Letter

I take a right from my front door and walk, crossing Archer Avenue, under the expressway, until the street ends at a park by the water. I’ve come here a few times now. Once, all the benches aside from an uncomfortable one in the playground were taken. I sat there and read a book, then made a sketch of the towering pole, mountain of beige sand or gravel, the grain-elevator-like structures, and NO WAKE sign across the river. 

This piece of water is where Bubbly Creek joins the South Branch of the Chicago River. This is where the runoff from the stockyards used to end up. Now there are people fishing here. I don’t know how polluted it still is. Judging by the people who I see here every time I visit, they see it as a place to relax rather than worry about disease. A woman hauling groundskeeping equipment asked to look at my painting was happy with what she saw and introduced herself as the person in charge of making sure the park is kept clean. I told her I’d see her again soon. I plan on coming back. 

After a month in the new apartment I feel like I’m starting to get my bearings. I finished a charcoal drawing and some sketches. Everything but my collection of Chicago-themed books has found its place. I’ll need to get another bookshelf and then, hopefully, keep the rooms reasonably clean. It feels like the right place to be. 

Each evening after I’ve stopped working on whatever thing occupied me during daytime I sit here and just take it in. It’s better than the way I pictured it over most of the past year leading up to the move. Feels peaceful here at the end of the day. 

I wish I could say the same with what’s going on outside. The spots of calm like the waterside park at the end of my street seem few and far between. The turbulence has been just below the surface a long time and no doubt the enforced isolation of the past months has accelerated its burst to the surface. I’m not one for marches or crowds but I support the sentiments behind their cause. I’ve rarely had good experiences with police in this country. One time I made the mistake of calling them because I believed my roommate was trying to kill herself by overdosing on pills. When they arrived they treated her like a criminal; their job is to keep the peace but oftentimes they escalate bad situations into worse ones. After a half hour standoff I had to carry my terrified roommate down the stairs to an ambulance. She refused to let the cops near her. I’ve regretted calling them ever since. There’s something wrong in the way they are trained to do their job. It has to change. Monday morning Marisa from The Rumpus asked for an illustration for a statement in support of the protesters and I was happy to oblige. 

I’ve seen the NO WAKE signs along various points of the Chicago River a long time and never knew exactly what they meant. After visiting the river a couple times over the past weeks I looked it up and learned that it’s an instruction to passing craft to operate their engines at the lowest level possible in order not to cause waves to splash ashore. It sounds like an appropriate way to be in this moment. To be extra mindful of the terrain we’re passing through, to be aware of those around us, to recognize that rocking one’s own boat leaves damage to others in its wake.

Tuesday I needed to deliver some art to Logan Square. I texted Marie the night before to see if she wanted to have a picnic lunch after I was done. She said there’d be thunderstorms; I said let’s see what it’s like day of. Forecasts are often wrong. My plan was to meet Skyler for a walk after dropping off the art, then to text Marie to see if the picnic was on.

It was scorching hot by the time I got to Logan Square. I was pouring sweat. I bought some mineral water at a liquor store and sat waiting for Skyler in the park by the monument. We ran into Jim Becker and the two of them commiserated about how much they missed playing music with friends. This plague has hit musicians especially hard because theirs is an art that depends on live collaboration and audience. We made a couple of loops around the neighborhood, catching up. The last time we took a walk like this was over a month ago.

We parted and I texted Marie. Still barely a cloud in the sky. She gave me the address of a Middle Eastern place to pick up falafel sandwiches. Ten minutes after starting the ride toward her Garfield Park home, the rain started. It felt good after the day’s humidity and there were blue skies in all directions beyond the dark cloud I was passing under. But as soon as I rang her doorbell it began to pour.

She let me in, making sure to rub it in about doubting her meteorological predictions. She left the front door open and we set up a makeshift place to eat. She sat on the staircase; I sat on an ottoman left in the alcove. We drank white wine out of paper cups. No sooner than taking a bite from our sandwiches, five or six shots rang out in quick succession. They sounded like they came from right outside the door. After freezing a moment, Marie ran up to the door and closed it so whoever was out there shooting couldn’t run in. Seconds later, there was children’s wailing and pounding at the door. Marie let in a neighbor and her terrified children.

We peered out at the corner a couple doors to the right and saw a white SUV at the far end of the intersection, its doors open, one man on the ground, another slumped over out of the vehicle. Sirens blared from all directions. Within minutes the area was swarmed by cop cars. We went back in to finish eating. Neighbors gathered and bunched the sidewalks, talking and taking cellphone pictures. Soon there was yellow crime-scene tape cutting off all access to the block.

