Roger Wright – Chicago

Last time I saw old President Obama? It was right around the fourth of July. I don’t remember the year. Get to be my age and, well I’m not sure if its that I don’t remember things like what year it was, or if I just don’t care. But I do remember it was hot. Baking hot summer. Now this was a long, long time after his years running things had passed. And no one could understand why he’d spend so much time in Chicago. Gets hot here. And it also gets pretty cold.

If I had me a house in Hawaii like he does? Not sure if I’d spend all my days here.

Aw who am I kiddin. Yes I would. Home is home.

For me? It’s the Lathrop Homes. Right here on the river. Right where I am telling you this story this very second.

Now I am old enough to remember when the river was a sewer. Old Man Emanuel. He’s been the Mayor now long as I can remember. He changed that. Now we got two places to go. We got the Lake, of course. And we got the river. And if you would have told me back then that kids would be swimming in the river, that there’d be fish you could eat from that river, that there’d be boats come slicing through that water like some sort of July 4th parade, if you would have told me that years ago? I would have called you crazy.

But here I am. Right out back of my place in Lathrop. Now Lathrop, that I knew about. That was not a surprise. Kind of a secret everybody knew. Place was called a housing project. Back when Riverview, the big amusement park used to be cooking and crawling with lights and crowds and a tunnel of love and a parachute drop and a million people every summer, back then, people mostly shied away from Lathrop, which was right next door to Riverview.

Lot of people didn’t know that the very same men who designed all the fancy places on Lake Shore Drive, designed Lathrop. That Jens Jensen, best damn landscape architect that ever lived, that he made sure anybody who lived here had a garden, had trees. Fact is that 18% of the land here is open space. So Lathrop was like a piece of gold that nobody polished for a long, long time.

But that changed. Now I live here and I love it.

Old President Obama, he looked like he loved coming through here too. Course he was surrounded by about a million grandkids. All of them helping with the wheel chair. Helping him roll in through the grass where I was sitting. Where we were all sitting. My neighbors. Me. Lovin the summer.

So the little Obama parade got him on that boat. I read that he really loved that boat. Nothing made him smile like being out on that boat going up and down the river.

I wasn’t always smiling during those eight years he was in charge. Didn’t like a whole lotta things he did. Didn’t like the company he kept. Didn’t like it when it seemed he’d never fight back.

I wasn’t workin then. After 20 years working, I could not get a job to save my life. Everybody I knew—it was the same for lots of us. And the folks who had jobs? Most times they were just whatever they could get. I think that’s why it took so long for things to get better. All these people doing things they just weren’t very good at. That’ll get to you after awhile.

But it changed. Eventually it changed. And things got better. Round that time I started to write. And I never stopped. Then finally after doing that for about 10,000 hours, someone started paying me for it.

And I been fine ever since.

Old Mr. Obama? I guess what he did, well, I guess what happened cause of him is that people started thinking differently about things.

People started thinking that the way to make things better for everybody wasn’t just to make some folks richer.

People started thinking that everybody really did have a right to be healthy.

That when some folks went hungry, we all went hungry.

That anybody should be able to marry anybody they wanted. That one sounds like the easiest. Most obvious. Not sure if I remember this right, but I think it even took Mr. Obama a while to figure that one out.

All in all though, he did good.

So I got to say it’s kind of an honor to sit here in my chair on the banks of this green and growing river and watch this parade.

Right now. As I write this. His family all around him, they are helping him on the boat. 3 or 4 of them going with. Just to make sure he’s OK as he goes floating down the river. I see he’s got a book in his hands. He’s still doing about 4 things at the same time. Reading, listening, talking, watching.

And they’re turning on some music for him to take down that river. Joe Williams. I’ll be damned. Looks like he remembered Joe Williams. Man does have taste. Nobody sang a song like Joe Williams. I read where “Here’s to Life” is one of ole President Obama’s favorites. Mine too.

I wish everybody could hear Joe Williams sing that song.

We’ll be hearing it right here on the banks of the Chicago River as the boat gets ready to sail. But it sure would be good if everybody could hear it.

Maybe if I write about it, everybody will.

Boats getting ready. Everybody’s waving. Lots a smiling. Lots of laughing. Happy 4th a July they’re singing out. Waving some more and look! Look at that!

Old President Obama. He looked right up here where I am sitting and he waved and he smiled right at me!

How about that!

It will come years from now. Long after the family home, seen here, is gone. A few years after the former Governor’s prison sentence has begun. One of the Blagojevich daughters will be running down the soccer field, glance over at the sidelines and just for a split second imagine that her Dad is watching too.

