As my departure for Japan draws ever closer, I find myself fascinated with the mundane experiences of my home. Anyone who has moved a great deal of distance from their home and then returned can probably relate to this feeling. When you have experienced other places and people, lived other lives in other cultural landscapes, you begin the process of becoming a homeless hybrid, someone not quite outsider and not quite local. You can see the marvel in the everyday, a sort of reverse culture shock that makes that tree in your front yard an obelisk imbued with familiar rituals, the calls of birds of birds the background score for the comfort movie of your daily life. You don’t notice these things until you realize you might not be seeing them again for quite some time.
Gary Snyder, an amazing poet and essayist, often talked of how nature can bring us into a state of “satori,” beautiful vistas and stunning spaces being powerful enough to quite literally knock us senseless in splendor. These outer experiences influencing the internal hunt for enlightenment can also come from the everyday, if you have the right frame of mind. To put a little bit of this into practice, I recently took a trip to a city I’ve been to at least thirty different times in my life, seeking to see it through new eyes with a valued companion.
For one of my final adventures, I traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio with my creative and adventurous partner, Aislynn. While I’ve been to Cincinnati a lot over the years, specifically to ride roller coasters at my home park of Kings Island, I very rarely ever explored the city properly. And never with a partner. So, we booked a hotel for a few nights in Sharonville and set to enjoy some of our final evenings together exploring the art and culture of Ohio’s third most populous city (“Explore Census Data”).
Well, technically we began our adventure on the other side of the river in Newport, Kentucky to take in the Newport Aquarium. I’ve had many friends and family tell me how cool the Newport Aquarium is, but I’d never seen it myself, so we started there. The staff were overtly friendly (in a way that I found kind of off-putting) and the ticket price was quite high for what it was, but I will admit, it was a nice place to relax. Watching ghost jellyfish float in a dark tank and weedy sea dragons drift along with the artificial current helps to melt the anxieties that settle upon your heart as you prepare for a big, life altering move. And of course, we had to spend a good thirty minutes eating cotton candy dippin’ dots in front of the penguin exhibit. Penguins easily rank in my top five favorite animals and watching their silly little waddles and their marvelous dives brought tears to my eyes for some reason. Maybe just pure joy and admiration for these cute little creatures. Or maybe the tears were just from the hilarity of watching those lovely Muppets pruning themselves. Either or.
After some rather lackluster grilled cheese and delicious soup from Tom & Chee (which I never realized was a Cincinnati original chain), we headed up to our hotel north of the city proper, the Tru by Hilton in Sharonville. To be fair, the vibes around Sharonville are a little odd. It’s part industrial, part commercial, and part residential all crammed together in less than like four miles. There’s a new looking high school nestled into some ritzy looking hotels and a convention center, complete with a craft brewery. Then a little further on is Glensdale, with its quaint townhouses and little squirrel statues (never did learn why squirrels). And then on the other side of the interstate is a UPS shipping warehouse, a General Mills, and various other warehouses. So obviously this area’s hotels catered more to salary men than it did to tourists or families.
Still, the hotel itself was quite nice. The staff were friendly and even let us check-in early. The rooms were clean, and I mean literally just cleaned when we arrived, as the floors were still wet, fumigating the room with the overwhelming smell of lavender Fabuloso. The lobby was comfortable, the complimentary breakfast was standard but solid, and they even had a pool table and a little indoor pool. We used the latter and were the only ones in it, enjoying some cold water in early March like the psychopaths that we are. I wish there would have been a hot tub, but sometimes you get exactly what you pay for and no more. And at about $170 for two nights, it was a decent deal.
It’s a shame that the nearby bar was “under new management” and most certainly closed, despite what the website said. And Third Eye Brewing, the craft brewery mentioned before, was closed on Mondays, so that wasn’t an option either. After driving around fruitlessly hunting, we decided to say screw it. Any port in a storm. Ruby Tuesday’s serves up decent enough drinks and Waffle House is about the most exemplary of all American restaurants, so we were able to quench our thirsts and fill our stomachs.
The following morning, we took off for Findlay Market to try some little bites and view the different food options. It was a shame that I was leaving in less than two weeks, as Findlay Market had a great variety of ingredients that I have been wanting to try out in my cooking but wouldn’t make sense to drop some forty dollars in spices knowing they wouldn’t be used in time. So, we settled for some carrot cake, hot pretzels, a little pumpkin roll bar, and browsing the works of the other creatives and culinarians. The nearby murals were stunning, and the vendors were warm and friendly, but as with many things in the city, early March might not be the best time to visit. The tone in the neighborhood was rather muted and I could only wonder what it would be like to visit in the full swing of summer or fall, with warm weather and fresh foods coaxing people from their homes.
