This dispatch from downstate. Dinner was from a bar inside what used to be a drive through restaurant, but is now also (or, mainly) for video gaming. A muted TV behind the bar, and a magazine on the wall dedicated to General George Patton, hung in a protective sleeve. The cooler under the TV had union stickers on the glass.
I had a small sundae from an ice cream stand across the street. Could smell the sugar from the car. I like getting out of Chicago (even 150, 200 miles is a world different.) I like seeing the different sky, the different horizon.
The place I’m staying is the size of a mobile home, built on a slab, split into two rentals. The washer is in the one bedroom, and when it’s running the floor from this half of the building shakes in rhythm with the drum of the washer. It’s an odd feeling. I brought my laundry because the dryer’s out in my apartment building and it’s no fun sitting in the laundromat next to the convenient store when it’s 85 out. Though, last couple weeks, while I’m waiting I’ve been sitting in a rocking chair out front and watching the neighborhood pass by. I won’t seek that out but it’s a fine way to wait.
As much as the city changes, and it’s a living thing really, no neighborhood is ever going to always be whatever ethnic group or social class or mob dominates a few blocks. Everyone thinks their thing is forever, and that it’s different this time, but it never is. I think that’s what gives cities life, that pulse. Chicago in particular, this all is a source of tension, violence, pride, it’s part of the whole thing. The movement, the electricity, is what makes city living alluring.
So as much as the city has changed. I appreciate that Central Gyros is still at Belmont and Central. There was the first time I heard alcohol referred to as an “acquired taste.” Retsina, which I had sips of when I was a kid with the adults. I remember it being a lot to handle, when I was ten or eleven, but by the time I was in my 20s I had … acquired the taste, I guess.
(The lesson later - someone outside my family pointed out - if someone went through the hassle of acquiring a taste for a wine that most people compare to a cleaning solution, might there be an issue with alcohol somewhere?)
I learned the importance of maintaining some family ritual there. Not that the visits were regular, but a couple times a year, frequent enough to have an idea of what was for dinner before we arrived. And with that, the importance of having a place or two for special occasions, where you could go without wondering who or what you’d encounter when you arrived. (It was this, and Armand’s on Grand Avenue in Elmwood Park. I am not sure of what went into closing that location, but I I wish it had stayed open. For selfish reasons - it's the only other restaurant I remember from the part of my childhood before I feel like I grew up, the innocent part. I have good memories of a couple others but they’re from turbulent times.)
This lost then from the generation after my grandfather - I don’t think this unique among American families born from immigrants. The family structure down the generations is just … different. Diffused.
I finished “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” I think my favorite of the first five Narnia books. I read them in sequence, starting with “The Magician’s Nephew.” (There’s apparently some controversy over the ordering of the books, but I have one book and the note inside reads: “Although “The Magician’s Nephew” was written several years after C.S. Lewis first began “The Chronicles of Narnia,” he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series.”)
For a couple years now I’ve been trying, for myself mostly, to understand and explain why I like books. To be mindful when I’m reading of what works for me. I admire people who can write about books. I just feel lost sometimes. The feeling is there but the words aren’t. I can summarize in a couple words how books make me feel.
“The Magician’s Nephew,” I’d say, hope and whimsy and exploration. “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” felt like first grade; I understand the world a bit better and I think I have it figured out, and I’m conscious of that. But also, I’m hit with something new every day and it’s not all good. And sometimes just hit. And on and on.
“The Voyage” felt melancholic, mature, pragmatic, the magic felt heavy and freighted. Like the color of the sky facing east at sunset staring out over Lake Michigan, the air is holding something. Almost sad, in a very early adulthood way.
I flew through the last two books in the Narnia series, and the ending of the last book … I wish I had someone I could talk to about this. Anyone I know who read them read them as a kid. No spoilers, but: having a fifth or sixth-grade understanding of Christianity, plus whatever I’ve picked up along the way through pop culture, and then what I think the biggest piece of my religious education has been, the good fortune of meeting people who truly believe through my work … the ending of the Narnia series felt like one of those woodworking puzzles where you’re not sure how the joinery locks into place and then all of a sudden it all fits - just - so.
I could pick up on the biblical allegory pretty easy, as a non-believer or skeptic, and I’m sure I missed a ton but some of it was pretty clear. A resurrection, a guiding light, good and evil; there’s more. (Another reason why, if I ever had the means, I’d love to go back to school and learn books from people who know books.) I think it’s not just that the books draw heavily from Christianity, it’s that I think you can see a pretty optimistic and loving worldview. And I understand that not all of Christianity is loving or optimistic.
I have a lot of mixed views and I’m not going to sort them out here - not now I guess - except to say, I don’t subscribe to the conclusion at the end of the final book, but also that the ending was perfect for the series and having it read it this way I couldn’t imagine any alternative, and as a piece of writing as much as you can separate it from the religious overtones … the books in total, this book in particular, were just so rich and engaging. People I love and respect hold these views, even though I don’t share them. And like all the other assigned readings and books from grade or high school I’ve read as an adult - I’m glad I found this as an adult and it would have been lost in fifth-grade me.
Reading
Tracing Cormac McCarthy’s Chicago Ties
Camino Ghosts
Uncle Dmitry