Thursday, November 3, 2005
Our Resurrected Lady of the UnderpassMy good friend Gabe, an exceptional poet I met down at University of
New Orleans, came into town today from Santa Fe where he's been exiled
since his house was flooded and ruined by the floodwaters of Katrina.
We went to my favorite southern Indian restaurant just blocks from my
house, Udupi Palace, and we talked about hurricanes and war and poetry and chapbooks (he's
meeting with his editor this weekend here in Chicago), and then we
drove to see the underpass virgin on Fullerton Avenue. I'd not visited
her since she first appeared last spring when a young Mexican-American
girl spotted her on her walk home from school. Within a few days, the
image was adorned by candles and notes and offerings and visitors, all
asking for ayuda from the mother of God. I went and visited her
and I was moved by the spontaneity of the event, how ordinary people
made a church out of a dirty, dusty underpass beneath the highway to
O'Hare. 6:50:35 PM | Within days of my visit she was defaced by an angry Mexican-American man who spray-painted a swastika across her face and beneath it "BIG LIE." The news traveled quickly, made the evening news, and within twenty-four hours the streets and sanitation crew had come (they are incredibly swift here in the City That Works) and painted over the entire image, leaving only a two-dimensional stalagmite in industrial muddy brown. The image of the virgin was gone; the visitors vanished. The notes stayed for days, but the candles burned out, abandoned. It was caused by water, this image, so it sat above the surface of the concrete wall like a calcified scar and therefore was easy to discern beneath the paint. A handful of believers came and removed the paint from the image, leaving only an outline of it around her head and body. They placed cinderblocks around her as a proper altar, placed potted flowers in front, and on the stepped edges, carnations in vases. Her image was not the same, a bit of the likeness had disappeared with the peeled-off paint, but with the outline and the cinderblocks she had become more edified even if a bit of her had been lost. Gabe and I walked and read the messages left for her, these 21st century petroglyphs. Most were RIPs or pleas for ayuda for whole families. Some were about careers, some about lovers. One asked for help in getting a dad out of jail. Another said simply "I miss you grandma." Gabe noted the whirring sound of the speeding trucks and cars above us and how they sounded like war. They sped above us violently, screeching, creating a harsh echo throughout the underpass that was deafening at times. I hadn't noticed this noise when I visited last spring, perhaps because the place was filled with the scuffing of work boots, the whisper of prayers, or perhaps because I don't pay attention to sound the way I should. Gabe stuck his cell phone up in the air and captured a bit of this highway clamor. Here are a few pictures of the water stain-turned-virgin, once defaced but again revealed. She is Our Resurrected Lady of the Underpass:  The new altar with flowers and a handful of burning candles. Who checks to see the candles stay lit? And who changes the flowers?  Scribbled on the Emergency Parking Only sign: "Take care of all of us sinners to let us all in when our time comes -- Mel"  The algebra of faith: "I love God times ten to infinty plus four." 
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Last update: 12/1/05; 10:35:11 PM .
