physical education

Manus verò has ipsas, totumque hoc corpus meum esse, quâ ratione posset negari? nisi me forte comparem nescio quibus insanis, quorum cerebella tam contumax vapor ex atrâ bile labefactat, ut constanter asseverent vel se esse reges, cùm sunt pauperrimi, vel purpurâ indutos, cùm sunt nudi, vel caput habere fictile, vel se totos esse cucurbitas…?

But how could I deny that I possess these hands and this body, and withal escape being classed with persons in a state of insanity, whose brains are so disordered and clouded by dark bilious vapors as to cause them pertinaciously to assert that they are monarchs when they are in the greatest poverty; or clothed in gold and purple when destitute of any covering; or that their head is made of clay, their body of glass, or that they are gourds?

Descartes, “Meditation 1″

I have a spanner in my works, a hitch in my git-along, a bunch of wires crossed somewhere. but it is not visible to the assisted or unassisted eye. people scrutinize me, and at length they say, “Well, you look great.” I have left behind a whole labful of blood at my HMO, vial by vial, and every last sample looks good. clean, healthy, vigorous. my T cells are great. thyroid’s fine. they cultured my blood and nothing grew. my head is not made of clay and my body is not made of glass. I’m just about the healthiest sick person I know.

but, as Descartes so famously wrote in Latin, our senses can trick us. they can give us the wrong information. I am almost always cold now; I have wished for a heated rock, like the kind they give to lizards, to lie upon. since the fall I have wished for a heat wave, not unheard of in Los Angeles even in January or March, but there has instead been an excess of cold and wind and rain. I’m walking down the street toward the bank, and the wind is coming off the ocean, three miles away, and I haven’t brought my jacket. it’s the end of May, and I am aware that the Pacific is very cold and very deep. is this inaccurate information? or is it just a little too much information, more than I was meant to know?

my temperature is normal, every time I take it, but I am always cold. there is, after all, a thirty degree temperature difference between my body and the air; this is the kind of thing of which one usually isn’t aware. I think I would prefer not to know it the way I know it.

I started physical therapy a little while ago. this kind of physical therapy is a little more complicated than the kind you get when you’ve got a bad knee or a frozen shoulder. it makes my head hurt trying to comprehend it. I go in and ask, why does my neck hurt? why does my back hurt? and I don’t always get the same answer. I have felt that my neck hurts from the effort of holding my head up all day; and this is the truth. but it also seems that my nerves are misfiring, that I am not getting the right information. the physical therapist does some kind of complicated mapping thing that moves from the palms of my hands to the backs of my hands, where he writes numbers.  then he maps out the numbers on the back of my neck, on each side, to correspond with the numbers on my hands.  can I tell where the touch is?  this is hard work.  my brain can grab all kinds of arcane information and it can do it fast – but I can’t tell where the touch is.  finally I say:  I know you’re touching me, but I can’t tell where!

my left hand is colder than my right hand. I rub the back of my neck: you know, I say, I’ve noticed my neck gets kind of numb. he nods, as though this is what he expected to hear.  I am supposed to keep the numbers on my hands and practice on my own neck.  it’s like learning again to drive a car, he says. I look in the mirror at my own hand. I remember an exhibit of preserved, dissected bodies that I went to, how it was full of people pointing and saying to their friends: that’s where my knee went bad!  look, that’s where Bill had his operation!  I want to look inside myself, to see where the disconnect is, to see where the wires went crossed.  but I can’t do that;  I can only close my eyes and try to interpret the information I’m getting.

maybe it is true that it actually hurts to live, but maybe we are not supposed to be aware of that, most of the time.

like Billy Pilgrim, I have come unstuck in time. except I don’t get to pay any visits to the future, only to the past. I am driving a little bit too slow on the way to the grocery store and someone is tailgating me; that person is me, back there. I’m tailgating myself, because I am always in a hurry, and I don’t see what excuse that person in front has for going so slow. I am at the grocery store and I’m moving a little too slowly in the aisles. someone is impatiently trying to get by me, because they are in a hurry. I am that person, trying to get past the person who is unaccountably slow. why is she so slow? she doesn’t look old or halt or lame. she must just be in a world of her own. she needs to pay better attention. but I am the person who is moving too slow, and I have never paid so much attention in my life.

