It's funny how things have changed.
I wrote this my first night in
the district.
it's too early yet. i don't have a grasp on this place, and i don't think i ever will.
so far i've relearned the alphabet. simply put, something as basic as the alphabet trips me up sometimes, and really, if it weren't for the alphabet song, most adults would stumble the sequence too. there's a reason you're asked to recite it backwards as a test of sobriety. thought's involved. that cluster-fuck "hijklmnop" would confuse you too if you were standing at the intersection of 15th street NW and P street NW, trying to kindergarten your way backwards through that mess, trying to find north. luckily the sun helped me out.
the streets here go like this: the capitol is the epicenter of the four triangles comprising the square lying on its apex that is washinton, dc ("dc" or "the district" are the only "acceptable" slang here). said triangle sections are known by their cardinal locations. i live in the northwest. all north-south streets, being numbered, increase as you move further west or east of the capitol. all east-west streets are named after letters of the alphabet, increasing in order as you move further north or south of the capitol. it's a parallel sesame street nightmare. i'm not even gonna get into the diagonal streets named after states, then trees, then flowers, or the traffic circles on top of that. what follows: i'm roughly 15 blocks west and 16 blocks north of the capitol building. and that's as oriented as i've gotten so far. that and i've noticed dc people wear hats. not like warm winter hats, but bothersome fashionable look at my fucking head kind of hats. grr.
i'm lonely. i can say that now. any sort of love affair i had with solitude in the past has turned into a bitterly enabling realization: growing up sucks. growing up for me means having people, places and things in your life that you love and can't do without. because i know that i never really got there - - that state of a wild open spirit with no attachments, no personality, no limitations. that type of freedom i'd been going for, as lackluster as it seems now, enchanted me. i was convinced my brain would work better that way, and eventually, my heart. the idea of not being locked into any framework, cerebral or emotional, just seemed like a worthwhile practice. solitude was my way inward. it was easy enough. but that's precisely the problem. these things don't come easy. i'm no ascetic. i just spent a lot of time by myself because people are too complicated or not complicated enough.
paradoxically, this mindset made me cherish each good human interaction with unproportioned happiness. steve at fleetwood, with whom i'd never actually had a conversation nor exchanged introduction, would nod at me as i walked in sometimes, eye contact and everything. this small thing would carry me all night long. i miss him, and he probably doesn't care one moment about me. he's just a stranger. so imagine how much i miss you.
don't know what the fuck i'm doing. i don't know why i'm here. i've never felt this alienated and dissatisfied with the alienation as i do right at this moment. and worst of all, i'm kinda scared. my job at the nih terrifies me. for the first time in my life i'm scared i'm not smart enough. moving to dc where i don't know a soul all by my big bad self going to work for the government was supposed to be some kinda rebirth, a next step, a challenge that i'd take on and run with, banners flapping, trumpets blasting and all that shit. i'm thinking back right now to that moment at my old job when i told chris slater i was moving to dc and he said, 'better get a vest'. i laughed really hard at that. now i can't even crack a smile. it's not as dangerous here as everyone says it is, at least not where i live. still, the people are fucking weird and i'm worried about a commencement of personal apocalypse. here's some of what i saw today.
i explored my neighborhood. i left the mess kit at home (maps, compass, music, notebook, pen) and encountered too many portentious anomalies for anyone to take lightly. first it took on the shape of a woman, sewing machine hat, salvation army shit-colored coat, sour ageless face. we crossed each other in the middle of the street and she said to me,
"green light
not enough time
you won't make it",
just like that, looking at me with eyes Full of time. what kind of fucked up lazy haiku is that anyway? after that it took on the shape of a man, train conductor hat, face that said he listened to smooth jazz exclusively, flaps on his shoes. we crossed each other in front of the thai tanic restaurant on 14th. he looked at me and said, as easily as truth be told,
"you gon' die".
it was like i was walking down the street cracking people's skulls open like fortune cookies, and they deliver these one-liners that kinda bounce around in my head, then jab me to the marrow. the third of these events took place in a CVS while i was purchasing cleaning supplies. This one took on the form of a woman with a whole foods bag, her two demonic little retards spilling the tictac display onto my feet. she was a dc yuppie-mom rushing to get home to make her organic fucking mac and cheese or something. she said,
"are you ever gonna be finished?"
