When a prairie marries a swamp and their offspring decides to become a city, you get something like Chicago. When that offspring grows, survives a fire, and then weathers the strange storms of morality and temperance imposed upon it by other cities, you get Chicago’s early life. Prairies and Swamps are wild places: each is as cunning as the other, and each lives in fulfillment of various Natural demands. Chicago, the offspring of a prairie and a swamp, knew—once—how to live within the boundaries of natural commands. Chicago, once, attained a level of violence and mayhem at odds with other cities, quite simply because the impositions of those other cities (and towns, and sprawling, sparsely-populated gaggles of humanity) had other, perhaps even unnatural plans. Though still young, in comparison to other cities, Chicago has aged, and has come to deal with other conflicts. Though still the lovechild of the swamp and the prairie, Chicago—in its young adulthood—has decided to be something else. Something at odds with its lineage. It has learned to domesticate itself. It has learned how to drain the swamp and bulldoze the prairie. It has turned its back on what its parents were, and as a result, consumes and destroys them. Perhaps, in a way, this is natural, but the direction of this action has been skewed. Only recently, has the city learned how to embrace its swampy, grassy origin, but this acceptance goes only so far as the placement of native plants in decorative pots along wide, linear boulevards. The influence of nearby towns (and now, suburbs) maintains a great measure of ascendancy. There are times in which the city’s atavistic nature emerges: times when (even amid towers of crystal and steel) you can see the prairie, the swamp, and even the lake defining the city’s eastern flank. There are times, especially amid the older towers of crystal, stone, and steel, that prairie and swamp assert themselves with subtle grace. As Chicago stands on a flat place, its architecture tends toward lines and planes. This, I have learned, is the mark of the prairie. As onion-scented swamps, rife with skunk cabbage defined the very ground now marking the city’s center, the swamp has come to define itself in the city’s glass and in the city’s overall color. Conflict has arisen, however. At a time of particular ethnic strife among humans, Chicago weathered the strange storms of reverse migration. Dark people spilled into the city. They were forced into particular areas (in the city’s margins.) As they moved inward their numbers increased and the city’s margins became centralized. This caused the lighter, pinker inhabitants of the city to flee to open, prairie-defined areas. The suburbs. There, they sheltered against the “distasteful state of things” caused by browner people. There, they embraced their own, not-exactly-realistic lifestyles. The children of those reverse-migrants have since returned to the city, bringing the suburbs with them, and as a result, the city (a child of the swamp and the prairie) has been forced to ignore its “distasteful” nature. Suburban, cost-effective blandness, has come to replace the city’s native authenticity. Indeed, many of the satellite communities of the city are but pale imitations of the city itself and now those imitations have become a part of the city’s core identity. The stage-representation of a thing has come to replace the thing itself. And yet, in the old core of the city, atavistic things continue to assert themselves. The prairie is still there, as is the swamp. These are natural things, and I suspect in the end of it all, they will prevail. Until then, I can only hope that much of what remains of the city may hide in safety, gather strength, and blossom—again—when the time is right. I’m sure it will happen…. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great weekend/week.