Whenever I haul all of my stuff to a different apartment I always feel a weird sensation of internal movement, even if that movement is only a quarter of a mile away, only to a different portion of Logan Square or a puddle jump to an apartment on North Avenue overlooking Humboldt Park. Every time I move I enter another old, yet entirely different space in Chicago and the spirit is sometimes similar but never actually the same.
I’m leaving the side of Chicago I’ve rented four different apartments in the last couple of years for one in Lincoln Square, within an old courtyard building with brown sponge painting on the walls and antique teardrop lamps on the wall and claw-foot tubs and all sorts of other old, comforting things.
I ask myself what I want every time I haul a collapsable box of books into another empty bedroom, with wood floors and a small closet and heavily-painted over white walls. I’m not sure.
A friend of mine told me that she loves waiting to board a flight, even if it really just means sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair and watching out the windows until an airplane refuels and crews bring in luggage into its cargo bays by elongated, glorified golf carts.
She always feels focused inward and outward, in tandem with the general feelings of everyone else in the gate that waits and wants to fly somewhere else, cramped together but open.
My next move feels like that.
Hey Steph,
The above is another well written story. It has a good feel to it. I have enjoyed having you around for the last week and a half.
I know on Monday, I will miss you and Paul and Bridget.
Love,
Dad