After too late a night and too little sleep, Judith rousted me out of bed, and I stumbled out of bed for tea and a shower. She was loath to wake Lissa up before we left until I pointed out she might just want to see me off before falling back asleep. They're really touchingly devoted to each other, and it's beautiful to watch. Lissa's and my conversation last night started out with long apologies on both sides: me for being six hours later than intended, meaning she'd wasted one of the few vacation days they actually permit her to take, and her for having had an unbreakable committment. But... well, to indulge in religious nuttery for a moment, she's dedicated to Loki, I'm fond of Odin and on verifiable wanderjahr, so you not only expect Shit to Happen, but plan on it.
Going around the country isn't for morning people, I've noticed. Most everyone I've stayed with has kept me up late with good conversation and pleasant company. It's a good thing I'm taking such a slow and comfortable mode of transportation -- it's the only way for me to catch up on sleep and journal entries! I fully intended to write Cleveland out of my system while I waited two hours for my train to Chicago, and if not then, certainly on the five-hour ride itself.
Judith and I lit briefly at a Burger King for breakfast (eck) before she dropped me off at the Dearborn train station, which was manned, yes, but lacked any facilities beyond vending machines. My only company was the Amtrak employees behind their bulletproof glass -- finally, a little time to write! When you're only able to spend a few hours with someone, sequestering oneself for a significant chunk of that for the benefit of your audience is rather poor form -- train stations gave me no such qualms.
However, I'd no sooner gotten the iBook booted and warmed up my text editor (yes, I write directly in HTML: writing tools are for sissies) to get cracking on Cleveland than a recently-arrived lady asked, "Hey, want one of these Krispy Kremes?"
That's a brand of doughnuts that recently made inroads into California, most familiarly coated with a sugar glaze that, former co-workers have asserted, must contain cocaine, as they're so addictive.
I wouldn't know; doughnuts are far too sweet for my current palate. I mentioned this; and it turned to conversation.
The lady, who turned out to be a pre-med student of some sort, was on her way home. I never got her name, and tried to keep conversation on things we could readily agree on: when left to her own head for conversational topics, she tended to bring up how much her race affected her chances for academic advancement in her chosen major, how rules were being selectively enforced in favor of white people...
Now, call me a blind Pollyanna, but she's already had more college than I ever did. My parents divorced; my mother had no serviceable skills, but did have custody, and we went through some dire financial times for a couple years before she got on her feet. I got into college by virtue of good grades, got a lot of help from high standardized test scores (National Merit Scholar), got need-based scholarships and loans for the rest: I was motivated, blessed with the flavor of intelligence that lends itself well to passing tests, and if there were any biases in my general vicinity, I have to admit I was too poorly-socialized and inobservant to notice. Still, many of the girls I'd gone to grade school with were busy being barefoot, pregnant, and on the welfare treadmill, all of 'em white as lilies, thanks. I got where I am by skill, work, my parents' work, and not a small bit of luck. And she bitches? Well, there are assholes everywhere, I have to admit; nobody has a monopoly on them. No race, no creed, is free of them or hoards them all, so I wasn't going to rule her out, especially not in the Rust Belt where life is much less racially integrated.
Still, steering the topic to a discussion of Star Wars was a much more comfortable thing. She complained about Billy Dee Williams's role as Lando Calrissian -- I pointed out that he was an amoral smuggler, trying to do the best thing for his people on the thin margin between the Empire and the Alliance. We talked about Jar-Jar, how many considered him a caricature, and I held up my hand.
"What you don't understand is..." followed by a five-minute delving into the concept of the Sacred Fool, the bumbler who apparently does everything wrong, but whose actions ensure the best possible outcome. I tried to branch off into mythical instances when she pressed for more examples (for me, it's far firmer ground than interracial relations!), but she didn't know the myths I was talking about.
But we were in Star Wars and talking about archetypes, I could go on for hours! I revealed the existence of Joseph Campbell to her, and said, "Now, stop me if you've heard this one:"
"A boy of noble birth is born or adopted into low circumstances, perhaps because a parent would want him dead, perhaps they were killed -- but they're not around. Sometime near the verge of adulthood, a small amount of shit happens, accompanied by some sage figure urging the hero to go off on an adventure. The hero refuses; perhaps he has responsibilities, perhaps he's afraid --" My eyes were twinkling. It's the standard Hero Story, you can't dip a toe into working with legends and myths without seeing this familiar territory, and Campbell's the most recent cartographer. Besides, I clearly had the upper hand in this round.