After some food, we headed to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Eden Park. While the museum itself was still closed when we arrived at 10am, the parking was free and the Krohn Conservatory was only a short hike away, so we parked and enjoyed the heat and humidity of the botanical wonderland while we waited. While I’ve never had to pay for a conservatory before (most of the ones I’ve been to have been free), the Krohn Conservatory did boast a beautiful flower garden, desert exhibit, and bonsai display on top of the usual tropical and palm houses. My personal favorite discovery on this trip was the Crown of Thorns (euphorbia milii f. lutea), which is the “oldest known plant specimen” within the conservatory and with potential biblical implications, given the name.
After warming up in the greenhouses, we ventured back up to the Museum of Art and took on the main event of our trip: the Cincinnati Art Museum. Aislynn is an artist and I’m a word nerd with a background in linguistics and anthropology, so surprise surprise when we realized that the Cincinnati Art Museum would cater to both of our interests. Not only were there paintings from Warhol, Wood, and O’Keeffe (to name just a handful), but a large amount of works from Japan (coincidence!), China, and an entire section dedicated to archaeological discoveries. Unbeknownst to me was the fact that the Cincinnati Art Museum houses “the most significant collection of Nabataean material outside of Jordan” (“About the South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities Collection”). My nerdy little heart was geeking out over the recreated entrance to the Nabataean temples, the relief busts creeping out of the stone in such a spooky way.
Going through all that history made me a little melancholic, and nothing captured this more than in the second painting to ever make me cry: Sunset on the New England Coast by Robert S. Duncanson. While the painting itself seems so idyllic from a distance, it was the chaos of the waves beating against a dark shoreline with the tiny hint of hope over the sunrise horizon that caught me in my emotions. While the artist was struggling with dementia, I have been struggling with depression and a sense of purposelessness these past few years. For me, these adventures and the relationships that I am forming are that bit of light on the horizon, a small bit of hope in a world that seems to me to froth with chaotic energy. It was a small moment, but an important one, and pulled all of this obsession with inanity into perspective – any sunrise can become a work of art to the right frame of mind at the right time in their life.
With our journey winding down, we finished our journey with a quiet night in our hotel after some drinks and food at Third Eye Brewery. Having received several awards for their beer, we needed to end with some choice beverages. Dark Aura was definitely interesting, as I am not a stout guy but actually enjoyed that chocolate peanut butter stout (sweet, but not too sweet, with the peanut flavor cutting through the normally awful cigar and dirt flavor of stouts to me). It was also Taco Tuesday, so we chowed down on some carne asada and chicken tinga.
On our way back home, we stopped by Jungle Jim’s for one final foray, and I was blown away. If it isn’t obvious by the nature of this blog, I love exploring other countries. And I absolutely love food. So going to a grocery store that specializes in stocking the staples and oddities of tastes around the world was a wonderland for me. We bought so many different snacks to try, including Turkish Delights (finally can see why Edmund sold out his family in the Chronicles of Narnia), hotpot potato chips, scorpion suckers, and spring onion Tayto crisps from Northern Ireland (one of my staple snacks when I lived there). The store was huge, and we didn’t even see half of it after being there for an hour. But with a car loaded with goodies, it was time to return and appreciate the subtle beauties of my home.
Well…at least for a little while longer.
And now, to End with Etmyology:
Satori. Noun. Defined as the experience of “awakening,” it is considered an experience which cannot be expressed in words. It stems from the Japanese verb “to realize” (satoru / 悟) but is distinct from this word as it is meant to show a “transcendence of the distinction between one that knows and knowledge” (Diener, 1994). So, as with most Zen concepts, it’s best not to think about it too much and just live with it.
Works Cited
“About the South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities Collection.” Cincinnati Art Museum, https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/explore-the-collection/south-asian-art-islamic-art-and-antiquities/ Retrieved March 10, 2025.
Diener, Michael (1994). The encyclopedia of Eastern philosophy and religion : Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Stephan Schuhmacher, Gert Woerner (1st ed.). Boston: Shambhala. p. 308.
“Explore Census Data”. United States Census Bureau. data.census.gov. Retrieved March 10, 2025.
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