Small decisions have built up to wear me out today. This past weekend Jackie's parents were in town and we went to this breakfast place a little above Lincoln Park. As we drove through, I saw a lot of cool looking coffee places with outdoor seating, which is basically what I want in life. So, I decided today that I would break my usual routine and go out to Lincoln Park to read some King Lear.
That is a simple decision. No problem. Also, I tend to walk everywhere I go. I rarely take the train, have yet to take a bus here in Chicago, and try not to drive. So, I started off, figuring I'd walk for as long as I felt like it, then take a train if I wanted to. Lincoln Park is about three miles away from where we live. So I'm walking, but about the time that I had gone a mile and half or so and was getting sick of walking, it started to seem like a waste to pay several bucks to ride a train. So I kept walking. Eventually, I get to Lincoln Park but there was nothing really to do on the street I was on, so I turned left for a few blocks. Nothing. So I turned left to get a Coke from a Shell station I could see a few blocks away. And then I was lost and wanted to get back to a road I knew, so I turned left again. Well, that made more or less a square that added more or less a mile onto my walk. As I still hadn't found anything cool, I went back down, further away from downtown.
Eventually I was just tired and walked halfway home before catching a train. It was a huge and tiring waste of time. But, I did discover some interestingly named streets. I spent a bewildered while on Goethe street, which ran past a huge complex of homes called Sandburg Village, which included buildings named Eliot and Kilmer. I don't really know what neighborhood I was in at that point, but I think that it was gentrified stuff. Still kind of weird.
I'm loving Kent. He comes across this guy Oswald, a messenger for Goneril. Here's the speech of insults he gives:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.
Good stuff, right?
You, sir, need a Garmin. You would know where you were, select points of interest, and the GPS even gives walking routes. I'm fighting the urge to send you one...
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should just set up a small table and chair outside of your apartment building, bring your own little thermos of coffee and a stash of books, and create your own place since it seems to be such a problem in Chicago to find what you are looking for.
ReplyDeleteI know, I know. There's a big Garmin store pretty close to us. It is the subject of another long walking story that ended immediately with confusion and disappointment, but ultimately with dinner. So, I'm not sure what to think about that trip.
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