NOW YOU SEE, NOW YOU DON'T

Looking at the stark, empty space that was once New York's gleaming Twin Towers reminds us what once was is often no more. Margaret Mitchell gave it a wistful title: "Gone With The Wind." Frank Sinatra made it a plaintiff song: "There Once Was a Ball Park." As usual, the Bible says it best: "And this too shall pass."

How then are we -- who by nature so yearn for the familiar -- to manage our lives in a world that has reached a state of perpetual and inexorable change?

For many of us, the answer burrows deep into our religions. For others, into our extended families. Still others find the spectacle of nature their one true constant. And yet each of these moorings have so often proved so insecure against the press of the tides just outside the harbors.

Perhaps the best way to respect the vacant spaces in our lives is not simply to remember them, but to actively engage them. Right there on the spot. After all, that space was once a place, and that place was once a part of you. Where you once lived or laughed or maybe loved. Which means you and it are forever inextricably linked.

There are those special places where people gather to honor a lost life. Cemeteries. Memorials. Vigils. But other places are for the living. Spaces whose places have changed with time, but whose ghosts will not. Think Pearl Harbor...Gettysburg...Jamestown....Plymouth Rock.Think back further. The Tower of London ...the Bastille...the Coliseum....the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Think the Holy Land where every space of every place has changed and yet remained changeless.

Precisely why we visit them.

Having said that, this is exactly why some of us re-visit the spaces and places that were once the pieces of our own lives. We are drawn to reunions. Anniversaries. Celebrations of all kinds, especially when they can be held "where it began."

Every city is really a bundle of spaces that became places that were pieces in their citizens' lives. That's certainly true here in Chicago where each summer there are guided neighborhood tours sponsored by the Mayors Office. Busloads of seniors traveling through city blocks to once more see and smell and feel the-way-we-were. What's particularly interesting is the visitors are not so much washed in sentimental tears as they are refreshed in the realization they've come so far.

Oh, by the way, you don't actually need a guided tour to re-discover the old neighborhoods. On the next inviting summer afternoon, you can solo all by yourself. You're going to be amazed...