May 13, 2016
That morning, you couldn’t have told me Nora and I would literally flag down a passenger train on the side of the train tracks in her neighborhood, waving a neon orange raincoat at the conductor like lunatics.
I would have laughed.
But we did it, having her head of now forest-green hair waving in the wind as we stared at the slowing train before it halted on the tracks right in front of us. We stared at the conductor and he stared back. And that’s when we realized. We were on the wrong side of it. We scrambled to throw our bags over our shoulders, hurriedly running around the front side of the train (which I think the conductor was yelling at us not to do), and we stumbled up the steps onto the main platform before finding some seats nearest to a window. It wasn’t my first experience on a train, per se, but it wasn’t an experience I was accustomed to, much less expecting at the beginning of the day.
It was an interesting change from Oklahoma, where nearly every I knew owned their own car.
The day itself was filled with a mixture of sightseeing and simple wandering, as Nora and I stopped by Chinatown to meet up with one of her good friends before wandering the district. Like any Chinatown I’ve been to thus far, this one similarly greeted its guest with a brightly colored, red gate that stood at the front of the district, the streets beyond lined with all manners of banners and shopfronts. The three of us picked up boba tea from Joy Yee, a sweet concoction of a drink, and sifted through the items in the stores around the area. Nora convinced me, somehow, to buy a mystery box.
“You never know what you’ll find, Sam.” She had shrugged her shoulders convincingly, picking out one of the boxes for herself as her friend did the same.
“I’m always up for a surprise,” I laughed, picking up a random one from the shelf, the newspaper wrapping hiding the contents from view.
It turns out I didn’t have much luck, since all I got from the mystery box was a bunch of small trinkets and Machop (ha!).
We had other plans for the evening–a magic show put on at one of the theaters downtown, The House Theatre of Chicago. Death and Harry Houdini, the revival of an original theatrical production, was held in a stripped down backstage setting, the lights bright and glaring overhead the monochrome props placed center-stage. Stacks of boxes littered the industrial shelving that shielded the rest of the crew, and a crane hung heavy over the crowd, a heavy crate dangling from it’s hook. Nora and I sat among a few of her friends in the small crowd below it, the only seating a few rows of bleachers surrounding the virtually vacant center.
The exterior lights dimmed.
And the show began.
Harry Houdini is so well-known that I would be surprised to find out if someone in the audience didn’t know who he was–his miraculous escapes were something made of both dreams and nightmares. That night, though, the magic was in what we didn’t see–some of the cleverly concealed escapes and the masked tricks evading our grasp.
I’ve always wanted to believe in magic–wanted to believe in something extraordinary–and nights like these would let me, if only for a couple of hours. A few audible gasps escaped as we watched, mesmerized by the actors of the night, and I felt the exhilaration of the Houdini’s escape as well as the cold dread of defeat against a faceless Death.
In the end, it always catches us.
As we walked back to catch the last subway to Nora’s after the show, I kept thinking about the fearlessness some have in the face of their very real fears–the ones so tangible and terrifying that most would stop just short of success. Death and defeat. Rejection. Ostracism. I haven’t ever really considered myself fearless–mostly fearful–and instead of jumping headfirst into anything I always think ten steps ahead and halt myself just short of starting.
But this escape to Chicago did grant me one thing.
It helped me realize I was capable of change.
Sam