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Charlie Clements The site is close to Navy Pier, which evokes for me various childhood memories with my father who took me walking. The space is idyllic for a monument, calm and peaceful, which is occasionally disturbed by the racket created by buildings being erected. I could wander here for hours and get lost in reveries. I feel an invigorating return to my childhood when Navy Pier looked different, and yet it seems strangely the same.
I am tempted to mentally memorialize my father who took me walking to various green spaces such as this, as well as to Navy Pier. My father was a man of inextinguishable energy who did lots of walking and running. He spent time with me after work and on weekends. We would choose a historic site to visit. In a sense, I still sort of emulate him with his constant surplus of energy. Like him, I walk prodigiously and run whenever I get a chance. My father would have appreciated my robust constitution.
The Wrigley Building remains the same as when I was a child, historically untouched, creating realms of fantasy for me; in many senses, it epitomizes Carl Sandburg's Chicago, City of Big Shoulders. Because the Wrigley Building remains unchanged since I was a boy, I never fail to feel a sense of Toyland when I walk past it-a continual sense of child-like discovery. Sometimes I think I am looking at huge building blocks. This building evokes for me memories of my father who took me through extended tours of Chicago and its various historic sites.
I am attracted
to green spots such as these, since I often sit and write in open fields.
I can spend hours doing this if there's no intrusion. Otherwise,
I simply like to schedule walks in various historic parks where my writing
blends in with the scenery. On one such walk, I explored the Chicago Historical
Society, then spent the rest of the day in Lincoln Park Zoo and by the
lake where I wrote about the experience. |
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