On the previous night, there had been wind. Rain dampened the city; it gleamed on window-glass and on sidewalk concrete, catching the colors of sodium vapor streetlight, neon, and flashing incandescents in the gem-colors of traffic control. On the following night, there was warmth, and so the city’s nocturnal light did not gleam in beads and in traffic-splatters and irregular, puddle sheets. On the following night, there were crowds in downtown Chicago: an enormous and irregular mass of people beneath the marquee lights of the Chicago Theater. They were something of a composite organism, an amoebic colony-thing—loud with its own numerous voices and huddled in theater light. There was traffic. I heard the unimpressive, almost anemic sound of coins in a battered, dingy, oversized cup. I heard laughter, and I was somewhat amused by the human-composite amoeba across the street. I was more interested—however—in the darkness and the spots of light gleaming within it. I walked with Corey. I snapped photographs on a northbound course along State Street. I knew we had limited time. Our destination—a part of it, anyway—loomed 12 feet above the State Street and Lake Street intersection. A few bedraggled and confused pigeons marked that location, swooping down to within an inch of sparse traffic. Rust and girders, grime and advertisements in yellow and black told of the elevated tracks marking the northern edge of The Loop. In our northbound walk, we ignored the human-composite amoeba beneath the brilliant glare of the Chicago Theater marquee. We ignored the School of the Art Institute students, returning to their dorms and student apartments after a night of too much. I watched as one of them spilled the contents of her stomach, shortly before spilling (and energetically scattering) the contents of her purse: I found it odd that such spillage involved an internal organ and a sartorial accessory of disturbingly similar shape and size. I suppose that the night in question was a night hard on her various bladder-organ shapes. She made quite a mess: less from high-pressure, upward ejection of the night’s wasted alcohol than from the existentially messy exuberance of her eventual, flailing droop to the ground. I don’t know if it was a slow-motion pratfall or an interpretive dance. Coins, lipstick, vital bits of identity fanned from her wallet, scattered away from her and the splatter of her stomach’s efforts to cleanse itself; the hem of her miniskirt migrated toward her neck and one of her shoes continued a particular southbound trek without her. The friends with her, made sure to hold her hair back, to keep her from blocking pedestrian traffic, and to keep much of the pedestrian traffic from walking off with the spilled contents of her purse. They scooped and nudged her nearly upright (avoiding the wetter parts of her mess) and eventually shoehorned her into the crude approximation of a woman taking a rest against a storefront. They looked for her still-wandering shoe, but the shoe, being a smart one, had probably just walked home and waited for her there. …I was not interested in a graceless embarrassment of a drunken girl. I was far more interested in what was across the street, and so I snapped a photo of that, instead. Corey and I had spent the day with Tara and Bill. We were on the way back to Corey’s apartment in Albany Park, for a bit of night-time rest, before returning to spend the following day with Tara, Bill, and the welcome absence of a drunk girl with one wandering shoe. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.