I woke up today with an overwhelming sense of lassitude which has characterized my Thursday mornings. I have named them lethargic because they are usually the day of the week when I’m most useless to myself and to society. For the past three months, I have spent the better part of this day in bed with my earphone in my ears and a laptop on my lap. Or sometimes on the sofa flipping through the interminable channels on American television. Maybe it is from working all day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays till late in the night, but whenever I wake up on Thursday, I only think of getting back into bed. Today is one of those days, and minus a little occasional effort around the bathroom and towards the door to get delivery of ordered food, I have been indoors.
It could be the cold, the gradually reducing temperature. It could also be the change in seasons that makes sure that it is already dark by 3pm. It is mostly the fact that I don’t usually have any campus obligation on Thursdays. And to cap up the already lazy week is the fact that next week is totally work-free. Yes indeed. By this time next week, we will be celebrating the annual Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. It is however a week-long holiday that ensures that no one goes to school or work. Everyone stays at home to eat, drink and be merry. For my apartment, it will be very lonely as my two American housemates are heading home. It will be this traveller alone in the large apartment, pondering time, paces and spaces. This is usually a time when poetry descends from its high realm of the heavens. It will definitely be a long week.
It could also be the withdrawal symptoms from the open spaces of Chicago. Truly, my Thursdays are usually lethargic, but this particular level of slowness is unprecedented and could only have resulted from my three days on Chicago’s streets. So what if I had spent a week there, or even a month? I probably would never have wanted to return here in a hurry. That city is endearing in a way that is not too pushy, yet it entices. I can’t say the same of Lagos, Nigeria where I usually always seek to escape from at the slightest opportunity. Next month will find me in Washington DC, New York (probably) and the state of Maryland. It will be a chance to compare the differences in the behaviour of big cities. Of course, thinking only of the cold, I would probably just wish that I can stay here in Edwardsville where somehow I’ve been able to adjust to the gradually lowering temperature.
I need ideas of something fun to do for one whole week, besides the Turkey-eating activities of Thursday which will take place as scheduled in the right homes of my host parents at Edwardsville.
Most of the art works, scruptures and wall reliefs in this collection were shot at the Art Institute of Chicago at South Michigan Avenue. It was our first stop early on Friday morning since the Sears Tower refused to open to visitors on time.
No visit to the city of Chicago is complete until one reaches the pinnacle of this building, standing on the glass ledge that sometimes bobs with the wind, and looking through the floor to the street 1,353 feet (412 m) below.
I will remember this visit to the 103rd storey of the world’s fifth tallest building mostly because of the way the city/investors take maximum advantage of the landmark for their own financial gain. According to the displayed statistics, the building receives 25,000 daily visitors, and it only has 149 staff members. Considering that the amount spent by each visiting tourist is about $50 or thereabout, it is definitely a good long-term investment, along with returns from several other similar buildings in the city, one of which is the John Hancock Building. One could only wonder how much of returns these buildings/structures would have brought to Chicago if the rights to host the Olympics had been given to them. Now, at places around the city, one could still see little torn posters of the city’s Olympic bid: Chicago 2010.
These photos are some of the over five hundred shots that I was able to take on the streets of Chicago. On the first day, I took almost three hundred. Their locations vary, from the Union Bus Station the Sears Towers, Congress Parkway, Navy Pier, Shedd Acquarium, Chicago Arts Institute to Lake Michigan, Michigan Avenue, Buckingham fountain, and Grant Park.
I will leave Chicago with this feeling: thrill; this impression: awe. Here’s a city that runs on order and a certain edge. Walking the length and breath to where my feet could reach, I found an open eyed town that never stops demanding. Either going upward on an elevator onto the Skydeck of the Sears Towers, taking pictures there on the glass ledge, requesting for branded gift items at the Institute of Arts, getting a guided tour, getting a 4D Fantasea tour of the Shedd Acquarium, or getting onto the Ferris Wheel at the Navy Pier, Chicago never stops demanding. Here’s where a padlock costs up to $10. (A little riddle on that: Q: Which is safer, a padlock with number combinations or a regular one with jam and lock? A: If they both cost the same, they stand equal chance of being broken), and a bottle of soda could cost almost $3. It’s a shopaholic’s heaven, a traveller’s escape and a photographer’s playground. There’s hardly ever a place to turn without something memorable to see. The one advantage of this set of travellers was our preference for our feet as means of transportation all through the large city. There probably was no other way we could have seen so much.
New York has the Subway. London has the Underground system. Chicago has the “L”. “No, not the ‘El’. Only Boston folks spell it like that,” our guide says. “It’s the ‘L'”. It hardly matters that there are places where the train moves at ground level. It’s still the “L” which stands for “Elevated Train.”
Lying at Union Station with a computer on the lap and an earphone plugging the ears, a stranger stops by, hooded and jittery. He needs a smoke and was ready to pay for it. Walking across the street, a woman with a scarf on her head is throwing up on the curb with no one taking notice. A policeman on small motorped warns squatting travellers to watch out for their bus or stand a risk of being ejected from the Amtrak station as soon as it is midnight. Coming in a cab for the first time during this trip, conversing with a Romanian taxi cab driver, sharing the words of exile. He will one day go back home, but not to become a politician. He’s now a Chicago citizen.