Paardebloem

Big Bay Park

Atwater Beach had a clearer view of the sunset, but it was too obvious. It was an after dark beach, the beach where you took a new romance to show them that you are too brooding and sentimental for Bradford Beach. Or the beach where you go to get drunk and spin around on the merry-go-round. There was a haze about it like an emotional hangover. Big Bay Park was a morning park; it had the hopeful exuberance of new beginnings. The way the seagulls passed over was not irritating like it was at Bradford, it was pleasant. Their squawking, mixed with the chatter of the songbirds created an ambiance where it seemed anything was possible. And anything was possible was for Davey Wenzel, writer, contrarian, who would usher in the first sunrise of the fall, coffee mug and pen in hand, ready to become inspired to write his Masterpiece.

He sat on the park's lone bench, with the view of Fox Point framed between two reddening trees, the first tones of day striking Lake Michigan, pink and slimy like a newborn, and smiled. This was it. He finally had the big idea, his gift to the world, the piece that was itself the perfect representation, as well as an integral part, of the human experience. The allegory of all allegories, Jesus wept; if only he were alive to see this. Why had nobody thought of this before, he wondered. All of those poor people in the world. The real world. Not his sacred and sheltered North Shore, the backdrop of his languid night walks, glimpsing in the windows of the palaces along Lake Drive. The lake breeze coddling him like a codependent mother, her loving embrace not reaching further west than the freeway. Those kids can sweat. They get shot and ride the bus so that doughy dreamers can eat ice cream and write poetry in climate-controlled studies. How many miles of Soweto-Township-esque sprawl had to exist in the world for one house overlooking the bay? This would all be addressed in tender prose. His wisdom only outmatched by his tact. Our hero, his scripture quenching a thirst we did not know we had.

The sun was in his eyes now, Davey winced and shifted his gaze to the dandelion's protruding from the unkempt green. They reminded him too much of himself. That was enough for one morning. He had a promising start of material to work with for now. On the walk back down to Shorewood he would think about how he would get his girlfriend, Sally, to ask about what he was working on. She is going to feel so foolish about incessantly asking me annoying questions like "how's the job search going?" or "have you thought about going back and finishing your degree?" when she hears about this.

Sally Finch was a writer as well, or at least had been at one time. She had met Davey in a creative writing class at UW-Milwaukee some years ago when they were both underdeveloped undergrads. She had written prose poetry and had a weekly column titled, "Sally the Songbird" in a small university publication. Initially she had wanted to study philosophy; she was the type who would hang out at coffee shops arguing with anyone who would participate about Cartesian dualism then go home and read Kant before bed. Davey caught her attention because he was easily drawn to heady wisdom, searching for the meaning behind the light like a dumb moth. He made her laugh with his naïve wit and ignorant charm. To Sally, this man-like being was a pudgy slab of marble that she could sculpt into her own Statue of David. Further into her time in university she dropped the philosophy and opted for a more, if not practical, concrete profession. While Davey was still a dreamer set on a career in writing, so much so that he eventually stopped attending classes and decided that he would devote his time to being a professional writer. Sally had come out with a degree and a job at a nonprofit on the South Side providing housing assistance. By this time, the pair were living together in a rented flat a few blocks from campus on S. Ave.

On some level he had to have sensed the grinding resentments. Davey spent his days ambling around the North Shore drinking coffee, listening to birds, looking for inspiration while Sally worked all week dealing in the cold hard facts of the city's social ills. She would come home from work in the evening, drained from sustained contact with human misery, and Davey would be on the couch eating chips and listening to talk radio. In his mind he had convinced himself that what he was doing was noble, that the job of being a creative is more work, maybe not physically, but definitely emotionally and spiritually, than someone who plugs into the grind of a nine to five day in and day out, never stopping to wonder about the things that really matter. It took a lot of mental energy to maintain this charade to himself and others, energy that could probably have been better served doing something to improve his station in life. This in turn had produced a psychic deterioration, that while in the act of lying on the couch for hours, staring at the ceiling, radio playing but not hearing a thing, he would sometimes start to envy those who had a clear-cut station in life. The people who had every second of their life accounted for and lacked the need, the hole deep inside, that made it so he could not stand still, but do nothing at the same time.