I have wished for a cane, or a sign around my neck, or some way of telling people that there is actually something wrong with me, so that other person in the aisle, who is me, might spare a second of understanding.

in landscape architecture school, for one class we all went around campus with a wheelchair, taking turns trying to get up and down ramps and through doors. we had a guest instructor, a wry architect who used a wheelchair, accompanying us as we wandered up and down the steep campus on a summer evening. Architects, he said, like to put their buildings up on plinths. “As if to bring them closer to God,” he said with a flourish. some of the ramps were OK, some of them were just stupid. when nobody thought about the ramp from the beginning, there is no end to the awkwardness that can result when you try to stick one on.

one year, I remember, my ex-husband was recovering from an injury; we went to the wild animal park in San Diego and rented a wheelchair and I pushed him around.  there’s a lot of steep hills at that place and he is not small.  this is information about a steep hill that you normally don’t get. standing at the bottom of a steep hill and looking up to the top of it, your interpretation of what you see suddenly changes.

someone once told me, Disability is a state we all will move through in our lives.  some of us stay there only a short time, others find themselves citizens of that state for much longer. I’ve been on crutches, I’ve hurt myself many times, I’ve gotten a little bit of education in the past.  but it’s so easily forgotten when you don’t think you’ll need to know it again.

the art historian in the family told me there was someone – an art historian or critic – who used to go to museums and rent a wheelchair, though he was perfectly able-bodied, just so he could sit and look at the art as long as he damn well pleased. I can walk; I don’t need a wheelchair; but I have considered it, being so short of art these days.

I went to a gallery, just a small one, and brought a friend for company, and to assuage my fear of suddenly becoming so exhausted I can’t drive myself home.  (that almost happened to me once a few months ago, and I can’t remember ever having been so afraid.)  it was an exhibit about water.  in some parts of the world, women spend almost all their lives either going to get the water or bringing it back home.  there was a five gallon jug on the floor that you could lift, to see what that would be like.  I couldn’t lift it. this might be a little more information than I was meant to know.

I could stay right here on my computer and look at all the art and photography I want; I don’t need to exert the effort to go to a gallery. but I want to stand up, to walk, to go up the stairs, to walk from picture to picture and look at each one: close to, far away, tilting my head sideways. I would like to just look at the art, but I have to pay so much attention to how I’m doing, if my neck can take it, if I need to stop yet.

before, if I was going about my business and felt this kind of fatigue and muscle pain, I would worry, because it might mean I was coming down with the flu, and I would have to start making plans about how I would try to “fight it off.” the thought of losing two weeks, or a week, or  a day, to illness would make my mind race with plans about how I could avoid it. now, I have to interpret the information differently: the immediate threat is less, provided I don’t get stranded somewhere with no way to get home, but the much deeper problem is the one the back of my mind is always working on, almost every minute. I can’t carry the water, I can’t be in the trenches, I can’t do the heavy lifting. so what, now, is my usefulness?

I stand farther back from a picture and lean my back against the wall.  I do this a lot.  I was introduced to someone and had to lean against the wall to talk to her. I wonder, do people notice that I am doing this?  do they notice that my hands and legs tend to shake?  if they notice, how do they interpret the information?  how shall I explain myself?

I’m going to my gym, which seems so familiar, like something a healthy person does to get more healthy, like something I used to do before, when I always thought I wasn’t healthy enough. the physical therapist wants me to get in the pool, for ten minutes. or I might get on a machine, for ten minutes, at a tenth of the speed I used to maintain for an hour. and that will be the one thing I will do today.  I go up the stairs, the same ones that I used to go up two at a time, and I’m really slow, grabbing the handrails. but I am taking the stairs, and not the elevator. I am not in a hurry. someone is brushing past me, impatiently. if I had to explain to that very fit and energetic person, who is me, what exactly is wrong with me, and label myself with the disease with the stupid name, what would that person think of me? would they think me deluded?

my head is not made of clay and my body is not made of glass. but I know that other person on the stairs has a barely-articulated suspicion that maybe there is something wrong in my head, that makes me mistaken about my hands and my body. the reason I know this is that the other person on the stairs is me, and not so long ago.

.

Truly, though our element is time,

We are not suited to the long perspectives

Open at each instant of our lives.

They link us to our losses; worse,

They show us what we have as it once was,

Blindingly undiminished, just as though

By acting differently we could have kept it so.

