Spring is Sprung

There are quite a few people I've spoken to in the past year who say they prefer living in the Midwest, because they really crave natural seasons. I am here to call these people liars.

As far as I can tell, most people who live in the Midwest are just as averse to snow in late March as people who live in California - if anything, they complain more than I do. Maybe it's because, when I moved to Chicago, everyone warned me how hard it would be - how long, cold, and dark the winter. And while it truly has been all those things, I can't help but face into the icy winds coming off of Lake Michigan, and think to myself (loudly, in a shouting voice) IS THIS ALL YOU'VE GOT?

Maybe the issue is not that people don't crave seasons, it's more that the Midwest actually lacks them. For example, today we've been having the first blizzard of spring. To me, this does not suggest that Chicago is the bastion of meteorological diversity that some have implied.

I don't have much to go with this. I'm not depressed about the weather. But when I look out my office window to the scene below, I no longer feel like I am in a cherished snowglobe. Now it feels more like ash is raining down from the heavens, and yea, disbelievers, the end is nigh.

How and when and why did God make the angels?

Lately, Dave has been bothering me to switch banks, and not without good reason. Here in Chicago, there simply aren't that many Wells Fargos, and most of the ones that do exist specialize in home loans instead of providing me with an ATM. And so, each and every time I want to withdraw cash I'm forced to swallow at least a $2 ATM fee - more if Wells Fargo really is charging me $1.50 for transactions done with other banks.

But still I don't switch. Why? It's not as though I have a solid business relationship with them - I've never opened anything except a checking and savings account, never received a high-interest C.D. or any sort of tantalizing offer. Indeed, my student loans lie with them, and it's easy to transfer money from one account to another online, and yes, I have somehow tricked them into giving me free checks (with a tricky, tricky "free checking" account). But on the whole, the reason I hesitate to switch banks belongs to altogether another comfort zone.

I read a quote this morning in an article about the Solovetsky Islands - islands which are most holy to the Russian Orthodox Church, and which have also become a site of increasing tourism. "This land, is it a means for earning money, or is it a holy place?" asked the acting head of the island monastery. "The two cannot exist together."

While I appreciate his sentiment, and come close to agreeing with it, the words made me think - strangely enough, about my relationship to the bank. I think it is an aesthetic one. As ridiculous as this will sound, I know the colors of Wells Fargo, and I know their style. I know how to get around in their bizarre corporate head, even when the decisions they make are maddening or seemingly random. And that, to me, is a comforting thing. I remember walking into a Wells Fargo branch in Grinnell, Iowa, and telling the women there that I wanted to close my savings account and transfer the money into checking. At first they seemed concerned in their banking way, and asked me why I would want to do such a thing. You see, I said, I have $300 tied up in that account (the minimum to keep it open), and I need that money to go to France with my boyfriend. Immediately the employees broke open into smiling people who wanted to know about my life, who cared about my plans, and who didn't mind one bit that I was closing my more lucrative connection to them.

So I have built an idea of Wells Fargo, an image made out of memories and aesthetic notions which I can cling to and understand while trying to navigate the strange financial world.

This is perhaps not a good enough reason to keep open a bank account that loses me money. But I feel like it is evidence of something: the beautiful - and in other, more extreme conditions, worshipful - things we create in a semi-hostile environment. That is, the holy ideas, the art we are still able to build with our minds in a place that is a means for earning money.