Looking back: a day in D.C.

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:26:12 +0000

(SAN RAFAEL, Calif.) — It’s strange to be on shore leave from my trip. Right now I’m sitting at my parents’ house, an old converted barn in the heart of Marin suburbia, and my trailer and travel life seems so far away. Part of me is anxious to get back to it; part of me is scared to resume it. I have this overwhelming sense that when I get back to North Carolina, I will have to create something completely new. My money situation and sense of daily structure demand it. I’ll still be on the road of course, but it will have to be in some fresh way. So far, my trip has been a string of long, introspective drives, punctuated at times by old friends. Now I don’t know anyone for 2,000 miles — and the money’s running dry.

Time to get creative. Some part of me is excited by the challenge, by the feeling of having to stand on my own. Just like my dad’s motto has been informing me for the last 20-plus years: Whatever it takes.

On an unrelated note, here are some photos from one of the two days I spent in Washington, D.C. recently

Entering the belly of the subway in Bethesda, Maryland.

In the presence of greatness: Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.

Rockets, man at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C

Veterans at a Veterans Day Ceremony at the Viet Nam Memorial, Washington, D.C.

For my mother

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:28:27 +0000

(BALTIMORE, Md.) — This city is like nothing I have ever seen, at least this part of it. In Hampden, where my friends Avelino and Meredith live, not a thing is uniform, except for overwhelming use of brick. It seem hodge podge here, with junky front yards butting up against well-groomed ones and bumper stickers of every political persuasion plastered to cars. Even the duplexes are split into two different colors. The streets come in all sizes and lengths, and many are downright European in their tininess. There are a bunch of hipsters that live here, a well as many older folks, and the rents are cheap enough that the pool of residents can get more varied in time. I feel like I’m in a scruffy version of an Edward Hopper painting — a strange, urban one with a sense of lonesomeness at its core. I like it here.

It’s getting to be that time of year just past the bright fall colors when the leaves are starting to really drop from the trees. This reminds me of my mom. Once, when I was little, she was driving through somewhere when she saw a gust of wind pick up a big group of leaves and swirl it around with abandon. I can’t remember her words describing this, but I know she was entranced and contemplated nudging me awake so I could see. She has told me, more than once, that she has always wished that she would have woken me up to watch “the dancing leaves.” The thing is, whenever I see leaves blowing like that, I do take notice now. Because of that story, I am always awake for the dancing leaves.

For some reason, this is the closest I have ever come to telling her.

Stina's Trip » Maryland

Looking back: a day in D.C.

For my mother