– Philip Larkin, “Reference Back”

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the doctrine of signatures

Borago officinalis

I first got interested in plants and gardens when I was about 9 or 10.  I still have my ancient, yellowed, taped-together copy of “The Forgotten Art of Growing, Gardening, and Cooking With Herbs”,  a book that profoundly shaped all my pioneer-woman fantasies for years thereafter.

I was a self-taught plant nerd.  I spent many hours absorbed in plant books after that first herb book. I learned about other kinds of plants, but I was always especially interested in herbs, and their very distinct personalities and smells. there was something deeply mysterious about the way herbs smelled; the seeming kinship between the smells of lavender and rosemary; the bizarre way that a certain kind of mint smelled like chocolate, and a type of thyme smelled like lemon. what did it all mean? and it was fun to think of using herbs for medicine, concocting remedies for unimportant or imagined illnesses, needing no adult to dispense them.

I read in my various herb books about the “doctrine of signatures,” the old idea that medicinal herbs had some visible trait that would inform you of their beneficial uses.  it might be that a plant had a leaf shaped like a lung, or little pores on the leaves indicating it was good for the skin, or a red root to let you know it was good for the blood. this now seems like rank superstition, but in fact in its time it was considered advanced science.  if this kind of idea came in part from folklore or backcountry healer traditions, to make it a ‘doctrine’ in Renaissance science was to recreate it as a specialized body of knowledge, only for the top experts to understand and apply properly.  it’s a few short steps from doctrine to dogma, from that which might be useful to that which we believe because we are told to do so.

people are pattern-seeking animals.  we have the ability to read our environment in minute detail and keenly observe its subtleties; we also have, it seems, an equally powerful ability to assign incorrect meanings to what we see, to detect a pattern that retroactively fits what we have already decided must be the truth.

Lavandula officinalis

last year, I had an illness that caused me pain.  it was incorrectly diagnosed at first, and I had a few months of unnecessary suffering before an identity and a name was finally assigned to this illness. once it had a name, it also had a treatment; an enormous relief, since I was so exhausted from the pain. or at least I thought that was the reason I was exhausted. I thought at the time I had only one illness.

I was tired in the fall.  I know I was footsore and exhausted in Chicago, but I would expect that after so many hours and miles on my feet.  I’ve done the same thing in other cities, from Paris to Seattle, so my tiredness in Chicago didn’t seem out of line.  and of course I was trying to do too much last fall, because I’m always trying to do too much. I’d gone through years of short sleep and overwork; tired I knew about.  but gradually it became clear that this was something else.  something was very, very wrong.

I have been very fortunate.  I have health insurance and conscientious doctors.  they’ve been extremely assiduous in ruling out every disease that could possibly fit my symptoms.  I’ve had tests upon tests, tests for diseases you never heard of, and have been scrutinized from every angle.  and nobody has accused me (at least to my face) of malingering, faking, or hysteria.

I have been very unfortunate.  the diagnosis and the name I eventually got for my illness is not a clearly lighted path to treatments and cures.  instead it is just a faintly medical-sounding way of saying “we don’t actually know what’s wrong with you.”  there is an observable pattern of symptoms and many other people have had the same thing, so at some point they came up with a name, and they gradually decided it’s (probably) not something wrong in the head, and the official line is that it is a Real Disease, though a deeply mysterious one, and presenting enormous temptation for the assignment of meanings that very likely have nothing to do with the real cause.

nobody can tell me when I’ll get better, or even if I ever will.  there are no cures or even good treatments for this thing. there are multiple plausible theories about what causes it, and some of them don’t even require a belief in the moral weakness of the sufferer.  it has a stupid name, that makes it sound like I just got kinda tired, that doesn’t adequately convey how much it hurts, how miserable it actually is.

there will be no more miles of urban exploration for me for a while.  how long a while?  I don’t know.  at the moment, my range of motion, the landscape available to me to travel, has become very small.

people are pattern-seeking animals.  did I mention that already?  for this reason, mystery illnesses are very unsatisfactory.

everyone wants to figure out what happened to cause the bad thing, and thereby be reassured that they, somehow, can think of a way to protect themselves from a similar catastrophe.  people stare at car wrecks for the same reason.  detecting a pattern seems to offer the possibility of safety, of control. I understand this to be human nature, and I don’t resent it.  much.

surely medicine has got everything figured out? there are no monsters at the edge of the map where the known world ends…right?

there was one doctor…just one…who brightly said to me, “Now that you’re disabled, this might be a great opportunity for personal growth!”

because I was taught ethics and morals, I showed great restraint and did not kill her.  but I could have.  even in my weakened state.  I may be disabled, but I can still fight dirty.

