Escaping Artist

It was a busy weekend in California, spent driving back and forth between Pasadena and Palm Springs. Five days should be enough time to see everyone and do everything planned, but the visit felt rushed and incomplete as visits always do. It’s hard to land in a place and pick up where you left off, so much has changed and happened since I was last there. It’s the seemingly small task of “catching up” that takes too much time and is so important, and the bigger tasks of seeing and doing that get put off. Arriving, a childhood friend retrieved me at LAX. Last time I saw her I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, this time she brought her two-year-old and the baby girl on the way. As much as I wish I lived near my oldest and best friends, I can’t imagine going home and having them be elsewhere. It is odd enough that my brother is no longer there. I think of certain people as belonging to certain places as strongly as I know those places themselves. It always surprises me that while I have lived most of my adult life away from the people I know best, they still understand me the most. Sharing a past seems to a lay the groundwork of trust that carries us through the unexpected twists and turns of our more adult lives.

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I remember Chicago the way I imagine I saw it as an 18-year-old girl fresh from the southern California suburbs. Unlike Richmond it has been four years since I have seen Chicago, and it has taken me a long time to make it back. It was surreal, deplaning at O’Hare, to see a place I have forgotten so easily and yet somehow remember so well. My memory of Chicago, or my mis-remembrance of it, has a heightened sense of everything. I remember the city being bigger, busier, scarier, louder, dirtier, harder, more threatening, more overwhelming, more segregated, and much less enjoyable than it now seems. I was amused by how narrow and small the subway cars were, they seemed like toy cars with their fabric seats and tight aisles, and I was dumbly amazed when I stepped off at Logan Sq. and the platform was completely deserted. I can’t remember the last time I saw an empty subway platform that was in service. Much of this, certainly, is the direct contradiction with my current city, but more interesting is the fact that most of what I saw contradicted the images in my memory.

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