in a tone that deserved an exacting elbow thrust to the throat so she could never speak again. am i ever gonna be finished. am i ever gonna be finished. hmm, hmm...no, she wasn't portentious at all. she was just a bitch. she should choke on a tictac.
i got on the metro. descending on the escalator into that dim subterranean network felt like tunneling into chronic disease, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't. i took the red line in the direction of michigan, if it weren't so far away, and got off at friendship heights, just willing myself not to fall into shitty metaphor, shitty regret. everyone put on their subway mask, that dead halflight to the eyes of commuters in common, bodies rocking in unison, nowhere to safely rest your gaze. i was gonna find something at friendship heights, so i'd hoped. i found a nieman marcus, jcrew, felines basement, linen's n things, tjmaxx, starbucks, starbucks, nothing, nothing, faces i didn't know and would never know. what i had hoped for was an incarnation of fleetwood, or at least a good cup of coffee in an actual mug. what i found was a bathroom shit hole medicine cabinet full of numbing agents, uppers and anti-depressants, all packaged in the form of recerche product. cheery's not the word.
walking outside the station, a guy in a hoodie savoring a cigarette looked at me. really looked at me, straight into my eyes, and said nothing. i slowed down to a stop, holding his stare, giving it right back. we spanned about 8 feet. then his friend punched him in the arm, and the whole thing broke. what could have happened, what could have been shared or discovered had that moment stretched to the point where words became necessary as an explanation?
walking ahead of me at friendship heights was a girl with hair about as long as mine was, just at the hip. it made me regret this chunky bob disaster i'd chosen, thinking of those 2 feet of hair attached to someone else's head.
on the metro back to dupont circle, back to 19th and P street, a woman was reading the newest issue of Oprah magazine. i couldn't see her face. it was totally sucked into whatever garbage had her so engaged, like heartworm. the cover read like this, in pleasing turquoise font on the melon background of the gloss:
how to be happier:
life changing tools, tricks,
shortcuts, breakthroughs - -
and of course, shoes
that was when my throat started to tighten, chest started to swell like it was filling with wet asphalt, smooth quiet! adopt-a-highway five hundred twenty five miles estimated driving time 8 hours 25 minutes escalator broken at dupont circle, take the Q street exit if you can't make the stairs or are disabled next stop farragut north doors closing doors closing shuttle service to dupont excuse you please return to the fare machine inadequate amount may not exit, must go back, must go back. i get these dizzy spells sometimes, and i don't think their onset is emotionally linked. anyhow, my whole body feels hot, then cold in alternating waves which causes a general notion of over-heating. my vision blurs, my breathing can't keep up, and i get dizzy like i'm gonna faint old world style. the last time it happened was at the novi denny's some weeks ago. the time before that was on the elevator to work at my previous job. anyhow, this one i can blame on oprah. getting out of the station and back to my apt became a difficult task.
then 9th grade eastern traditions flashed through my head, out of all that nonsense. we were made to read a book called 'everyday tao'. each page was devoted to a certain notion with instructions that followed the way. there was a section entitled 'vomit'. the explanation was something like this: " if there is something bad in you making you ill, purge it."
simple enough. this somehow calmed me. this wasn't so tough. i was only short a nickel. surely that could be managed. somehow, i had only a nickel in my pocket. this was the only thing that made me feel good today because i never carry change in my pocket. ever. not even before i got my horrible adult wallet with the zip change compartment. so where did that nickel come from? i can't say. but it made memories go through my head. that nickel made me think of aesop rock talking about quitting smoking at the magic stick, then reading one of andy's sketches at rendezvous with rubicon and 'wind's discretion' in it, and 'wind's discretion' made me think of ron because whenever he was around the wind just cut out, and the wind that came off lake michigan last winter in rogers with adam and how cold it was no matter which view you were facing, the cold making me think of nicole and i running from the state theater to my car after an amazing ben folds show, laughing and gasping hilariously like we were little school girls because it was absolutely freezing that night, and that made us run, and we.don't.run., running up the asswarmers in my car till burning, remembering the intense heating at mike's allston apartment and how the walls would actually bead, sweat, condensation streaming down the walls as we watched south park off his computer before falling asleep, and the image of water running down the walls made me think of rain, and then the rain god. then i thought of eric, the two of us sitting on a park bench in the night rain getting soaked on our first date, not talking because the awkwardness of that time and place held us absolutely still, together. still together. and then, with no connection at all other than he's one of my favorite people in all the whole wide world, justin. justin being high at the construction site, climbing up to the highest point on that structure, higher than i had gone.