No one can really plumb the depths of another’s heart. So judging whether Rod Blagojevich really believes he did something wrong is perhaps better left to amateur psychologists or fools. Blagojevich was convicted. Definitively. Prosecutors can take a victory lap. The parsing of the process on how that happened can chatter on. Blame can be tossed. And the collective shame of an electorate who twice put him in power can raise its head for a moment. And then quickly retreat into the protective community conversation on the weather or parades of questions like “How about them Cubs? Them White Sox?”

But in a few years there will be a prom. And a Blagojevich daughter, dressed and ready and beautiful will just for a second search the room for her Dad. And he’ll be gone.

Ten miles due south of the yellow brick East Ravenswood home where the two Blagojevich kids spent the first years of their lives, there will be another round of picture taking for the prom going on. And there will be no Dad in that room either.

And of course what’s happening in that fatherless room on the South or West side of Chicago, or of any city or town anywhere, won’t be news.

There will be no screaming headlines proclaiming “THE WORLD IS NOT FAIR!”

But if you looked hard at that circle of picture taking surrounding that nameless young woman, ravishingly beautiful in her new prom dress, perhaps you’d see traces of connections back to the Blagojevich daughter. In Patti Blagojevich’s living room you’d see surrounding her prom queen daughter . . . .

A Mother of absolute steel. Raised in the neighborhoods of politics and summer festivals and alleys and neighborhoods and tough enough to come out swinging at any fight imaginable. You’d see her sister. Deborah Mell. Also in the family business of politics. As principled as the day is long. But more than anything, the cool Aunt to those girls. The one who fills in the colors of the girl’s high times and laughing parties. Mom taking care of every day. An Aunt who can be like a trampoline of dreams.

And standing quietly behind his two daughters, you’d see the rock of the neighborhood, the Blagojevich girl’s grandfather, Alderman Richard Mell. As quietly proud of what he helped hold together here in this room of picture taking and girls giggling —no, he’s even more proud of what’s happening in this room—then of anything he did to leave his Ward better than when he found it.

As the picture taking session ends and the car pulls up to whisk the young Blagojevich daughter off to new worlds of her own grown up dreams and trials, she’ll have a moment of recognition of all the other people filling that room, lots of them who she didn’t even know 5 or 6 years ago when her Dad had to go away.

Her Dad. She’ll miss him. A brief second in her swirling exit outside to her awaiting chariot parked under the green trees of June on a Chicago street. She’ll think, she’ll remember, because this is how she was brought up, she’ll remember; my Dad loves me.

Today. As a soft, grey rain swept clean the sleepy streets of Chicago’s early morning rhythm, the Poetry Foundation prepared for the housewarming party to its brand new home.

After almost a century of being a renter, Poetry Magazine, and the umbrella organization, The Poetry Foundation can now throw open the doors to it’s sweeping 22,000 square foot building, and say to the world, ‘We own our own home.’

Designed by Chicago architect John Ronan, the building does what poetry does, provides a place to think and speak and reflect on the world differently.

Of course, writing about Poetry is akin to dancing about architecture. There is an element of absurdity in even attempting such a thing. So one can first turn to facts. But then reciting facts about poetry can easily fade into the steady stream of background noise that populates so much of the inboxes of our souls. Like for example: The building houses a performance area, a 35,000 volume library and an exhibition gallery. Quick show of hands. How many read that last sentence and thought “So?”

Scores of words will be devoted to the money angle on this story. By last count, there were 32 poets across the world that actually had a lot of money. But the Poetry Foundation has a whole lot of money. Supplied by an heiress to the Eli Lilly drug fortune.

And finally, there’s the fact that there are a few famous poets. Garrison Keillor and Billy Collins will be here soon to headline the dedication ceremonies.

And all those facts are well and good. Fodder for the tired old arguments about all the ways that art and commerce should get along with each other.

But it’s when you leave the city rhythms and wander into the garden of Poetry’s new home that the real story starts to unfold. You’ve come early to the ceremony. Your search is for the voices that will not be giving speeches today. The spirits who have come back to see what we’ve done with the world they’ve left behind. You start listening. You listen harder then you ever imagined you could listen. And as the blurry images of poetry’s real history start to take shape on the benches in the garden that surrounds you, there is first a quiet woman pouring over some numbers on a piece of paper. Studying them intently. Harriet Monroe. Founded the magazine in 1912. Touching the tip of her pencil to her tongue. ‘If I get 100 people to dedicate $50 a year for the first 5 years . . .’ and she ends up getting 108 people.

That first issue—the one in the picture. Look at who was featured. Ezra Pound. He’s here today too. Sitting on his bench in the garden, marveling at the height of the buildings surrounding this oasis of calm and center of curiosity.

