17:05 - May 04, 2002
drawing on sidewalks
So yesterday I went and got Rachel and we took the train out to around the Art Institute and went to work with some sidewalk chalk and an extra-wide city expanse of sidewalk. She did abstract designs, working out in bigger and bigger circles, while I flitted around the edges drawing random little cartoons and phrases. It was around 7:45 by the time we actually got there and started, so there weren't very many people around. The majority of the people who walked by pointedly averted their eyes, like we were crazy drunkards sprawled on our stomachs on a dirty city street, which we were, minus the drunkard part. Then, when they thought we weren�t looking, they craned their necks around to see what was written beneath their feet, what they were walking over. The family who walked over �I am an angry spider� looked quite frightened, and began walking faster. Some taxi drivers whistled. One old man hobbling by looked at my �YOU ARE IN A BEAUTIFUL CITY� and smiled wistfully, saying, �that�s so nice.� Then he walked on. Rachel was making something that looked like an alien plant, winding and twisting and reaching out purple tendrils. Then she said �In California, they�d charge you $100 per hour to do this and call it art therapy.� So I wrote it down, in big block letters, over by a streetlamp. An old crumpled looking man carrying a big sack stopped walking while I was putting touches on something. �Art therapy, huh?� he said. �Well, in Chicago, they lock you up.�

One Monte Cristo and one big evil Oreo sundae later, the train stopped at Granville, and stayed there. Granville is the alternate universe evil conspirator stop of the El, which means, basically, that a train will not be stopped there for less than twenty minutes. It�s against some sort of law. So when we got going about twelve minutes later, I thought it must be a miracle; that the Superman of Train Tracks had fought the Granville Gnomes, or at least held them down long enough for us to escape. However. We got maybe a half a mile, and the train grinds to a halt. The lights flicker. Then we slowly begin to go BACKWARDS. Back towards Granville. We travel, backwards, towards Granville, at about two miles per hour, and when we get there, we commence sitting there for another ten minutes. The lights flicker again. Then the train takes off like a bullet for Morse. The twenty minute mark had to be surpassed, I suppose....

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