I can’t yet speak as though I have “adjusted to my condition.”  I don’t quite yet have the trick mastered – of being cheerful, being accepting, being philosophical, making the best of my situation.  I understand from the movies and from popular magazines that these are things I eventually ought to become.  and if I am only determined enough, have an indomitable enough spirit, I might find my way to the miracle cure or otherwise overcome “my condition.”  I recognize that narrative.  it is a very compelling pattern.  I would like to look at myself and see that narrative unfolding.

or, perhaps, I could righteously seek justice against somebody or something that has done this to me.  it is very unsatisfactory to be in so much pain, and so angry, and have no appropriate target for my anger.

well, what I would really like is to have the power to fix myself, since I like fixing stuff and figuring stuff out.  as there are for all mystery illnesses, there are various forms of snake oil available to me for “my condition,” obtainable at varying levels of expense and trouble.  but I don’t think anybody could mix up a batch of snake oil that would meet my exacting standards, or be as good as what I would concoct for myself.  I would require it to be very green, and very thick, and very smelly, so that you would know it meant business.  there would be nothing gentle or contemplative or woo-woo about my snake oil.  it would be the nastiest stuff imaginable, and nobody would ever mistake it for yoga or meditation or aromatherapy.  it would have nothing to do with correcting my various mistaken attitudes.  it would just do the damn job.

when they finally figure out what causes the disease with the stupid name — and I do believe that they will, and that it is not actually a psychological, spiritual, or moral condition —  I hereby predict the following: expert-types will look back at all these years of people being pointlessly, miserably sick, and say of COURSE, it is so OBVIOUS, this disease looks EXACTLY like it should, it is so plainly and patently a disease of (auto-immunity, endocrine disruption, viral infection, broken mitochondria, demonic possession, pick your favorite).  look at that big fat signature right there, the clearest possible sign of what we were actually dealing with all along. the pattern was so clear!

and people will forget that they ever attributed the mystery illness to “stress”, or the hurlyburly of modern life, or suppressed emotions, or whatever. just as we’ve now forgotten that people once thought grief caused cancer, or that melancholy temperament caused TB, or that worry, tension, and overwork caused ulcers — what today we would call “stress.”  (at this point, I am just about ready to declare “stress” the least useful word in the English language.)

in the meantime, because there isn’t any good snake oil for what I’ve got in my HMO’s formulary, there isn’t much left to do besides hang around and wait for something to change.  and do the little things that I can, which some days seem sort of OK, and some days feel like a small, faint, pathetic shadow of actual life.

fresh air, green stuff, and sunshine are not really considered serious modern medicine, but I do actually have some doctors smart enough to recommend them.  and I, in my turn, am smart enough to know that there is actual research about the health effects of exposure to the green stuff.  and I’m saving up a good rant about the lack of non-strenuous public open space in Los Angeles, not that I would be the first to make such a rant, but being sick gives a whole new angle on the urban experience.  what I wouldn’t give for a dopey little pocket park or a nondescript urban square just down the street.  I would totter down there, sit on a bench, and be buddies with people twice my age who would understand what it is to have to hobble and totter when what you would really like to do is climb mountains and explore cities.

I got a for-real camera, since I shouldn’t let a little thing like being disabled stop me from spending lots of money on new toys, and was promptly intimidated by the manual.  so much left to learn.  would I once have thought I’d be grateful to have the chance to lie around, catch up on my reading, and learn how to use a fancy new camera?  it’s not a chance if it’s not a choice.  it’s not a bad thing to do some reading, but what I’d really like to do is to go back to Paris.

