So like I’m apt to do when things go wrong or I embarrass myself, I think of running away from the place where I’ve been planted.
I’ve done it before…running away to Cali 11 years ago, only to be led safely back to this frozen Ohio valley that kept calling my soul every time I looked at one of those Thomas Kincade paintings of a snow-covered cottage.
Money don’t matter tonight…
…well, yes it does, but I totally see what Prince meant when he sang that.
Today, running into the well-heeled folks to the homeless, I know that money does answer plenty of things, but I would give up a grip to have some decisions back right about now.
Alas, I let the view from loved ones Trump Tower room try and take my mind off those things, and delightfully distract me with flat TVs literally built into bathroom mirrors — the second time I’ve seen that in my life. (The first time being in their room at the Elysian downtown Chicago, one of only five or so 5-star hotels where I walk in as if I belong, because I do.)
And yet I know the $25 bottles of bling water are all a shallow facade, a weak substitute designed to sell people a dream…
But stopping by what used to be Grant Park on this seasonal warm night had me dreaming of another life…one easier with less stress and judging Ohio eyes as I took in the different races and smiling faces breezing around the cold ice skating park as folks fell and swished by to ’70s tunes blasted from the XM/Sirius station.
I didn’t even know that rink was there.
There are old haunts mixed with good and a few bad memories all around this city of big shoulders, but not as big as the broad shoulders of God that a rapper sang about on Da.T.R.U.T.H.’s The Whole Truth album…one who sang about his sin not being as public, but still there when “my posse told me to pause.”
Maybe it really is time for a change of cities.
If not Chicago then a Southern California city like San Diego or L.A.
“You ain’t going nowhere,” my friend said when I bounced the idea off her a bit. I know I’d miss some peeps and they’d miss me, and I try not to take my blessed friendships lightly anymore.
But nor do I want to stay somewhere if the chain is really broken and I am meant to leave.
Time will tell. God will tell me.
