day: 7 chicago, il to youngstown, oh

we awoke to the immediacy of the city. even on a sunday there is a certain sense of purpose thrumming through. we showered beneath the waterfall-style showerhead, brushed our teeth in the vessel sink and unwrapped the individually packaged cotton swabs. we packed our things and wheeled them out to our now fly-covered buick (they were attracted, we think, by the massive amount of bug splat covering all forward-facing surfaces of the car). we partook in the hotel’s complimentary continental breakfast (coffee, juice, flaky pastries and fresh fruit). to r’s indignation, the waitress who brought us our food did not offer us the option of ordering a hot breakfast from the menu unlike our more glamorously attired neighbors who, though given the honor of the offer, likewise opted for the free fruits and pastries.

it had been raining in the morning and by the time we went out the sidewalks were slick and glossy, the anemic city trees rapturous as though breaking a long fast. we walked to a bookstore m had spotted the night before called europa. it was a small basement store containing books from western europe and latin america. m selected a copy in spanish of roberto bolaño’s 2666, diamela eltit’s los trabajadores de la muerte, and a german copy of die klavierspielerin. m was brilliant over having made such finds (eltit’s novels are particularly hard to find), but r was dim over having spent over one hundred dollars on books in one go. ‘great,’ he said, ‘now you’ll have to carry them around all day.’ and carry them he did, like the gentleman he is.

next we went on a treasure hunt for a public sculpture called the waltz of hands by louise bourgeois (the artist on whom m wrote her honor’s thesis and with whom she is still obsessed) made in honor of nobel peace laureate jane addams and located in the jane addams memorial park somewhere down by navy pier. on our walk to the park we couldn't resist snapping a shot of the graffiti stenciled on the walls of an overpass. after walking around fruitlessly for nearly an hour, we decided to ask someone, but no one had ever heard of either the sculpture or the park. finally, a mall employee directed us to a tiny corner of the park with a fine prospect of the lake and some wrought iron benches surrounding a small, windswept grassy grove fenced off from the circular walkway (why is all the green in chicago protected by fences?). a small plaque dedicated the area to addams for her work in social philosophy and explained the inspiration for the sculptures (addams thought the hands to be the most expressive organs of the body). the only thing absent were the sculptures themselves. sunk in disbelief and disappointment, m walked the short perimeter of the site, wondering what could’ve happened (remembering the artist having said that she was worried about placing the sculptures in such a public place because of their delicate forms—each black marble pillar supporting a pair of clasped hands, each figure cut into, rather than placed on top of, the stone itself—but that she had been willing to take a chance). had something happened to them? where were they now? winded and wrung, we took a taxi to the art institute museum to raise our spirits.

the museum was magnificent. though there were hundreds, probably thousands of visitors there with us, the galleries were uncrowded and it was possible to spend one on one time with every work we wanted to view. the only place photography was prohibited was in the photography galleries. this sensitivity of photography to copying is particularly ironic. as an artistic medium it has never been able to shake its self- doubts and -concerns with its own capacity for infinite reproduction. though we saw works everywhere that we liked (particularly in the abstract expressionism gallery, the special exhibition of cy twombly’s recent work, photographs by jeff wall and an enormous work by georgia o’keefe called sky above clouds iv), our favorite wing by far was european modern art 1900-1950, where m was giddy with a generous sampling of joseph cornell and r with several magrittes. after absorbing more than we could possibly digest we gathered our things from the museum check room, picked up a few postcards from the gift shop and headed outside to the insistent drumming on an overturned bucket of a street performer.

we walked back to our car (passing the famous ‘bean’, and in its reflective surface the city’s face, and a raucous gospel festival on the way) shooshed the flies away from our doors and situated ourselves inside for the next leg of our journey. on a hint from r’s brother in law, a former resident of chicago, we drove over to wrigleyville in search of cubbie dogs, which we found on our gps but eluded us in reality. deprived of a hot dog lunch, we munched on our left-over pizza contentedly as we pulled away from the chicago.

we were determined to drive as far as we could. we made it through indiana and all but the last inch of ohio. on the way, r was furious to find that the interstate route he’d selected was comprised of one after another toll roads. furious about the ‘un-american’ practice of charging for the use of what he thought to be federal, tax-funded property, r fumed each time he had to open our wallet for the booths (it cost us $6.75 to traverse indiana and $10.25 to put ohio behind us). to add insult to injury, the turnpike only allowed exit to designated rest/fuel stations where, because of the lack of competition, gas prices were elevated to inhumane levels (sometimes a full ¢30 more to the gallon). in an attempt to skirt paying these states the funds (r was sure there was some sort of kickback scheme involved) he stretched the gas as far as he could, lighting the ‘low gas’ light on the dashboard not once but twice, pulling into the station on the last of the fumes.

we decided to make a short detour to toledo for dinner, but when we arrived, we found sheer desolation. we saw not a single person on the streets, and not a single store, restaurant or otherwise occupied building that displayed even minor signs of life. it was as though the entire population had gone elsewhere. we drove back to the highway and stopped at a denny’s (it was either that or a mcdonald’s) for a quick meal, raised a few eyebrows with our ca plates and drove on down the road.

we ended the night in a cheap travelodge in youngstown, ohio, where the first room the clerk gave us turned out to be unmade (a strange experience since the bedclothes were jumbled into a fairly humanoid form—at first we thought he’d given us an occupied room). without apologies he handed us the key to another and we tucked in for some simple sleep on a somewhat stiff queen.