Broad Lawns, Narrow Minds

CHICAGO — Yesterday I revisited the Hemingway birthplace & museum in Oak Park. I don’t know quite what I expected to get out of it. We all have people we are obsessed with inexplicably (despite unending efforts at explication), and Hemingway’s mine. The first time I went there was Summer 04, I think. It was a pilgrimage then; I spent all afternoon checking out the house and taking pictures, and bought a ceremonial copy of A Farewell to Arms before I left. Riding the El back into the city, I felt the same sense of unfulfillment that I felt yesterday, but there’s something fulfilling about looking back on it. Yesterday was a poorly-planned rush, a pathetic attempt to grasp what I’d had before even though before I didn’t think I had anything either. This is kind of how it goes with obsessions, I guess.

A part of me was pretty content with the Chicago Hemingway four years ago, though; we were both young and stuck in our hometowns for what seemed like the rest of our lives. Now I think more and more of Hemingway in Paris — through with trying to impress others with writing, ready to actually master the craft; through with home, ready to be someone else; ready to speak other languages, tell new stories, generally expand my person. Part of it is this trip; I’d never thought I’d think this, but Chicago has become an old place to me. The more memories I encounter, the more comfortable I feel, but I also feel less excited about things. Yesterday was like coming to pay my respect to a dead man and finding an empty tomb.

Overlooking Michigan Avenue two days ago from the windows of the Borders café at Water Tower, I was thinking about how important that street is for me. It was the first place where I encountered Chicago, having snuck out of my parents’ hotel room on the first night of a family trip. The city that night was the first world I had seen away from my parents’. For whatever reason, they just weren’t familiar with the city, and it was strange to explore a place without their varnish. It was the ecstasy of being out of my self, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt anything quite as exciting, except perhaps the ecstasy that comes with writing something new, which is like exploring a city in your mind.

That ecstasy fuels Hemingway. A new place or a new story is a new self, and when you read Hemingway’s writing you can tell he is always trying to figure out how many people he can find in himself while he still has the chance.

Another explication for the ether.

6/5/08; 5:29 p.m.

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This is one in a series of posts (listed below) that seem to be feeding into the same idea and may become part of a larger personal essay.

Notes on the Ineffable 1: New York
Notes on the Ineffable 2a: In the Air
Notes on the Ineffable 2b: Chicago
Notes on the Ineffable 3: Literature