“Where Do We Go, Nobody Knows”

Imagine a giant revolving door: one that’s big enough to fit five to ten people in each pocket as it rotates. You step in with a handful of your closest pals. You stay in the revolving door as it goes round, but some of your friends slip out, and new ones step in. You keep revolving, because you haven’t decided on another destination just yet. In the meantime, you find that your circle of friends has reshaped itself several times over, and you start to wonder whether you should step out of the revolving door, perhaps heading in the same direction of one your friends who has slipped out, or keep running in circles. This is how I feel sometimes, as I keep remaking my circle of friends in the oscillating lives of twenty-somethings in a big city…

Yes, another of my favorites is leaving Chicago. Kat got a job in NYC, so she's heading east in a few weeks. With all of these people leaving, I’ve decided that the least you can do is enjoy all the going away parties. So, that’s what I’ve been doing, repeatedly. Last night about twenty-five of Kat's friends gathered for a big going away dinner at Bijan’s Bistro on the Near North Side. I’d never been to the restaurant before, but the atmosphere was warm and inviting, with an eclectic clientele, which is something I always appreciate. Plus, the food was fabulous. (I had the grilled portabella mushroom tartine, and a side of grilled asparagus—I was in a healthy mood last night.) As far as I could tell, there were satisfied nods and empty plates across the board.

We filled up a long table consisting of about six four-tops pushed together. Seated this way, it can always be a bit awkward to socialize, particularly when you don’t know most of the dinner guests. It’s difficult to communicate with people on the other end of the table, and someone in the middle can easily become trapped half in/half out of conversations happening on either side. I honestly had a great time and engaged in a wide range of interesting conversations (lucky to be sitting next to a rather animated couple), but there’s inevitably an awkward lull when the couples break off into their own personal chat, and the dispersed single people kind of sit there searching for some way to insert themselves into conversations that have already gained good momentum without them. Sometimes, you just become a third wheel, but I find that I don’t really mind it anymore. After a month-long dating marathon that has left me drained, disgruntled, and desirous of alone time, I’ve found that the occasional silence doesn’t bother me, and even as more and more of the people around me are coupled up, I’m quite content to be on my own.

It was good to catch up with people I’ve met at previous outings but didn’t really know that well yet, and to celebrate Kat’s moving on to bigger and better things in NYC. But it’s still tough to swallow the fact that the overwhelming majority of great people I meet in this city don’t stick around for too long.

I am always looking for patterns, clues, and signs in life, and I have to admit that I find it rather interesting that I have still not made any serious ties that would keep me bound to Chicago. I continue to maintain a handful of Chicago friends, most of whom don’t plan to settle here, I don’t have a significant other, and I have a job with a company that has offices around the country and even the world. I almost start to wonder if things are lining up for me in such a way that I can break free from Chicago if/when I want to. Once again, I am reminded of the below portion from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which I have quoted in a previous blog post:

[T]he people living in the Great Lakes region are confused by their place on the country's edge--an edge that is border but not coast. They seem to be able to live a long time believing, as coastal people do, that they are at the frontier where final exit and total escape are the only journeys left. But those five Great Lakes which the St. Lawrence feeds with memories of the sea are themselves landlocked, in spite of the wandering river that connects them to the Atlantic. Once the people of the lake region discover this, the longing to leave becomes acute, and a break from the area, therefore, is necessarily dream-bitten, but necessary nonetheless (162).

Escape Route

This morning, the brightness pouring in through my open windows woke me early. I laid in bed for a little bit, contemplating throwing the covers over my eyes for another hour of sleep, but then decided to fight the laziness, get dressed, and go for a walk. It was a gorgeous morning--temperatures in the sixties, accompanied by full sunshine. The pedestrian traffic was light as I headed toward the beach.

I like to observe Division Street at different times of day (this is the street I take to get to the lake). It's a dirty street for the first couple of blocks, lined on both sides with pharmacies, bars and hole-in-the wall restaurants. It seems dingier in the morning, when the remnants of the night before are visible along the gray, gum-wad-dotted sidewalks. In the morning, there are no bouncers greeting you as you walk past doorways, no eyes ogling you from patio tables adorned with beer bottles. The pedestrians consist of joggers, dog-walkers, and professionals headed to the El. I enjoy the general calm of the early hours as I head toward the lovelier, leafier blocks of Division, which are lined with vintage apartments and condos. I drink in the architecture and wonder what it's like to live in one of those places, with their personal parking garages and restored interiors. (It's always good to have aspirations.)

Soon, I approach the roaring traffic of commuting autos on Lake Shore Drive, but I duck into the underground pathway that takes me beneath the buzzing highway and I emerge on the other side at Oak Street Beach. When I get to the lake, I just want to run. My back is telling me that it's not an option this morning, so I listen to it and walk instead. As my feet fall into rhythm, my mind wanders off...

I can't help but wonder what it is about large bodies of water that adds so much to the quality of life. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I believe that there is something much more satisfying about my general outlook and mindset when I know that I can escape to the lake whenever I need/want to. Perhaps water is just a necessity for some people. Perhaps because I am a crab (July baby, after all), I feel at home on the beach. All I know is that the simple awareness that the lake is there fills up something inside me.

I am reminded of a quote from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon that I displayed on my facebook profile for years. I used to feel that this quote defined me in some way, but since moving away from and then returning to the Midwest, the words of Morrison's narrator impact me very differently. This is the quotation:

Truly landlocked people know they are. [...] But the people living in the Great Lakes region are confused by their place on the country's edge--an edge that is border but not coast. They seem to be able to live a long time believing, as coastal people do, that they are at the frontier where final exit and total escape are the only journeys left. But those five Great Lakes which the St. Lawrence feeds with memories of the sea are themselves landlocked, in spite of the wandering river that connects them to the Atlantic. Once the people of the lake region discover this, the longing to leave becomes acute, and a break from the area, therefore, is necessarily dream-bitten, but necessary nonetheless. It might be an appetite for other streets, other slants of light. Or a yearning to be surrounded by strangers. It may even be a wish to hear the solid click of a door closing behind their backs. (Song of Solomon 162)

Morrison's narrator was right—-a break from the area was necessary, and it was necessarily dream-bitten, because I left the Midwest to live in an area next to my favorite vacation spot in the country—-the Smoky Mountains—-and I did not find the idyllic place I had imagined. While I enjoyed the mountains as often as I could escape to them, and I made some lasting friendships during my two years in Tennessee, I yearned to return to the Midwest. So, I found the other streets and other slants of light, but they didn't fill me up. Perhaps because I left and returned, I now find that those five Great Lakes are enough to keep me from feeling landlocked. I still feel like I am on the edge of the world, living on a body of water that ultimately connects to the Atlantic. I think that maybe that's what the lake does for me. It allows me to sense, at all times, that life is fluid and moving and that there is always escape from the confinements of daily life...

As I finished my walk, and headed back toward the city, I felt refreshed and alert. My daydreams slowly dissolved into the schedule before me. With the sunshine on my back, I strolled back to my apartment, freshened up, and felt an extra spring in my step as I fell into the mass of pedestrians headed to work.