Jaywalking in

Chicago

i. ambulations

Crossing a street can be a moment as fleeting and irrevocable as choosing to die. I am certain of this.

When streets in Portland are empty I often think what would happen should I slow my pace to a crawl, drawing closer to the ground with each movement forward. I imagine a particular, impossible moment—upon reaching the intersection's center, belly to it, my body melds like sludge to the pavement.

I am somewhat away from myself. I imagine myself as a small spill in the road. This thought has been constant since late August of 2011.

To lie down.

Depending on your intentions, it might not be wise to lie down in oncoming traffic, but there are other, less loss-filled ways to disrupt the flow of a street.

An intersection traversed at the wrong angle, a traffic signal ignored.

It is satisfying to operate incorrectly, to skirt around edges.

I cannot count the number of intersections I have crossed jaggedly, no regard for walk signs or traffic cops. I can say how brazen Chicago grows me, how Portland streets past midnight make me fearful.

Once, wandering late and exhausted from the school library, I saw my own shadow against a tree at 37th and Schiller and was terrified enough to cry.

This, like many other moments, was set aside to be laughed about later.

Sometimes I fear that I will never stop panicking about movement and relocations.

In high school we talked about the Dan Ryan and afterwards I mentioned how it’s construction destroyed Englewood, my father’s neighborhood, forcing Black people to worse places. A boy simply said that highways are a greater good.

The University of Chicago holds the rest of the south side at arm's length and I walk the neighborhood with wild hair and surly face, unsure of where my childhood has gone to rest.

I understand that movement is inevitable but I do not know what a greater good is, or what my own neighborhood will become.

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I have peeped many Black men shuffle across a street almost roaring with traffic, one hand dragging pants upward for comfort and ease, a brown bag or a cellphone or a nothing in the other and I have to say it—I worry about the ways they might die.

Jaywalking in Chicago is often pointed and purposeful. I like to watch it happen from the passenger seats of cars. Most of the time along 79th or 87th, a Black woman will cross the street as my father and I wait for the light to change. Sometimes she walks slowly, cellphone or baby or bag in hand; sometimes she walks slowly, letting her feet connect to pavement as if to walk is to make art; sometimes she walks so slowly that the light changes, the cars honk, the drivers yell, and she shoots them with her eyes, pace even more lengthy, the queen of the road. She is a different Black woman each time. Sometimes her pace is not a slow, deliberate patter but a quick and sly jog to the other side.

ii. movement work

In walking at a certain time of day, with a certain tug in your belly, a certain area, you are bound to reflect on other walks, similar or dissimilar as they may be. A small part of Portland feels like a small part of San Francisco. and another brings Chicago's industrial belly to my eyes. Very few walks remind me of Beirut; not even Beirut herself reminds me.

Though it is my instinct to do so, I am not going to apologize for thinking a city like a woman.

The treasures of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities have feminine names and are the dreams, lusts, fears of men.

It took this book to remember how to find my reflection in impossible places.

Portland reminds me very little of home. When I feel the pull of Chicago in my gut, Portland becomes little more than a boring woman, average in appearance, you glance over her and forget.

In Portland, I walk and my body becomes strange. I am desperate to walk the city without these anxieties, this extra work. To the starers I want to scowl and say, can a bitch live? Skin is a such a drag.

A body is a blueprint for a city. Sometimes when wandering, it is easy to find yourself thinking "Look! I am a discoverer! Look at this wonderful thing I have found!" But remember—voyagers have usually only wrought havoc, and any city you see has already been planned, and the triangle of tiny freckles on the skin of her right inner thigh have never been yours to claim. Women, like land, are not meant to be discovered.

iii. pressing for the walk sign

Sometimes it does not hurt to follow rules. Sometimes you must be patient.

The walk sign at 55th and Lake Park likes to speak, and I remember being 15 and running sleepily to the lake, waiting at this intersection as the signal bleated out which crosswalk was safe to use. It was 5 a.m. and the streets were empty.

