Over my trip I meandered up to Chicago and fell in love.
L, EH, KD and I got Moroccan food with other friends of theirs. And then. And then we went to the Empty Bottle. I walked through the door, into the front, past the Ms. Pac-Man, the pool table, the green couch, turned right into the bar proper and at some point during the screening of several episodes of Yacht Rock I looked around and realized that it was love. I had fallen in love with the place. This feeling was cemented after Bobby Conn and his wife Monica got on stage. They were pretty great. (the myspace page)
As is often the case with love at first sight, I can't really say why this place versus another or pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. It just felt good to be there. It felt right.
It's happened two other times that I can recall, at the Milestone in Charlotte, North Carolina and at the Embassy in Urbana, Illinois.
Sometimes I wonder why it doesn't happen more often. Maybe it's because I am getting older, more guarded, more jaded. Maybe it's more difficult to reach in, grab my heart, and squeeze it.
There are other paths to forming a bond with place. Surely over time I could learn to love a place. Getting to know it better, seeing the beauty and the good in it, forming a bond, creating shared memories and all that stuff.
3 comments:
Glad you fell in love. Hope it doesn't end up breaking your heart ;-)
FYI, "KH" is actually "KD"... *never* call her "KH" ;)
Molly: Thanks. I think it will be a bittersweet long distance kind of thing.
GC: D'oh! Me and my sexist traditionalist patriarchal assumptions. Will change that forthwith
Post a Comment