As August dawns in bleak Indianapolis.
Indianapolis fails to amuse. A city stitched together with scaffolding and stale ambition. A place held aloft only by its sports teams—the Colts, the Pacers—and the new heroine, Caitlin Clark. The streets hum with construction and a lingering aroma of urine and wood rot. The architecture is unremarkable. The 'Centre Center' mall—if one dares call it that—is a mausoleum of glass and echo. Most shops stand gutted, surviving is an Aeropostale and Hot Topic of all things. The volume of downtrodders turns me off to my usual city wandering. There is no thrill in the anonymity this time. No glimmer of adventure.
My hotel is vast, indulgent, reeking of money. Spa, gym, sauna—the prescribed trifecta of leisure. I ought to be luxuriating in it all, perhaps reading, perhaps stretching, certainly exercising. But with my tender hip, my motivation is at a low ebb. So I sit still in my suite, accompanied by a headache that grates at my temples --too much melatonin last night, not enough water, surely. A sluggish kind of discontent slugs through me, unpinpointable. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve started self-adjusting my Prozac, foolishly hoping it might spark my sex drive back into existence. (It hasn’t.) Or maybe it’s just my period. I feel that trembling desire to run away, to start again, in a town that feels more alive than this one.
The only light in this Midwestern melancholy is that my promised is having a grand time at Gen Con. It’s not my crowd: a sweaty, eccentric herd of the metabolically challenged. Mark you, they are impossibly kind and earnest. It warms me to watch them wander the city in bewildering garb—cloaks, anime wigs, ridiculous face paint. It is obvious this convention means the world to them. I can imagine the budgeting, the anticipation, the quiet countdown in the months leading up. Good for them.
Tomorrow is my last day here. I hope for an improved disposition by morning. It is most likely that I've brought my bad weather here and the city is not so bad. I am traveling, after all. In states I once couldn’t have identified on a map! As a girl, I was bound by fences, papers, and border patrol. For now, I am free to meander in cities I don’t belong to. Minute joys, V.
I may go walk along the river tomorrow or visit a park. Allow nature to interrupt this fog in my head, the climate here is remarkably temperate. Fair is the general culinary standard here. I’ve completed my postcards.
My current reads: The Bible (still stuck in Genesis—stubbornly plodding toward the promised apocalypse of Revelation). The Historian—recommended by my promised—a dark, eerie waltz through the legend of Vlad the Impaler. James by Percival Everett on Audible, which is, so far, my favorite of them all. Next in queue: Huckleberry Finn, Persuasion, and Gone to See the River Man for my horror fix.
I am tired, vaguely sad, and filled with the gentle dread of being emotionally underwhelmed. But I am here..the sun will rise and I exist. And tomorrow, maybe, I’ll remember why that once thrilled me.