That man in the business suit, holding a small jar that he places on the bench beside him. Wallace Stevens. Poetry Magazine contributor and Vice President of Claims for Hartford Insurance. Both. And that a combination like that exists in one person is a marvel.

But the wild prairie fire soul clearing his throat on the bench behind you, Carl Sandberg, has no time for guys in suits, as he starts to sing out:

“Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I

have seen your painted women under the gas lamps

luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it

is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to

kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the

faces of women and children I have seen the marks

of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who

sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer

and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing

so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on

job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the

little soft cities . . . .”

Sandburg, interrupted then by the wild eyed Nelson Algren who had just wandered in late, looks up from the bench to his picture at the typewriter at the top of this page right here, shrugs, and cries out, “This is a home? Maybe now I can be loved in my home. Like when I said,

“The Pottawattomies were much too square.

They left nothing behind but their dirty river.

While we shall leave, for remembrance, one rusty iron heart.

The city’s rusty heart that hold’s both the hustler and the square.

Take them both and holds them there.

For keeps and a single day.

And as Algren roars, crying out for his home, I look around a filling in all the benches in the garden, I see a virtual parade of poetic giants: T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, James Merrill, Gwendolyn Brooks.

All of them having filled the pages of Poetry Magazine.

I pull a copy of the magazine out of my back-pack, just to have it in my hands. It arrives at my house each month. Always a surprise, because money does not arrive at my house every month. But the magazine does. And I devour that magazine like a meal wrapped in gratitude.

The garden is almost full now. I remember this from the poet Steven Orlen:

“Now everything is real;

There is a beginning and an ending.

The end is like a dream in which

You’ve found friends who understand.”

From inside the building, Poetry Magazine’s Chris Wiman, the Editor, and Don Share, the Senior Editor, wander out into the garden, at a distance their talk is animated. They’re laughing.

In that laughter, echoes of Wiman’s poem “Given a God More Playful,” one of my favorites.

The rain lets up as the spirits all come to attention. Sitting up straighter on their benches. Harriet Monroe gives a slight nod.

The poet Check Stetson once wrote “Poetry is a short memory overload, do it right and the imagery floods the senses.”

In the Poetry Garden in Chicago, surrounded by the spirits who built the soul of this building, every sense is alive, ready, waiting, challenging.

Curious.

Sure the church smelled like chlorine. But there were no complaints. Fact is that it was the fastest growing church in, I don’t know, the history of religion? Not sure. I really don’t know a whole lot about religion. Never cared for it myself.

What I do care about is numbers. And if a church wanted to install it’s own swimming pool in the basement? And the membership numbers in the church went from 30 to 3,000 in 2 weeks? That got my attention. I loved to swim.

Course it took me awhile to become a member. Turned out there was a waiting list for the place. And then the screening committee review. But I made it. Hot damn! Jackpot! It was like winning a lottery. I was a member.

Church was on a block in the city where there were a lot of indoor swimming pools. Course I didn’t know that then. It wasn’t a gated block. Anybody could walk through. But no one did.

And the church had a special service. 10:55 to 11:00 a.m. Every Sunday Morning. All the folks who took care of the pools in the big houses got to come. The workers were like family. One big family. Time went on and some of my best friends were the workers. They were just like us.

The pool was the big draw. Family fun and all. But the 5 minute services helped too. Nobody got bored. Nobody got mad. Nobody said that one religion was better than another. In fact, I think we really did something for religion in the world because no one fought about it anymore.

We just swam in our pool.

The best part was our lifeguard. We had applicants for the job from 16 countries. In total, 4,032 people. But we narrowed it down to one. Really fast. It was the only way to do it. I mean we probably wouldn’t have gotten many more applicants. And we did find the perfect guy.

Why was he perfect? Because everybody liked him. In fact he was impossible to dislike. It was like he had some kind of likeability gene that melded him into being whoever you wanted him to be. Nicest guy in the world. Didn’t bog us down with a lot of details on religion. Did what we told him to do. He just talked about sunshine for 2-3 minutes each week, we sang a song and then we all went swimming.

Who could complain? It was perfect.

See we all knew that nothing made people angrier than religion. Don’t EVER mess with a pissed off atheist or agnostic. They will smother you with a passion for the cause that you really don’t even want to hear. Those people can get angry. And religious extremists? Don’t get me started.

So we got a swimming pool.

And the worlds best lifeguard.

Course there was that time that that poor kid, she was the youngest daughter of one of the help, fell in the deep end. And our lifeguard wanted to save her. Tried to save her. He ran as fast as he could. And all those rumors about him not jumping in the water because he couldn’t swim, none of them were true. He just didn’t get there in time.

And I don’t know what all the bitchin was about. This was church. This is where we all agree. This is where we swim.

