the long trek

Post 73 of 90.

I departed Hotel Fleabag about 11am.

The water in the shower was so hard I couldn't seem to rinse completely clean. I feel like I have this layer of schmutz all over me, like I'm a walking bathtub ring.

The drive between Chicago and Indianapolis always seems the longest. I decided to take 290 through downtown Chicago this time, to get a look at the skyline and examine various memories going back to high school marching band trips in the late 80s.

I still remember the feeling I had upon seeing the infamous South Side housing projects for the first time. To my small town eyes and sensibility, they had developed an iconic power over many years as almost mythic vortexes of poverty and despair. All gone now, of course. But it amazed me at the time to see it "in the flesh" and know that real people were living real lives in the shadow of these crumbling buildings.

The mountainous landfill far to the south is still both awe-inspiring and sickening.

I stopped in Broadripple in Indy, and had a dinner at the Egyptian Cafe and Hookah Bar. There was one waitress on duty, also responsible for cooking. She did a good job on the chicken souvlaki, considering she was an avowed vegetarian and claimed she didn't really get how to cook meat.

I sort of miss this area from when I lived there in the mid 90s, but it's also changed a lot, especially in the last 3-4 years.

I read a local, Broadripple community paper while in the restaurant, and it seems as if the powers that be in the community are working to make the area into a walkable "village" sort of community. If my impression is correct, this is a positive step. It won't be long before such a living arrangement will be necessary and will be forced upon a lot of people by circumstances.

A long time ago, I studied a vocabulary course based on exploring the Greek and Latin roots to various words. As I recall, "nostalgia" was a combination of nostrus for "time" and algia, Greek for "pain."

Literally, "the pain of time."

Nostalgia is not a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling at all. It's a painful, hurting sort of feeling. The ancient roots of the word take you close to the heart of what the word means.

This was my day to confront nostalgia and feel the pain of time having passed and wrought changes in all of these places that stood as markers to the flow of my life.

Now to bed.