OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW? part 4; or, HOW TO PREDICT A RIOT

after the pre-party, dinner and digestifs, there wasn't any question that it was time to go out for a beer. and although a pint (or two) of anti-hero would probably have been better suited to the tenor of the weekend as it had begun (and had been planned to continue), the revolution taproom was well out of walking distance from downtown, and it probably would have been closed by the time we were able to make it there otherwise (if it weren't closed already). haymarket, however, wasn't too far, and our hope for its association with a bit of radical history had its own special appeal. too bad, unfortunately, that the pub and brewery seemed only to have been named for the neighborhood, the name of which didn't seem to connote much anymore. i flicked off a taxi. there was a wait if we wanted a table, but we could seat or stand ourselves anywhere we wanted in either of the bars. at the end of the hallway with the windows that give onto the brewing tanks there's a quote from brecht. "theater without beer is just a museum." go left to the bathrooms; the bar is to the right. and although there's a bookcase full of books on political economy and performance next to a battlement of mixing boards and other sound equipment, the people in the bar (and in the adjacent second dining room) are all acting in a different play. in which the high school cafeteria gets off work and goes for drinks, as the poet observed. so a single beer each was all of the show we could take.

in the morning, the race was run without event. or: there was the event itself, with more than a few of the participants running to wrigley field for boston, but there weren't any bombs. we screamed, drank our complimentary kefir smoothies, and left. myopic books appeared to have disappeared or relocated by the afternoon, so there were three dollar breakfast cocktails under the damien stop of the blue line. there was ladieswear and there were art books. the illustration for which the artist hadn't been paid was just out in the magazine that i wouldn't buy for twenty-five dollars. i might have stolen it if i hadn't respected the mission and the mainstay of quimby's. i did want it, because it probably won't see an issue two. but... or, then again, i'd probably just gone soft, like wicker park. and the bloody marys couldn't have been very strong, because after three i was still well on my way to lake view. powell's didn't have either of the books i had wanted, but, luckily, they'll always have something i want. when it was time to meet for dinner, i'd been lost for long enough that i felt completely renewed. some respite. some sweet potato fries, a feast of seitan, and a vegan milkshake. afterwards, the one of the book stores we'd planned to visit on broadway was closed, but all of the design firms turned coffee shops and coffee shops turned designer were still doing their things, the thing that everyone's doing. and if i hadn't been encouraged to make good on my talk about crashing the wedding, i probably would have just put myself to bed.

so i went back to the room to change instead. and in the time it took my hair to dry i picked up the party where we'd left it to chase our disappointment in haymarket. then i went to dance, but my heart wasn't it. the high school cafeteria off for the weekend and come to pat backs around the open bar. and i was too full for cake. but worse, when i left the ivy room to pick up the glitter trail (to the fun to which i should have acceded on my way to dinner) i couldn't find a trace of it anywhere. so i helped a kid from pilsen find his way to where his cousin's boyfriend was spinning instead. and then i smiled as i was leaving the restroom and said that i'd had enough to want any cocaine. with the glitter trail lost, the city was the freehold of the closeted judges and the horny nows. until someone threw a bomb. and the sirens screamed. and a taxi swerved. and i flicked it off. then the driver rolled down his window and complimented my suit, to which unexpected approbation i responded by stepping back up onto the curb and dropping my pants. curtains! then, out of his cab now, he handed me a beer. here's to hoping! because otherwise it's all just a museum.

HOW TO, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

as we were headed south, somewhere north of lafayette on 65, the lights on the turbines of the wind field flashed red and in unison around and ahead of us every couple of seconds. some of the turbines closer to the interstate were unlit, and most of the ones further away were invisible except for their lights. the expansive, quasi-futuristic effect of the field past dark was even more expansive and inspired even more saccharine future nostalgia than it had when i'd seen it in the daylight from a car headed north three days before. i sent her a text to mark my impression. she said that she'd seen the lights through the snow storm that had blown through northwest indiana on friday night as she was driving back. i dropped that, but then i turned to the driver and told him that i had a saint christopher medal in my pocket so not to worry. there wasn't any cause for worry, though, except -- apparently -- over whether i was superstitious. i told him no, but that the point of the medal was the cloying romance of embracing it. forgetting it in my pocket until the anecdote. like my soppy appreciation of the turbines in the frozen fields.

the snow storm that blew through northwest indiana on friday was likely part of the system that hit ohio the next day. the five inches that fell on evanston on thursday night might have been the beginning of the same, but more likely they were just the effect of the lake. there had been snow on the ground and on the tops of the buildings when we'd arrived in chicago that same day but nothing falling. the lake seemed to have had more of its effect farther north. and it was snowing again on saturday at noon when we left lucky platter and pushed our way through the bluster to the chicago-main newsstand. a quiet marvel, and a survey of the intellectual situation, the meek cashier and the man talking too long and too loudly on his phone. i might have bought all of the everything that they had -- or at least given it a long, library browse -- if we hadn't had to move on (and away). we'd been in university village the night before, and i had discovered a gem on halsted.

