dreamland

It’s been one month since I moved to Evanston! And I decided this was the week I would finally venture into the city. I don’t love the word “Chicagoland” but since I live just outside the city limits, I need a term for home. I don’t know Chicago all that well; I’ve visited the city half a dozen times and I look forward to exploring its many neighborhoods. Chicago feels familiar in a way it shouldn’t to someone who hasn’t spent a whole lot of time here. I think, like Harlem, I learned about the city by reading African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance…and while studying lynching, I definitely learned about the Red Summer of 1919. I don’t think I’m a romantic but there is something dreamy about this city. It has a quiet grandeur that exists alongside its grit. Today I went down to Millennium Park because The Witch’s Apprentice opens with Jaxon staring into Cloud Gate, otherwise known as “the Bean.” The plaza was buzzing with tourists the last time I was there, but today the sculpture is fenced off and this is as close as you can get. The nearby Lurie Garden was still open so I took my time moving through the park, admiring the wildflowers and art installations and thinking of ways I could incorporate them into my story. I already know I’m going to mimic the pandemic somehow so Jaxon will encounter the city just as I am experiencing it now—not entirely empty but not bustling. I walked over to the Art Institute, which was closed, and strolled through the gardens on either side. The fountains had been drained but this sculpture still caught my eye—the Great Lakes are represented as nymphs bearing shells that would ordinarily spill water from one to the other. Suddenly I heard a crow and spent a minute scanning the leafy boughs above until I found her. There’s a crow figure in the novel as well…an African crow, of course. Everything just felt perfectly placed—the lions in front of the Art Institute, the statue of Lincoln in a nearby, rather neglected park. So many flowers, so many buzzing bees…I better get to work and write it all down before I forget. I’ve spent the past few days working on a play but think I’d better pivot and get my outline hammered out. September isn’t over yet so that gives me 7 weeks to write this novel if I want to get it in on time. And I do! because then I can get back to my other projects. This was supposed to be the year I finished things but that’s hard to do when I keep starting new novels/plays/poems…