There is something about that morning—how the light came up over Lake Michigan, watching a dog lick from the fountain, the bikers and runners on the lake path, my alternate sprint/walk home—I would like to put this morning in my pocket. How out of breath I grew as I ran. How pained. The air so silent and ordered and cottony, breathable. I would like to liquify that morning for courage, for consumption in uncertain times.

(Chicago. What is Chicago? Where is

Chicago? Who? Why and how is Chicago?)

iv. gridding

Oh, I don’t know.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson wrote, "Cities are for/breaking you into several people/at once." I think this is about digestibility. It is difficult to take a person as a whole, so in cities we portion ourselves and are portioned. Away from home, I cease to be a daughter. Walking Portland streets I am a pedestrian to be watched for, or a Black girl to be looked at. This is true of Chicago too, and any other place. In beds I don’t really know who I am, or how.

A city is capable of breaking itself. Grids are made imperfect by streets which crook and curve, which bend to or negate the will of the land. Sometimes I confuse myself when I turn off a street only to find a dead end, a cul-de-sac, a three-way intersection. Sometimes I overcome it with a gut feeling for north.

v. city as dress

Depending on your gait, a narrow alley can become a wide, open space. Not green, and the air won't quite breathe, but if you walk a certain way, the world will begin to conform to your liking. Who knows what makes you walk like this—a certain person, the stories you carry inside, an item of clothing which fits you perfectly, in which you feel proud and bold and present.

There is a fine line between these walkers and those who swagger about as if they own the world. The former very much want the world to be beautiful.

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When I was small I used to daydream about a blanket large enough to envelop the entire earth. We would cover it for a day or two, a short hibernation, then carefully cut our way out as new people. With time this dream has become patchy and worn and new visions have taken its place, more localized and insistent on stories, light, and mobility—ways to be bigger than a body would allow.

We speak of Chicago like a torn place. A paper target in a shooting range. The south side, “easier to find a gun than a fucking parking spot.”

Certain things will unravel a city, leaving it exposed.

I wear Chicago like a much-loved dress. It is seamless and forgiving at certain times. I slip in and out of it. I like to take it off and wear nothing. I like to hang it on the back of the door. I like to walk around in it. I like to search for flaws. To launder with care.

vi. jaywalking without streets

Once I found myself jaywalking in downtown Chicago. It was close to midnight. It is incredible to think of the number of disordered moments it took to get me there and suddenly I was just standing alone in the middle of an empty street, my breath a little gone. If I traced myself through the crossing of streets—my own, my parents', their parents' and further—I would eventually get to a place with no streets, only paths, then no paths, only unplanned earth, an empty place with no people or thought.

The thought of all the places and times that I have not been is exhausting. I cannot fathom a world with fewer crosswalks or rules for pedestrians.

vii. dead ends

When a person is gone or a place changes, or we lose a thing or a moment, it is instinctive to ache, to sit with our memories and thoughts as if they are air. Our life-worlds become like air. This clinging gets us nowhere. What we want is to grow into the type of people for whom it is instinct to exhale in a way that clears our lungs but empties us of nothing.

A friend said—to get to know a person is to walk a street with them without knowing when they will change directions or if, upon parting, your paths will ever cross again. There are other factors, too. Construction, a flower to catch your eye, a mean old woman dumping water as you pass. Sometimes your street leads directly to a dead end, and you must double back down the road, reroute. The world conspires to walk you certain streets without clues, not even the position of the sun. How many people in a lifetime of walking will I meet and lose track of?

If we meet, I hope to come at you slightly incorrect. To catch sight of you at a busy corner opposite me, to cross slowly against the traffic light, cars braking and honking, my arms open to greet you.

(portrait of ghosts at lake — Chicago, May 2010)

(portrait of lake with thumb and skyline — Chicago, May 2012)

with love,

imani e jackson / summer, 2013

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iejackson24@gmail.com