Good Looking

Moving to Chicago hasn’t been easy. I’ve only ever lived in small southern towns where people walk slowly and feel safe. In this city the cold keeps my head down and fear keeps me moving. When I exit the train everyday I have the choice of heading left or right to exit on either Damen Street or Hoyne Street. A bus runs on Damen Street so I almost invariably exit to the left, on the off chance I am able to catch it and avoid the mile walk home.

For the past few days the temperatures had been flirting with rising above the freezing point and I’d been leaving my fourth layer at home. This day, however, the cold was furiously asserting itself, punishing anyone who had entertained thoughts of spring. I stepped out on the platform and with my back to the train dug around my bag to verify that all valuables still lay therein. From this vantage point I could see the rooftops of my neighborhood with the twin silhouettes of Saint Paul’s Roman Catholic Church’s spires towering over them. The spires have been covered in scaffolding for the entirety of my seven-month tenure in Chicago while workers wrap the spires in what appears to me to be copper foil. Whenever I got lost in the city I tried to look for the spires to find my way home.

The train took off and the wind blasted me from the left, shoving me to the right and to the Hoyne Street exit. The gust made my eyes stream and so I turned my back to it, immediate reprieve taking precedence over the possibility of a sheltered ride home. Letting the wind push me I went towards the exit I so rarely used. As I walked something caught my eye. The crowd and the wind pushed at my back, but I resisted long enough to survey one particular rooftop. I stared at rooftops every morning while waiting for the train, but always on the other side so I’d never seen this one before. Now I couldn’t believe that seven months had passed without my noticing this rooftop garden.

The first thing I noticed was a bike wheel, sans tire, out of which a variety of glass and plastic bottles emerged opposite the wheel’s spokes. I could see that there were more sculptural objects in the garden, but couldn’t stand the cold any longer and made a note to myself to return. I hurried home with the intention of inspecting the garden further in the morning.

It was a few days before I arrived at the platform with time to spare for my planned investigation. I walked to the Hoyne Street end and kneeled down to get a better look through the rails. The left and right sides of the garden were lined with cast iron semicircles, which I imagine served as trellises in the Spring, but in the Winter merely arched over a thick layer of snow. A few sculptures like the bike wheel lined the sides of the garden, revolving gently in the breeze. The center of the garden contained the true masterpiece, however, which I hadn’t even noticed on my initial inspection. Two stone birdbaths flanked a sprawling, kinetic sculpture. The materials weren’t obvious to me: possibly rubber hoses, yarn, colorful plastic, hula-hoops, or maybe the tires from the bike wheel.

It looked as if someone had laid a child’s colorful macaroni necklace on a table all tangled up and then imitated that configuration vertically. It was serpentine and colorful and somehow standing straight up. The sides of the “necklace” met in five places, leaving four ovoid openings. Instead of the adjoining bars I associate with a DNA helix structure, these openings were the site for an intricate netting which resembled a blossoming flower or a twelve-sided star. The first oval went from the ground to maybe a foot above the stone bird bath, the next about two feet above that, the third jutted out about two feet perpendicular to the that, and the fourth oval arched up vertically in perpendicular to the third. From the fourth node hung more ovoid spiraling structures, each wrapped in the same Technicolor blossoming netting. These ovals appeared to be concentric, spiraling within one another.

The only colors I see in my neighborhood usually belong to commerical signage: the lime green paint outside the taqueria or the bold reds and blues of the auto shop. These colors have utility: competing for the pedestrian’s attention and adding to the city noise and intrusions. I had no idea what this spiraling sculpture’s agenda or purpose was; and instead of adding noise it gave me a feeling of quiet, instead of prodding me along it gave me occasion for contemplation. I wondered what the tenants motivations were. Did they build these sculptures only because their garden faced the train platform? What kind of lives made these materials readily available, gave inspiration for these forms, instigated their realization? I longed to see the garden in Spring. I wondered how many other commuters had seen it.

A voice came over the intercom, announcing an inbound train for the Loop. I looked to my right and saw the train’s headlights on in full daylight at the station before mine. I estimated 60 seconds until the sculptures would be obscured by steel and glass. Still on my knees, I dug in my bag for my camera. The train was in motion again, coming towards me, but the platform was unusually quiet and sparsely populated today so I was calm. I snapped a picture, and even though the exposure took a moment longer than usual I knew I’d gotten it before the train flew by. I felt a flood of relief-- as if the hero had pulled the damsel off the tracks just in time. I stepped onto the train and it pulled me away. A few stops later my cell phone rang. The number was withheld but I felt compelled to answer. A woman’s voice came on and told me my test results had finally come back and that they were abnormal and when could I come back so that they could look for potentially cancerous cells? I made an appointment. I hung up, I closed my eyes, and I pictured the garden.