a year ago......

Ok, I wrote this last year. It was a year to the date almost. But so what? It's my blog and I'll try if I want to...you'd try too if it happened to you..... It's kind of another glimpse into the crap I think about. I'll tell you about Chicago sometime. And my fascination with Hopper.

I sit in a café bright with mid morning March Chicago sun. A modern café, to be sure, but so much like the one in the 1940’s Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. It has the same yellow green walls and rich mahogany trim. A calico curtain with wood rings and rod spans the storefront window, giving the patrons a safe haven from which to watch the passers by outside. An urban duck blind of sorts where one can read, drink coffee and compute in concealment. And the sun streams in, welcome though it highlights – almost celebrates – the streaks and layered window dirt from a winter not quite yet passed.

The awning shadow is my clock. How slowly it moves so quickly. But to watch it move, to catch it in the act, isn’t possible. A game of cat and mouse. A glance and it plays against table edge. Another glance and it moves to highlight the blonde hair of the woman absorbed with caffeine and newsprint.

The revolving doors ingest another customer while spitting one out in one efficient rotation.
I’m waiting for the Chicago Art Museum to open, to visit once again the works of Edward Hopper in the temporary exhibit. He is gone and yet his art draws you in. He is speaking through his work and saying something at once clear and yet so vague. “What, Edward, what? What is this pain you express, this morose?” You almost understand it but then he changes the subject and seems to say “…yes, but look at the composition and the colors I used here and the light. Not bad, huh?” Ah, my friend you remain a mystery and I must visit again.

And the American psyche of the diner, of separation, of urban loneliness of which he speaks lives on in this café. Most sit alone this morning, each to his/her own, even friends stop their conversation now and then to pull into themselves. Not that it’s a dreary scene. Far from it, especially with the warm cheer of the butterscotch sunlight bathing our space. It’s just me, alone. Observing. And feeling it.

I did not know until I looked out the window this morning that the famous Route 66 comes over along Jackson Street and ends right here at Michigan Avenue, just outside. I can see the sign clearly from my vantage point in the blind. Route 66. An American icon. A road that winds from Chicago to LA, more than 2,000 miles all the way. A road where one can get his kicks, strewn with diners hosting the lonely; Some of the same folks frozen in oil and watercolor across the street in Edward’s frames. I pause to consider my notice of this. Irony is not the word but nonetheless interesting to note, and so I have. The revolving doors continue to ingest and spit out. I’ve been digested and it is now my turn to leave.