My trip back to Indiana was so pleasant it bordered on bizarrely serene.  It's obviously been way too long since I managed to escape the tight, tangled skein of humanity on the too-densely populated East Coast.  Boston in particular is such a miasma of stale complacency and rancid ambition.  And the threat of tribal malice looms with every interaction.  But while it's nice to return to the wide-open spaces and ordered linearity of my Indiana home, I find you pay for the quiet and calm with a vague sense of not quite definable benignity.  If "out East" people tend to be too sharply focused, in places where people can really spread out the center doesn't always hold. 

Definitely a nice place to visit, though.  For me, at least, since I have family there.  That wasn't always such a draw, but I have to admit since my brothers got married and started having kids, family is fun again.  At first, of course, it was sheer schadenfreude — children are Nature's best revenge on those who have them, aren't they?  But as my nieces and nephews have grown and blossomed into more than mere agents of Nature's vengeance, and my brothers and sisters-in-law have suffered enough for whatever long-forgotten sins they may have committed and have begun to take on the noble mien of middle age, I have come to a renewed appreciation of family for its own sake.

In fact, after the initial shock and horror at the thought of my siblings reproducing, I took to uncle-ing like a pig to the slaughter.  Or... wait.  That can't be right.  Honestly, it was a little scary at first.  Being the youngest of three boys it was hard to yield the spotlight to the firstborn grandchild.  But I quickly realized that there was nothing I could ever do as a 21 year old that would match the signal achievements of baby's first poo, first burp, first smile (even if it was just an expression of the pleasure of passing gas). It turns out, none of these things are very impressive when adults do them.

It takes a little time to acclimate to the upside-down world of child-rearing, that's for sure, but once you get that it's about rediscovering, over and over and over again, all the little things we take for granted, you can start having a little fun with it. Having said this, I've found that watching the kids grow up from a safe and sanitary distance — get yourself an undisclosed location if at all possible — and then occasionally parachuting in to spoil the little monsters and fill their heads with all sorts of silly notions yields the best results.

Nieces and nephews are such an unexpected pleasure, I'm continually surprised by how delightful it is to see them blossom and grow.  And it does wonders for your mood when you show up and they want to jump all over you and hug and kiss you.   I mean, does anything feel as warm and fuzzy as a tuckered-out two year-old in your arms with her little head resting on your shoulder, drooling all down the back of your shirt?  Who knew?  Like I said: unexpected pleasures.

And after the initial assault mine were surprisingly well-behaved to boot.  I am known to have a lude-like effect on children and household pets.  I can't say why.  Yoga?  Meditation?  Superhuman Buddha-like detachment?  That mind Control course I took at the Global Hypnosis Academy in Poona back when I was in the service?  I'm sure they all play a role.  What you have to realize is this: children, office workers and dogs are a lot alike.  And it's like Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer, says: "If you're not the Alpha, guess who is?" 

Long and short of it: kids are a tonic, but you can't spend too much time with them.  They are so lovely in so many ways — we can talk a lot about innocence and hope, but when you see it in a child's eyes it has a transformative effect, doesn't it?  Grown men and women make faces and sounds  in the presence of children that grown men and women should never make, ever.  But we're utterly helpless against the urge.  Children truly are omnipotent.  We are slaves to their laughter.  I know it sounds hokey, but it's so true.

And laughing along keeps you young, but you want to get out before you regress entirely.  You have to balance the occasional tourette's-like bout of babbling and baby talk with real words and whole sentences, if you hope to communicate with your kids once they do learn to talk.  And they will, before you know it.  In fact, parents sometimes find it hard to keep up.  That's one job of uncles — to occasionally prod them on.  Truth is, uncle-ing is probably the best gig you can get in a family.  You get all the fun and games, and you never have to change a single diaper.  Ever.  You might get an aunt to change a diaper or two, but whoever heard of an uncle falling for that? 

The kids were only one of the many joys of my trip back home.  Seeing aunts, uncles, and cousins I haven't seen in ages is always a treat.  And catching up with old friends, too, of course.  This time around my bff Jer had all sorts of activities planned and hustled me hither and yon all day Friday meeting various people and deadlines.  We ended up at the Circle downtown for the annual Christmas tree lighting...


I have to admit, I like downtown Indianapolis.  When I was growing up in the seventies, the tourism board had a big ad blitz that taunted: "Move over New York, 'Apple' is our middle name!"  The Big Apple.  Indian-APPLE-is. Get it?  They had a snappy little jingle and everything.  For some reason they sort of abandoned that ad campaign.  They're back to being "Naptown" now, which, personally, I think is something to be proud of (and according to the New York Times, "an afternoon nap works better" than a "strong cup of coffee" for a late-in-the-day pick-me-up — so naps are much more exciting than previously imagined).  The City that never sleeps?  BAH!  It's got nothing on Naptown!

Get this: there's even an Indianapolis International Film Festival.  We dropped into the headquarters and I walked away with a "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" action figure, and everything! 

I also got to visit with my favorite Mastiff, Rocco, back at Jerry's place...


And — oh! — Jerry took me to the Peace Chapel at the Crown Hill cemetery where many of Indiana's luminaries are buried, to show me the spot in the mausoleum he'd picked out as his eternal resting place, too.  It was the one next to this one...


Next day I trekked downtown on my own to visit some old haunts from my secret teenage life.  War Memorial Plaza is always first on my list, and, not surprisingly, I had the whole place, including the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to myself...


I have to say, I'm a big fan of traditional "heroic" monuments, especially since, for some obscure and thoroughly fabulous reason, they generally include flamboyant, monumental nudity, which I am also a huge fan of.  There's no full-frontal in War Memorial Plaza...

