Proud faces in the canyon streets

I went to Chicago for the first time last weekend. It's the weirdest and most intimidating city I've ever been in (not having ever been to New York). I lived in London for four months, but this was way stranger. I think it's because Chicago is not only big in the sprawling sense, but also big in the tall sense. And I am only a Very Small Animal after all. So you have all these ridiculously tall buildings to either side of you, and yet you feel closed in in a lot of places because of the el trains above you. And sometimes the ground slopes and you feel you're going down, down into a dark urban valley where terrible things could happen - yet none of it seems real; it all feels almost like a movie set. I spoke to my father about this on the phone, and he said that the Chicago streets remind him of canyons.

The other weird thing was the people, who all looked famous to me. Every single one of them. That didn't happen in London, which surely contains at least as many celebrity residents as Chicago does, and where I actually ran into one or two by chance. But stick me in Chicago and I'm staring agog at every person I see. It felt like being in a different country, too; when we ate at a little corner deli I ordered in a super polite and clear voice as though I were not speaking my first language. When the girl at the department store check-out counter starting chatting with us about the date she'd be going on later that evening, I was amazed to be having a conversation with such a strange and confident creature.

The whole reason we (my roommates and I) went to Chicago in the first place was to see Eddie Izzard (only the best comedian ever) perform. And he was fantastic, as always. It certainly wasn't his best material, and some of it wasn't even new, but we still had a wonderful time and laughed a great deal and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

I keep saying I'll probably end up living in Chicago at some point in my life. Not necessarily permanently, and not necessarily any time soon, but just some time, for a time. Walking around the city, gawking at the strange-yet-familiar landscape and the proud faces passing by, I kept thinking, "Yeah, I could get used to this." So there you have it. The place intimidated the hell out of me, but I kind of fell in love with it at the same time. What does it all mean?