It was such a wonderfully dark, rainswept morning when I left for the bus stop. I could hardly keep my umbrella open. There’s an amazing the beauty that the lake has when it’s a morning like that, before dawn even. You look out onto it and it’s like you’re looking past the edge of the world. Everyone else on the bus is still sleepy and quiet, so nothing disturbs your reveries.

And you sweep off of Lake Shore Drive and onto Wacker, skirting the river, some of the skyscrapers lit up; it’s just gandeur, plain and simple. That early in the morning it has a feeling of pure nature, how you’d feel in a forest or on a mountain. There are people scurrying here and there but it’s empty enough that you can almost feel alone. Really seeing the city alone. O man, it’s that feeling that makes me such a city dweller. It’s a feeling that you can’t have in the wilderness; only an empty city in the darkness can give you that feeling.

When I was a freshman at the Art Institute and living in the dorms in the Loop, we had the fire alarm go off in the middle of the night that once. We all had to clear out and walk down to Wabash, in our pyjamas and bathrobes and sweatpants. It had rained earlier and the streets were slicked down. And I remember how quiet it was. Just the group of us students and counselors, chattering, half-awake. Somehow it was peaceful, and it was easy to feel cozy in my bathrobe even though I was standing on a wet sidewalk at 2 in the morning.