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29 June, 1998
For all the dreams and schemes
Actually it was very nice today, for a summer day in the District. Yes it was still very warm, but it wasn't as killer as it has been for the past week or so. Yes it was still muggy, but not chokingly so, the way it has been for the past week or so. If it was like this all summer long, I think I could handle it. I imagine that this is what the weather was like in this area 100 years ago: hot but bearable. Now it is generally grueling and the mechanisms which we run in our homes to compensate for it only help to aggravate the problem. Go figure. The air moved across my skin in a silkily delicious fashion, the various city smells arose, almost as loud as the clamor in my ears of traffic and birds and people talking, in my nostrils. Sweat and hot concrete, hot baked dirt and damp dirt, exhaust, oil drippings, air conditioner exhaust, car exhaust, and the simple under current smell of heat shimmering in the air. The smell of warm suspended water, hanging all about, like a cloud of steam in the bath. Leaving work, I looked up at the sun, westering over the tops of the buildings. It cast a gentler, friendly style of cozy afternoon light, unlike the harshness which has characterized the sky since sometime early last week. I smiled to myself and strode off down the sidewalk, beneath wher ethe golden arch used to stand and where now a 55-foot deep pit of broken rock and earth stands gaping, waiting for shops and health clubs and luxury high-rise condominiums. The city has an ever-changing face. It's fascinating to watch it shift over time. But all the same there is something much calmer and relaxing about living away from that frenetic pace, out here on the green edges of a town. I don't know why, nor claim to understand why humankind feels this constant need to change and reinvent itself. All I know is, that the desire, or the compulsion to do so, exists in even the most stable of personalities. We are not a static race, but we are also singularly ill-equipped to discern when it is best to remain static and when it is best to be active.
What I Did Today On a more mundane front, here is how my day progressed: went to bed around 1AM. Got woken up by the cat briefly around 3AM. Went back to sleep. Got woken up by Sabs' pager around 6AM. Went back to sleep. Pager goes off again just before 7am. Go back to sleep. Sabs turns off the alarm, we both sleep late and wind up running out the door at a quarter 'til 10. Sabs drops me off at Dunn Loring instead of Van Dorn. I sit through a crowded, tourist-infested ride. I get to work, talk briefly with the bossman about the coming week since he is on vacation in Florida. I answer e-mail. I port my e-mail to the new mail server. I backup all of my files in preparation for the new computer which is (hopefully) arriving tomorrow. I fool around for the rest of the afternoon, inermittently checking the help box. I leave at 6:45PM, catch exactly the train I wanted, but still wind up being late because of an accident on an adjacent track. I witness the awe-inspiring sight of 4 freight-train cars over-turned on the tracks and leaking their contents all over the place. Sabs picks me up we argue lightly about the mail. I check up on the cat: still no kittens. Now we are going to Fuddrucker's for the World's Best Burgers™. Now wasn't that prosaic. |
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