Writing with Light: The Windy City Without Wind

Tuesday, August 11, Chicago

A morning begun with Wild Sweet Orange tea, Tazo’s herbal infusion, and promising one of my favorite Bonnards at the Art Institute. A breeze ripples the flags along the bridge; the boats sleep, still, like houseboats on the Seine or on the river Avon.

It’s good to be back in Chicago, one of my favorite big-city away-from-homes (along with Boston’s Back Bay, midtown Manhattan, and Washington, DC up near the cathedral and zoo).

Despite the early hour, it’s pleasant to walk to work along the green river, under a lofty drawbridge, with architecture tour boats moored quietly along the opposite bank, impressive buildings rising all around. To see the reflection of sky and clouds in the new Trump International Hotel, on my way to the Corner Bakery for decaf espresso and croissants. Then later in the day, sprung from the windowless, timeless exhibit hall, it’s reviving to see the play of fireboats and water taxis on their journeys to and from the lake, to sit with sandwich and notebook watching the wakes erasing as they go and the contemplative sparkle of sun. And when the night comes on again the enchantment of lights reflected, multiplied, and with them unarticulated yearnings for things past or out of reach, the far places in me I long for and am always already leaving again.

So many momentous things have happened to me here—the hopeful turn of the Millenium; the painful decision made but in the end not carried out to give up my career (rivers and fireworks, days such as these); losses of faith and heart; sudden unbidden love. I came first when I was only four or five, travelling by train with my mother all the way from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to visit relatives, the sister of an uncle who was working in a candy factory. I’m told about the child’s awe seeing candy everywhere, and even on the floor, but what I remember is the train—the linen cloths on tables in the dining car, the other child in the seat in front of us who gave me tiny printed band-aids, treasures indeed.

One of the things I like about Chicago is its pragmatism under the sophistication—the real, earthy, unpretentious place, the amiable “kid next door.” The home of Morton’s Salt, of Wrigley’s chewing gum (flavored by the pungent mint which grows across from my aunt’s property in Montana), of agriculture, publishing, the train yards—and of course stuffed pizza. Along the river I pass Chicago Rising from the Lake, an appropriate bronze bas-relief of a native woman with bull and eagle, sheaf of wheat. The sculptor is Milton Horn.

I wonder what the name means. Who was this Chicago? (Wikipedia tells me, “The name "Chicago" is a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, meaning “wild onion”, from the Miami-Illinois language”; and the Encyclopedia of Chicago adds “The name ‘Chicago’ derives from a word in the language spoken by the Miami and Illinois peoples meaning ‘striped skunk,’ a word they also applied to the wild leek (known to later botanists as Allium tricoccum). This became the Indian name for the Chicago River, in recognition of the presence of wild leeks in the watershed. When early French explorers began adopting the word, with a variety of spellings, in the late seventeenth century, it came to refer to the site at the mouth of the Chicago River.”

I treat myself to Sunday dinner at my favorite Brasserie Jo. Because the chef was a friend of Julia Child, there’s a special menu en homage, to celebrate the wonderful new film Julie and Julia. From it I choose vichyssoise with crispy leeks, and an amazing tart with almond crust and a custard of yoghurt and fresh-picked Michigan blueberries. And then besides, from the regular menu, sole with butter and capers and lemon, and red rice from the Camargue—that area of Provence south of Arles know for its wind, the Mistral, and its gray horses (like the wild ponies of Chincoteague which fascinated me as a girl), where King Henry the Fourth decreed in 1593 that rice be grown.

Lunch outdoors another mildish day at South Water Kitchen, the home of well-contented gourmet comfort food: a lovely salad of watercress, roasted beets, carmellized onions, goat cheese, and grilled steak.

I love the great arch of spray from a fountain just left of my hotel that erupts like a Yellowstone geyser into the river, that wets the passengers of open boats. I love the track of sun that riffs like good jazz across the late morning water, an intent busman or a waiter standing looking—listening—out. I love the rusted barge that holds scaffolds, tarpaulins, ladders, cans of paint.

I’m always fascinated by the fossil bed or archaeology of stones in the face of the Tribune Tower, telling the world, its triumphs and its losses and its wars. The imbedded stones are variously sandstone, limestone, Brandywine Blue Granite, marble, bits of gravestones...from

Revolutionary War battlefields

the Stabian Baths, Pompeii

Pearl Harbor

The City of Stone

Arizona’s Petrified Forest

Sibyl’s Cave, Cumae, Naples

Hamlet’s Castle, Elsinore, Denmark

Parthenon quarry

Forbidden City

Omaha Beach, Normandy

The Alamo

Westminster Abbey