I'm actually in Chicago.

To go to the AERA Conference.

I am in a Hyatt looking out on a city which is very exciting. it's maybe midnight....two.

I'm too tired to say much coherent and yet I am very excited to be in this city.

My first impression is ....that it is slicker than when I saw it in the 70's, still all business, huge, monolithic, intimidating, cold... found this in my mail..and it's the exact way I find it. I tried to imagine growing up here...sorry it seems to me to bear no kids...or at least not to condone them or childhood. What purpose would that state serve the city?
When I last was here people danced The Hustle.
So of course this would be the kind of place in present times chosen to present Ed. Research.... I always found it to have humanity "on the side". I can never quite fathom it...still can't. I recall it made me feel ineffably dispensable.

Chicago
Carl Sandburg


HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

I flew in a plane so tight it was awful, I need to never eat again, really.
So I'll restart those worries,insecurities abound. But I successfully suppressed coughing with codeine syrup but once off that plane a very easy flight, I coughed an hour and sounded ridiculous. But I am happy because it was exciting to be traveling through time and space into somewhere so different than where I am/was.

And the sound of the voices. This sound in Chicago is wonderful to hear, when you go out and listen...umm.
I heard this sound last around Christmas in a call that said it was a wrong number...but it wasn't...anyway it was a beautiful accent. Oh sound, Chicago..i forgot that piece too.

I read the Neruda book of poetry on the plane Odes To Common Things.
It is bilingual, this edition, and I read it in Spanish trying to work on my translating. Sometimes I have to cheat, and the differences in where it sat in my brain were as different as how I feel in a city and my home by the beach.
Each poem relates to the ordinary and the sublime, in that very normal and utilitarian place. The beauty in our "things".
It's a very direct line into your connections to daily life, heart, pain, joys in living a life.

Good packed in a sardine can. Cost so much to fly. Did you know you buy a box of snack stuff for 5 dollars if you want food?
Which no one seemed to buy except the lady next to me who was really hungry I think.

Then I watched a plane movie about Beatrix Potter. It was wonderful. A love story, art story. You know as a child, very, very young I thought her books were real. They were one of my first reads, my own, and they were so real to me I've never taught the books. I think they were a part of my inner life. Secret and my divinity lies in there maybe hiding. I lived in these fantasy places. Created them. I still hear the lines about the father who met with an accident and landed in a pie....it was a shame as I cry.... so people were noticing. It was a very touching movie.
She had two loves, the movie shared how she forged an independent life, a life connected to nature, a life where as kindly as possible she stood up for herself and was driven by creating. And she loved.
A love story in all ways. And hooked to my life for many reasons, a very valuable thing to see flinging through sky.

So I wrote a poem or two. Sadly not fine ...nor even clear where they came from...but it was a place of feeling it.......


Journey

Nothing about being hot cramped
Stuffed sausage in a United casing
Seems remotely about this love story on the little screen
I have to crane to see.

Coughing, coughed on

But it took me to thinking of love-
How unprepared I am, over-weighted, inadequate
Anne Lindbergh said something of love that sees another free
Especially of the "me".

Dropping the cup of cola on my shoes

I have that destination in mind
My desired trajectory
Not to you, but through you, to the places
Outside of the the limits of this sorry form stuck in chair

Flinging through stifling air.

A journey of knowing you
Traveled in my mind, considered watching this feature
Blasted through stringy headphones
I tie no string in love's name.

You need to fly free of my limited horizons.




Disreal, I Want To Hold Your Hand

It hurt.
Rejoining reality so soon
After a flight into fantasy

Like that fall that
Broke my kneecap
The day I left high school.

Inheriting a mother
Who was hearing a voice
Telling her my future was hers

Or the trip down the stairs
Damaging my spine
At just five.

Still when you gave
Me back my hand
It was really the first time.

It hurt too.
In a different way
The others closed a door

This shut off alternate reality
Where I crawl.
It hurt.


I had to feel it.