Streaming My Conscious: In The City I Dreamed

I Dreamed In A Dream
I DREAM'D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the
         attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust          love—it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of          that city,

And in all their looks and words. Walt Whitman


I've returned. Returned to the city I knew and I've known in my heart no matter how far I traveled.

Images forever ingrained in my mind of a city shared by so many, yet seldom seen by the world unless in violence. 

Younger years spent on green and gray buses long before air conditioning came standard in a vehicle. Placing my feet in the footsteps of people long gone who traveled up rickety wooden steps to an elevated platform no longer in use. An adrenaline shot kicks in at the memory of excitement when I could see the expressway far beneath me from my seat on the train making its way over the city below.

In this city I dreamed of nothing existing outside, for it was my whole world that existed within this city. My birth, my death, my past and my future held no possibilities outside of this city in which I dreamed. Before I understood hate, I saw only love. The love of my family, the love of my neighbors and the love of strangers who smiled benevolently down at me. 

Nothing was greater or sweeter than my sweet home Chicago.