i'm glad it was only a nickel, because if there were others they would make noise and i would have removed them and put them into my adult wallet. then i wouldn't have steeped in all those memories. i hate the wallet. i think it's cursing me.
home is where you can take out your keys and select the right one by feel, insert it into the lock and turn one-two-three, hand flipping on the lightswitch four, step out of your shoes five-six, deconstruct the outerwear and accoutrements seven-eight, sit down comfortably nine, sigh contentedly ten, all in stride. instead, every action is a fumble.
last night was my first night here in the district. i couldn't sleep and i was too scared to go out and wander the streets, scared that i would return only feeling more estranged than when i set out. walks can do that. some out there may feel i'm getting just what i deserve. and those rare people would be right, to a degree.
i'm finding it much easier to be honest and open of late. i figure: what's the point of being in a fog. i'd like to end all of this with a happy note, still. back to memories of being in school, the things i learned. this one is also from a religion class, freshman year at BU called sacred journeys. we were studying ritual and the crisis event of the hero. the process has three phases. the first is departure: severance from everything known, obliteration of the self and all associated illusions. the second is initiation: initiation into the new you, and all the trial you have to go through to earn your newness, initiation into wisdom that was until this point completely beyond your comprehension. the last phase is return: coming home, transformed. but i'm no hero. just stuck in that time between departure and initiation. right in here you are nothing, have no understanding, no place, you are lost in neither here nor there, you are lost in otherness. you can' t go back. you're terrified to go forward. you lose your name in this liminal swamp. but you get a new one once you make it out, a better one. how do you make it out? you just do. because you have to.
All I can say is that the hero's adventure is drawn in a circle for a reason.
Back to square one. Sometimes I wonder if I've learned anything at all.
the district.
it's too early yet. i don't have a grasp on this place, and i don't think i ever will.
so far i've relearned the alphabet. simply put, something as basic as the alphabet trips me up sometimes, and really, if it weren't for the alphabet song, most adults would stumble the sequence too. there's a reason you're asked to recite it backwards as a test of sobriety. thought's involved. that cluster-fuck "hijklmnop" would confuse you too if you were standing at the intersection of 15th street NW and P street NW, trying to kindergarten your way backwards through that mess, trying to find north. luckily the sun helped me out.
the streets here go like this: the capitol is the epicenter of the four triangles comprising the square lying on its apex that is washinton, dc ("dc" or "the district" are the only "acceptable" slang here). said triangle sections are known by their cardinal locations. i live in the northwest. all north-south streets, being numbered, increase as you move further west or east of the capitol. all east-west streets are named after letters of the alphabet, increasing in order as you move further north or south of the capitol. it's a parallel sesame street nightmare. i'm not even gonna get into the diagonal streets named after states, then trees, then flowers, or the traffic circles on top of that. what follows: i'm roughly 15 blocks west and 16 blocks north of the capitol building. and that's as oriented as i've gotten so far. that and i've noticed dc people wear hats. not like warm winter hats, but bothersome fashionable look at my fucking head kind of hats. grr.
i'm lonely. i can say that now. any sort of love affair i had with solitude in the past has turned into a bitterly enabling realization: growing up sucks. growing up for me means having people, places and things in your life that you love and can't do without. because i know that i never really got there - - that state of a wild open spirit with no attachments, no personality, no limitations. that type of freedom i'd been going for, as lackluster as it seems now, enchanted me. i was convinced my brain would work better that way, and eventually, my heart. the idea of not being locked into any framework, cerebral or emotional, just seemed like a worthwhile practice. solitude was my way inward. it was easy enough. but that's precisely the problem. these things don't come easy. i'm no ascetic. i just spent a lot of time by myself because people are too complicated or not complicated enough.
