twosmallmonsters

moi, Annette, Valerie, Lisa @ the Orpheum for Lion King

I am jogging north in my neighborhood and decide to take a street that sneakily veers off the simple grid pattern of most major city streets. I am suddenly displaced but in awe of the beauty that I have stumbled upon- sometimes lostness can be a very good thing. I am suddenly in someone else's downtown near someone else's prefered breakfast spot. Somebody else's treasured or dreaded memories are embedded on these street corners & here I am, for the first time, fresh and in wonderment.
Someone told me last weekend that I ooze love for Chicago. "I can definitely see you going back to Chicago after San Diego," she said. I never want to be one of those people who go to faraway lands just to boast about how my home town's ice cream shop is better than theirs. As much as I want to experience and embrace new locations, I find that a strong sense of place always comes back to me when I am around something that reminds me of home or college or a faraway land that I fell in love with.
I believe the magical feelings, nostalgia, or nausea we get from a sense of place is not necessarily the effect of physical terrain. It is the familiarity shared within the context of a place that creates a sense of place. The el train of Chicago for many may just be loud, delayed, and clanky. As I ride the red line north there is the immaterial presence of Emily at Armitage, Megan at Granville, Squirell at Foster, & Lisa with a styrofoam box of leftovers from Francesca's at Bryn Mawr. During my Purdue years, every time I returned to my home town I was struck with the feeling that I would surely vomit. My loss of accomplice within my context caused my home town to have an empty, bittersweet taste.

I am knocking on Wendy's door and she is already putting her shoes on. "What about a walk tonight?" I ask her and she instantly agrees. "Where should we go?" she asks and I shrug. Wendy has lived in our apartment building for a few years so she knows the area better than I. "What about Europe?" she asks and I clap my hands in excitement. Sure enough, with our imagination and romanticism, we stumble into Italy three blocks east of our building. Apartment buildings are stacked right on the street with flowers tumbling out of window boxes. The narrow brick road is beautiful and we giggle as we make our way to Moscow and Chicago (my own improvisation from the day I got lost running). I am creating my own sense of place at twilight in a park with twinkling Italian lights strung in the trees of a corner park. "I'm in love here," I say. Wendy agrees and we move on to Boston.