"No, wait, Luke didn't refuse the call..."
I spocked an eyebrow, and quoted, "'Well, I can only take you as far as Anchorhead.'" Please. I'm not as solid on the material as Jennifer -- I have my own all-consuming obsession in "Babylon 5" -- but this is easy. I swept on, "But, after refusing, Big Shit Happens, the Stormtroopers come for Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and the hero at least no longer has a reason not to go, and most likely has a good reason to go, so the party sets out."
I went through a few more steps in the general hero treatment, paused, and wrapped up with, "Anyway, it's all there. The main problem with Star Wars was that Lucas had this book by Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in one hand, and the script in the other as he wrote. It really steered his hand, and made all this more than a little obvious."
She'd been making commentary throughout, and her final comment was, "Oh." I wonder if she was interested enough to pick it up -- I hoped so: it might break her out of the cycle that tends to accompany her favorite topic of conversation. We passed on to lighter things, and I didn't get a damn thing written before the train arrived, so busy was I delivering the Gospel According to Campbell.
These were single-level cars, and as it was a Midwestern train, the menu was of an appropriate variant: name-brand Polish sausages from Chicago were the hot dog of choice, among other things. My companion noted that hot dogs were too salty, and I countered with a description of how hot dogs are made, with the summation that I only ate kosher ones anymore, having little desire to eat lips, rectums, and rat whiskers -- the FDA has acceptable allowances on how many rat parts are allowed per pound. Well, so do the rabbis who do kosher certification, only the number is a lot lower: it's zero.
That put her off-color enough for me to bring out my laptop in peace, and get most of Cleveland written while the train rattled and clacked along.
Just about halfway between Detroit and Chicago is a town I knew existed -- in the front half of my brain -- but a part of me insisted existed only in Looney Tunes, along with Azusa, Cucamonga, and Walla Walla, Washington:
Kalamazoo, Michigan, has a pretty train station, too.
The conductor warned me there'd be another nice one in Niles when she let me off the train to take these, but I was busy writing when we passed through and couldn't make it.
Soon after Kalamazoo, we passed into Indiana, putting us firmly into the Central Time Zone. I set all my clocks back one hour; I would be here most of a week, and not back into Eastern Time again this trip. During the winter half of the year, most of Indiana is on Eastern Time, save the northwestern counties that are part of Chicago's suburbs; these are in Central Time. In the spring, when the rest of the country including that handful of Indiana counties, goes to Daylight Savings Time, Indiana stays on Standard Time, effectively flipping to join the Chicago counties in Central until the fall, and I suspect the whole arrangement is much less confusing if you actually live in Indiana. Suffice to say it was time to set all my gadgets back an hour, and they'd be there awhile.
Songs from the Blues Brothers soundtrack were stuck in my head as we passed through Hammond-Whiting, Indiana: both sides of the tracks were taken with the heavy industry that crowds the shores of Lake Michigan. I'd retired to the cafe car for the moment, as it had power outlets and I'd been writing long enough to train the iBook's batteries. At least it was good music: I've spent too much time with "Fish Heads" or even worse stuck in the mental jukebox, so "She Took the Katy" was a welcome change.
At three-thirty, essentially on time, Amtrak #353 pulled into my fourth Union Station, the one in Chicago. My contact here was Jhary, from the online Dungeons and Dragons-style game called RetroMUD, where we'd known each other by conversation and reputation for over five years. He would leave work as soon as he could, and meet me at the train station.
Several of my friends have asked, "All these people -- you've only met them online, or once a year at some campout or whatever. Do you have pictures? How do you know they're looking for you?"
Actually, I don't bother carrying pictures. The ones I see once a year at one festival or another, I may not remember their face well enough to describe, but I have a vague idea and it'll snap right back into focus on approach. As for the people I've only known over the net, it's a little more complicated, and relies a touch more on observation: most people in airports, train and bus stations, and the like, know exactly where they're going, how to get there, and they're very focussed on that, with as little brainpower as possible spent on 'avoiding other people' and none at all on 'looking for people.' It's the tourists like me who gawp (especially looking up, only tourists and nuts like me look up), who look perhaps a little lost (I avoid this in particular, it makes me look like a pigeon, ripe for plucking), or who are expecting to meet someone. All I have to do is sit somewhere obvious, like near the arrival gate or at a nearby café, and look like I'm expectantly waiting for someone. My contact, too, will have a similar look, and will approach, like two spies in a bad movie.
