Mo’olelo of the Stinking Onion

If I were to compose a map of Chicago, for instance,

There would be a pin here at my first apartment

    Where I felt adult because I could sit on my countertop at 2 am and eat a pb&j sandwich

    Where Dewey almost got guillotined by the old window crashing closed

There would be a pin over there at my next apartment

    Where I could hear the sounds of the Cubs hitting home runs

    Where we once awoke to our squeaky fan slowing to stop in the heatwave of 95

There would be a pin at the next apartment called the Land of Boz

    Where life-sized cardboard cutouts of Captain Kirk and Michael Jordan stood sentry

    And our couch housed anyone who needed a place to stay

And the pin over there would be my last apartment on the South Side

    Where Tim’s Grandma gifted us a free start to our married life

    Where I found her one day packing her belongings because she thought she had to move

You’d see listed in the index

    The place where I got proposed to, just on the other side of Navy Pier

    The theater where I first directed a tie-dyed 60s Midsummer Night’s Dream

    At least eight places where my car died and I needed to be rescued

    The intersection of Fullerton and Lincoln where I popped a bubble on the forehead of the Dalai Lama

    The track near Ohio Avenue where I wore a fuzzy cow print hat when I ran into Oprah Winfrey

    The rocks near near Montrose Beach where I once sat and cried for no reason

    The trail we forged through the city on a drug-fueled New Year’s Eve

    The Chicago Academy for the Arts where I first stood at the front of a classroom

    The room where I hugged Stevie Wonder

    The hotel where I worked to pay for my theatre habit

    The Improv Olympic and the Second City where I learned more than I did in school

    The Blue Rider Theatre… or at least where it used to be… where I sat outside and ate bananas with Booker.

    The Halsted Street bus where I took my last ride as a resident.

Chicago. The Stinking Onion. The City of Big Shoulders. The Windy City. A place I inhabited and a place that still inhabits me. A place where snow was more than snow; it was a quieting blanket that forced us to bundle up and settle in. A place where the rattling metallic cacophony of the El was more than a subway; it was a live beast whose back you’d ride to get anywhere in the city. The River was more than just a waterway; it was the arterial flow of willpower and urban pulse where if you push hard enough, you can reverse the flow of the water.