Chicago Avenue

So, In an effort to get back to the good old days, where I was posting new stories and poetry and things like that, here's a vignette I wrote today.
-A

Chicago Avenue

It is Sunday, March 11, 2007

First day of daylight savings

First thaw of the year

The sun is out at 5:30 as I leave the theatre building with Brea, my director for Machinal, the show I’m composing music for. We’ve just seen “The workroom”, in the new studio.

We part. I make my way down printers row, through the deserted, vacant downtown on this Sunday afternoon in early march.

I enter the LaSalle st. subway to make my way north on the blue line, back home before I have to go tile a bathroom.

On go the headphones, on goes the iPod Shuffle as I hunker into the station and await the coming train.

I hear the clarinet of joyous klezmer celebration, clapping, wailing trumpets, fiddle,

I shuffle and sway slightly, my true feelings betraying my façade to the station.

Rumbling, on comes the train, round the bend and right to me. I board the front car and notice its vacancy. This is a day of vacancies. A vacancy of cold, a vacancy of crowd, yet today is more full of life than all the winter’s been.

I sit facing front and realize than I can see through the front window and view the oncoming tunnel.

I wait, I move closer as we descend down through the tubular depths, gliding past lights and signs briefly illuminated by our headbeams in the darkness.

A light approaches, we glide into Jackson

Glide into Monroe

Glide to Washington

Glide glide glide through the dark world of the underground

Then suddenly, the CURVE TOWARDS CLARK APPROACHES

We’re not going to make it, are we? It’s so steep, so tight! And just as the windshield and headlights prepare to kiss the curvature of concrete, it slides on past for moment after moment as we spin our tangent, a thing made of straight lines turning in a seemingly effortless cheat of option.

Glide into clark, glide down the ramp, deep into the belly, towards the long stretch to grand, past lines of staggered bulbs, illuminating a rat

A crawler

A cord

A sign

Up and down, an invisible roller coaster of secret joy, spinning and twisting, wheels nonexisting

Glide into grand, on a cushion of air.

The Grand Station

That which is wonderful

And though the Voice of CTA now says “This is grand… and Milwaukee”

We still know it’s grand.

With its euphoric blue lights at its stairways, a cool pleasing mother I will never touch, save for sight

And as soon as we see her, grand is gone, and a fat lady with skin both black and white sits in front of me to the side, so I can still see our path

With lights swooping past, gliding me home to Chicago, and up jumps the station and out jumps me

Double take, for now that I’ve seen the way here, is here really here?

Turning left up the stairs past the wet red floor that is always wet and red

and a floor

Out of the cage turnstile

Up into the clear and onto Chicago avenue

Joel rubin still playing his clarinet in my ears, more joyous than winter’s been

And I take a breath and smell the same smells I always smell upon exiting

The sewage, highway, wastewater, pizza, distant bakery

The birds are chirping past me, past the fire station, walking west, a young man

Clarinet clarinet clarinet

Army surplus on the left “Don’t Tread On Me!” says the snake

Over the Dan Ryan, slipping smoothly beneath

Clarinet, yada da,

The wind through my clean hair I washed this morning

The wind through my clothes and my eyes

My bag swinging at my left

My laptop hanging at my right

An old man smoking cigarettes, taking the first few puffs turns the same way I do

Clarinet, saxophone, joyous occasions call for dancing and shaking and hopping

Birds chirping

Hand on my iPod,

Pause

The Baptist church is having evening service and rocking down the walls

Clapping stomping sweating praising!

A little boy has the door propped open with his leg, looks at me

HA HA HA HALLELUJA!

Unpause

Clarinet up down up down screaming for what we know but can’t see

On the right, the park, children running with sticks clacking the metal fence, old woman sitting on the steps of the Ida Crown natatorium

Young couple walking past me as I near Ada, the smile and the laugh with the breeze and the early rays of the first sunlit afternoon of the love

Bubble bubble

Turning left on Ada, walking south, past the school for kids who aren’t smart

Guy sitting on steps with cigarette and cell phone

Looks at me

Fire escape

Parked cars

Fire escape

My parked car

Is still there, I have to check

Fire escape

Key in knob, door slam sticky, I shut it

Turning left up the stairs, second floor, the sun illuminating every shade of brown possible,

Door is unlocked

Roommate is home

I am home

Windows open

I sit.