Crosswalking

I do most of my walking in Chicago. I do it selfishly, all alone, in search of something anonymous, yet universal. People smoke, or lean, or fight, or build, like me in transit between one something and another. This streetside limbo is beautiful to me. The functional, shelter-to-shelter hustle of college does nothing for these aesthetic cravings; a pavement odyssey in New Haven plays like brass to my city’s gilded views. In the town of skyscraper, Wright, Van der Rohe and the Black Belt, my leisure takes on meaning—a directionless ritual creates direction, as my feet and mind absorb the city that has only ripened in my absence.

I am hungry and the city feeds. You haven’t heard? Urban landscapes are the final frontier, showing public culture in high relief. In foreign cities I eschew public transport, instead stomping out miles of cheap anthropological thrills. In my mind I wear a pith helmet and khaki explorer’s gear; I am coasting down a concrete river, looking at the natives in …