Hard to stay and harder still to leave
Jordan Keller / January 27, 2023
About
Point: Chicago winters are brutal.
Living on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone means the sun (which barely drags its pale, hazy self up off the horizon) is in bed by 4pm for a month straight.
Driving is a death wish. Walking isn’t any safer.
No joke: last Monday, I went to take the dog out, slipped on our ice-slicked stoop, landed on my elbow, and tumbled meatily onto the salt and concrete.
In the winter, Chicago compels us: “Leave.”
Counterpoint: Chicago winters are beautiful.
Snow flurries flitting like clouds of starlings through the sodium-orange streetlights. Leafless tree branches clacking in the winds that whip off the Lake. Hopscotching through a stranger’s footprints on an unshoveled stretch of sidewalk. Neighborhoods growing still and quiet.
Whether it’s the weather—or something personal that you can’t avoid by staying inside—there’s a camaraderie in facing miserable shit, individually, together.
“Cracks” is my attempt to put all of the above into song.