My writing has slowed down a bit the past couple months, but I’m still working on some stuff. This is a poem I finished just yesterday. In other news, I’m doing a reading for Audrey’s birthday up in Milwaukee this Friday, over at the Laundry Chute. Ask me for details.
Map of My Experience
Bike over to the lakeshore at North,
cross lakeshore drive on the foot bridge
you have to walk through the park to
get to, arriving at the beach over where
there’s that lakehouse that’s shaped like a
boat built into the pavement. Go southeast
from the boat, past all the couples and small
groups playing volleyball, fresh tans and
blue-rimmed coolers, and walk out onto
the pier about 30 or 40 steps. When you sit
down, legs dangling over the water, you
will be facing several points of note:
( 1 ) the Drake Hotel, right at the bottom
of this stretch of the lakeshore’s crescent
moon, which faces you, distinguishable by
the gothic print sign saying “The Drake”
in white about ten floors up on the buildings
faded tan façade, the perfect size for someone
at this distance to read it, as if this moment
was curated for you; ( 2 ) the Van Der Rohe
building, (at least, you think that’s what it’s
called, though it might not be) only skyscraper
east of lakeshore drive, a black amorphous
chute that stands off on its own, on the top
floor of which Oprah lives (or so you’ve heard),
but as yr sitting there trying to imagine Oprah
on the street calling a cab you notice the split
of lakeshore drive, traffic slow over the hill
at that spot, where someone at this moment
is driving over the crease and noticing the
field museum sitting there, as you have done
before, another of the curated vistas that can
make the chaos of Chicago seem like someone
has a hand in its design; ( 3 ) behind you, when
you turn your head rightways, you can see the
diminishing slope of lakeside condos along the
drive, each smaller and more separate than
the last, Evanston being marked off as the first
suburb by where they slowly end, replaced at
this distance by trees, the imitable sprouts of
much smaller condos, and sky beyond, which
for once makes the city seem small, manageable,
something you can mark off, categorize, and
define limits on, rather than being swallowed
up whole by its overwhelming vastness.
Addendum to “Map of My Experience:” Field Notes
The previous night I had stayed up late watching
the Talking Heads live DVD in my room. I drank
some Polish beer and woke up with a headache,
and for no real reason on this particularly warm
spring afternoon I decided to go and see Date
Night, which wasn’t very good, so on my way
out I thought to kill some more time before
heading home with a Four Loko (the blue one)
and a Chipotle burrito, and so I biked over to
the lakeshore to enjoy my moment with them.
As I was sitting in the spot described in the
previous poem eating and taking slow sips
a helicopter appeared at about 2 o’clock in the
sky, hovering just above the split between two
tall building over there, and in the course of me
sitting there hatching out my poem it slowly
moved over to the southeast, just above the edge
of downtown, and started on southwest from
there. There was also a whole party of seagulls
in my vicinity, one of which was particularly
loud and had a small white head, and kept tugging
his head down towards his belly when he called
out. This is all important, for some reason, to note
to get a closer account to the verity of that moment.
How can you, for example, feel this sense
of smallness when you are not working a mere
six hours a week tutoring for a kid who you find
spoiled and ungrateful, who some days you sort of
want to fail just because he probably never has
been allowed to before, just so he can know what
the rest of us feel like, the hours of which job
afford you not much money and a whole lot of
idle time, which you try to fill with things that
relieve you and take your mind off of where you
are and what you are doing, even though the total
cost of the six pack of beer, a matinee, a burrito
and a can of malt liquor ($26 and some change)
feels like a real luxury expense, and means you
will probably eat only dry pasta and toast for
the rest of the week, again—in fact, you can’t
remember the last time you’ve made a nice meal
for yourself—but so instead of spending the
afternoon inside your head, or writing letters
to faraway friends, or struggling to write until
you give up and watch TV on the internet, you
give yourself this moment of peace, outside,
where of course of all things to be thinking about
you are looking for some sort of design and care
in the city you’re stuck in.