I understand that is not an option right now.  I even understand what a tremendous privilege it has been to get to go once, and that it is greedy to want more, and even greedier to want to go on to see London and Tokyo and Amsterdam and Cape Town and all the other cities on my endless wish list, to see the rain forests and the outback and the Northern Lights.  I understand that the ability to see new things with your own eyes is a rarely granted temporary privilege, revocable at any time for any reason, and that I am not owed an explanation.  I understand all these things.

however, as a poet once wrote:  I know. but I do not approve.  and I am not resigned.

some past september

Wedding photography in process in the Lurie Garden, Millennium Park, Chicago

I admit it: I just can’t get enough of watching people take wedding photos in public places. I’ve seen it happening in cities all over – in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Diego, Boston, and here in Los Angeles.  I wish I’d gotten more pictures of the scenes I’ve witnessed. sometime I’ll have to go down to the Mulholland Fountain or the Rose Garden in Expo Park, both high-volume wedding picture locations, and try to get some shots of the action.

I’m fascinated watching the photographers set up the shots, and I always wonder exactly what vision they’re trying to capture.  I suppose I recognize, in this lengthy and elaborate manipulation of people and backgrounds, some (noble? foolish? doomed?) impulse that also tempts me – to pin down a moment that might be gone before you get a chance to notice it.  I’ve written about this here before, of course.  and I have the feeling I will again.

I didn't get the shot! they're taking a picture of the shadow of the bride and groom kissing.

I was so rushed and tired and footsore when I was in Millennium Park, it probably colors my impressions of the place somewhat, my disappointment and frustration that it didn’t add up to a more coherent experience. nevertheless, I do think the place is absolutely jammed with missed opportunities. and of course, while freely admitting I am biased, I absolutely do believe that the challenge of getting all the disparate elements of a major public space to sing together in harmony is the kind of job that landscape architects should be doing, at the highest levels.

it's mean to pick on this kind of thing. but I saw a lot of it.

I know nothing about the master planning process that the park went through or what the overall landscape vision might have been; I can only report on my experience, and make a few educated guesses about what happened.  I also feel hampered by not having had the opportunity to see more of Chicago’s fantastic parks system, to understand better how Millennium Park did and didn’t fit in to the overall system. Chicago, of course, is famous for both its architecture and its public art, and I got only the barest glimpses of these things. but when I’ll be able to go back and study Chicago properly, I just don’t know.

Millennium Park has such outsized showpieces with such forceful personalities; that they overpower “the landscape” might seem like a very specialized way to express the problem of the place.  I think that phrase “the landscape” has kind of a fuzzy-muzzy meaning to most civilians outside the confines of the architecture world, and certainly doesn’t seem to belong in the heart of the city.  but the “landscape” in “landscape architecture” doesn’t just mean the dirt under your feet.

there’s a skeleton under a place that most people don’t see, and usually aren’t consciously aware of – the result of a whole series of big and little decisions: where will all the things you need to include go? how will people get from one part of the place to another, horizontally and vertically?  how wide will the paths will be and how they will be paved? what will happen at the edge of a space to tell you where its boundary is?  what kind of trees will you plant – canopy, skyline, specimen – and where, and how will you give them what they need to live?  what kind of benches, lights, water fountains, trash containers will you order? and then there is a whole other set of decisions about what to say NO to, what won’t be allowed, what should be edited.

these are all tough decisions, and they get argued over and second-guessed more times than you could possibly imagine.  but they are the backbone of a place.  they hold it up, make it proud of itself, make you experience it as a place, not a placemat.

it is hard to express the essence of a place. it is even harder to articulate exactly what is missing, what a place could have been.  but one message from Millennium Park seems unavoidable - big “gestures,” as we architecture types like to say, do not accomplish placemaking all on their own.

there is a bridge that leads into the park from a terrace on the top level of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.  from that bridge, you can get a nice view of the Pritzker Pavilion, and you can also see a very well-defined edge of a very well-defined space in the park, and that’s the Lurie Garden.

I looked up the plans for the Lurie Garden on the web and I sort of wish I hadn’t – for me, it doesn’t enhance the experience of the garden to know about things called extrusion plazas and dark and light plates, that kind of naming gets a little too jargon-y for me in a hurry. but I do get a kick out of knowing that the big hedge in the 15-foot tall metal frame is called the Shoulder Hedge.  because, as we established earlier, Chicago is the city of the big shoulders, stormy husky brawling etc.

this hedge is clearly not to be trifled with. this is a hedge that’s telling you something you should know, and it will kick your ass if you don’t listen.  it’s telling you that something will change when you go through those portals, that there is going to be a big difference between inside and outside.  it’s also a bodyguard: something important must be inside.  when there are thousands of people streaming through the park for an event, it’s going to make sure whatever is inside stays safe.

