(East River) Chicago River

"I want to see the body."


A AERA bag in her hand grasped tight, she lunged forward over the bridge to really get a good look, her female companion also quietly watching the green water. The boat marked Chicago Police lifting out a dripping cold diver in chilling calm next to the canal. There was a diver and a marker buoy floating. It's so cold I couldn't breathe, but that might be my lungs spasming. A walkway between two AERA sites with the people who move impersonally and cover spaces so quickly in the drive to "get there." I didn't want to see a body in the water between the Sheraton and Hyatt in Chicago with " the spectacular view of Lake Michigan offered" as you looked up and if that was the real reason sending that poor diver into the chill this Monday morning it was contemplated dispassionately generally by the morning crowd on the walkway. On the Police boat the team did seem to have the requisite detectives and folk. Like a dollar plane mystery story might script out for this city's crime come into life. Or death. Real and bitter in cold.

But that's exactly what she said, standing on the rail in the freezing. I listened.
She continued, "I always want to see the bodies come out of the water."
There was something unclinical in her voice, it was excited.
I started looking at her. I know as a listener, a recorder of human interactions in classrooms, you don't direct thought as I did. That takes with it your judgement and places things interpersonally. You do that to engage another, but that's a thing I do too. In teaching when to do either is the art of the job.
I turned this morning in the cold air, directed a stare to look at her ,really look. and concentrate. Now not oblivious to me at all. I suppose I had a recorders break, truthfully for a second I was rather revolted by what her voice carried to me moments before. It was not a mourners voice. And I had looked at the divers face. It was bleak.
So she turned away and moved away, really aware I had captured her space, her words.
In teaching I record what is said. I am forced to stick to this to look at what's there.

Today in water that was very cold I then saw an imagined dead body another woman conjured.
It was homeless and cold. And once a student in a class of a person with AERA bag in hand just like my on-looker.



I had just gone over to register. In the lobby of the Sheraton is a phenomenal urn up on a huge table filled with branches of a cherry tree, cut and presented almost in an Oriental arrangement, but a bit too heavy and clumsy. It looked like three trees worth of branches. I mourned that because I t thought of the trees, though it has been awhile since I've seen the blossoms and they are so phenomenally beautiful. You understand their associations...cherry tree and bloom to friendship. I was thinking some could be grafted or rooted but the pull of a group sucked me out the door and down the cold to the boat I looked at for awhile too and took a picture. But I forgot my cable....but who would want to see that.

A nice woman who can't speak very much English is re-filling my mini-bar this second as I'm typing, and talking to me about cashews. I want to talk about her. She works here coming I think from Korea but she talks very broken and isn't expecting me to talk so much. I just bought her a soda out of the thing, actually a water sparkling and she can't quite deal with that. But she said she likes them after I said what do you like? I like mini bars. I could probably live out of one for ten years if it was refilled once in awhile. I am eating a little can of cashews, she likes them too so I'm sharing, but I notice she is agreeing with everything I say. She says Chicago is so cold. It really is.

In a bit I'm going to go hear someone present Beth Yeager's work. It will be interesting. I'll be 100% interested in the meeting, but I'm going to the Chicago Art Museum after at 1 and that is much more on my mind and to the Contemporary At Museum tomorrow, to jazz tonight. I'm watching as I type a million machines moving earth building something down there. You marvel that people erected these buildings. How is that possible?

So with an eye on the water and what it holds I think I see a glimpse of Chicago.