paradoxically, this mindset made me cherish each good human interaction with unproportioned happiness. steve at fleetwood, with whom i'd never actually had a conversation nor exchanged introduction, would nod at me as i walked in sometimes, eye contact and everything. this small thing would carry me all night long. i miss him, and he probably doesn't care one moment about me. he's just a stranger. so imagine how much i miss you.
don't know what the fuck i'm doing. i don't know why i'm here. i've never felt this alienated and dissatisfied with the alienation as i do right at this moment. and worst of all, i'm kinda scared. my job at the nih terrifies me. for the first time in my life i'm scared i'm not smart enough. moving to dc where i don't know a soul all by my big bad self going to work for the government was supposed to be some kinda rebirth, a next step, a challenge that i'd take on and run with, banners flapping, trumpets blasting and all that shit. i'm thinking back right now to that moment at my old job when i told chris slater i was moving to dc and he said, 'better get a vest'. i laughed really hard at that. now i can't even crack a smile. it's not as dangerous here as everyone says it is, at least not where i live. still, the people are fucking weird and i'm worried about a commencement of personal apocalypse. here's some of what i saw today.
i explored my neighborhood. i left the mess kit at home (maps, compass, music, notebook, pen) and encountered too many portentious anomalies for anyone to take lightly. first it took on the shape of a woman, sewing machine hat, salvation army shit-colored coat, sour ageless face. we crossed each other in the middle of the street and she said to me,
"green light
not enough time
you won't make it",
just like that, looking at me with eyes Full of time. what kind of fucked up lazy haiku is that anyway? after that it took on the shape of a man, train conductor hat, face that said he listened to smooth jazz exclusively, flaps on his shoes. we crossed each other in front of the thai tanic restaurant on 14th. he looked at me and said, as easily as truth be told,
"you gon' die".
it was like i was walking down the street cracking people's skulls open like fortune cookies, and they deliver these one-liners that kinda bounce around in my head, then jab me to the marrow. the third of these events took place in a CVS while i was purchasing cleaning supplies. This one took on the form of a woman with a whole foods bag, her two demonic little retards spilling the tictac display onto my feet. she was a dc yuppie-mom rushing to get home to make her organic fucking mac and cheese or something. she said,
"are you ever gonna be finished?"
in a tone that deserved an exacting elbow thrust to the throat so she could never speak again. am i ever gonna be finished. am i ever gonna be finished. hmm, hmm...no, she wasn't portentious at all. she was just a bitch. she should choke on a tictac.
i got on the metro. descending on the escalator into that dim subterranean network felt like tunneling into chronic disease, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't. i took the red line in the direction of michigan, if it weren't so far away, and got off at friendship heights, just willing myself not to fall into shitty metaphor, shitty regret. everyone put on their subway mask, that dead halflight to the eyes of commuters in common, bodies rocking in unison, nowhere to safely rest your gaze. i was gonna find something at friendship heights, so i'd hoped. i found a nieman marcus, jcrew, felines basement, linen's n things, tjmaxx, starbucks, starbucks, nothing, nothing, faces i didn't know and would never know. what i had hoped for was an incarnation of fleetwood, or at least a good cup of coffee in an actual mug. what i found was a bathroom shit hole medicine cabinet full of numbing agents, uppers and anti-depressants, all packaged in the form of recerche product. cheery's not the word.
walking outside the station, a guy in a hoodie savoring a cigarette looked at me. really looked at me, straight into my eyes, and said nothing. i slowed down to a stop, holding his stare, giving it right back. we spanned about 8 feet. then his friend punched him in the arm, and the whole thing broke. what could have happened, what could have been shared or discovered had that moment stretched to the point where words became necessary as an explanation?
walking ahead of me at friendship heights was a girl with hair about as long as mine was, just at the hip. it made me regret this chunky bob disaster i'd chosen, thinking of those 2 feet of hair attached to someone else's head.