there are a lot of very careful choices made in the Lurie Garden: stone, water, wood, metal, d.g. (that’s a kind of gravel, for you civilians.) and all the elements are fitted together precisely, and with attention to creating places where people might walk, look, and sit.

in a recess inside the big hedge, a quiet bench.

out on the main boardwalk, the sun against the stone on a September afternoon.  the wedding photographers obviously had this place in their back pocket for their special “kissing photo” effect, and I saw all kinds of people similarly having fun with their own shadows.  these two young folks must have been at the conference: I see a green ASLA travel mug, just like the one I have.  (hey ASLA: best conference swag EVER.)

at last!  safe haven for sketchers!  I’m guessing she was from the conference too, perhaps a student. she’s standing on the upper level, the edge of the “dark plate”, looking west over the lower level, the “light plate.”  I find I didn’t get enough photos of the “dark plate,” and I can’t really make heads or tails of the official design narrative as to exactly what was planted up there, but I gather it was taller, bigger, “wilder” stuff, expressing the pre-urban history of the site.  or something.  I believe there were trees.

most of my pictures show the “light plate,” a large swath of perennials, in the very specific colors and shadings of one mid-September day.  I have no doubt that the colors change just a little, every day.  I have learned that they leave the dead stuff there in winter, to be encrusted with snow and ice, and only cut it back when spring gets going.  I don’t know what season here I want to see more: winter, spring, summer.  hell, I want to see every single day.

landscape architects were in charge here, in this particular corner of the park.  and an important part of the team here was the planting design.  I understand the plants are not all area natives, and the palette of perennials is actually very diverse – and meticulously chosen, of course.  but the effort doesn’t show.  probably some people come here and think it’s a natural meadow of some kind.  I can understand why they might feel that way.

I’ve talked about the colors and textures and light in this place, but I don’t have pictures to show what happens when you step inside, the part you don’t need your eyes for.  inside that big ironclad hedge, you are immediately hit with a wave of sounds and smells, almost theatrically intense. the smell I can’t describe, because everyone knows you can’t describe smells.

but, just as I can identify the smells of southern California chaparral, the way this place smelled seemed very familiar to me, very Midwestern.  there is a kind of combination of plant and flower and earth smells that I would associate with the Midwest, and it’s no doubt subtly different in Chicago than it is in Iowa or Michigan, both places I knew when I was a kid, but it reminded me of both of those.  late summer, the start of fall, some past September.

and a million singing bugs.

I came up the path and I met this guy, in his very stylish sunglasses, and I asked if I could take his picture.  he’s got a tiny camera there in his hand, but just at the moment he’s not using it.

my camera remembers the exact time for me, and stamps it on every picture.  grasshopper, September 18, 2009, 1:34:37 PM.  but my camera was on California time, so it was really 3:34 in Chicago, with the sun already lowering.

home from Chicago. too soon.  I don’t want to leave this garden. last September seems like a long time ago.

in which the architects score a landscape point

at the southwest corner of Millennium Park sits the Crown Fountain, two 50 foot tall towers with video projections of the faces of Chicagoans, and water cascading down them.  the faces face each other, which is why the sides and back of each tower look a little nondescript from outside the park – some urban camouflage against the backdrop of skyscrapers.

the Crown Fountain, of course, is another photo magnet, and heavily represented on flickr.  what still pictures don’t convey is the slightly eerie quality of the faces (though it’s a friendly sort of eerieness); the video is slowed down and occasionally runs backward, and the giant faces don’t do anything more dramatic than look around a little, smile, and occasionally pucker up to spit water.  the giant faces move so subtly, and keep themselves so carefully in frame, that they seem trapped in the confines of their tower, as if they’re afraid to move too much and tip the thing over. but there is a kind of benevolence about them, as if they are keeping it low-key on purpose to avoid scaring anybody.

appropriate enough, since the mandatory to-do item here applies mostly to kids.  kids: play in the water.  adults: watch the kids.

I had the same thought I so often have at science museums and the like – why should kids have all the fun?  no, I didn’t wade, but with my feet in the shape they were in, it might not have been such a bad idea.

there were a few bad pixels in the towers, unfortunate, but probably inevitable.

it takes some patience to wait around for the “spitting” to happen, so most of my pictures don’t show it, because I was running around too fast.

now here’s a picture that’s way too boring for the photo sites.  this is the entrance to the Crown Fountain plaza from Michigan Avenue.  in the foreground is the sidewalk.  your entrance into this magical experience begins when you set foot on those fabulous concrete stairs.  what’s that little square thing?

well, there you have it.  the name of the artist and the date.

