It is important to know your place. I know mine; it is the north side of Chicago on a street lined with bungalows. Its recently trimmed trees give it the look of a cathedral. The neighborhood is diversity personified. A Saturday in the neighborhood out running errands makes me curious if any one speaks English. Of course they do. I am the one deficient in languages.
I am also curious who will be the next group of immigrants to grace my hood. Today, after spending a cold day on the lake delivering a friends boat to Montrose harbor, I saw a group of cheerful children and their parents exit the Church of East Africa based in a storefront on Western Avenue.
But this speculation is not my purpose here. I wish to speak of the night before, a cold one for this time of year. A high-pressure system from Canada brought in cold crisp clear air that extended out into space. No warm weather convection currents disturbed this air. Through it a full moon rose above Lincoln Ave. There it stood, hovering in the sky unmolested by clouds.
The moon lite up as if by some inner light; even my aging eyes could make out many smaller details. I clearly saw the hare pounding mochie and the man in the moon. The white was brilliant and the greys were like the grays in an Ansel Adams photograph.
Chicago is a hard place to see the horizon that is unless you venture to the lakeside or ride up to the 95th floor of the Hancock Building. Whenever I fly into O’Hare I break with convention and take as many photographs as I can of the skyline. It sits bunched up against the lake with the earth’s curvature beyond. It gives me a palpable feel that I live on a sphere. Whether we understand it or not our lives are spent on an iteration of the infinitely long number Pi, 3.14….
The moon coursing above the lights on Lincoln and California got me thinking. How could I have forgotten the physical limits, vast as the earth may be, of where I live? At that moment, while waiting for the traffic arrow to let me turn left onto California Ave. I realized, if only for a second, that everything in front of me, except the moon, was — is — an illusion.
It’s taken me 60 years to appreciate this. The fact that it occurred while driving home from Home Depot, on a Thursday night, in a place where I have spent most of my life is bizarre. I was brought up to think this kind of thing only happens in some exotic realm high in the solitary mountains, and not in a Subaru Outback with Charlotte sitting next to me. Go figure.
So now that I can feel the earth rotating under me what do I do; nothing of course. I will do what I do. It got me to this point. I will keep this little secret in the back of my mind and hope that I do not get vertigo.
July 2013