The kid made it. She didn’t die. One of the workers pulled her out. Not sure what his name was. But he pulled her out. She was fine. Oh sometimes she wakes up crying. But that will pass. We’ll all pray for her. We still do prayers. So we’ll pray for her.

Before you know it?

She’ll be back swimming again too.

Chatting with Willie the security guy in the bustling hallway of the City Hall/County Building in Chicago when the swirling gold elevator door swooshes open and four shadowy figures in black trench coats and sunglasses pop out, scan the hall as if their necks were all attached to the same string, and then walk briskly to the LaSalle Street entrance and circle outside through the revolving door.

I had noticed that they all came from the 5th floor. The Mayor’s floor. Three men and a woman. I knew it was a woman because the trench coat was form fitting. Long black hair to her shoulders. The silver funnel tin hat perched on her head.

“What the hell was all that about?” I asked Willie.

“Big meeting.”

“Like for a movie or something?”

“Hah. Should be that!” Willie chuckled. “But it’s about jobs.”

“For those four? They looked like the Marx brothers trying to sneak into a country club.”

“Well, you ain’t all that far off. They all dressed up like that cause they don’t want anyone to know they asking for advice from Mayor.” Willie said.

“So who are they?” I asked.

“They four of the folks who want to be the next President.”

“Of what, the Screen Actors Guild?”

“Of the United States. That was Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachman. She’s the one with the tin hat.”

“What do they want advice on? Fashion?”

“They want to know how to create jobs. Seems like no one’s really cracked the code on doing that in a way that wouldn’t piss no one off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a bitch. Getting something done without pissing someone off. That can be tough.”

“I think what they all doin is making up stuff that sounds good but doesn’t really mean nothing.” Willie said, folding his arms and taking up his post in front of the golden elevator.

“Like what? What did they all come up with on their own?”

“Let’s see if I remember this right,” Willie looked up at the ceiling as he thought. And he continued. “Rick Santorum said that he’d create jobs by taking away health care and drilling for oil.”

“Big thinker huh? Gosh, maybe I should go out on Clark Street, step in front of a moving car, get hit and not be covered. Maybe that would create a job.”

“You crazy Roger.”

“What about the other 3 knuckleheads? What did they come up with on their own?”

“Well Santorum. He also said that this time we would REALLY let the wealth trickle down. Pawlenty said that tax cutting would bring out the job creation fairy and put her to work. Mr. Romney didn’t have a plan. And that lady with the tin hat, she said that getting rid of the EPA would create jobs.”

“Getting rid of the EPA? Would create jobs?”

“Uh huh.”

“I wonder if Richard Nixon ever thought about that when he created the EPA? I wonder if he ever said to his wife, ‘Pat, this EPA is a great thing because we’re destroying the planet, killing the air, the rivers and streams. But we might have to stop controlling all that destruction some day because you know that it could kill jobs?”

‘I don’t suppose he did say that.” Willie nodded.

“So what happened in the meeting with the Mayor? What advice did he give them? I bet it was a long meeting.”

“Actually,” Willie said, “The meeting lasted 90 seconds.

“90 seconds! That can’t be right. These are complex issues. Not just local. National. These are global issues. There are policy people. Thinkers. David Brooks writes columns. Lobbyists. International monetary factors. Economic trends. Polling numbers. How could the Mayor cover all that in 90 seconds? Did he just tell ‘um all to f— off or something?”

Willie narrowed his eyes and scoffed. “Roger, you know that whole trash talking train left the station long ago. Why don’t you ask me if Al Capone is having a drink down the street while you’re at it?”

“Ok. Sorry. Yeah, I do know that. But what I don’t know is what he told these people. What’s the secret to creating real jobs? Which policy? Which plan? If we cut the national Institute of Health will that create even more jobs? What do we do? What did the Mayor tell them to do?”

“He told them to ask.”

“Huh? Whattya mean ‘ask”? That’s too simple. How could that work? Ask who?

“Ask the people who have jobs to fill them in Chicago. Just ask.”

“Just ask? That’s crazy. How does he know this will work? Were their studies? Commissions?”

“No, there was a Bulls game.”

“Huh?”

“At a basketball game, the Mayor asked the CEO of Motorola to make Chicago home for 400 brand new jobs. Good ones.”

“That it? 400? What kind of subsidy did he have to give to make that happen?”

“No, that’s not it. The number is inching up to three thousand. Three thousand new jobs in the first month of office. Three companies. GE Financial, United Airlines and Motorola. No government subsidies. No promises of future business. Now Motorola already does business with the city. But there was no horse trading there. There was just ‘the ask.”

“Just the ask?”

