Ohio 1

 

August 17, 2023

Hampton Inn, Rt 43, Kent, Ohio. Of course I left unnecessarily early, and arrived earlier than I need to have.  Grueling drive, though much of it through some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. Red sunrise over Virginia. The room is dank, dingy, and smells like, though not necessarily of, urine. It’s festival week in this part of the world (who knows why?), and all the motels are booked, so, glad I planned ahead. The pool and the exercise room have something wrong with them. The WiFi is useless. Sharp emotion crossing the Ohio river, difficult to define. One returns to the birthplace missing those whom one once knew, wondering if all those years and all that effort came to anything in particular. Was it worth it? Not fully answerable until the last moment, but at the moment of crossing the Marietta bridge into my home state the answer was “not really.” TK is dead. PS is dead. I've known PS since I was six. I passed PS love notes in the 4th grade, not because I loved her, but because I thought I should have a girlfriend and her desk was nearest mine. 

Later: Took a ride, saw a cinema, stopped and watched the Barbie movie. Clever, if less clever than it’s reputed to be. I left the cinema in a cloudburst. Oddly, it never occurred to me to prepare for rain.