just get wet

Some people feel the rain, others just get wet.

~ Bob Dylan

[Wacker Drive between Michigan Avenue and Wabash Avenue]

un éclair

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

lighting on every moment of my life

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

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

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

~ Odes of Solomon

[The Magic Alley, Ukrainian Village]

mystical hysterical

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

"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

[Cortez Street east of Western Avenue]

the fog remains

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

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

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

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

"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

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

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

not the story of the wreck

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

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

the only thing

"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

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

the show costs nothing

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

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

Phrases from "Fog," Mark Doty.

[Chicago Avenue west of Orleans Street]

attention must be paid

He's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

"Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street; Ukrainian Village]

postcards from the imaginary into the impossible real

A postcard to Jessica. One to Tina and Graham. One to Sal and Sylvie. Postcards from the imaginary into the impossible real. I don't know why I didn't visit Tina and Graham in London, but I will the next time I'm there. I will not go to Belgrade. At least I don't think so. I remember my father saying, like a film-noir private eye, Don't think you can change a man. Buda it turns out might mean something like a chimney. But Pest means nothing, certainly not stove. Buda was Attila the Hun's brother. I wonder if they got along.

"Motion Sickness," Lynne Tillman

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

the sort of beauty that i have approved

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

"A Prayer for My Daughter," William Butler Yeats

[North of Chicago Avenue, east of Damen Avenue]

brut

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

apt for rent

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

new year's eve 2010, 55 degrees

[Damen Avenue above Huron Street]

we delivery

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

rat's alley

I think we are in rat's alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

"The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

cashed

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

smoke and steel

Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.

A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.

A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.

The wind never bothers … a bar of steel.
The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools of moonshine.

"Smoke and Steel," Carl Sandburg

[Lake Michigan east of Lake Shore Drive]

strange cats

"You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats."

[Winchester Street above Thomas Street]

booth one

[Pump Room, Ambassador East]

home federal

[Loop]

mira!

[Michigan Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

water towers

[Chicago Avenue at Michigan Avenue]

harold's

[Milwaukee Avenue above Division Street]

choco

[Ukrainian Village]

you

[Michigan Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

blot

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

and so

"Πληροφοριών έχει γνωστοποιηθεί."

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

you've seen him

[Damen Avenue above Thomas Street]

peter gabriel's ace

shaved recently

north

chicago