you could do me a favour

2011-05-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

I want to know who you are. People talk about a voice calling in the wilderness. All through the Old Testament a voice, which is not the voice of God but which knows what is on God's mind is crying out. While I am waiting, you could do me a favour. Who are you?

"Short Talk On Who You Are," Anne Carson

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

was you ever bit by a dead bee

2011-05-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

I was, I was—by its posthumous chomp,
by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz.
If you’re ever shanked like the chump
that I was, by the posthumous chomp
of an expired wire, you’ll bellow out prompt
at the pitiless shiv when she does what she does.
Was you? I was. By its posthumous chomp,
by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz.

"Was you ever bit by a dead bee?", Hailey Leithauser

[Ukrainian Village]

writers who do not write

2011-05-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

"I often wonder about the people who linger over trash baskets at the corners of the city's sidewalks. One sees them day and night, young and old, well dressed, in rags—often with shopping bags—picking over the trash. They pick out newspapers, envelopes. They discard things. I often wonder who they are and that they're after. I approach and cannot ask them. Anyway, they scurry off. Some times I think they are writers who do not write. That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all."

"Speedboat," Renata Adler

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

rainward

2011-05-12T17:53:00.000-05:00

[Chicago Avenue looking toward Michigan Avenue]

angels depart

2011-05-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

[North Avenue west of Western Avenue]

in the damages

2011-04-22T00:01:00.001-05:00

God, my dear, is in the damages.

"30 Delft Tiles," Mark Doty

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

after a while

2011-04-21T19:35:00.000-05:00

The rain, after three days of uninterrupted sovereignty, had stopped for the time. The sky cleared after a while and the stars came out.

"The Man Who Killed Dan Odams," Dashiell Hammett

[Chicago Avenue at Damen Avenue]

hard to explain to anyone

2011-04-19T19:40:00.001-05:00

The startling reality of things
Is my discovery every single day.
Every thing is what it is,
And it's hard to explain to anyone
how much this delights me
And suffices me.

To be whole, it is enough
simply to exist

~ Pessoa

[Ukrainian Village above Augusta Boulevard.]

where you're to sleep

2011-04-18T01:34:00.000-05:00

Here's where you're to sleep
The sheets are still clean
They're only been slept in once.

"The Impact of the Cities," Bertolt Brecht

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

after each sudden swerve or rubbery squeal

2011-04-14T18:11:00.008-05:00

just terribly, but humorously sang
Jonathan Richman's 'Stop This Car' after each sudden

swerve or rubbery squeal. Once they discussed
the pros and cons of having sex

with Bob Dylan–or a Bob Dylan look-alike–in a Buick
while listening to 'From a Buick 6'.

Black fumes billowed from the exhaust, and by a species
of dead reckoning they charted, in a road atlas, detours

and punctures, losses and gains–all
the time wondering whether (as Van Morrison once

sang) to 'Hardnose
the Highway' were the same as to live.

"They Drove, Mark Ford

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

i've never had the right words to describe my life

2011-04-12T23:51:00.001-05:00

"Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever."

"Middlesex," Jeffrey Eugenides

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

that lost year's first snow

2011-04-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

The little petit-larceny punk from Damen and Division and the dealer still got along like a couple playful pups... Their friendship had kindled on a winter night two years before Pearl Harbor when Sparrow had first drifted, with that lost year's first snow, out of a lightless, snow-banked alley onto a littered and lighted street.

"The Man With The Golden Arm," Nelson Algren

[West Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

float backwards

2011-04-10T18:05:00.000-05:00

People kissing stop to sigh then kiss
again.
Doctors sigh into wounds and the bloodstream is changed
forever.
Flowers sigh and two noon bees
float backwards.

"Guillermo's Sigh Symphony," Anne Carson

[Damen Avenue at Augusta Boulevard]

beauties have come

2011-04-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

Be silent! Spring is here! The rose is dancing with its thorn.
Beauties have come from the Invisible to call you home.

"Give Me Ecstacy," Rumi, trans. Andrew Harvey

[Chicago Avenue west of California Avenue]

they ask themselves

2011-04-08T18:06:00.004-05:00

"Some men are above the law."
"But how do they know who they are?"
"They ask themselves."

"Pickpocket," Robert Bresson

[Damen Avenue below Augusta Boulevard]

i want to hear the true story, essentially

2011-04-07T20:22:00.011-05:00

“The notion that anything can be invented wholly and these invented things are classified as fiction and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called nonfiction strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things. We know that most great novels and stories come not from things that are entirely invented, but from perfect knowledge and close observation. To say they are made up is an injustice in describing them. I sometimes say that I don’t make up anything—obviously, that’s not true. But I am usually uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the imagination. I would rather be in a room with someone who is telling me the story of his life, which may be exaggerated and even have lies in it, but I want to hear the true story, essentially."

~ James Salter, Paris Review Interview No. 133

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

i like to watch the man mix

2011-03-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that's wonderful.

"The Long Goodbye," Raymond Chandler

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

dispelling the sordid gloom

2011-03-07T00:00:00.000-06:00

dispelling the sordid gloom of our subway decor

"Chicago: City on the Make," Nelson Algren

[Chicago Avenue Red Line]

fade like the darkness itself

2011-03-06T17:12:00.001-06:00

"Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny. No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation. Alcohol's job is to replace creation. I've spent whole summers at Neauphle alone except for drink. People used to come at weekends. but during the week I was alone in that huge house, and that was how alcohol took on its full significance. It lends resonance to loneliness, and ends up making you prefer it to everything else."

~ Marguerite Duras

[California Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

understand it all

2011-03-05T02:56:00.001-06:00

Someday, we will fall down and weep, and understand it all, all things.

"Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoevsky, as translated by Terrence Malick

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

just get wet

2011-03-04T18:25:00.001-06:00

Some people feel the rain, others just get wet.

~ Bob Dylan

[Wacker Drive between Michigan Avenue and Wabash Avenue]

un éclair

2011-03-03T03:05:00.006-06:00

Un éclair... puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

"À une passante," Baudelaire

[Framed photograph: Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street; image: Chicago Avenue just east of Damen Avenue]

reversal

2011-02-19T19:57:00.001-06:00

lighting on every moment of my life

2011-02-14T00:01:00.001-06:00

My lovers suffocate me,
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,
Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and
chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.

"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street]

an overwhelming problem for an animal free of instinct

2011-02-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

Life is an overwhelming problem for an animal free of instinct. The individual has to protect himself from the world, and he can do this only as any other animal would: by narrowing down the world, shutting off experience, developing an obliviousness both to the terrors of the world and to his own anxieties. Otherwise he would be crippled for action. We cannot repeat too often the great lesson of Freudian psychology: that repression is normal self-protection and creative self-restriction—in a real sense man's natural substitute for instinct... The artist also takes in the world but instead of being oppressed by it he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art... We might say that both the neurotic and the artist bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an external, active, work project... The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own... There is no doubt that creative work is itself done under a compulsion often indistinguishable from a purely clinical obsession. In this sense, what we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed.

"The Denial of Death," Ernest Becker

[West of Damen Avenue, south of Thomas Street]

all things shining

2011-02-12T04:07:00.000-06:00

And you have made all things new;
you have showed me all things shining.

~ Odes of Solomon

[The Magic Alley, Ukrainian Village]

mystical hysterical

2011-02-11T02:12:00.001-06:00

Mystical hysterical amalgam of earth and wind
and mind

"Dust Devil," Christian Wiman

[Division Street east of Damen Avenue]

the great city's troubled heart

2011-02-07T18:02:00.001-06:00

"There, unheard by the millions who ride the waves above and sleep, and sleep and dream, night after night after night, loving and well beloved, guarding and well guarded, beats the great city's troubled heart."

"City on the Make," Nelson Algren

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

disappears

2011-02-05T08:02:00.003-06:00

[Cortez Street east of Western Avenue]

the fog remains

2011-02-04T03:38:00.000-06:00

Here was the fog. It's not difficult to drive in the fog. Just don't lose sight of the white line in the middle of the road; move over only when you see another car coming toward you. In a relationship between a man and a woman, there's also a white line, which at a certain moment divides into two: these two move parallel to each other for awhile and then converge, only to diverge suddenly until finally they disappear. The fog remains.

~ Michelangelo Antonioni

[Chicago Avenue west of Wolcott]

in the dark times

2011-02-03T15:29:00.006-06:00

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.

~ Bertolt Brecht

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

our endurance these days frayed

2011-02-02T17:47:00.000-06:00

For wearing the soul out in dull dull size
O’Hare is the worst, it is a fitting gate
to come into Chicago, if your feet
still drag their heavy selves and if your eyes
survive the miles of Stygian blue. Be wise,
lovers of light, lovers, and sedate
humanists, race of Erasmus, to evade
this labyrinth upon your winged ways;

our number is grown few and our endurance
these days frayed; though we are sweet and bland
by disposition, we are known to kill
or die of grief meeting the imbecile.
And through these corridors they pipe a canned
music that is neither song nor dance.

"O’Hare Airport," Paul Goodman

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

a ruined moon in a sky that had fallen through

2011-02-01T17:07:00.001-06:00

A sky of midnight blue. A moon of Christmas snow. Long ago. Now rust and rain had run the colors, sun had flaked the midnight snow. Nothing remained but a ruined moon in a sky that had fallen through.

"A Walk On The Wild Side," Nelson Algren

[Chicago Avenue at Damen Avenue]

but there is no sound

2011-01-22T16:31:00.001-06:00

"She has been a famous actress, I recognize her. The debris of a great star. Narrow lips. The face of a dedicated drinker. She constantly piles up her hair with her hands and then lets it fall. She laughs, but there is no sound. It’s all in silence—she is made out of yesterdays."

"A Sport and a Pastime," James Salter

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

a time when time is not enough

2011-01-16T22:16:00.000-06:00

There comes a time when time is not enough:
a hand takes hold or a hand lets go; cells swarm,
cease; high and cryless a white bird blazes beyond itself, to be itself, burning unconsumed.

"The Reservoir," Christian Wiman

[Milwaukee Avenue below Wood Street]

fuckup shoes

2011-01-15T22:19:00.003-06:00

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

not the story of the wreck

2011-01-14T10:20:00.006-06:00

the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth

"Diving Into the Wreck," Adrienne Rich

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

food mart

2011-01-10T17:12:00.002-06:00

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

the only thing

2011-01-10T17:08:00.004-06:00

"The only thing I can do is write; I have no other skills."
~ Francine Prose

[Superior Street west of Wells Street]

woke on a sudden manhattan

2011-01-09T22:43:00.000-06:00

hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices

"Howl," Allen Ginsberg

[Ukrainian Village]

this is 606

2011-01-08T04:56:00.000-06:00

the show costs nothing

2011-01-07T00:01:00.002-06:00

Ekki sýna sljóleika,
elsku snillinn minn!
Þú kíkir á þessa tónleika
því það kostar ekkert inn.

[Chicago Avenue at Damen Avenue; Damen Avenue at Haddon Street]

what if a much of a which of a wind

2011-01-06T04:46:00.001-06:00

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't:blow death to was)
—all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

"what if a much of a which of a wind," ee cummings
[Ukrainian Village]

some secret amplitude in this orderly space

2011-01-05T00:01:00.003-06:00

Phrases from "Fog," Mark Doty.

[Chicago Avenue west of Orleans Street]