I don’t think I can ever adequately describe Chicago, at least in relation to whatever I’ve experienced it to be. In many ways, it has reverted back to what I adamantly saw it as when I first visited at seventeen, which is complete and utter freedom from the trainwreck that vaguely resembles my parents. But that in itself is a juvenile comparison (read: unremarkable, boring); if pursued further, it would turn into nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to complain about my folks. Plus, Chicago is not the correct platform to describe their attitudes about things that all parents inevitably worry about, such as how camping is the equivalent to pre-marital sex, which in itself automatically makes you a dirty, dirty whore.
I recently visited Chicago for about two weeks, and decided to journal my days in detail. To be honest, most of it consisted of scribbling maps to combat my lack of directions (fail), or half-assed sketches of the Eliasson exhibit over at the MCA (spectacular fail). But I did chronicle my days faithfully–from comparing radiation tattoos with Carl, to looking at homo smut with Corey, to wandering Graceland Cemetery. I could walk Chicago forever, I wrote over and over again. I could stare at the skyline forever.
“I have no idea what that even fucking means,” I told Lukas.
Because this is conveniently ignoring the fact that I had lived in Chicago for six years, the last two largely monopolized by an unhappiness that never amounted to anything interesting. I think I once summed up my experience as a “peripheral abuse of alcohol and cigarettes,” which while technically correct, doesn’t say much, if anything at all. I suspect the main source of my unhappiness stemmed from Alex, and maybe the realization that my degree that I spent well over $60K in would be pretty damn useless. For awhile, Chicago was some kind of terrible. For awhile, I didn’t notice the city at all.
But I suppose it’s all about context, also known as being back in Los Angeles and once again passing by the most underwhelming skyline I have ever seen in my life. The thing about Los Angeles is that I could never really see it as anything else but long stretches of highways, suburban lawns, and the occasional underpass crack addict. The skyline–which I use as my north star in any given city– consists of a couple of buildings visible to varying degrees but usually shrouded in smog, and ultimately leading to jobs I never cared for and an art scene I always found difficult to involve myself with. If my problem with Chicago was that I had always failed to legitimately see it as a city, my issue with Los Angeles is that I couldn’t see it as anything else.
Coming into Chicago again, where I aggressively insist on doing things to it forever, I suppose this is the first time I ever noticed that it could function as more than a collection of past fuckups and indiscretions. I spent a good chunk of my days wandering downtown, doing dumb shit like touching buildings, taking pictures of Greek columns, babbling about Beaux-Arts facades, and getting kicked off the BP Bridge for staying too long. I was, to put it politely, pretty fucking happy. Surely that is more than I ever got from my current position, where I blankly stare at the skyline before looking away uninterested and completely unmoved.
