8.08.2025

I think the most disorienting thing about being in Chicago is that I always know where I am. Yeah it's a grid but I have an innate sense of placement in this city. The sun rises over the Big Water and sets on the other side. Most addresses are on simple x-y coordinates and if you're in the know you know which avenues run on an angle or curve around all silly through your hood. I will say it's odd being down here where there's an actual East Side to things; everywhere I lived up north if you went any further than the end of Navy Pier you were either on a boat or wet. Four blocks between bus stops. Eight blocks to a mile. The red and blue and green and pink and yellow and brown and purple lines of the CTA map reliably fixed in my medulla geographica. Been here almost a week and haven't left the South Side. That will be remedied tomorrow when I go back to the neighborhood where I lived the longest, where I have a lot of sweet and painful and some violent memories, and where I expect to be slammed in the face by the change in landscape. As I deserve for never being from anywhere anymore.