Welcome, February.

Dear Diary,

My friend Rita and I got together for a good 4 mile run on Wednesday before catching a ride up to The Vic in Wrigleyville for their Brew and View series. I didn't really know what to expect---I knew that it was an old vaudeville theatre that hosted concerts and on their off nights played double or triple features for $5. Wednesday night's package was a triple, but we paid for a double of Fantastic Mr. Fox and Rushmore.

There was no seating left by the time we got to the theatre, and we opted to sit on the first tier of flooring----the whole place was set up like a Las Vegas supper club with terraces of bench seating and tables tossed around hap hazardly. It was dark and noisy, and sitting cross-legged on the floor and craning my neck up at the screen made me feel even more like a kid sitting on the floor of the city hall or high school gymnasium in Hebron, ND. Except for the beer. There was a private party in the upstairs of the theatre and we could periodically hear yelpings and shouting. Also, the projector cut out for about 10 minutes in the middle of the movie. But you know what? NO ONE CARED. We paid $5 and were watching a great movie surrounded by a bunch of other Chicagoans trying to fill their Wednesday night.



Mr. Fox was great---watching stop motion animation always reminds of this great PBS show my brother and I used to watch that was hosted by James Earl Jones called Long Ago and Far Away. Somebody spent time curating and programming that show with claymation (a sad/weird story about a circus), stop motion puppets (The Fool and the Flying Ship, a five day extravaganza!), delicate animation with pastels (Bunny, the story of a brother learning about his autistic little sister), and short stories with kids playing almost all the roles (the story of a boy deciding to go and live in a tree to escape his stressful family life, where neighborhood kids would send bologna sandwiches up to him in pails he lowered down). I owe much of my love of performance to that show.



After Fantastic Mr. Fox ended, most people left so we grabbed some cushiony seats, extra beers, and a box of Dots. I haven't watched Rushmore for a long time on the big screen, but the combination of watching the movie with Rita (who had never seen it), Stacey and her box of Dots, and hearing the familiar music and characters gave me the sense of belonging in Chicago. I feel the same way after seeing a surprisingly good play or a musical performance that puts me in a trance. How am I one of the few people here, in this room, able to take in this once-in-a-life-time note, line, or moment in front of art? The note will never be sung again by that performer ever again. Not to our audience. Being that happy just based on what I am hearing, seeing, or feeling, takes me back to my childhood when I saw something for the first time---a lizard, a gun, flowers from mom's garden, or the BBC's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. So even when I'm sitting on the floor of an old theatre in Chicago surrounded by a bunch of hipsters and Wrigleyville students, I feel like that little kid on our farm again.

I took the suspension of disbelief home with me. My husband and I both have jobs we like, we're meeting people we would have otherwise have never met, living iamongst a culture we knew nothing about, seeing art that is being performed no where else, and going home at night happy to see each other and hear about our best friend's day. In a city where there are million dollar mansions down the street from me, hoards of people who can afford to put their names on buildings, and Bentleys being driven down State Street... sometimes I feel so lucky.