Dear David,
Just
now returning from an evening walk, the air not too cold and the colors
of the blue white sky giving the lake a glowing calm. Stopping to skip
stones at Oak St Beach and then striding the jetty until the chess
pavilion reminds me of a hot summer morning in the 90's and we battled
our guts out while slamming a green fuzz ball and then back at your home
you treated me to a Knudson's spritzer, flavor red, and we sipped on
your porch, and God bless youth, we found more energy to run and bike to
the lake, I was loping down the street with you at my side both of us
weaving in the traffic with the sun rising and getting hot and we didn't
care we were flying!! And then we reached the lake and I thought why not
let's keep going and we cruised south all the way to the chess pavilion
and we stopped like it was nothing being young then I hope we had the
sense to realize the greatness of the day and I think we/I do/did
because 25 years later I am thinking about it and savoring it like a
raga in nocturne mood. And then turning into the park and going back
south along Rush St the faded lights of a downing sun mellowing the
usual city glare and now everything is soft and this special light
brings me back into my past and I watch my nine year old self wandering in a
field with five friends and we are walking talking balls of energy and one
of the boys gets a little too far ahead and one of the other boys turns
to the four of us and motions to scatter and we all see and understand
the beauty of the game, where the sorry boy who gets left behind has
the exhilarating thrill of surprise to find a once bustling field of
action has changed into a silent church of one and even the birds have
fled and a pure thrilling abandonment descends upon everything and for
one brief moment he feels in his bones the faraway loneliness of God.
And now I'm walking beside the Museum of Modern Art, the streets
abandoned, feeling a certain shame creeping in, as if the whole gang has
fled and to my great surprise I look around and see nothing but deep
feelings of a cold quiet. I slept long the night before, with dreams no
more far fetched than the present real moment, where it seems to be
folding in on itself like an out of tune accordion and all I know is
fading fast the empty buildings pass like corpses stood on end all the
spirit gone I'm the last man standing at Columbus and Wacker and that
isn't saying much.
