Always twirling, swirling, always sucking people through like we shouldn’t have a choice to open and walk across a threshold. The absent deliberation of swing… no way to stand outside and decide whether to knock, whether to bother entering another person’s terrain, whether to put yourself through another portal.

At the Art Institute, the students are always rushing through them, rushing everywhere, high speed, like something started waiting for them five minutes ago and now they are late. And I feel the need to leap into the rotator like a girl trying to play jump-rope with those sidewalk-kids who use two ropes instead of the easier single weaves. I pause at the beginning, start counting the rhythm, watching the way others go through, the beat they hit. Some push through it like the spinners have potential for roller coaster; others couple up with their friends, the second one putting her hands on the hips of the first and shuffle shuffle shuffle; still others like me, waiting in a line for the beat, the beat, counting counting and then jumping, first the left leg, right up next to the metal frame, and then the right, sucking in through the closing gap just like Indiana Jones’ hat. And three hops in between, a hard push at the handle and the last final dart through the opening before the rope descends, catches your foot, and fouls you all up with folks laughing at your clumsy dance.

Maybe it’s a windmill blowing wildly in the gusts. And we are the wind.

Maybe it’s a water-wheel churning fast with the river. And we are the water.

And the energy it generates, the spin of this city, the moving and clipping along people with their jacked-up walks. Downtownites: the sheer variety of people churning about like wind and water, like children dancing along concrete with sung stories of Susie-Had-A-Steamboat or Hot-Crossity-Buns or Frogs-that-Leap. The sheer variety of movements throwing you forward, pushing you into heated or conditioned environments with marble and guards frowning at you as you enter, and grinning at you as you exit. If that’s what the continuum of rotating doors is really about.