Letter

Last week I got an unexpected email. It was from my ex-girlfriend Shay. We broke up nearly two years ago and have had almost no contact in the past year. I wouldn’t presume to know all the reasons why this has been so, but suffice it to say that she wanted to have nothing to do with me. Her email was an invitation to have coffee. I could only speculate on her motives but set Wednesday at a coffee shop nearby to meet. I figured that if it went really badly I could just walk the few blocks back home and forget about it. 

Friday had started with the sad news that my friend Gil’s greyhound, Rufus, was gravelly ill and would have to be put to sleep. I painted this portrait and sent it off to New Jersey hoping it might provide some small bit consolation. Nothing you say when a friend is losing someone dear to them ever seems like the right thing. 

Saturday night I went to hear Marc Maron do stand-up at the Vic. His podcast has been a twice-weekly companion for several years now and I’ve seen him perform several times before. This night’s show was more scattered than others I’d been at. Like so many of us Maron was trying to grapple with the Bizarro World reality we find ourselves in in this country and coming up with no solid take on any of it. Still, I’m glad I went. The man has brought a lot of great conversations with smart people into my life and I couldn’t blame him from being a bit discombobulated. I doubt I could trust or respect anyone who isn’t these days.

Afterwards I caught a cab to Berwyn to hear my friend Kelly perform a couple Anita O’Day tunes as part of Heather McAdams’ & Chris Ligon’s annual country music calendar extravaganza. FitzGerald’s was so packed I spent my whole time there squeezed near the entrance, but it’s always a great thing to hear Kelly sing and she was gracious enough to give me a ride back to the city after. A room full of people excited about music can’t help but be a hopeful thing even amid this utter darkness. 

A block west of my place is a restaurant and bed & breakfast called the Polo Cafe. Shay and I had gone there once for their Sunday Gospel Brunch a few years ago and I had only returned one time since. But this Sunday I decided it was time to hear some hymns once again. The Polo is run by a profoundly devout Catholic gay couple. There are hymnals on all the tables and one half of the couple leads the diners in sacred song on organ, under the watchful, bejowled countenance of Richard J. Daley. It’s a unique Chicago experience which I’d heartily recommend to anyone in search of an unusual repast. 

Monday night I went to the Empty Bottle to see my old high school classmate and Coolidge Corner Theatre coworker Jason Sanford’s newish band E play. It’s great to see anyone my age still trying to do their thing and not giving in to complacency or just giving up in the face of indifference. It doesn’t hurt that Jason’s bandmate is Thalia Zedek, who’s music I’ve loved for decades. They made a beautiful racket together and I finally got the nerve to talk to Thalia. It’s always a nice surprise when someone you admire turns out to be a nice person.

At a little after 11 on Wednesday I walked over to Bridgeport Coffee and saw Shay already at the counter ordering. She smiled when she saw me, which eased my anxiety instantly. She told me that she’d decided to give herself an early birthday present by stopping being angry at people. We ended up talking for two and a half hours. I’m thankful for whatever change happened which has allowed her not to hate me any more. On our way out I asked if this meant that we could be friends now. She said that it did.

Later that afternoon I went to Bernice’s to start a drawing. I told Steve about the miracle which had just occurred to me, then went back into the garage, set up the easel and got to work. 

I never learned how to dance. Watching others do it, especially people who really know how, is like hearing a good story. It’s rarely a straight narrative but the combination of gesture and sound can take you to places far from where you were when the dance began.

Over the past few years I’ve worked with my old art-school classmate Wendy Clinard on various projects. It’s always a pleasure and a challenge to collaborate with her. She’s got a unique mind and her own particular way of communicating. Though the jumping-off point of her choreography is usually flamenco, she takes it into far-flung places.

A few months ago Wendy moved her dance studio to one of the storefronts on Halsted Street in Pilsen. She’s been based in the neighborhood over twenty years but now passersby can watch as she puts her students through their paces.

I’ve been drawing during some of these sessions and will be hanging about ten of the better drawings on the wall of her studio, opposite the mirror in which the dancers watch themselves. I will also hang about ten recent paintings. Most of them have never been displayed anywhere but a computer screen and I look forward to seeing how they look out in the world.

—I wrote about the new Nelson Algren biography for Vol.1 Brooklyn.

Behind Bernice’s Tavern, through a cluttered kitchen, past a staircase to a second-floor apartment, and out the back door is a former horse stable. Beyond a steel door secured by two padlocks and a deadbolt lies a treasure trove. Over the past few weeks I’ve been going back there and trying to make order out of its chaos.

Crates filled with toy train tracks form leaning towers stretching upward to twelve foot rafters; sagging, decades-old cardboard boxes hold paperwork, photographs, tchotchkes, and tools; rusting tin signs and dust-covered neons advertise beers long forgotten and years out of circulation; stacks of gilded frames lean against canvases depicting creepy clowns or barely started, abandoned student art assignments; speed racks, cocktail napkins, and glassware, all sealed and unused sit waiting on shelves, buried under layers of ceiling debris. Every time I go in I find something unexpected. 

A collection like this takes time to assemble. Along with discarded and discounted goods are personal writings, children’s doodles, and keepsakes going back at least fifty years. On the one hand this is just a room full of stuff, on the other it is a historical record of a family’s life and how it was lived. It’s a great privilege to be allowed to comb through someone else’s belongings. It is also much easier for a stranger, who has no sentimental attachments, to organize them into some sort of coherence. Were these my boxes of past, each opened cardboard flap might send me down a rabbit hole and sidetrack me from the task for minutes or hours, but because these things are someone else’s I can categorize them coldly, for the most part. But there’s no denying the Antiques Road Show element of this thing I’ve undertaken.

A box full of matchbooks I opened a few days ago is like a history of Bridgeport. There’s a set of six naked beauties who advertised the tavern back in the 60s and 70s, while others promote restaurants and stores so long gone that even the buildings which housed them were demolished decades ago. I’m no professional picker, so I don’t know how much of this stuff is truly treasure, but I have no doubt that a good lot of it can be turned over for a profit. The question is whether the man who has amassed it all will be willing to part with any of it.

In the weeks I’ve spent pushing boxes and furniture around I’ve wondered about what it means to want to gather things for decades in this way. Each new discovery must represent a need fulfilled and all of them together are a buffer against some inner lack or emptiness. There’s no way not to feel the sadness in this room. All these things should’ve filled the void but by being piled back here abandoned have obviously failed. Still, picking up one of those matchbooks or dusting off an old beer neon, I can feel a bit of the charge of possibility they each contain.

When everything is sorted and organized in a couple months I won’t profit financially but if these last couple weeks are any indication I’ll certainly gain a measure of peace. When I go back into the garage everything else disappears. The raping swindler holding our country hostage can’t get in and neither can any other global or personal misfortune. I’m already dreading when this job will be done.