My Love Affair With DC, Part Two

Fast-forward nearly 10 years. After 12 years, 3 completed BA majors and 2 graduate degrees (I know I overdid it a bit), I have finally decided that I am done with the noble pursuit of higher education. I am so done with higher education in fact that I no longer have any desire to pursue employment in the field that drove me through those last years of student loan applications and late night panic attacks. I am done, done, done. I am burnt toast done. All I can think of is the shock of the new.

And in so many ways my life is so totally new. Life as a companion has taken me by storm and swept me up in a whirlwind of self-reflection. Seemingly overnight I have been publicly transformed from a bookish semi-introvert into a sought after seductress. “O brave new world! That has such people in it! (William Shakespeare, The Tempest)” How can I resist this sexy new reality? I ponder my options, weigh the consequences and then shell out the money needed to fund a professional website and high-end photos.

I set my sights ahead of me 6 months and begin to dare to dream of a world outside of my cloistered apartment, greater than the next term paper or final. I pause, look around admire what I’ve accomplished. I see my cloistered apartment transform to a house with a yard. I witness my shoulders drop from earmuff status to their regular shoulder height. The intense insomnia I experienced while in the last months of my graduate degree begins to transform into a regular sleep schedule. I am feeling semi-human again. I am feeling liberated, energized. I am feeling like a new-hatched moth, ready to fan my wings and catch a breeze to life’s next adventure. I am feeling like it might be time to travel outside of the safe cocoon of Portland. Perhaps it is time to risk more; to dare more and to push past those preconceived boundaries I have constructed for myself. Perhaps it is time I go back to DC?

When I arrive at National I grab a taxi, not the metro, into town. It’s winter, the weather is cold and dry and the trees are naked but for a few brown and withered leaves that still cling to branches here and there. All the better. This bare plate better showcases the meat of the capitol. I openly gape at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the arching bridge that spans the Potomac. I beam at each new post card brought to life as we pass, The Lincoln Memorial, The Washington Monument, The Capitol Building. Then the taxi coasts through downtown, past a building with a glass room. The walls are tiled all in marble on the inside and lit from behind. What grace! What elegance! What a moment to be back in DC.

The cab pulls up in front of the Hotel Palomar, a geek sheik boutique hotel with a contemporary interior. Within minutes I am headed to my upgraded room. As I open the door I am greeted by an expanse of space. I reflect that it is larger than a studio apartment I once lived in while in grad school. I throw myself across the king sized mattress, taking in the large mirror adjacent. A wall of windows and the room’s tasteful décor is reflected within. There in the middle of that reflection is me, a slightly travel worn girl with a big goofy smile on her face. I’m back in DC and this time it is 100% on my own terms. I’ve cast my vote and found a balance within myself, a democracy of one.

Washington DC: A Love Affair, Part One

My affair with DC began nearly a decade ago, when as an undergrad I was invited to lobby my Oregon senators and representatives about an environmental issue. I recall my terror as I lugged my suitcase from the metro and walked, wide eyed, towards the street corner where my hosts were to fetch me. I had no idea how safe, or unsafe the city was and at that time I had never flown anywhere alone.

When I was shown to my room, on the second story of a tall and narrow row house, I was greeted by a random array of stored items all of which watched over the bare twin mattress where I was to sleep.

The following week was a grueling blur of early mornings filled with seminars, followed by long days of walking the capitol in my best “big girl clothes.” I was at the heart of our nation, at the steps of the Supreme Court, in front of the Capitol Building and I could feel the power and influence that shaped the democratic ideals of this nation. However I was far too busy to actually get to see any of the cultural attributes of the city. The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian buildings stood maddeningly near promising rich educational experience that I had been informed would change me life, but I lacked the time to make the short excursion.

One evening, exhausted, I escaped a social obligation involving wine, crackers and political somebodies, and found myself in the Hirshorn Sculpture Garden. The guard at the gate must have thought I was nuts as I collapsed on my knees on the grass and began to cry. I was so relieved to be away from the political jargon, the oppressive agendas, the intensity of the capitol experience. That and I was seeing, touching and yes, taking photos of, sculptures that I had studied in school. There they were, statues by Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore, along with other beauties I had never before seen.

I returned to Dupont Circle, where I was staying and had a delicious curry at a dingy corner dive, all the while updated with the ever ready CNN news stream pouring into the room from the television over the bar.

After, I dragged myself back to my crowded room, dodging drunken Sierra Club employees, laughing uproariously over their own party politics. I threw myself into my sleeping bag on my naked twin mattress and finally I slept while visions of what I might be able to see in DC “someday” danced behind my eyes.

Self Portriat with Glasses