soon enough I’ll check out like a highway motel

title: live now  – artist: hotels and highways

I wasn’t expecting it. I got blindsided by a city with a week left to love it.

The city I’d seen was a well-worn rut I was fairly fluent in navigating within my first two weeks here. I adored the skyline, especially at night. I got reacquainted with the warm glow of streetlights. I found out just how much I could miss things like streetlights. I delved into a good deal of recreational shopping. But something hadn’t quite clicked in the preceding four weeks. I liked it, but I didn’t love it.

Then, exactly one week before my departure, I encountered the River Keys district. A city in the midst of a revival can be a glorious thing. The City Market started whispering sweetly in my ear. The

Nelson-Atkins

Art Museum deftly plucked my heart strings. The old apartment buildings, still retaining the stateliness of their youth and taking on a nuevo-hipness, seemed to instinctively know my sensibilities. The metropolitan urban nirvana I’d been harboring desires for was in front of me. And even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have stopped myself. I was falling in love with a place I only had a week left to bask in.

It’s one of those doomed love affairs. You’re dragged back and forth between the euphoria of falling in love and the heartache of seeing the end in sight. But the euphoria is all-encompassing enough to make you bear the heartache.

I’ve been tempted to stay. To see where the love affair takes me. To fall head-over-heels for a city and let whatever comes, come. But, Saturday afternoon, I’m getting on a plane and heading northeast. I’m packing my bags and letting logic win this one.

But it’s made its mark. I’ll never forget it. And a part of me will always love it.