"Lorrie?"
I would peer up, "Maybe. Are you Jhary?" He'd nod, we'd be off, life is good.
So you see, it's really not hard at all, as long as you take reasonable precautions (like make sure they speak your name first).
We'd worked out a common meeting place of the Metro Deli, which unfortunately was a good fifty yards away from the Food Concourse where the other deli was, and where I spent a good hour before trying to find the right deli. When I finally arrived at the Metro Deli, I pulled out my Palm for a mail check -- hey, Laurel forwarded me some good news about a new "Babylon 5" movie! Oooo! I indulged in a bit of quiet random speculation while waiting for my ride and hoping he hadn't shown up and was looking instead for me. Luckily, it turned out that Jhary hadn't gotten out of work until late, anyway, so nothing was hurt by my inadvertent detour. We gathered my two bags (my whole life, condensed to two bags), and hoofed it to where he was double-parked -- I'm informed this is practically a tradition in Chicago, as nobody has any parking there, either.
I had now, on this trip, stepped from a train into the three largest cities in the United States. I was in Chicago, and you can insert some Carl Sandberg here, complete with a blues soundtrack. Several folks from the MUD were anxious to see me, along with some number of heathens around the Greater Chicagoland area. This would be my longest layover that didn't involve a blood relative, with a sequel to follow after my trip to Minneapolis.
Jhary and his girlfriend Tiffany share a two-seater sports car. We threw my suitcase in back, and took a brief tour of Chicago's downtown. The Chicago River is carefully set between high walls into a canal, flowing just next to Union Station, and we crossed over that on our way to Lakeshore Drive. Wacker Drive was down for repairs, but it wasn't the only street to have an upper and lower portion (something they'd never even consider on the seismically active Pacific Rim) as we made out way to Chicago's most famous north-south thoroughfare.
Lakeshore Drive reminded me of Cleveland's Shoreway: a broad road of many lanes that parallels the water while delivering drivers downtown. Unlike the Shoreway, though, Lakeshore parallels Lake Michigan, not Erie, making this the second Great Lake I'd spied this trip -- I can make a questionable argument for Lake Ontario, though, when I crossed the broad gorge on the US/Canadian border just below Niagara Falls.
Jhary and Tiffany live in Chicago proper, just a couple blocks from one of the stations of the 'El,' Chicago's (usually) elevated train system, and also quite near Chicago's gay and lesbian enclave, North Halstead (also known as "Boys' Town"). They're on the top floor of what in Cleveland would be a "triplex," but is here called a "three-flat." The tendonitis in my wrist that I thought I'd licked before I left California was threatening to come back, so Jhary kindly carried my bag up all those steps (yay). Next on the agenda were waiting for Tiffany to come home while figuring out who was going to be available for dinner.
Tiffany (aka 'Hellcatt') is a professional dancer, but one semester away from her Bachelor's Degree in Dance. Jhary is a medical student whose residency had just completed; he would learn tomorrow where his internship was going to be. He had high hopes; he had a Ph.D in immunology, and was held in high in many of the places he interviewed. On his list of twenty possible places were names like Cornell, Columbia, and Yale, although I personally was pulling for the University of Washington in Seattle, Jhary's fifth pick: he's originally from Southern California, and I knew he didn't particularly relish the cold and snow of the Midwest. Tiffany, on her part, was already making inquiries into dance opportunities in all the East Coast cities where her beau might land. Her best friend, Katie ('Siren' on the MUD), was due in that evening from Texas, and it was likely we might land 'Tecwulf' and John/'Rez.'
Of my possible heathen contacts in the Greater Chicagoland Area, Carolyn Reyes was about to head to a local mailing list-inspired moot in central Missouri, and might or might not be about today, but would certainly be gone tomorrow. Ivar was looking forward to meeting me, but his job placed great pressure on him and he lived two horus' drive away, in Wisconsin near Milwaukee. Tomorrow would be better than today for him. Kadlin, though, lived in nearby Evanston and was available and delighted to visit on either day, as circumstances warranted.