I didn’t find myself spending too much time at the Crown Fountain.  once you’ve seen a couple of the video faces and taken a couple of cute kid pictures, you’ve pretty much had the experience.  there would be nothing wrong with killing some time watching the action, but did I mention I was in a hurry?  I’m always in a hurry.  or at least I was.

next, here’s some Gehry, all the way from Los Angeles to you, Chicago.

the Gehry I know in person, of course, is the Disney Hall in downtown LA.  (I haven’t made any concerted effort to photograph it, but I have taken a few, because I couldn’t possibly not, there’s one in this post.) and I could pick some nits, but I’ve always liked the experience of it, and as crazy as the forms look from a distance, they are surprisingly friendly up close – you can get right up to the base of the building’s “skin” and climb around inside it and see how it’s put together.  it doesn’t just make for an amazing photo, it’s fun to be around.  it was fun watching them build it, too.

I wondered how the Pritzker Pavilion and the BP Bridge would feel, especially since the Pavilion is so clearly a bandshell, and those always look like sort of forlorn when there’s nothing going on.  like you’ve arrived at the wrong time.

those red seats certainly do look empty, but they make some nice lines to go with the swoops of the pavilion and the “trellis” over the space, with the fog sweeping in over the buildings. I’m sure a concert here is terrific, with a state-of-the-art sound system strung overhead on that curved grid.  but at the moment, with no concert going on, does it feel too much like it’s just waiting for something to happen?

maybe a little, if you focus on all that silent equipment.  but behind the chairs is a big lawn area, where you can have lawn seating during the performances.  the rest of the time…one does what one does on a big lawn.

one plays frisbee, or just sits around.  this was about the only place in the park I felt like I could just flop down, and I did.  there is still nothing that beats a big chunk of good turf for flopping on; and the “trellis” overhead, which brings the sound all the way back when there’s a concert, has an amazing effect when it’s just silent over the grass.  it feels like a roof, but an expansive, soaring, open roof.  under it, you feel somehow protected, but also in a mood to scan the skyline and watch the clouds go by.  you’re enclosed but you can look out; nothing’s better than that.

oh look, an axis!  there are so many places throughout Millennium Park where it feels like there ought to be an exciting line of sight, and there isn’t, but here’s one to love.  it almost doesn’t look like it was done on purpose: the Bean is hiding a little between those trees, kind of mischievous-looking.  I wish there was a way to walk straight out from this grassy field, under the bean, and right out onto Michigan Avenue and into the heart of the Loop: but there isn’t.  you have to go down and around.  but what a processional arch that Bean would make.

even the transition between the fixed seating and the lawn area makes for a nice hangout spot:

darn it, one of the best pieces of landscape in the park, welcoming and civil, and it’s in the architecture. score one for the architects, curse them.

there was after all one Pavilion moment when I felt like I was, in fact, there at the wrong time:

don’t get me wrong.  I have been to a lot of public parks and it would take a LOT for a park bathroom to really scare me.  but this still looks a little ominous.  I’m sure it handles concert crowds brilliantly: down there is a giant hallway, and HUGE capacious bathrooms; clean, utilitarian, well-maintained.  four stars for function.  but heading down this stair on an ordinary day with no concert crowd – well, I didn’t feel scared so much as outscaled.  you could have driven a truck down that hallway.

the bridge sneaks up on you a little, it feels very much behind the Pavilion, but it lets you know right away there’s something going on. somebody’s been practicing architecture.

nice materials, well-constructed, forms that have the courage of their convictions…and I’m going to find something a little lacking in the setting.  do you sense a theme here?

I could live without those safety bollards, but that’s a minor nitpick.

hmm, those barriers around the water fountains don’t look like part of the original design.  I think some concert goers must have been intruding where they weren’t wanted.  but in fact I’m not really convinced by that fence, either – it’s nicer than your usual temporary barricade but it still feels tacked on.

cleverly enough, the bridge, by running parallel to the busy street below, serves as an acoustical barrier for the amphitheatre.  I can’t help but think that adds to its elegance.

more soon…