There’s no proper way to act under such conditions. Was it wrong that we kept eating while a young man and possibly others lay dead on the ground fifty yards away? In the middle of all this Bill texted to tell me his favorite uncle had passed away from Covid. He’d mentioned the uncle was in the hospital when we saw each other a few days before. I texted condolences, then went back out to the doorway to look again.

Now there was a sheet covering the man on the ground. Clusters of people crowded the periphery of the yellow tape. A few professional-looking cameramen had appeared. A cop was taking a statement from a young woman next to us. She was worried her relation was one of the victims. An older woman—the mother of the man in question—had to be taken away as she screamed she had to see him. Thankfully, it turned out he had only been grazed in the leg. An ambulance had snapped a length of yellow tape blocking Hamlin coming to pick up the body of the man on the ground. A few minutes later a young man and a cop met in the middle of the street, each holding half of the ripped tape. The young man handed over his end to the cop so he could tie the ends together.

Marie apologized for the thunderstorm and murder which marred our picnic plans. This is how we jcommunicate. What else is there to do? If it had remained sunny, we might have had a front row seat to the killings. Every event, whether extreme or forgettable, is contingent on so many factors of timing and conditions. All the neighbors watching this crime scene talked about this: where they were when the gunshots rang out. Where they might’ve been. A few seconds this way or that and we could have been caught in the crossfire.

Marie ran upstairs and came back with some zucchini bread for me to take home. I walked my bike around the taped-off perimeter, climbed a little hill into the park and came out onto Washington Boulevard. The sun was back out and it was a sauna as I pedaled east. I thought about Bill’s uncle and the young men lying in the street outside Marie’s house. They were victims of two different plagues. There’s a worldwide effort to find a vaccine for one and little collective will to address the other. Long after Covid is forgotten people will continue to be gunned down in America’s streets. And every one of us who isn’t personally affected will go on as if nothing’s wrong.

We’ll put down our sandwiches for a minute or two, but then, after satisfying our curiosity, we’ll go back to eating.

Erin asked for a painting of her old greyhound, Zooey, in exchange for the copyediting work she did for me. She sent some photos and a couple cellphone clips. I collaged a couple stills from one to use as reference for the painting. I cut up two pieces of cardboard, put the painting between them, taped it up, and put it in the mail. A couple weeks later she still hadn’t received it. Then it showed up back in my mailbox. She’d moved and I didn’t know, so I sent it to her old place. I pedaled up to Andersonville and delivered it in person. She was surprised to see me at her door, though we’d scheduled it a day or two before. There’s a lot of that happening now—people’s sense of time has become a lot more elastic. 

Sophie was turning sixteen, so her mom, Wendy, commissioned a painting of the view out her window for a birthday present. She sent a bunch of photos for me to use and I did my best. It’s always strange to use photographs as a source because they’re so impersonal. It’s also a room I’ve only been in once or twice, so there’s some imagination and muscle memory involved. The low building on the right is the Open Books annex. It helped me that I know that place while I was making this painting. 

I’m finishing up work on the new cab book. I bought an ISBN number, wrote the Library of Congress for a reference number from them, and got in touch with the printers in Michigan. One final read-through and I’ll send it out. I’d thought that it would come out next year, but with this block of time to myself, it turned out to be the perfect project to lose myself in. It was the perfect proportions of clerical and creative. Because I was reshaping and reediting old material. Still, I think I’ve made a new thing. Or, at least a thing that will replace a couple of old things. So, close enough.

Saturday I rode up to Firecat again to talk to Stan about my show there in August. Chicago will start allowing gatherings of up to ten people in a couple weeks, so it should be feasible to put on an exhibition. More than ten people in that room and they’d be in each other’s way anyhow.

Stan has set up his desk in the middle of the gallery to draw. I spent a couple hours with him, shooting the shit and drawing. It was good to spend some time with him, but afterwards I looked forward to being alone again. It’s a feeling I always have around others. Sooner or later it’s time to leave, to get back to my own life, which is mostly solitary. This is why I’ve told friends I have nothing to complain about during this plague. I could vent about the orange-faced gaslighter and his enablers making a bad situation worse at every opportunity, but everyone with a conscience and a working set of eyes and ears already knows that. But when I get home and get into whatever I’m in the middle of working on, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

The other day it occurred to me that maybe the painting and writing I do is meant for another time. Maybe someone will discover it one day and get something out of it. I hope so. In the meantime, it’s what keeps me going.