I did what I could: I let it be known dinner was tomorrow (I'd forgotten about Carolyn), invited Kadlin down for both nights, and tried in vain to reach Carolyn and invite her for tonight, but she'd apparently already left. With just a little more forethought, I might have accompanied Carolyn to the Missouri festival instead of going to Minneapolis, but it probably turned out for the best.
It's time for more pictures!
Here's Jhary, one of my gracious hosts. I didn't get a picture of Tiffany tonight, I'll make sure to get one before I leave Chicago the last time.
Image removed at subject's request.
Kadlin is a really wonderful lady! Originally from Iowa City, she's an intellectual property lawyer by education, currently a judge's clerk by occupation. What amused me the most is that her voice sounds almost exactly like Jennifer Tifft's back in California, and they do look a bit alike.
Kadlin was only too happy to join us, regardless of who else might be coming. Tiffany made a brief appearance between dance rehearsals, so I met her, and then we had just enough time after Kadlin's arrival to get some dinner before Jhary had to leave for Midway airport to pick Katie up.
The first dinner of the night was at an all-night diner named Nookies (or something similar) that was definitely over in Boys' Town. Jhary, with his slender build, dark hair, and pale skin, has been hit on more than once in those few blocks, which he was mature enough to take as a compliment. I'm sorry, Drew, you may not take him home, Tiffany would be quite put out, and I'd be hard-pressed whose side to take.
We had, er, an interesting interpretation of a quesadilla for an appetizer, and then Jhary and I ordered 'blackened' salmon, and Kadlin had something else. I wondered if the salmon would be blackened to a Midwestern taste or a Cajun one (the difference is non-subtle and profound), but no sooner had the appetizers arrived than Jhary had to dash for the airport, leaving we ladies to fend for ourselves.
Considering I was in Chicago, I really shouldn't have worried: the salmon was well-flavoured, but not at all hot, and properly cooked through without being dry. Unfortunately, when Kadlin and I rose to head back to Jhary's place, we left his dinner standing on the table, and we didn't notice until we were nearly back! Oops... I bought a six-pack of Sam Adams Ale as an act of propitiation (another liquor store without mead, and nobody's surprised). Kadlin, unfortunately, had to leave to make an early wake-up call for work in the morning, but Tiffany was there when I got in.
I neglected to take a picture of her that night, or the next. I'll see if I can't get one before I leave Chicago for good tomorrow afternoon. It also seemed that Jhary had made himself late getting to the airport: there were a couple messages from Katie on the answering machine, asking about him. There wasn't much for Tiff and I to do, though, but wait for more phone calls or people, so I got online and cleared out some accumulated e-mail.
Jhary apparently found Katie: they arrived together. I didn't get Katie's picture, either, and she'll be on a plane to Dallas when I go back through Chicago, unfortunately, so I can't have one on these pages at all. She has very short fine blonde hair, and is downright petite and slender of build -- we were always wrapping her in more layers, because she hadn't planned ahead for the weather. Shoot, there were times the next day when we had to wrap her in two or three blankets just while she was sitting around on the floor!
Nobody else, now, had eaten -- seeing as Jhary's dinner was now in the trash can over at Nookie's -- so we went to the much closer, diner-style, twenty-four hour restaurant: Clarke's. Clarke's is papered in oddly eerie bombastic statements that echo the fifties, although they're obviously of a more recent actual vintage. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, the girls noshed appetizers, and Jhary had a hamburger or something related.
After that, we talked for awhile and went to sleep. Dinner tomorrow would probably have Jon/Rez, possibly Ivar, and definitely Kadlin's, and as the constituency was so in flux, we opted to declare a pizza day.
Besides, while I'd had Chicago-style pizza before, most notably (and nobly) at Zachary's in Berkeley, I hadn't had it in Chicago, which of course made all the difference, right? Jhary and Tiff both discussed leaving me keys, but hadn't made anything firm by the time I went to bed. Kadlin thoughtfully gifted me with a pack of transit maps and brochures -- the stage was set for solo sightseeing in Chicago in the morning!
Nestled under "Powerpuff Girls" bedsheets, I drifted off to sleep.
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