A seasonal post / re-post

The first is from the beginning of the winter, the second is from almost exactly one year ago to the day.

Cities are not like people

It will start with something somewhere in between apology, in the classic and / or literal sense of the term, and improvised communication. Apology for what? Apology perhaps for the improvised communication, and perhaps then, if that, apology in both the classic and / or literal sense of the term and the more modern, common, colloquial understanding.

The sight of street after street or street day after day rises with a hypnotic quality. The casually effective character of Chicago is that it believes it must prove itself at all moments, having been, over time, relegated to the position of “Second City”, although it is, of course, the Third City and although it has nothing to prove at the moment. This is a charming quality in a city, a sort of neurosis of self- image, “something to prove.” Charming in a city if not in a person. Anyone that has ever written or uttered the sentiment that cities are “like people,” that a city is “like a person” did so because he was possessed by an anxiety upon realizing that he had run out of things to write or say. This “cities are like people” is just the kind of thing that is written or uttered when one has really nothing worthwhile to write or utter. It means nothing. Cities are not like people because they are, for example, more attractive for their neuroses. Perhaps this could be said of certain people, it is true, but the neurosis of a particular city more categorically assigns genuine character. Action is multiplied by X number of people in the case of a city. Response is preemptive. Communication is painful and easy.

The early urban winter city air is heavy with cognitive looping and hideous progress. In the cold, the exhaust is more visible at its first entry into the atmosphere, but less visible eventually as it seems to entirely vanish into the flat, shimmering cold. Chicago attempts to prove itself at every turn, for so long thought of as the flat, characterless city of the Midwestern prairies. The artists are emboldened by the working class history -- and not only in a Tony Fitzpatrick kind of way, but also in a reactionary way: “This city has something else; art!” while at the same time claiming the depth of legitimacy and authenticity lent by the working class history. And I say all of this with a sincere and intense respect because, of course, I am not outside of the orbit that is comprised by these gravitous tensions. Gravity is chains, chained weight is the chain gang gathered ‘round the artist-by-tradition-bar which sells beer for cheap enough, chain gang. I would never venture a guess as to how many paintings have been rendered of A. Finkl & Son in the waxing or the waning of daylight. I have never rendered such a painting, but have breathed the queer, soapy smell blossoming there on Cortland in both waxing and waning daylight, sometimes twice in a day, on opposite ends. Down along Ashland south of there, the low factory monuments brimming with windowpane skeletons and shallow history, grayed, faded and by now appreciated only by those in the chain gang saying: “. . . something else; art!” There are various gravities.

Stripping loop from loop around.

---

Don't say I never gave you anything, cosmos

Just before Lake Street
on the 54 / Cermak Pink Line
inbound
off to the left
a small plastic dinosaur
maybe six inches long
laying on its left side
on top of an awning
outside of an apartment
window
looks like the last of
the dinosaurs
dead
in the March thaw
ice age passing
revealing secrets of
dog shit
and the preserved bodies
of prehistoric
animals,
lost religious medallions
plummetted into snow
on drunken nights
forgotten letters
notes un-passed
in so many 4th grade
classrooms,
cigarette butts by the
thousands, each
with its own
complex history

artifacts of a temporarily
forgotten cosmology
carrots leading us forth
back / forth

We watched a Russian war
film
scored live, orchestra
in the park
drank Bell's
rain falling on our heads
head home

Some child will wake today
and make a red-letter
archaeological discovery
scientific journals
rejoice!

The wind sweeps my
cigarette butt from the
park bench, beside me
into the mud

I am the shepherd
of universal
progress

Don't say I never
gave you anything,
cosmos.