Time bends and flips back on itself sometimes. In Lincoln Park where I once lived, it's always fall. I am always 23 or 24 and taking grad school classes in Victorian novels and middle English romances. The leaves are always red or yellow or brown. Always on the ground or just barely hanging on. The past couple movie outings have taken us to theaters in that neighborhood and every time it's like a trip back into memory, especially this time of year.
Different neighborhoods have different smells and sometimes its hard to discern what makes each unique. While obviously, certain places smell different in different seasons, LP always smells like crushed leaves, Italian food, and peppermint tea for me. That first fall, I remember waiting anxiously for my excess student loan funds check to come in the mail, mostly so I could buy food, but also so I could buy books, which I would read, prone on my single mattress, later a futon, devouring novels and bagels with cream cheese and tea while the city turned to fall for the first time outside my windows. When my sister was visiting, we'd walk around the streets at night and look in all the wealthy people's windows..the huge greystones and brick 3 stories lined with Pottery Barn furniture and big screen TVs. Meanwhile, until the following spring, I watched what few channels and a handful of VHSes on a small black and white screen in an apartment that barely fit a bed and my bathroom was technically in the closet.
In a year, I would be writing poems hardcore and sending out what would garner my first acceptance. In two years, I would have my degree and be back in Rockford, working at the elementary school. But that first fall, I floated a little more aimlessly. By spring, it would be obvious to me teaching was not for me, but then I still thought it was a possibility. I'd moved in over the summer, working briefly at a Starbucks before just kind of floating on credit cards till the semester started.
While that neighborhood is far too bougie and expensive to live in as anything but a student, its still one of my favorites for its tree-lined streets and tiny parks. Edgewater is bigger, newer, and the trees, a lot of them re-planted in the past three decades due to the ash-borers that terrorized the neighborhood. It's also cheaper and closer to the water. But the larger trees in Lincoln Park still stand and drop their leaves every fall on luxury SUV's and the occasional brick alleyway. In LP, it still smells and looks like 1997...
