September Ending

Yesterday I went downtown for a Chicago adventure. I began my day under this Tiffany dome:

It is a part of the largest Tiffany installation in the world. It lives in the Chicago Cultural Center, at the corner of Washington and Michigan. The CCC used to be the Chicago Public Library, until they built a bigger, fancier one (there are gargoyles on the new one). The Tiffany room is officially known as the Preston Bradley Hall, and it is now mainly used for concerts.  Yesterday's musicians were Rebecca Wascoe, vocalist, and Jeffrey Peterson, piano. I have never heard anyone sing with as much feeling and presence as this woman did yesterday. She was part queen, part madam, part teenage girl belting out Wagner's "Schmerzen" ("Anguish")  in perfect despair.

Sun, each evening you weep
Your pretty eyes red,
When, bathing in the mirror of the sea
You are seized by early death.

My God, I nearly wept.

After the concert, I dazedly wandered over to Millenium Park for lunch, then walked along the harbor of the Lake. It was a wonderfully gloomy sky, and the boats at the yacht club looked as though they were going to rebel at any moment.

I ended my walk in Lurie Park. It was built as a part of the "city in the park" plan that very clever and forward thinking architects and landscape architects devised in this city nearly a century ago. It felt strange to be moseying about a little prairie garden under the watchful eyes of the city.

Sofas and Scones

If anyone had asked me before how I felt about sofas, I don't think I would have had a whole lot to say. But now!  For the past two and a half weeks, I have been sitting either on the floor or on a hard wooden chair, which do not comfy reading spots make ! Oh squashy, loungey sofa you. We don't have to call it a sofa. Couch is nice too, I could go either way. The color--a soft sage gray. The feel--a perfect combination of soft and firm. The length is just right for sleeping--there is no need for bending ones legs in any funny positions or for draping one off the side.  And there is not just the one, lonely couch. Noooo lonely only-ies here! There is a lovely matching loveseat too!  That is all about the couch for now, but as we get better acquainted there may be more.

 

In other news, I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory earlier this week. It is one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Chicago so far (the Lake takes the cake).  A very sad thing happened to it in June --there was a giant Midwest style  hailstorm and almost all the glass shattered all over the place. So only a couple exhibits were open to the public when we were there, but that is ok because now we will go back very soon.  We brought watercolors and my intention was to find some brightly colored thing, of which there were many, and which are very nicely expressed with watercolors. Instead I became obsessed with this shiny metal spiral staircase that leads up to the roof of the conservatory.  It is hard to see in the picture, but Spanish moss is hanging down from the curving handrails all the way up to the top.  So instead of painting, I mostly just tried to sketch its looming awesomeness the whole time.

In most recent history, this morning I tried to bake scones. For some inexplicable reason, I have always had this mental image of myself standing in a sunny kitchen, in Chicago, baking fabulous scones. So this morning, Nick very obligingly went to the grocery store to buy baking powder. When he returned, I baked. Here is what I made:

These do not look like scones to me. To me, they bear an eerie resemblance to chocolate chip cookies.  But they taste delicious! Better luck next time. Notice the Ed Hardy juice glasses in the background. This is one classy image.

I'm just going to post one last picture.

Sylvia Wrath

Another week in Chi-town has flown by. Monday through Friday I did the requisite job hunting required of the newly unemployed, but that hardly sums up Week 2 of life in the Great Midwest!

First, however, a brief explanation of this week's post title. While out in the frantic neighborhood of Bucktown Saturday night in the stimulating company of Nick Bacon and Jackie Alcantara, a brief discussion of future roller derby names occurred. Now, as I am very interested in joining a team in the near future (so much energy! so much pent-up aggression expressed on wheels!) this subject is of great interest to me. Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for the utter brilliant-ness of "Sylvia Wrath" (thanks Nick!) but I can and will claim the name. Yes!

Had another ah-HA moment Saturday evening. The mystery of the super late-running farmer's market has been solved! In Virginia, as in most places I have spent time in bars, the bars close at 2, and they usually try to kick you out earlier. But here in Chicago, they close at either 2, 3, or 4. And on Saturday nights, they all close one hour later than they normally do. GAH I am not made for 5 am ending nights of debauchery! But I suppose that takes practice. Anyway, no way is anyone getting up at 7 am to go to the farmer's market on Sunday, so the market begins obligingly at 10. It's very practical of them.

In other news, I did a little home decorating over the past few days. Basically I hung some family artwork on the walls of our empty apartment (it has the pleasing "art gallery effect" that is sought after by many modern women in the midst of a decorating frenzy). Now, I really enjoy displaying my talented artist brother's work around the house, but the self-portrait hanging prominently in the kitchen is a hit with only 50% of the inhabitants at this apartment. To some minds it has a sort of "big brother staring out from the depths of hell" look, while I rather feel as though I am doing some "cooking with Lee" (no relation to the Cooking with Madge web phenomenon) whenever I prepare meals. 

To sum up,  a word I discovered recently while attempting to name the blog something clever and relevant to my life. From wikipedia:

 A kōan ( /ˈkoʊ.ɑːn/; Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng'àn; Korean: 공안 (kong'an); Vietnamese: công án) is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition


Yes again!

So Fresh and So Clean

Eight days into The Great Chicago Adventure! It is exciting and scary to move to an entirely new city without a job waiting, but I have to say that the feeling (so far) is wonderfully liberating as well.

I have already begun to formulate a daily routine.Wake up, have coffee, read email, check some job lists, make more coffee, make hot tea, put on scarf, then sweater, then coat, contemplate gloves, WAIT A MINUTE! It is September damn it! We are so woefully unprepared to survive an icy Chicago winter (people eye us with pity the minute we confess to being transplants from Virginia) but sure, we are from Northern Virginia, right? We even had a blizzard two years ago!

So, mom, as I assume you are the only person reading this, I will just go ahead and address this to you and give you lots of details that probably only a mother would be interested in anyway:-). We live in Logan Square, which is a quiet and residential neighborhood just northwest of downtown Chicago. It takes about 15 minutes to walk to our closest train stop.  That doesn't seem so bad now but it probably will this winter! There is a community center on our block with an indoor lap pool and a game room with ping pong and the like. We haven't met too many neighbors, but our landlord is very friendly and keeps coming by to offer his services.

There are a couple of coffee shops in Logan Square proper. In particular I have been frequenting one called New Wave Coffee, which feels like home because it is generally packed full of Richmond-style hipsters staring all crazy-eyed into their Macs with little white ear buds sprouting from their heads. Mostly they seem  friendly, although I sense some disapproval whenever I pay for my coffee with a card instead of cash. Cards are bad for the local economy you know.

To backtrack just a little, I have also seen a tiny bit of Chicago's cultural side. On Friday we saw a play showcasing some local talent that was part of the Fringe Festival.  Took the El downtown on Saturday and had my first glimpse of Lake Michigan, the Bean, a slightly frightening Marylin Monroe statue, Buckingham Fountain, and Millennium Park.  On Sunday I had a chance to compare a Chicago-style farmer's market with those back home. My favorite difference is scheduling: the market here runs from 10-3, which let us non-early morning people get a shot at the best produce and eggs, unlike at home! Don't think I ever made it to a market before 11, at which point all the eggs are gone and produce is definitely looking a little sad.

Our apartment is big, clean, and basically empty. Some friends gave us a gorgeous round wooden table with some pretty matching chairs, so we do have the beginnings of a dining room.  It feels so fresh, you know? New city, new apartment, new job (hopefully soon), new faces, streets, smells, weather! There is not much of the familiar to hang on to, but as Calvin's dad would say: it builds character!