squidville versus the circle city

My home was Raleigh, but my second home has always been Indianapolis. I am well aware that most people would consider this a weird choice, but there it is. It’s got one of the most beautiful and weird buildings I’ve ever seen – the Scottish Rite Cathedral, a palatial paean to the Masons with Gothic architecture and every dimension based on the number 33. There’s a surprisingly lively downtown. There’s Kurt Vonnegut and John Mellencamp. There’s the Greek Islands Restaurant, where the whole Stergiopoulos family chats you up as you watch belly dancers and sip high-octane Greek coffee. And, of course, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
I bleed gear oil. This is no secret. I come from a long line of motorcycle racers, car aficionados, and all-around motor geeks. It wouldn’t be a year without the regular IMS pilgrimage.
I am sad to say that apparently, this is my last year. There will be no more IMS pilgrimages. We were in Indianapolis for the Formula One race, which imploded spectacularly. (These are car geek details; I’ll spare you.) We spent $300 on tickets, not to mention airfare, hotel, car rental, and food. Now that we have to fly, we can’t justify spending our precious money. We’ve been saving for this for months, and now the money is gone with nothing to show for it.
We ate dinner one last time with the Stergiopoulouses. We toured the cathedral, with its 16 ½-foot-tall columns and 99-foot-square ballroom. We walked through downtown and the Circle City mall area. We took the tour around the Indy track, stopped in front of our perfect seats (high in the covered stands, with a view of the pits and the other side of the track), and said goodbye. We met a couple of flabby, rosy-cheeked, corn-fed tourists from Nebraska – the kind I’m sure Kathleen sees all the time in New York – who said “Gosh!” and “Golly!” a lot. They were very nice, and we stayed around and talked at the end of the speedway tour.
“Have a nice trip home,” she said.
“Go Huskers!” he added. “They won’t let me go back to Omaha if I don’t say that!”
We cut through the neighborhood near the speedway – little box-houses with peeling paint and Toby Keith blaring through broken windows, where the men drink Bud and have tattoos, 10-year-olds smoke cigarettes in front of their parents (no joke), and rusted-out American cars litter the yards.
And on the way to the airport, I began to cry. “I feel like I’m leaving home again,” I told Steve.

In the “SpongeBob Squarepants” episode “Squidville,” Squidward – silly SpongeBob’s pretentiously cranky neighbor – gets fed up with SpongeBob’s silliness and moves to Squidville, a town populated entirely by pretentiously cranky squids. At first he enjoys being surrounded by squids who do nothing but play clarinet and practice interpretive dance (Squidward’s favorite activities), but over time he grows disgusted, finally breaks down in a silly fit, and gets kicked out of town.

I crave diversity. My idea of utopia is a land where everyone can get along, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political persuasion, vegan- or non-veganism, or musical taste.
I grew up always feeling like a stranger in a strange land, wishing that just for a while, everyone would agree with me and be like me and I wouldn’t feel like an oddball. Is it like the song: “When I get what I want, then I never want it again”?

the weather here

Hot, relentlessly hot all day, and now rain and thunder in the skies over Brooklyn. It is not hot like North Carolina, the relentless humidity that oozes into everything. This is a different kind of heat, characterized by the pervasive smell of garbage and the awareness that you are surrounded by miles and miles of concrete, all sucking up the heat and bouncing it back at you. And yet, unlike North Carolina, there is always a breeze from time to time, cool shade behind tall buildings, the bliss of an air-conditoned subway car. (Here A/C is something a bit exotic and not quite trusted, not the necessity of life it is in the South.) And when the rain comes, the temperature drops, at once, like a miracle. I was always expecting that in the South, always perplexed that it could rain and be just as hot, and actually more humid.
At my window, I look out on the street and see someone standing in his door, looking out at the rain, as impressed by nature as I.
I have felt defeated lately, by the heat, by the awareness that the honeymoon is over and I simply have to face things.the rain, oddly, is cheering me up.