Omaha Eternal

A revisit of some writing composed on a blustery day in Omaha, Nebraska, March 2023.

Dear Reader,

Do you ever think back on the moments that changed you? Especially if you expected nothing from them?

I was only in Omaha, Nebraska for 36 hours, but it gave me a lifetime. See, I had to figure out where I was going, and the first step was finding a way off a train that was about to crash into a brick wall, cartoon style. What better place to do that than Omaha? Omaha is famous for its historic rail system; it used to be the gateway to the west, the stop you took before you got to gold. I guess I needed that, too.

Omaha called me for an entirely different reason in March 2023, though: I was on a journalism trip to write about the composer and percussionist Andy Akiho, who was in-residence at the city’s symphony orchestra. He was premiering a new piece to be played on a giant ceramic head and a few other ceramics made by certified Omaha legend Jun Kaneko. I’m grateful for the generous access Akiho gave me to write the profile, which remains a story that makes me proud.

At the time of traveling to Omaha, I was yearning for pretty much everything in my life to change. It was a slow burn, then a freefall, and then an explosion (yes, cartoon style, as I had nihilistically predicted). Omaha, I think, jumpstarted much of the self discovery that has colored the final years of my 20s, unexpectedly, surprisingly, and thankfully. I’ll write more on that in due time.

For now, here’s what I wrote when I was there, totally unedited. At the time, I titled it “the yearn.” (ok sure, Wong Kar-Wai.)

Anyway, think of this as an introduction to why I go on these musical adventures and why I hope you’ll come with me.

Where have you been lately? I’m sure I’ll see you out there soon, the real you, the one you’re living for.

Much Love,
V

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“the yearn (omaha free write)”

There’s only so long that you can sit on the couch and ponder who you’ll become. So, I hopped in the car, turned up the music, and watched where fate took me. My car teetered along Route Eighty, snaking through woods and past lakes; my tires screeched when I took a sharp turn onto Route One to get to the Old Saybrook coastline. Beachgoers wandered on the sidewalk next to me and laid under rainbow-colored umbrellas that dotted the coastline. I rolled down my windows and let the wind slap the side of my face, the smell of the salty sea emanating into my car while the sound of fuzzy guitar riffs emanated out of it.

For a late-blooming teenager, an aimless drive along Long Island Sound was pure freedom. In the car, it was just me and the whole world ahead of me, an ocean of ideas waiting to be untapped. If only I could figure out which one would be the right one to pluck out of the ether.

I often think back to those times, where I was between semesters and I thought I could reinvent myself for the next one. Maybe I’d return to school in the fall and find my “true” calling; maybe I’d make a friend who would last a lifetime. At the time, selfhood was finality. It was a goal I was achieving, not a process I was living through, and the way to get there was to go out on the open road and find some kind of manufactured hope.

These days, I’ve done the drive enough times now to know what comes out on the other side, but I’m still yearning to piece together some complete version of myself that exists in my head but nowhere outside of it. So, I went to the middle of the United States, looking to prove myself to myself. In Omaha’s Old Market district, roads turn from pavement to cobblestone. The area has a retro-hip flair: vintage shops, bookstores, art galleries, and trendy ale houses line the streets, and there’s a bright red, oldschool English phone booth on one corner. Many of the shops here are housed in refurbished warehouses, an ode to the district’s past as a production epicenter during Nebraska’s population boom of the late-19th century.

Much of Omaha is desolate today—it’s about 15 degrees out, with wind gusts so strong they could knock you over, and snow flutters occasionally fall from the sky—but the Old Market enclave is bustling. Inside Hardee’s, a local coffee shop, only a couple of tables are open; the thrift store down the street is full of antiquers looking for quirky housewares. I peer into the art galleries, many of them closed. I see walls lined with landscape paintings and oil works just waiting to find their home, empty spaces waiting to be filled with life.

I chat with my driver, who’d gotten in her van after spending a few years zookeeping. She asked me how I liked Omaha. “It’s nice,” I said. “How did you end up here?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she told me with more than a little pride. “Our zoo was ranked “best zoo” this year. We beat San Diego. When you come back, you have to see it.”

I thank her for the idea and hop out of the van to wander a little more. After roaming for long enough that my fingers turn purple from the cold, I stop in a local bar-grille and eat a turkey sandwich at a high-top table on my own. It was the first time I’d eaten in a restaurant by myself—I wonder how I went this long without doing it, too—but I get over my nerves and get myself some food. Shakily, I ask if I could have a table for one, I get a “sure” in return and a stack of food and drink menus to peruse. It was a run-of-the-mill question for them, but an earth-shattering revelation for me.

Back at my hotel, a table of travelers next to me chat about their drive to South Dakota. They’re excited to see the Badlands. One woman wonders whether she should have invited her daughter on the trip, too, and the rest assure her it’s alright to go on her own. They’re certain there’ll be another time. Omaha is, after all, the place you stop at before you get to where you’re going. And there are many stops left on the road.

Yet I remember that adventure is something I’m still grasping at. It’s something I’ve held onto, but the second I’ve had it in my hands, it’s already gone, and there I am left searching for it again. When I first went out on my own, an 18-year-old just discovering what it meant to have to pick yourself up, I thought one epiphany would be enough to change me forever. Funny. What is life but a series of realizations and setbacks connected by the process of experiencing them? Here I am looking out at the shimmering morning light over the desolate Nebraska plains, wondering what’s just beyond the horizon.