on the metro back to dupont circle, back to 19th and P street, a woman was reading the newest issue of Oprah magazine. i couldn't see her face. it was totally sucked into whatever garbage had her so engaged, like heartworm. the cover read like this, in pleasing turquoise font on the melon background of the gloss:
how to be happier:
life changing tools, tricks,
shortcuts, breakthroughs - -
and of course, shoes
that was when my throat started to tighten, chest started to swell like it was filling with wet asphalt, smooth quiet! adopt-a-highway five hundred twenty five miles estimated driving time 8 hours 25 minutes escalator broken at dupont circle, take the Q street exit if you can't make the stairs or are disabled next stop farragut north doors closing doors closing shuttle service to dupont excuse you please return to the fare machine inadequate amount may not exit, must go back, must go back. i get these dizzy spells sometimes, and i don't think their onset is emotionally linked. anyhow, my whole body feels hot, then cold in alternating waves which causes a general notion of over-heating. my vision blurs, my breathing can't keep up, and i get dizzy like i'm gonna faint old world style. the last time it happened was at the novi denny's some weeks ago. the time before that was on the elevator to work at my previous job. anyhow, this one i can blame on oprah. getting out of the station and back to my apt became a difficult task.
then 9th grade eastern traditions flashed through my head, out of all that nonsense. we were made to read a book called 'everyday tao'. each page was devoted to a certain notion with instructions that followed the way. there was a section entitled 'vomit'. the explanation was something like this: " if there is something bad in you making you ill, purge it."
simple enough. this somehow calmed me. this wasn't so tough. i was only short a nickel. surely that could be managed. somehow, i had only a nickel in my pocket. this was the only thing that made me feel good today because i never carry change in my pocket. ever. not even before i got my horrible adult wallet with the zip change compartment. so where did that nickel come from? i can't say. but it made memories go through my head. that nickel made me think of aesop rock talking about quitting smoking at the magic stick, then reading one of andy's sketches at rendezvous with rubicon and 'wind's discretion' in it, and 'wind's discretion' made me think of ron because whenever he was around the wind just cut out, and the wind that came off lake michigan last winter in rogers with adam and how cold it was no matter which view you were facing, the cold making me think of nicole and i running from the state theater to my car after an amazing ben folds show, laughing and gasping hilariously like we were little school girls because it was absolutely freezing that night, and that made us run, and we.don't.run., running up the asswarmers in my car till burning, remembering the intense heating at mike's allston apartment and how the walls would actually bead, sweat, condensation streaming down the walls as we watched south park off his computer before falling asleep, and the image of water running down the walls made me think of rain, and then the rain god. then i thought of eric, the two of us sitting on a park bench in the night rain getting soaked on our first date, not talking because the awkwardness of that time and place held us absolutely still, together. still together. and then, with no connection at all other than he's one of my favorite people in all the whole wide world, justin. justin being high at the construction site, climbing up to the highest point on that structure, higher than i had gone.
i'm glad it was only a nickel, because if there were others they would make noise and i would have removed them and put them into my adult wallet. then i wouldn't have steeped in all those memories. i hate the wallet. i think it's cursing me.
home is where you can take out your keys and select the right one by feel, insert it into the lock and turn one-two-three, hand flipping on the lightswitch four, step out of your shoes five-six, deconstruct the outerwear and accoutrements seven-eight, sit down comfortably nine, sigh contentedly ten, all in stride. instead, every action is a fumble.
last night was my first night here in the district. i couldn't sleep and i was too scared to go out and wander the streets, scared that i would return only feeling more estranged than when i set out. walks can do that. some out there may feel i'm getting just what i deserve. and those rare people would be right, to a degree.
i'm finding it much easier to be honest and open of late. i figure: what's the point of being in a fog. i'd like to end all of this with a happy note, still. back to memories of being in school, the things i learned. this one is also from a religion class, freshman year at BU called sacred journeys. we were studying ritual and the crisis event of the hero. the process has three phases. the first is departure: severance from everything known, obliteration of the self and all associated illusions. the second is initiation: initiation into the new you, and all the trial you have to go through to earn your newness, initiation into wisdom that was until this point completely beyond your comprehension. the last phase is return: coming home, transformed. but i'm no hero. just stuck in that time between departure and initiation. right in here you are nothing, have no understanding, no place, you are lost in neither here nor there, you are lost in otherness. you can' t go back. you're terrified to go forward. you lose your name in this liminal swamp. but you get a new one once you make it out, a better one. how do you make it out? you just do. because you have to.
All I can say is that the hero's adventure is drawn in a circle for a reason.
Back to square one. Sometimes I wonder if I've learned anything at all.