12/1/10 – The City of Washington, DC

I’m walking to a café through a residential area of DC. The air is cool, and moist. It’s in the low 60s. This city has a certain unique scent to it that no other city has. I’m not quite sure what the specific combination is, but I know I’m in DC by this familiar odor: diesel fumes, moistness, rotting of leaves, motor oil, and the smell of the subway system, heated by pumped air and electrical energy of the railway cars. It carries with it an acrid watery sharpness. The breeze is blowing, and it’s slightly warm outside.

Puddles of water surround me. They splash up from the wheels of the cars and trucks which splatter their watery grime into the air and onto the sidewalks. The decaying leaves flurry up into the air in an eddy of an in breath, and settle back down as DC breathes back out.

The city is alive with rumbling sounds of car engines, and the screeching of metro trains on their tracks. There’s a familiar sound and scent of escalators. The scent of black motor grease carries its rich hydrocarbon scents of oils throughout the underground, and streets above. Energetically this place has a feeling of a higher purpose, and constant striving and hard work. The houses stand empty as their residents are busying themselves about government and corporate work as I walk on the fairly empty streets of a weekday morning in the district.

The guards around the Mall and Capitol stand wearing stern faces, concerned with their important duties. As I contrast the energy and the peoples of the District with the peoples of other places I have lived in the US, there is a sense of seriousness here that is not present in other places. The city itself is rather cold in its architecture, well organized, and sterile. Its streets are poorly looked after with potholes and trash rolling here and there. Its residents are either poor, resigned to their situation and angry about social injustice – or they are well paid, well dressed, perfectly quaffed, carrying brief cases and fighting for some form of justice. Then there’s the students and everyone in between. I feel a need to stiffen up here, put on airs of importance and seriousness and be ready to have a well-prepared, politically correct, non-incisive and well-articulated opinion. There is little time for frivolity – the stakes are too high. If you’re not doing something important, you need to get out of here. The city carries an air of arrogance, self-importance, determination, and disparagement of anyone who’s not doing something valuable and note-worthy. Cold, stern, polished, austere, good-intentioned, filled with fake promises, and rabid survivalist self-interest. It's the restaurant owners and bar keeps that keep the mood of this place somewhat regulated – they are almost a separate breed of individuals somehow uninvolved in the dirty work of solving the world’s problems but nourish and enable those that are concerned with such things to eat a meal and enjoy their 1 hour lunch breaks.

I stopped into a French café/restaurant. After sitting down I wanted to check to see if there were any classical concerns during the Christmas season I could go to. I asked the waitress if they had WiFi. I was given a resigned, judgmental and smug look and told “We do not. We like to think of ourselves as a place where you come in to relax and take a moment rather than continuing to do work”. Considering what I was intending to look up, I found the judgment and prohibition of the fun I wanted to find, rather ironic. Somewhat shocked, and feeling scolded, I simply thanked her and ordered a cup of soup.

When the residents party here, they drink hard and lose their stern masks to reveal repressed grief and anger as well as a joy and lightness that they could not express otherwise. The people that walk here walk fast and with a purpose – their shoulders like battering rams ready to break through the crowd.

The metro cars are stuffed like sardine cans and smell of a sharp rancid oil, fishy rotting fruit mixed with body odor, perfumes and a light smell of urine – in contrast to the New York subway which carries its own particular perfume. Bodies curl into themselves as people stand apart from each other in a “don’t touch me” and “don’t talk to me” stance – “I’ve had to deal with assholes all day, leave me alone”.

It’s hard to know what this place needs most - perhaps a mass unburial of the Spirit, or a touch of warmth to break down the seriousness. Mostly it could do well with a moment of silence, being brought into the present moment, and people authentically acknowledging each other’s thirsty spirits with loving and compassionate eyes.