If you unbuild it, they will come.

Imagine my glee a few weeks ago to see actual masonry work happening under the vinyl facade of this nondescript building.

A restored brick
two-flat, I let myself dream. Historical integrity. Aesthetic charm. Care and feeding of a long-neglected block.

The disappointment set in a couple days later, when the
expected ta-da led to this:

The whole repair job had been structural. Surgical. With no real regard for the building's potential.

I guess I'm judging the book by its cover. But when you see the contrast between shell and body, clothing and skin, it's tough not to carry some longing.

So here's my noisy plea to the world: tear up those carpets, people. Strip off the siding. Wipe away the make-up and show what's underneath.

How to become my friend for life

1) After I've boarded the Belmont bus heading west, damp and wilted from a nighttime rainstorm, say, "Has anyone ever told you you look like Julie Christie?"

2) When I turn to rebuff you with, "Nope. Never heard that one before," smile and say, "I'm not trying to pick you up" with such straightforward conviction that I instantly believe you.

3) Say, "Not Julie Christie across the board, just in McCabe & Mrs. Miller," which I admit I haven't seen. Tell me it's great. That I should see it.

4) When I mention my favorite Julie Christie movie (Don't Look Now), scratch your head at first until I start filling in details and we both in unison say, 'That little girl in the red raincoat!'

5) Tell me you're a playwright. You've been working at it a long time, first in Los Angeles and now in Chicago. Ask what I do for a living.

6) When I tell you I work in affordable housing, smile and say that's good work, and that you've lived in supportive housing for years.

7) Start filling in details of your own life, including the fact that you have a history of drug abuse, mostly heroin and cocaine. Tell me you used dirty needles and now have HIV and are dealing with all that baggage. Tell me all of this with such composure and gentle intelligence that I have to question all my old assumptions -- ones I didn't even realize I had -- about addiction.

8) Tell me about your play, that it's a monologue about these very experiences that ran in a little storefront theater for a few weeks in April, and you're hoping to put it up somewhere else soon.

9) After I congratulate you on the play and ask how long you've been clean, completely disarm me and say, "I'm not clean."

10) Talk about the frailties of American recovery programs. Agree that there's too much Jesus and not enough self-determination.

11) When my stop comes up (long before yours does; you're still heading west), look me warmly in the eye and wish me well. Have a firm handshake. Use my name when you say good-bye, even though I've shamefully forgotten yours.

12) Get stuck in my head for the next few weeks. Remind me there's more than one way to be a good person.

Those Catholics know how to throw a party

In honor of the neighborhood festival season, a sentence you couldn't have convinced me would someday come out of my mouth: Tonight we saw a glee club doing a capella versions of Gang of Four and
Dead Kennedys songs on the steps of a Catholic church, adjacent to a Catholic grade school where my friend Peggy is the principal.

For the equally befuddling but charming p.s.: They opened for a Led Zeppelin cover band.

Happy summer!

(Almost) 13 Ways of Looking at a Cauliflower

We planted, we grew, we harvested, we diced, we grilled, we consumed.

(Who'd have thought that something so pure could grow from the lead and ashes of the city?)

The Devil You Know

They say it's best to know thine enemy, and apparently mine is a good-natured man in an aging yellow station wagon.

Some of you remember the saga of seven months ago, with a chronic and belligerent 5am horn honker, who finally mended her ways, but not without the intervention of my good friend Thuan and a helpful officer of the law.

We've had seven months now of relative quiet. Seven months of decent sleep. But lo, about two weeks ago, which some of you may recall as 'the single worst week of my adult professional life,' the honking horn was back.

Can you add injury to insult to injury? If so, that's the conceit of this story.

But, if I dare say it out loud, maybe it's not the moral.

This morning I heard the horn again, checked the clock, verified the inhuman hour, put a jacket over my tank top, and headed out in bare feet to confront the driver. What I expected was the horrible woman of the last series of episodes, speeding away, middle finger flailing from the window of her SUV, horn blazing in victory.

What I got instead was the contrition of a humble man. In a humble car. Who has to pick up a coworker at 5am to get them both to work on time. Who probably doesn't have a cell phone. Who speaks very little English. Whose apology -- despite the fact that I couldn't tell if he was saying 'Sorry I'll have to continue to wake you up every morning' or 'Sorry; it won't happen again' -- was categorically sincere.

Tomorrow, I suppose, is the litmus test. Or maybe next week, or the week after that. In my heart of hearts, I believe I'm going to hear that horn again. Quite possibly again and again. It's entirely plausible, in fact, that my neighbor could work the early shift for the rest of her days, so this will become a standard intrusion sure as taxes.

But is it possible, now that I know the driver means me no harm, that I can get past the sense of personal assault? That I can see this not as a targeted offense but as a neutral pattern in the lives of my neighbors?

Might it not even become a source of comfort, like the revving engines of the Greyhounds when I lived above that Missouri bus station in 1989, and felt secure in knowing people were out there, living their lives, at all hours of the day, so not even the darkest moment needed to seem isolating, hollow, or stark? It was just people of the world doing their worldly machinations, and maybe that's something worth making peace with.

Let it Rain

Lots of people have been complaining about summer's refusal to land in Chicago this year. Me? I've relished it. Sure, there've been plenty of gray days to turn a bad mood lousier . . . But on the up side, I haven't had to break out the sprinkler even once for our garden, which shows signs of almost ridiculous abundance. And true, the scarves and jackets remain in high rotation, but I've been able to sleep under blankets at night, which tends to be kinder to my insomnia.

Above all, though, it makes you appreciate a day like today, when you can bike in shirtsleeves to the farmers' market and buy lamb shoulder at one booth, pickled mushrooms at another, and tall, weedy asparagus at yet another.

When art happens spontaneously in a prairie garden you yourself had a hand in creating.

And when tomatoes are already in bloom at the new Corner Farm, which two months back was an empty parking lot.

Last summer never got hot enough that we longed for sweater weather. We cursed the start of winter; we spit on its name. Not so this season, when we've had to basically beg for summer. We've had to love it furiously with the aching sum of our hearts. Now it's here, all the sweeter for the wait.

Here's to keeping it simple

Maybe this is a sad basis for date night, but between a bath for Inez, a bottle of white hauled back from our trip to Mendocino, and a dinner of Wisconsin cheddar, local oyster mushrooms from the farmers' market, and salad greens plucked from our very backyard, this is honestly the most fun I've had in weeks.