there, i'd been a bookmark which i'd guarded in the copy of the lobo antunes book i bought. (what can i do when everything's on fire?) it had almost been too right to be true. i'd asked for a book store tour of the city and found myself at powell's. the store on halsted was the newest, but the bookmark gave  addresses for the other two. so after being driven away from the newsstand we made our way down lincoln avenue to drive up alongside the powell's in lakeview. and there was the writing on the wall. facing north: "used books." (it didn't mention the overstock.) i took a picture. inside, i found myself a copy of will self's psychogeography to fill the hole that i'd dug for myself when i hadn't bought the copy i'd seen at spartacus in vancouver. i didn't buy the schiele catalog that i had been almost specifically searching to find, but i did take some pictures. "the torment of the loner, the distress of the seeker beset by visions...the sorrow of the hopeless." in hindsight, thirty-five dollars was a steal. in the moment, however, i distracted myself by looking up the ladders at the shelves.

when we're old we're going to buy old lincolns and spend our weekends clogging the drop off lanes at the departures terminal at midway. but that afternoon we were just dropping off. and since we were already so far south, we decided to see hyde park. that's when we found powell's number three (which was actually the first). but down south it was the university library that stole the show. the future nostalgia there, however, was reductively ironic. the 57th street complex was straight out of truffaut's vision of "farenheit 451."

i can't remember all of the places we ate or the names of most of the buildings we saw. we made it to intelligentsia, but i didn't make it out of the car either of the times we drove through wicker park. i'm retired.

i did, however, make a point of seeing the muse's apartment before i left town sunday. i took a picture of her in her tattered, thrifted rabbit fur coat with the taxidermy weasel in the foreground. then we laughed about the ryan lewis thrift store song, but that didn't inspire her not to give up on mastermind. i snooped, and in the bedroom i found a painting. with the rain clouds subdued behind her, three doves flew out of saint scholastica's mouth. he'd painted it for her because of a cemetery experience they'd shared. hours later, i suggested that maybe the reason we'd been spared more snow for our trip back together through the wind field was scholastica, but he didn't get it. so i got smug about my medal and held on to the sham future that we were passing by.

LET THEM SUCK LEMONS, A HOW TO; or, QUÉ HA PASADO CON EL COMUNISMO, REVIVAL

we're talking behind the dumpster that's next to the garage across the alley from the apartment because the wind has picked up. although the winter storm hasn't come through yet on its promise of snow, at least the rain has stopped. it might be snowing if it hadn't though, because it's definitely getting colder. and the wind makes our sense of it worse. but we have the dumpster to shelter us from the full force of the wind, which we'd gone out into in order to shelter ourselves, momentarily, from the party. in such a litigious society, it's cruelly ironic that a lawyer wouldn't encourage his client to sue the local police department -- if not for a violation of due process, then at least for the damage to his client's property -- just because he'd already dispatched himself of his obligation to defend that client against his d.u.i. charge. doesn't she agree? but those people (in clark county, i think it was) just live differently, the lawyer turned real estate agent had said. (the system works!) this is what we're talking about behind the dumpster. this and other systemic wastes. she'd found the light box that they'd rigged with flashing christmas lights for the party in the alley the day she arrived. at the thrift stores we visited the evening of that same day she had bought a rocking chair upholstered in vinyl for her host and the pogo stick that we'd used later in the park. we'd already put the chair and the unicorn print in his apartment and were in the park waiting for the word to go pick him up. she'd also gotten a german wall scale for ninety cents, but had passed on each of the pairs of red motorcycle boots that we'd seen at both stores. behind the dumpster i tell her that i'm happy that she decided to visit. i'm happy to have met her. i'm only wearing a light sweater and i'm cold, but if i catch cold i can just follow her example. "lemon sucking now hailed by science as influenza cure," goes the title of one of the articles on the front page of a los angeles evening herald from october, 1918. maybe that's why she always has one in her pocket ready to suck. but the habit isn't good for her teeth. (without insurance, which way would be the wrong way to go?) she says that she's happy to have met me too, and if i want i can stay at her apartment in humboldt park while i'm in chicago between the holidays. she'll give me a key. from what she says (and what i've already gathered), i should be excited to see how she's decorated. she has a good eye, and she says she has a great collection. it's only possible to work as a floriculturist during the spring, summer and fall, so she has all winter to browse estate sales. her apartment is in the puerto rican neighborhood, she says; and i say like that part of brooklyn, until it went the way of wicker park. i haven't been to chicago in two decades, so i don't really know if that's accurate. but i have been to williamsburg, and she says that's where her sister lives. the muses: by all accounts they're an interesting bunch. i'd known before tonight that this one liked alleys and dumpsters. the issue of wisconsin swingers that's inside the apartment came from the dumpster of a half priced books. what do you get for the girl who can find everything. cigarettes. there's that. then i remember having seen a vodka beverage called sucking lemons at a bc liquor store and think that i could try to find her one to leave at her apartment as a gift. she doesn't drink, but she does suck lemons. i think that she'll think that it's funny. if i can tell her that i got it at a drive thru it will be even better. they apparently don't have those in chicago or milwaukee, and when i took her to the one across from the salvation army thrift store in merion village she'd been uncommonly impressed. she'd bought a tiny bag of candy corn and a packaged carrot cake. (the peasants have no bread!). i don't know if i'll actually end up staying at her apartment, but i accept her offer. just say yes, i think, because that's what makes life interesting, and now that's exactly what we're talking about behind the dumpster as the wind picks up again.