Snowfall in DC

Snowfall in DC. A cotton blanket to cleanse the city and for a moment return it to the purity known only by the ivory statues that adorn its busy streets. They look on with their icy stares, frozen not by the tiny flakes that fall around them but by time itself. Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington, all carved in stone to preserve the magnanimity that each has rightfully earned, for they are eternal and in this city their residence shall never abate.

But it is not that way for we mortals, simple men whose time is fleeting and whose opportunities, once relinquished, are lost forever in the haze of regret. We call this city home for but a short while, marching quickly past its permanent residents without care or understanding that we will never truly join them. Our lives, consumed by satisfying the fleeting desires of ignoble passions, are but curious dramas to those souls whose names belong to history now. For once our time has passed we retire from this stage so that other actors may don the muses' masks and discover for themselves that which their predecessors learned far too late.

Tragedy and comedy, both masks I have worn for my role in the play. With ease I slide one over the other so that their expressions become indistinguishable. Life's moments are viewed through the lenses of these two masks simultaneously so that each memory has the hallmark of both. Pleasure mixes with pain, joy with sadness, so that each memory, each moment in time becomes an amalgam of sentiments that I have not the words to declare. And so I sit here in silence, staring out my window as the snowfall blankets DC and I do nothing but remember, remember us as we were. A girl silhouetted against the backdrop of the Boston skyline and a boy holding her tight, whispering words of fidelity as the snow fell softly around them. A single moment of perfection that happens but once in life, and you let me share it just with you. You slipped off my tragic mask and let it fall to the ground, lost forever beneath the ivory snow that wipes everything clean.

That is the last memory I have of you. It visits me from time to time, reminding me of what should have been. A path I might have walked went untrodden, a life we might have shared went unlived. And yet, I wonder if there is still time to retrace my steps, to seize for myself that which I so foolishly abandoned. No, there shall be no seizing of this prize, for it is not mine to take. Rather, all I can do is graciously ask for forgiveness and hope my words pierce the heart that once loved me so deeply.

Snowfall in DC. The slate is wiped clean for us to rewrite our story. A year has passed since the ink on that last page has dried, a year to remind me how much I miss you.

Mr Martin Goes to Washington...again

It's called Déjà Vu. That feeling you've been somewhere before, seen these sights and walked the streets that are undoubtedly foreign yet seemingly so familiar. I've had this experience from time to time, aroused by curious circumstance that introduces me to hazy memories that could pass for either reality or dreams. Its surreal nature eludes detection. Its timing always so curious, never announcing its arrival or caring to stay too long. Never betraying which memories are real and which are simply remembered in the moment they are created.

Déjà Vu. It's happening to me again, right now in fact as I drive down Interstate 66, retracing the steps I long abandoned some four years ago. Through miles of tiny Virginia towns I drive, the line between reality and dreams blurring into the white stripes of pavement that melt beneath my tires. Alabama is far in the distance now, no longer visible in the rear view mirror that has fogged over from my breath that now runs fast and deep. I wipe the mirror clean and see a street sign in its reflection: Centreville. Not much further to go now. Past Dulles and Fairlakes I drive until finally my old home awaits, just as I remembered it. Fairfax Virginia, at last I come back to thee. Back to DC and back to a life I thought had passed away all those many years ago. For better or worse I have made my decision and now must face the consequences and whatever fate may await.

"Either I'm dead right or I'm crazy!" a man once said. I'll tip my hat to you Jimmy and see you on the other side.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was in high school I was fortunate enough to have a single teacher whose capacity for wisdom was matched only by his ease of dispensing it. He was a small man, no more than five and a half feet tall, but he strolled the school halls with the swagger of a man twice his height. His possessed a confidence about him, a confidence secured by a thorough understanding of not only humanity, but also himself. He was a man who had spent a great deal of time in self-reflection and had come to understand the workings of his fellow man in a way most people can never even imagine.

He was also a man who loved to tell stories. One day he told the class that as a young man of only eighteen he had been on a train passing through the desolate expanses of south Georgia. For those of you who are unaccustomed to this area, south Georgia is a great wasteland of one horse towns and endless forests and swamps that have yet to be tamed by civilized man. As his train passed through this area, my teacher looked out the window to see other men just as himself toiling in the hot southern sun as they drained swamps and worked in the muck to ready the ground for the next set of passenger rails that would eventually be built alongside the single track. The work was brutal. Swarms of mosquitoes pestered the men's every move and red clay baked onto exhausted arms so that it finally matched the color of their sunburned skin. For eight hours a day they toiled in near slave labor to finish building the rail line that still had another year before its completion. The men looked at the passenger train as it passed and glanced at my teacher.

"I'll never do that," he thought to himself, almost aghast at how anyone could work in such treacherous conditions. He lowered the curtain of his train window and fell soundly asleep.

A year later he saw those men again, only this time it was not from the comfort of a passenger train. He saw them up close as he was now counted among them. For in the year since shaking his head in disbelief at how anyone could do such a horrid job, his father had been laid off and money around his household became tight. Just on the cusp of graduating high school, the only way now for him to attend college was to pay for it with his own money. After numerous attempts to find a job, he found that the only business that was hiring was the rail line. With no other chance to find work, if he wanted to go to college he would now have to do the one job he told himself he never would. With shovel in hand he sent himself through college.

"Never say what you won't do," he told our class that day. "You'll usually be wrong."

I told a girl once what I wouldn't do. I told her that I would never return to DC. My path led elsewhere, I said, away from the treasured monuments of glories past and the shattered hopes I felt had always been but a fool's paradise. In the land of my fathers I would return to reclaim my battered glory and finally seize for myself that measure of pride that had forever remained so elusive. I would return to Alabama and settle amongst those kindred spirits whose peculiar habits I know so well, never venturing away again lest the world clip the wings that had only just begun to spread.

Yet I came back. In spite of all my uncertainty and misgivings I came back. And in truth, just as I was when my path first took me down this road all those years ago, I am still fearful of what challenges may yet come. But those fears must be ignored, cast aside to reveal the great adventures that lie just beyond.

I was afraid. I was afraid to come back. That is why I always had to.