“That’s it. That’s the secret. You ask.”

“Damn. That’s pretty simple. Probably gonna piss a bunch of people off. Something that simple. Something that works. That already has worked.”

“Well,” said Willie. That’s what he did. He told ‘um, ‘just ask.’ “

“Then what?”

“Then he told them to have a nice day. And they left.”

You’re the victim. 90 seconds before the attack.

A sparkling summer twilight on the shores of Lake Michigan. The city rhythm of serenity. As if you’re in a metropolitan front yard where everyone is welcome.

You’ve just locked your bike. Texted something trivial to a friend. Later you won’t even remember what it was. All you’ll remember is that there was no reply.

The thought drifts through your mind, there was no reply. . . . and a baseball is whipped at your face, from three feet away. A crackle splintered pain goes off in your head. Searing hot pain is your whole world now. You are slammed to the bloody scratched sidewalk. There is a sickly sweet smell of liquid iron as you take the kicks and the stomps and you float till it isn’t really you anymore and there is no real way to fight back, no idea how many people are engulfing you in this gauzy dream of scratched cement pain and your last thought is when you reached out to your friend, there was no reply.

A trembling question hovering faint in the raging waters of the pain, “Why was there no reply?”

You live through it. Scars, private wounds you don’t share with anyone. The irony that this happened yards from a hospital. The refrain floats in and out of a medicated garden that smells like alcohol that could disinfect the very world, “Why was there no reply?” You keep asking that same question till you’re not even sure what it means. Or why you’re asking it now?

While 4 blocks west, along Michigan Avenue, the premier shopping district of the big city, another assault is being planned. A gang of 15 is coordinating, via twitter, with military like precision, how they will swarm the racks of a high-end fashion retailer. Shadowing, distracting, shimmering through the confusion to walk out with thousands of dollars of goods.

And this is all while Ruth, a career retailer, a woman very good at what she does, checks her email behind the counter. Sales had been down. Lay-offs were in the wind. Probably not Ruth. Course quality customer service and loyalty didn’t matter anymore. Neither did revenue when you got right down to it. People hang on to jobs the same way they get jobs, through the people they know. What matters is who you know. So Ruth was emailing an old friend. Making sure to stay in touch. The first two emails had gone unanswered. She was watching the floor. The good retailers, the real pros, do that without thinking. It’s like breathing. When you love what you do the way some retailers love their work, then the store is almost an extension of your body. You’d never actually say that. And you’d make fun of anyone who did. But there is an unseen connection between people and their stores. It’s what drives them to come in early, to stay late, to clean, and to face the shelves, to protect.

Ruth was always protecting to some degree or another.

But her guard was just a little bit down that exact split second when she had the thought, “Why was there no reply?”

And that was the second the mob poured in and began the attack on her store.

When it was over, when the cops had left, when the adjusters, the corporate people had left to go do whatever corporate people do, Ruth checked one more time, and as she flicked the alarm and set the lights for the night she thought again, why was there no reply?

And as she walked out her door, cops were all over the neighborhood, looking for the next flash mob. The little brother of Smashing Pumpkins founder Billy Corgan would tomorrow be attacked by a small mob on his 4:30 train ride to work. Dispatches from the class war were being written. Commentators commentating. Easy answers abounded. All sprinkled with blame and 24 hour news cycle wisdom. Tensions of a society where the differences between the vulnerable and the wealthy keep stretching like a giant invisible life force had put one hand on either side of the Grand Canyon and began to pull.

Night came. The light beam grid of communication amped up and if you listened real hard you could hear it. In the uncountable conversations, virtual and real, it kept happening with greater frequency. Someone would not reply. It didn’t cause the flash mobs. No one thing ever caused anything. But it kept happening. This new rule that it was OK to not reply. And the rhythm of the world’s conversation sputtered. There was just too much to do. We were just too busy. The stranger simply didn’t matter anymore.

That was it. The stranger simply didn’t matter anymore. So there was no reply. And that bled into those who we do see as mattering. And with that thought came a distant glowing light and these words:

“One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became the greatest of all.”

Expecting the impossible. Like a new kind of rhythm to the way we communicate. Make it look like a jazz band. Set the tune in 9/8 time. Flying on some sort of magic carpet above the highways along which we speak with each other. Like some Blue Rondo dream.

Expecting the impossible. A rhythm of reply.

What if the impossible started singing? In a new, yet ancient, rhythm?

And then even to a stranger. We replied.

We expected the impossible reply.

What then?

Shepherding 7 teenagers down a crowded, horn-honking, sidewalk. Chicago’s money dripping mecca of retail, Michigan Avenue. And Tina, short blond hair and wild eyes, calmly turns to stroll off into the passing traffic. Six feet and three seconds away from being slammed down dead by a taxicab.

