Man, it's glorious weather here, or maybe just the glow and shimmer of being with my dear friend, but never the less the time here is Golden. It is rare and beautiful, and what we can grasp turns not to dust but instead solid and weightful. So I feel we are bucking the trend, and buying postcards for our own mantles.
As Mark worked today I wandered the foreign and weathered downtown of Chicago, finding amazement not in the skyscrapers, but in the overwhelmingly massive towers of brick and stone, something I had forgotten a country once has the audacity to construct. After lots of being lost and some really cool help from Chicagans, (Chicagoans? Chicites? Chiclets?) I found my goal at the Art Institute, which is their word for a gallery.
And so followed four hours of heart-filling, soul-breaking, mind-rending beauty. Paintings from the year 1300 shared endless hallways with the artifacts of humanity's birth. There lives Nighthawks, American Gothic, Rainy Day in Paris, George Slaying the Dragon, Fork by Andre Kertesz, and the thousands of breaths in between that leave you empty in the end. I ended up with a pretty dry mouth after holding it open for so long. Gasping like I shouldn't be in a public space.
It was more than anything a surprise, I wasn't ready for so much, more than ever, and to have Jessica's most upright tenant of the appreciation of beauty thrumming in my ears left me ready for the weeping lounge. In a fit of brilliance the gallery has placed a room for "touching" near the end of your by-now tactilely starved escapade, and I damn well molested some bust in an effort to cross through to all the art I'd been able to see, but not touch.
Afterwards I managed some wandering, very incorrect train rides, and now late night drinking, so all is well.
Thanks for reading all, I miss you,
Nicholas
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