So Long Twin Cities, Hello Chicago

IDHH Tour Day Seven, Pilsen Community Books

Pilsen Community Books event sign

People of Earth! Day seven began with the sweetness of departure; the middle schooler who co-hosted me went off to her third day of sixth grade; my dear old pal from the punk scene returned to collect a bike and lingered on the steps with me, weaving a new connection with my hosts Jamie and Angela from Moon Palace Books. I got a thumbs up for my outfit: “I like it,” my old pal said, “Keep ‘em guessing.” A succinct summation of my fashion—and my gender, now that I think about it.

If you’ve been on tour you can relate to this moment when we gather in leavetaking for a final drink from the cup of friendship; our time together so brief, so sweet, so potent. Tour veterans like my punk pal know just the right grip to hold me when 60% or more of my mind is already rolling south down the I-94. Likewise Jamie and Angela who host a rolling roster of writers understand the nature of an author abroad, uprooted, scattering seeds. The cross pollination continues: over the next two evenings Moon Palace would feature readings with works by Raki Kopernik and an event with my old friend Pablo de Ocampo, the Walker Art Center’s Director and Curator of Moving Image. Raki attended the Bryant Lake Bowl event and we saw Pablo at Extreme Noise.

Mic rolled up in the rental car with a bag of snacks from his own sweet farewell with his Baldies comrades, and by 8 am we rolled away from the deep history of Minneapolis down the long flat road to Chicago. The Minnesota weather snapped overnight from unbearable heat to autumn cool, a seasonal pivot familiar to northerners; departure felt appropriate ‘What’s it like,’ I asked Mic when we pulled into a fuel pump beside a man wearing a hat emblazoned with a flag from the losing side of the American Civil War, ‘for you to encounter that out here?’

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