I lunge for her upper arm. Even then, a voice that has become as ingrained as a bloodstream screams in my head, “The upper arm is where you grab the kid.” She has one foot poised over the street when I pull her back. The breeze from the cab is the only clue as to what just about happened.

An electrical current that singes through the rest of the kids, because they all saw. Teenage hormones infused with a cocktail of crazy. They are all inpatients on the adolescent psych ward. I’m a counselor. And not exactly a paragon of maturity myself. So I steady my voice before letting it come out. “Tina, if you walk into the street, the cars will hit you and it will hurt.”

She answers, “Oh, I’ve been hit by cars before. It doesn’t hurt.”

Twenty years later. Right now. With so many in the world standing in the endless line to try and find work, I wonder if she’s working. And if she is, how did she get herself that job? How do the invincible find work?

————–

Sitting in the dirt in my front yard yesterday. A summer day of promise. Planting cheap but hearty looking ground cover. And a giant flat bed semi, big as a railroad car, chugs around the corner and pulls to a stop a couple of doors down. On the flatbed truck, gift wrapped, fully grown trees. Five guys with shovels appear. And the one who looks like the boss rings the doorbell of the neighbors who now own not just their house, but also the two adjoining lots, where they have demolished two houses.

Spacious grassy meadows in the middle of the city. Protected by a black wrought iron fence. A small soccer field. Ice rink in the winter. A gazebo. Hot tub. Basketball courts. Perhaps horses will be romping tomorrow. But today, as I cradle my fragile bloom of ground cover, today is tree delivery day. By night there will be tastefully designed shade to bless the sheep’s meadow on my street.

No judgment on the neighbors. Good for them. The summer breeze while I sat in the dirt brought a wave of incredulity that I even lived on a block where giant trees got delivered by semi trucks. But I couldn’t help but wonder, how do the invincible find the work that buys that land, those trees, and the steam wafting up from the hot tub?

———————

Walking up Grace Street to the neighborhood hot dog stand. Polish and a fries and large coke with a side of Jack Reacher—Lee Child’s brilliant character—who also is invincible and never seems to lack for work. And Herman from the neighborhood comes in and begins to circle the corner storefront. Eyes down. Mumbling. He stops in front of the lottery machine. Gently taps his forehead three times on the top of the machine, where the lottery tickets sit behind slide up clear plastic doors like sandwiches and pieces of cherry pie used to sit in old time automats. And Herman mumbles quietly to the floor, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he mumbles, “Sure I’ll find a job, and you can’t touch me. You can’t touch me. Nothing and nobody can touch me.”

I sip my coke. The owner scans the room. Everyone knows Herman. Knows he’ll soon be gone. After he leaves, the owner comes over to talk and says, “And what’s really something, is that he didn’t used to be that way. Quiet guy. Came in once a week for lunch. Worked around here somewhere. But then one day about three years ago . . .”

And again I wonder . . .how do the invincible find work?

That night, in the empty orange light of the alley, just about to lift the top of the garbage bin and dump the kitchen trash, when the raccoon rolls out about two feet away and gets up on its hind legs to face me. None of this “they’re more scared of us than we are of them” stuff. The gleaming feral eyes spoke only of a fight for food, for flight from a million different forces of terror. Ready for the fight right now.

Seeing how the invincible survived, I backed away. Inside my broken hinged fence. Who’s got money to fix a fence gate?

And I remembered a time when I thought that if I’d only find the right river. And follow that river to the sea. If i’d just find the right river . . . .

Then I’d be invincible too.

http://youtu.be/DNjzzDNIJWw

I was never alone.

In the fraction of a second just after my steel-toed boot came down through the Afghan dust and scraped the buried oily spring of the landmine, I turned first to see my unit. Their eyes in shock like a piano chord hanging in the air after the song has ended. To a man. To a woman. They rushed towards me. The cries of “No!!! . . . . blending into a silence that had colors brighter and bluer than the Afghan sky.

In that fraction of a second I could see across time. I could see she’d have a good life. Keeping me always at twenty-one. Holding that drop of sorrow inside her like a tiny drop of golden honey. That honey colored sorrow would prompt so many to say, as she marched across the decades of a long, long, life—they would say of her, “She really understands.’ And because she really understands, I was never alone.

In that fraction of a second I saw a stranger getting ready for a journey that would sweep him across the entire endless morning of the American horizon.

The stranger could be any age. Might be a woman or a man. I couldn’t tell. I only knew that the stranger had it in them to move. To keep moving. He was allowed to do that. I heard him sing.

“I bid farewell to the state of Old New York.

My home away from home.

