Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here!
Come visit us this weekend at Printer’s Row Lit Fest. If it’s too hot for you, come to the Museum on Saturday 6/9 for Herbert Quelle and Renee Rosen on Writing the Blues.
The city by the lake is warm today.
Warm enough to make sure we move quickly
from destination to destination. We don’t linger
as we might on breezier days.
The boats on the shore seem carefree and grateful
for the sun, as I’m sure they are.
The lake really chills you if you let it.
This beautiful poem definitely gave us chills:
I knew you evaporated young.
Destroyed, beautiful as bark in autumn.
A boy carefully feeling blissful.
Standing bloody in the darkest rain.
Broken, howling, destroyed.
Time itself froze, the wind began to slow.
So did his breath.
A quiet night, a silent night.
Alone.
Drowning in thoughts of the self.
Torn apart by simple fears.
Isolation in its finest form.
Chicago inspires many thoughts, feelings, and words as seen in this story written by 2 visitors:
At last, the sun broke through the suffocating clouds, and the city began to come alive. The sounds of the street vendors, beckoning all who were near, mixed with the bellowing horns of impatient deliverymen, creating a cacophony of distraction, rising from the street and echoing off the cavernous canyons of the tenement buildings that lined Michigan Avenue.
Above me loomed the great skyline of Chicago, the sky filled with clouds that loomed even closer than the gray, ominous buildings of the city. No more of the beautiful blue sky could be seen through the thick smog that coated the sky. It reminded me of a house filled with smoke, the occupants choking inside. I felt I was choking inside of the tall buildings that surrounded me, making me feel like a rat trapped in a maze. No longer was I in the safe countryside, but in the city, where surely I would become entangled between the streets. The speed and horror of the city was enough to make me, a grown man, terrified.
Yet, when my friend M.G. met me at the Art Institute, I felt a rekindling of a connection to humanity, a rebirth of optimism knowing that I am not alone in this city, this oft-cruel world. I can’t live in a state of dystopia, a depressed state of being. And, of course, I always want to know more about this world and its many wonders.
I would like to see a name or other signature of the visitors who wrote the texts which are posted online, should they have signed their writings. I feel it would be doing justice to the words when they are connected with a name or synonym. Maybe that’s why names are usually spelled with a capital letter even in the middle of a text. To me that makes a relation visible and still leaves a distinguishing feature visible for the reader. I also feel it would support more people to be seeing the creativity which lies with so many people who take time to create a specific description of motions. Greetings Heidrun
Heidrun,
We’d love to see signatures as well! Many of our visitors wish to remain anonymous and do not sign their work, but we always include names when they are given. We hope you’ll visit soon and add your own story, including your name of course!