Jetlag continues on day two of my visit to Chicago(land). I awoke this morning at 3:30am, ready to take on the world. Unfortunately, the world wasn’t ready to take on me, so I took on a new novel: Angela’s Ashes
At 6:36am, the sun rose behind a thick layer of clouds and oatmeal. The garden squirrel looked fat and full in her thick winter coat, a sure sign that winter is just around the corner. On this cold, gray, obscenely early Sunday, I was tempted to crawl back under the covers with my book and a cup of tea, but that would only put me to sleep, not to mention take away from this rare opportunity to spend quality time with my parents. No, the best thing to do in my condition was to keep on pushing. To hell with sitting still! To hell with lazy Sundays! To hell with the suburbs! Give me art! Give me culture! Give me new! Give me dopamine!
Give me consumers?
Give me tourists?
Give me shopping?
Give me Starbucks?
It was kind of strange that “The Missing Piece: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama” exhibit was held in the heart of The Magnificent Mile, the stretch of Michigan Avenue devoted to up-scale department stores, fancy but generic retail stores, and overpriced restaurants. Or was this the perfect location? After all, what better place to celebrate a man who took on issues such as the “religion of consumerism” than at its very temple?
With 88 artists presenting, the exhibit was vast: sculpture, video, audio, painting, textiles, and an obnoxiously verbose guided tour which seemed to follow us everywhere! With so many artists exploring so many themes, the show felt a little disjoint at times. In one room, I met a stunning portrait of a Tibetan child who stared at me with strength and suffering. Around the corner, a stack of phone books spiraled towards the ceiling like a double helix, carved into the likeness of the Buddha. Up some stairs, past the ubiquitous tour guide and her followers, I found some preparatory drawings from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates” in NYC’s Central Park. My attention was pulled in so many directions that it was difficult to fully absorb more than one or two of the exhibit’s many messages. But maybe that’s the beauty of The Missing Peace: the collection of themes forces us to find those that affect us the most.
One of the pieces that drew me in was Salustiano Garcia’s “Reincarnation”, a portrait of a small boy representing the future incarnation of the Dalai Lama. It was impossible to bypass this painting, a 1×3 meter explosion of red, and a boy with a perfect face staring me in the eye, demanding instant connection.
Then there was a piece by Vietnamese artist Binh Danh who prints photographs on leaves, then casts the leaves in resin. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s really cool. I believe the photos I saw were of Vietnamese prisoners. The message: war and violence impacts nature, which seems so obvious now, but I had to read the informative placard to get it.
Post art bomb, is it any shock that my mind was on food? I’d never been to Chinatown, so why not cruise south side and see what’s cooking? We ended up at The House of Fortune, and what a fortune it was: deep bowls of piping hot vegetable soup, piles of crisp szechuan broccoli, and egg foo young glistening like gold coins in a treasure chest of savory gravy. Their menu and website claim they have “been previously voted as one of the 21 Best Restaurants in Chicago by Chicago Magazine and Chicago Sun Times” but I couldn’t find anything ob either publication’s website to back this up. But who cares, right? The food was neither overcooked nor oversalted.
After our afternoon feeding, we were ready to explore a bit of Chinatown. But really, how many crappy gift shops and smelly groceries can one take after a filling lunch? Luckily there was the Ten Ren Tea shop to win my heart. Was it my fatigue that made all that green tea so appealing? I left the store with oolong, jasmine, white, and plum green tea. And a box of rice candy for mom.
Before heading home for the afternoon, we impulsively walked into the first bakery we saw so dad could feed his sweet tooth with an almond cookie. Some people like my dad can go into a bakery and buy the one thing that they know they like. Me, I see a case of strange pastries and want to taste EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. The night before, we had red bean paste ice cream at a japanese restaurant, so why not continue the theme? We bought a red bean paste mooncake, then saw another fluffy looking ball of goodness rolled in coconut whose tag said “[something in Chinese] red bean paste”, so we bought that too. It turned out to be a “glutinous rice ball” filled with bean paste. Mom aptly pointed out that it had the consistency of a breast implant. The rice flower was gelatinous and surprisingly unsweet, while the bean paste was thick, dry and mildly sugared. In a nutshell (or riceball encasing as the case may be), the ball o’ bean was weird, yet strangely satisfying.
Dad didn’t like it.
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