Chicago is the city where I was just a seed in a wheat field being swayed by wind, swirling within golden waves of a million clusters which would one day be milled into bread. Why not? Bread and wine filled me up quite a bit on my travels.
After my backpacking trip to Europe, which I’m not done writing about, I was invited to live for a school year at the University of Chicago by my closest friend. It was an awesome gesture for him to invite me at a time when I was going through my wanderlust years. I’m surprised he let me stay as long as he did because I was having way too much fun on the impressive network of public transportation between points of celebration. I learned well enough in Europe how to travel alone so I was zipping around this great city like it was my job. I was actually sort of looking for a job but with no real ambition. My focus was sticking out from the crowd and being recognized for my philosophical views and Afghan sweater. It turned out my sweater was wearing me because it started more conversation than I could keep up with. Instead of working I wanted to keep dreaming that I was in a Utopian society where I could lay around like a lion statue so travelers could rest their feet at my great paws to crack their toes after a long journey – bursting bubbles with their skulls to get here.
At this point in my life I had only seen the face of god once – close enough to see the pimples, as some would report. It left a lasting impression on me because while in Chicago I saw the face over and over again always hovering over a pair of rumpled jeans that had a lot of depth, quite like the jeans I had put on just as many times. If I was brave enough I would write it off as a flashback to places I wish I hadn’t been but I’m weak and visited those places of my own volition and regret none of them.
This vision of vanity happened always at the same place in the same position. I’d be sitting in the kitchen leaning back in a chair comfortably with one leg over the other. An overwhelming feeling of boredom would consume me. My legs would stiffen with toes pointed upwards. I would start grinning in anticipation while looking down at my legs and stomach. Then a sensation like turning a corner in a vehicle while turning your head in the opposite direction would overcome me and there would be my grinning face looking back at me, about the same distance as the window would be if I were the passenger. The celestial image would orbit my head a quarter revolution and then I would suddenly return, viewing my legs and stomach as the driver of my own body. Everything around me lacked luster and had an ethereal glow with a yellow tint. It wasn’t over yet because next I would see my legs and torso being stretched and enlarged – expanding – making it impossible for me to want to attempt to leave the room, though I wouldn’t have, for fear I would invite this procurious glow to follow me around the house. The whole out of body experience thing left me feeling very droll, like I was tired of sizing myself up all the time. I was disgusted by the experience because I came out of it small, feeling like a rat and old like a used up sofa – unwanted and taking up space in alleyways or yellow wallpapered rooms. The dull yellow glow immersed me in boredom and was most certainly a precursor to my inevitable depression that would follow me out west – further away from those who love me. I would find out over a long grueling few years that I should have welcomed boredom rather than loneliness and the beautiful mistake that was my life.
Francis Erich McElroy 