Sunday, June 25, 2006
Au Revoir!
Studs Terkel recently had an essay about Chicago in Smithsonian Magazine. He talked about arriving in this busy metropolis as a boy of nine. He has been here over seventy years now and has seen such incredible change, but his tone, when he speaks or writes of Chicago, is always warm. He loves this town.
My five years in the Windy City are nothing to his decades, but I leave with some of the same love. My first taste of Chicago was a quick detour downtown on our way north to head to Alaska in the summer of 1998. I had the map that afternoon and managed to get my father completely mixed up--even heading the wrong way down a one-way street! But those glimpses captured my imagination. Tony Bennett hung around in the back of my head crooning “Chicago! Chicago!” In 2000, I spent ten weeks living at the--now closed--Three Arts Club in the Gold Coast and interning at Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was pretty scary, even for a military brat used to strange, new situations, and I spent the first few nights crying and/or spending money at Barnes & Noble. My therapy later extended to Marshall Field’s, Bloomingdales, Victoria’s Secret, Virgin Megastore--after all, Michigan Avenue was just a ten minute walk away . . .
The kookiest thing I did that summer was to take the train out to DuPage. I discovered the college’s Anime Club online and one of their gatherings was a day of watching fan-dubbed videos. I was so in! Looking back, I’m amazed I went through with it. I spent the night before worrying that I would get lost, miss my bus, be mugged, tortured, killed, arrested, hit on, hit up, get hit, you name it. I could only sooth my anxiety by planning for every contingency, i.e. carrying lots of cash, some of it in my socks. I also only knew one bus route, that didn’t run on Saturdays, and was not sure where the train station was. I did manage to get out there and back safely and without a hitch. I even had fun in-between.
That sort of thing is old hat now but it was big then. That’s life, I guess. My new path scares me quite a bit. I could be making the absolute biggest mistake of my life. Actually, it’s more that I’m making a big choice and am worried I will regret it later. I know, though, that I’ll regret not doing it more. Still, leaving is pretty damn depressing. It always is and maybe I leave too often, but you can’t build a life on ‘what if.”
But back to Chicago. I’ll miss you. I almost stayed because of you. Don’t change too much, but don’t stay the same. I’ll try to follow the same advice, and may we meet again.
My five years in the Windy City are nothing to his decades, but I leave with some of the same love. My first taste of Chicago was a quick detour downtown on our way north to head to Alaska in the summer of 1998. I had the map that afternoon and managed to get my father completely mixed up--even heading the wrong way down a one-way street! But those glimpses captured my imagination. Tony Bennett hung around in the back of my head crooning “Chicago! Chicago!” In 2000, I spent ten weeks living at the--now closed--Three Arts Club in the Gold Coast and interning at Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was pretty scary, even for a military brat used to strange, new situations, and I spent the first few nights crying and/or spending money at Barnes & Noble. My therapy later extended to Marshall Field’s, Bloomingdales, Victoria’s Secret, Virgin Megastore--after all, Michigan Avenue was just a ten minute walk away . . .
The kookiest thing I did that summer was to take the train out to DuPage. I discovered the college’s Anime Club online and one of their gatherings was a day of watching fan-dubbed videos. I was so in! Looking back, I’m amazed I went through with it. I spent the night before worrying that I would get lost, miss my bus, be mugged, tortured, killed, arrested, hit on, hit up, get hit, you name it. I could only sooth my anxiety by planning for every contingency, i.e. carrying lots of cash, some of it in my socks. I also only knew one bus route, that didn’t run on Saturdays, and was not sure where the train station was. I did manage to get out there and back safely and without a hitch. I even had fun in-between.
That sort of thing is old hat now but it was big then. That’s life, I guess. My new path scares me quite a bit. I could be making the absolute biggest mistake of my life. Actually, it’s more that I’m making a big choice and am worried I will regret it later. I know, though, that I’ll regret not doing it more. Still, leaving is pretty damn depressing. It always is and maybe I leave too often, but you can’t build a life on ‘what if.”
But back to Chicago. I’ll miss you. I almost stayed because of you. Don’t change too much, but don’t stay the same. I’ll try to follow the same advice, and may we meet again.