In the State of New York I came of age.

When first I started roaming.”

And in the harmony of the song I knew that he could keep moving, he not only had a home, he had a home away from home. He not only had a family, he had a family he could choose. He could travel. Set out on the open road. Maybe not move a foot. But he’d still be moving. He could do that.

He could do that. And as I lay dying in the Afghan dust I could see it. I could hear the song of where he started.

‘And the trees grow high in New York State

And they shine like gold in the Autumn

Never had the blues from whence I came

But in New York State, I caught ‘em.”

I was never alone. I was on the journey too.

As if I had helped make it possible.

As if the stranger could do this because of me.

Across a new American land we travelled. The stranger and I.

No longer bound by the fight I’d left behind,

Now the point was on what we had been trying to defend. And that thought was new. It wasn’t a cliché. And empty phrase. A politician’s speech. It was like the song of the journey.

And it’s on to South Bend Indiana

Flat out on the western plain

Rise up over the Rockies

And down on into California

Out to where but the rocks remain

Off goes the stranger.

In that last split second as I lay dying, I could hear in the ocean waves off Mendocino, where the stranger and I had arrived together.

The stranger on a Greyhound. Me in the winds. I could hear a new America. One where we turn from the new and better ways of fighting, new and scarier “Others” to fight. And cast our golden promises on what it is we’re defending. Not a concept. Something real. The journey we’re protecting. Making it flourish. Making it sing. In infinite, individual ways.

That journey with the stranger. Our common journey from the moment of death. To each our own Mendocino.

Like a prayer we sing,

Let the sun set on the ocean

I will watch it from the shore

Let the sun rise over the redwoods

I’ll rise with it till I rise no more

Talk to me of Mendocino

Closing my eyes I hear the sea

Must I wait

Must I follow

Won’t you say ‘Come with me?’

I was never alone.

http://youtu.be/2fcBEGjK3cM

I knew it was Oprah because she never used my doorbell. Just
BAM

BAM

BAM

Three knocks. Like it was some sort of secret code. I didn’t bother to get up. The Bulls game was on. And I knew she’d let herself in. It wasn’t like this was her first visit. In fact, I was kind of expecting she’d be by. So I kept my eyes on the TV and just shouted out, “Yeah O. What’s up?”

She stormed in, tossed off her coat and went straight for the microwave. Pulled a brown envelope of popcorn out of her purse, tossed it in to be nuked, pressed the buttons and started drumming the fingers of her left hand on the silver surface of the microwave as the corn started popping.

“Roger, I’m depressed.”

“Mmmm”

“I SAID I was depressed. Are you listening?”

“You’re a mess?”

“Depressed!”

“Oh. Sounds like an issue.”

“Don’t mock me Roger. I’m depressed.”

“OK O. Why are you depressed? You’re rich. Adored by billions. Done with your talk show. Able to move on to world domination, or whatever it is that’s next on your list.”

“But I’m still depressed.”

The Bulls were not looking good. The microwave bell had dinged. She had melted the quarter pound of butter and was pouring it over the bowl of popcorn. I had lost track of the conversation, and the quiet didn’t bother me. But O hated quiet. So she went on.

“What am I gonna do about my depression?”

“Beats me. Why don’t you ask Gayle? Or Tom Cruise?”

Oprah sat down on the couch and glared at me. Big yellow bowl of popcorn in her lap. “Roger, give me the remote.”

“No O. You know how you always get butter on it. And you know how I hate that.”

“If I ask Gayle or Tom, they’ll just repeat something I shoveled out on some show.”

“So? Won’t that help? You give out all the right answers, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You know that the true and deep expression of feelings. . .”

“O, I got to hear this beer commercial. You want to hold that thought?

“Yeah whatever. You know, people like me, we don’t get depressed. Unless its my annual “Depression” show. The one where I reveal that I do get depressed.”

“O, there are no people like you. No one sells better than you. No one.”

She took another handful, stuffed it in her mouth and glared. “I am not selling. I am expressing my feelings. I am empowering. . .”

For the first time I took my eyes off the game and looked at her. Didn’t say a thing. Just looked. And I said, “Not buying O.”

“What do you mean, ‘Not buying?” It’s that jibber jabber “Strengthsfinder 2.0” book you’re always talking about isn’t it? You know if there was something there, I would have had it on my show. I don’t need you tossing out those made up words like you were some kind of professor or something. I got people who read books for me. They read that one. They didn’t see anything I needed to know there. They didn’t see anything that answered why I’m depressed!”

“No, there’s nothing there that would say why you’re depressed.”

“So what’s the point then? And don’t be using some made up words to explain it.”

“OK I’ll explain it without the made up words, Relator, Individualization, and Positivity combination.”