...but, if you don't already know it: I'll take what I can get...

Inside, the place is grand and ghostly somber.  I used to come here quite often just to collect my thoughts.  It's one of those timeless spaces, a world away from the world outside...


Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, which borders the plaza to the North, recently renovated their old building and built a huge new state-of-the-art addition...

A total departure...


...the new space still manages to play well with the old one.  In fact, by not feeling too constrained by the design of the old building, as was clearly the case with the Boston Public Library, they managed to create a space that really honors the old space without having to ape it.

Another new addition, this one I have to say I'm ambivalent about, is the Indianapolis Museum of Art's.  The old building was huge, lumbering, monolithic...


...but the expansive grounds — over 150 acres — gave it a monumental setting it worked in.  The new building struggles with some iconic elements, but looks gimmicky to me...


Frankly, it could be a shopping mall.  Great parking, though.

The grounds are still gorgeous, and Sutphin Fountain, while nestled into a corner now instead of front and center, anchors a grand view from inside...


The views are about all that remains recognizable of the museum I spent endless hours in as a kid... 


The IMA was my church, another of those places out of space and time.  From as far back as I can remember through my tumultuous teens, this was my secret getaway. Admission was free, and remains so, but it doesn't mean the place ain't classy.  Inside, the new building is stylish and serene...


Still with plenty of secret nooks and hide-outs here and there.  The best was in the Asian Art galleries, where you could choose your sound effects as you sat around a corner out of sight contemplating nature through a wall of glass looking West.  The Asian collection is one of the nation's largest, and while I was there there was a special exhibition, "The Power and the Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty"  which was well-presented, if in a slightly cramped space for the embarrassment of riches on display.

I liked the statuary in the permanent collection, myself.  The tomb guardians are always my favorites...


The European art consists mainly of major works by minor artists mixed in with minor works by major artists.  Which is not a bad thing, in my opinion.  I'm at a point in my career as a museum-goer where I want to go off the beaten path a bit.  The IMA's collection has plenty of charms.  Lots of tasty treats, like the delightful hors d'oeuvres by Gustave Caillebotte...


La Place de l'Europe, temps de pluie is probably his best known work, but his depictions of shirtless laborers have been favorites of mine ever since seeing them in a traveling show at the Chicago Art Institute in my youth. 

There are typically dreamy works from Odilon Redon, another of my favorites from early childhood on, like La Voile jaune...


There were also minor works by Sargent that were well worth seeing. And exquisite curios like the darkly whimsical William Holbrook Beard's His Majesty Receives...


Leaving the new galleries I stumbled into the Medieval Renaissance gallery, which has not changed since my childhood.  Here I found The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist, Nosadella's kewpie-esque take on Christianity's first family...


The museum acknowledges that Nosadella, a student of Pellegrino Tibaldi, was completely "ignored by the artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari and his contemporaries."  Nor is there agreement as to whether the painting was the product of pupil or master.  They hail the "almost grotesque monumentality" and "congested intimacy" of the "restlessly idiosyncratic" composition, all qualities I esteem and aim for in my personal life.  I don't know if it was that it was the Thanksgiving holiday but I thought I saw a 20 lb roast turkey resting on Mary's shoulder.  Christ seems to be lunging for the drumstick. 

I liked the picture.  But not as much as I like Pietro della Vecchia's St. Dominic and the Devil...


According to the label:

The story of the Devil's appearance to St. Dominic in the form of a monkey derives from a medieval legend, according to which the saint seized his tormentor and forced him to hold a lighted candle while he studied. St. Dominic released him only after the candle burned down and singed his fingers.

Now, that's a saint for you.  They don't mess around.  That's the kind of painting that gets you thinking.

But nothing gets you thinking quite like contemporary art, does it?  I have to say, while I maintain what I consider a healthy skepticism toward contemporary art, I enjoyed a couple of works in the museums contemporary galleries, at least after the initial disorientation of stumbling into a gallery that had closed after an exhibition and taking it for a postmodern statement on gallery closings...


I loved Tim Hawkinson's Moebius Ship...

But I really loved Do-Ho Suh's Floor...


Neither work is openly hostile to sentiment, and both work on a fairly elemental level while giving the viewer something to chew on.  I trust children's initial reactions to contemporary art.  They may not be able to articulate what is compelling about it, but you can see it has an impact.  That's the same part of an adult that responds, although an adult may then take on the work on various levels children can't — at least not readily.  There are, however, works I remember seeing as a kid that have stuck with me, that I've been "chewing on" ever since. 

With Do-Ho Suh's work what I especially like is it's obviousness.  It's such a powerful visual metaphor, so immediately resonant, it's almost shocking not to have seen it before.  Where you go with it from there is your business, but it's open — generously, rather than vacuously so, I think — to multiple conversations.   

All in all, a very fruitful trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  And Indy in general gave me a lot of food for thought.  But, it wasn't all blowjobs and rainbows.  Along with the positive developments downtown, there were some heartbreaks...


My ihop — where I had spent endless late nights, me and all my self-medicated friends, pondering the questions of the universe — was all boarded up!  And to add insult to injury the blue tile roof was all torn off!  I wept.  I'm gonna need a support group. 

Some changes are just hard to take.  Truth is, I should get back more often — it's scary how quickly the kids grow up and the rest of us grow old, innit?  And a dose of midwestern hospitality every so often makes these long, bitter New England winters a little more bearable, too.  And now that Indiana's gone blue, I don't need a passport to go home again!

Thank you for indulging me, gentle reader.  If you're a real glutton for punishment, you can see more or less all of my pics from Indy (except for the x-rated ones, natch) on — or is it "in"? — my flickr photo stream.