This time, I remembered
how easy it is to forget.
Shawna-Bean has started her Kentucky cycles,
just as promised and not one day too soon.
I forgot what I was saying. . .
I repeat.
After all the times I swore I was done
with this place, here I am again,
in this hall of mirrors, labyrinth of glass and steel,
of brick and mud, of MDF and plastic tarps,
of data loss and debt collection.
Skunktown, I walk your streets.
Funny. This time I kind of like it here---
This place Chicago, Empire Central,
Sewer in the Sky, I love to call you,
looking up at my own distortions in the sky.
Like an eighty story funhouse mirror,
tippy on top, you winding tower; standing on toes
so far off balance, hovering there and almost floating.
I've been on top & contemplated falling.
EIGHTY ACRES OF HELL
(CAUTION: LINK LABYRINTH AHEAD)
Earlier, I was reading this book called Devil in the White City---
even though it is about H H Holmes- - - as deranged as he was
but for other reasons about other things, not so much
unlike Richard Wright's Native Son, but even more psychotic.
When I go to a new place, I feel very affected by the ones
who are already there. It goes, the axiom, like this:
When in Chicago, live as Chicagoans do.
What--- exactly--- do Chicagoans do?
I've taken up the practice.
Let's Go Crazy!
I'll be your Haunted Chicago tour guide
and show you a moment or two of how thrilling
life could be, often was, or might have been.
FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY.
NOT VALID WITH ANY OTHER OFFER.
The Windy City, according to this book,
Devil in the White City, Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair---
got the name in a particularly remarkable way.
It's quite profound, really, the way the journalists
(who were very proud of their newspaper)
tried to portray Chicago to their undoubtedly superior
rivals in New York, and at the same time, boast of
Chicago's come-uppance since Chicago, after the other EXPOs of the future,
the first one in London---
(there's a replica of it in Dallas)----
Chicago was chosen to host THE SECOND WORLD'S FAIR---
the 400th Aninversary of Christopher Colombus's fateful trip---
The Colombian Exposition Revisited.
Burnham and Root took part.
Walt Disney grew up in it next to his father who helped build it.
Chris Ware imagined himself as a pre-pubescent Walt Disney
in Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth
a simultaneous Super-Man who nose dives
from on top a Root box in the sky downtown.
Does my life fit in this history?
Needless to say, Superman didn't fly.
In any case, they repaired the sidewalk
and the crater that he made in a matter of minutes.
Meanwhile, the public transit is a mess, centuries later.
Poverty is a plague, still. Homelessness is the new future
For everyone. If you're not a bank unto yourself,
get ready to live in a tent. I'll show you a few pointers.
Welcome, Nomads.
I can offer lots of food and drink, soap and shower, laundry,
plus a soft place to sleep. FOR FREE.
You can have it all.
You can learn a lot from traveling
&
You can learn a lot from children,
and my new favorite word, like Cosmo's:
Why?
Where am I ?
Oh yeah, The Windy City
Yes, of course, the wind blows off Lake Michigan in ways
that are unfathomably painful, especially in winter, but that's not it.
Windy City used to be "Stinktown"
and personally, I like the declarative,
definitive sound of skunk town, better.
non-descript language for no place, butcher of the world,
animal who urinates, stinking of rotten wild leeks,
just like today's ghetto, shithole, downtown wasteland-
glass and steel
reflecting all the heat of greed, fractured into its google bits
and falling down in four thousand triggered, controlled demolitions.
It's beyond fixing.
Go ahead.
Blow it up.
There's nothing I can do to shed a positive light on its shittiness.
Someone else might could, but not me, no way.
It stinks too much.
As Chicagoans everywhere got quite arrogant,
people everywhere else took note of this effluence
of gratuitous bullshit, calling it what it was.
Now, I'm talking out my ass.
So in spirit of this message, I'm launching a different zeppelin---
only a prelude--- a picture somewhere outside Kentucky.
Simply Delicious.Shawnabean got her camera back and this was on it. She can tell the rest.
As soon as the Kentucky Cycles adventure is up and ready, I'll let you know.
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