“See what you did there? I hate when you do that.”

“Ok, here it is another way. And I gotta make this fast cause the game is getting serious. You can sell anything to anyone. Not cause you’re some kind of carnival barker. Although. . .”

“Shut up. And then go on.”

“But because when you talk to a person you can make them feel like they are the most important person in the world. You can make them feel like they are the ONLY person in the world. You’re so good that you can even do that through a camera!”

“So what’s wrong with that? That’s a good thing! That’s how I help people! You can’t be saying that’s a BAD thing! I HATE when I come over here. I should have gone over to see Gayle. I do not know why I come here at all. What is so bad about making someone feel like they are the only person in the world? That sounds like love to me.”

“Love?”

“Yeah love! You saying it’s wrong to love someone? You against love Mister Professor, Mister Fancy Words that normal people don’t understand? You saying its wrong to know how to tell people exactly what they want to hear and then make them feel it? And who made you the one who knows all truth? Why are you more special than anyone else? You against love?”

“No O. I’m not against love. Not when it’s real.”

And with that, Oprah stuffed another handful of popcorn in her mouth, turned to the basketball game. Watching quietly.

Thinking.
http://youtu.be/kJz-k8bEZgo

The story of how Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and GE Capital CEO Jeff Immelt recently created 1,000 new jobs in Chicago has already been reported. What’s new here is a story of the 1,001st new job.

———————————————-

The shadows from the elevated train tracks criss crossing the booth in the back of the darkened bar made me almost spill the drinks on both the Mayor and the CEO. Club sodas. For both of them.

Their people were scattered in the dim light front amongst the regulars. You couldn’t have picked them out. And the name of the bar doesn’t matter. It’s the kind of place where people mind their own business. I’d been working there for 6 or 8 months. Long enough to serve back booth customers. To usher them in with just a look and a nod. To know when to talk and when to keep quiet. To make sure the back booth customers knew they had a home here.

So I was there to watch the deal go down. 1,000 new jobs for Chicago. I saw the Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, ‘do the ask.’ I saw the CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt, nod his head and say yes.

They were putting the final touches on what they had already talked over and emailed over the past 3 months. The Mayor’s quote to the newspapers later would be, “I think that Jeff will now change his email and his phone number because I have both.”

The new jobs are skilled technical, commercial and regulatory positions to support GE Capital. There is no government subsidy to prompt the move. GE Capital sees the move as good business.

With the deal done, the electricity in the back booth dialed down. Everybody relaxed a bit. The Mayor and the CEO started talking about how they wanted to get the thing moving quick. They needed another round. So I brought it without being asked and as I put the two drinks on the table said, “So what if I told you that I can get your people up and running, in an on-boarding program, that would cut 20% off your hiring and training costs?”

“Jesus Rahm. Everybody in this town got a deal going down?” said the CEO.

But the Mayor held up the palm of his hand and said, “Wait.” Turned to the CEO and said, “No, but a lot of people are doing whatever they can to get by.” Then he turned to me and said, “Talk.”

“I’ve been building on-boarding programs for years. Lot longer than I’ve been hustling drinks.” I shrugged. Looked at the Mayor straight in the eye and said, “My programs work.”

The CEO said, “If you’d like to send a resume, I’ll get it to our HR person and. . .”

“I appreciate that sir. And no disrespect to your HR people. But the likelihood of them moving the process along any faster or even seeing what they want in my piece of paper is slim to none.”

I saw the Mayor stifle a quiet smile. And nod almost imperceptibly towards me. He then asked very softly, “How do I know your programs work?”

“Because I measure them. And the measures correlate to the metrics of the business. Turnover costs go down. Revenue rises. Productivity rises. I can even tell you about a measure that will correlate to stock price.”

“So where did you get your MBA?” asked the CEO.

“Don’t have one,” I said.

“Well,” asked the Mayor, can people from the businesses you’ve helped, tell us you’ve helped?”

“Going back 25 years, people can tell you that.”

“And when can you have a 30, 60 and 90 day plan on what will change and how it will be measured on Mr. Immelt’s desk?” asked the Mayor.

“Two weeks?”

“Why not tomorrow?” shot back the Mayor.

“Because no one makes a plan alone. I’d have to check in with the right folks at GE.”

That’s when the CEO smiled.

“OK, then,” said the CEO. Looks like we can announce 1,001 new jobs in Chicago.”

And as the Mayor jumped up, glanced at his watch, and grabbed me by the right shoulder all in one fluid motion, he said to the CEO, “You don’t mind if I have a copy of the plan this gentlemen is making for you, do you Jeff?”

“I don’t mind at all Mr. Mayor. I don’t mind at all.”