What began with Mexican children playing in an alley ended somewhere between worlds. It was hot and muggy. There had been rain the previous night: virulent flashes of arc-welder lightening followed by indolent, rolling thunder. There are nights when rain in Chicago is a polite whisper. What the city endured that night was a tempestuous, hammering rage. It lasted until daybreak. It lasted until well after daybreak. By the latest hours of the afternoon, the clouds, torn and ragged gave way to the sun. The scent of charcoal and meat filled the air. Mariachi trumpets kept time with hasty accordions that gave shape to the strange, rapid-tempo polka that defines much of popular Mexican music. I can understand the relationships between the waltz and the polka; they are cousins, one slower than the other, and upon weekly immersion in a neighborhood now dominated by Mexican culture, I can hear a third cousin to this venerable musical family. I don’t know the name of this music in the Spanish of Mexico, but I recognize it as it wafts from storefronts and gaudy, hyper-polished cars, from apartment windows, or some distant park. I heard it yesterday, as children played in an alley, skipping over a puddle wedged discretely between the bare concrete of a parking area, and the blacktop of the alley. Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood holds numerous charms. It is also—like any neighborhood in any major city—a paradox. It is interesting. It is mind-numbingly dull. It is an inquisitive anthropologist’s endlessly-intriguing experiment trapped in fail-on condition. It is nothing worthy of notice. So much of human life is mundane, after all, no matter how interesting the language in which such life might find expression. With my cigarette finished and sunlight appearing for the first time yesterday, I went back into the apartment and roused Corey from his contemplation of newspaper, duct-tape, and a window in need of modification. I was thirsty. He was thirsty. We both wanted something not contained in the nearest refrigerator. We agreed to find cans of something cold at the nearest open store. Chicago’s Albany park neighborhood holds numerous charms. It is also—like any neighborhood in any major city—a paradox. It is interesting for the tinges of Arabic, Korean, and Romanian that spark through the streets like strange, sentient energy. It is mundane in the conversations of fruit vendors, or plump, black-haired ladies selling chalupas and steamed corn, flavored with mayonnaise, powdered cheese of Mexican pedigree, and powdered hot pepper. It is sometimes garish and red, like peppers, or softly green like the skin of fresh chayotes(the seed is the best part.) After the rain yesterday's rain, Albany Park was something else. Where children played, bare moments before, the puddle-dappled alley was empty. The puddles were still, though a toy car sat patiently for its owner to retrieve it. Ahead, I saw something dream-like. I saw a puddle. I saw the different textures of asphalt and concrete. I saw bricks: face-bricks and back-bricks, and telephone lines. They were not a part of my world, though I recognized them. They belonged to someone else, and I—by the accident of an late afternoon walk—saw them and thought that they—like a child’s toy car—were momentarily abandoned, and waited for their owners to come back for them. I knew a lot about the bricks, the telephone lines, and even the blue sky above them all; but I recognized them as something separate from me and from the world I inhabit. I saw another place: not a reflection, but an inverse-world, crammed into the strange, shifting space on the surface of a puddle. What I saw is what I have presented here. There is minimal post work done, aside from resizing and a tiny increase in contrast. ...As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting!