Field Studies

I'm visiting D in Chicago, and we're finding fun even though it's wintry outside. On Thursday night we went back to the Green MIll, hoping for a transcendent jazz experience akin to the one we experienced the last time. (See http://voyageartistique.blogspot.com/2007/07/birthday-week.html) We arrived around 8:30 PM, and the place was already inexplicably packed with people. I found a bar stool facing the stage on which to perch, and David stood and leaned in next to me to give the waitresses room to work the bar. I ordered a bourbon and ginger. Sitting on my right on a bar stool was a man in his eighties, looking expectantly at the crowd. He was wearing a kind of knit blue track suit, with the HBO insignia and "The Sopranos" etched over his right breast in red lettering. To our left was a tall thin man in narrow glasses who looked suspiciously like John Lennon, and a gaggle of college boys in corduroy jackets and bushy hair. In front of us was a middle-aged man towing two thin young men dressed in "emo" fashion: women's jeans, close-knit shirts, and long, straight hair combed in a swoop to the side. D leaned down and whispered "catamites."

The band started setting up-- they crammed the bandstand and revealed brass, acoustic bass, saxophone, and drums. Women dressed in a-line skirts and short stacked heels approached the dance floor. An announcer began, and the night revealed: swing music. HBO man hit the dance floor, after feeling up the bottom of the young woman in front of him. I watched her scurry to her trio of friends and recount his lechery.

It was some kind of "Prairie Home Companion" type show-- including re-enactments of 1940's radio commercials and a tinny soprano singing standards. After about half an hour we had had enough and took the El back to D's apartment.

D's apartment is heated by radiators, so it's about 88 degrees Fahrenheit inside. Consequently, we lounge in shorts and
t-shirts and I stick my feet out the open window to cool down. I find it particularly delicious at night-- snug and warm under the bed-covers, but with an occasional wintry breeze chilling my face and arms. The muted sounds of the city in winter soothe me somehow-- I'm reminded of my hotel in Paris where I slept with the window open to cool the torrid room.



D asked me to bring my Christmas ornaments, so we trimmed a tree on the 27th. I kind of like it-- having a Christmas tree, but without all the fuss and bother of the pre-holiday "to do" list. See what you think:



Yesterday we went to the Field Museum to see a special exhibition on maps. We took the El downtown and walked the snowy streets through Grant Park to the Museum.



Even at 3PM on a Friday, the Museum was filled with people. Babies cried, toddlers howled, and weary mothers pushed strollers while fathers juggled coats and diaper bags. The map exhibit line was too crowded, so we decided to walk through the animal exhibit. Growing up in Northwest Indiana, I had always wanted to visit Chicago's Field Museum, and as a child had imaginative visions of stuffed Cougars and Grizzlies standing alert in defensive poses. Surely, I thought, such un-pc exhibits have been updated? Surely, I thought, I will not see a stuffed Lynx in a glass case?

Much to my delight and dismay, the 100-year-old displays are intact. Case after case of glass-enclosed animals stuffed in a variety of natural and unnatural poses. See the Golden Eagle, standing looking over its right shoulder, as big as a four-year-old child. See the North American songbirds, heads cocked, stiffly staring as children push buttons to hear their songs. A Cougar (yes! too big to imagine running into in a forest), a Bobcat, a Lynx. See the monkeys, with their preternatural human expressions, looking terrifying, terrified, inquisitive, animated, or finally, just dead. All those animals from all over the world, all dead and stuffed a century ago, and still on display in Chicago. D and I left the exhibit feeling unnerved and made our way to the equally inanimate, but never-animated maps.

At the Green Mill, HBO man continued to dance, John Lennon smoked, and the boys in corduroy sipped their beers. I head one of the corduroy boys say, "I'm claustrophobic," and watched as he grabbed his backpack and suddenly crouched down to the floor in the middle of the crowd. His friend watched him go down, dispassionately, as though this instinctive behavior was a century old. Corduroy boy on the floor gripped his backpack, trundled forward a few inches, breathed, and came to his feet. "I'm going, dude," he said, and slipped out the side door where the musicians entered. His friends, as though breathing his air, closed in ranks and faced the music.