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.

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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.

The Dance

So where does this leave me? I don’t know. I may come back to Alabama, I may stay here, or I may go somewhere else completely. Whatever job I take and whatever journey my life is about to begin, I am going to carry with me the lessons from this job. I am going to find something that I am passionate about and pursue it with all the fervor and gusto that my head never knew my heart craved. I’ll pick up my pen and see where it leads me, knowing that my passion for expressing my ideas has never abated. For I know where my talents reside, and I know the man I am about to become. “Follow your heart,” they say…only this time, I am actually going to do it.

Surely an idealist must have written these words. A man burdened by neither fear nor trepidation and whose reluctance to end such a seminal chapter in his life was tempered with the expectation of better days to come. The man who wrote these words must have expected a bright future, one in which the trappings of success would finally yield to that higher calling which only a willed countenance and driven passion can preserve. What becomes of men like this, men who hold such lofty ideals that alight passions of both the heart and mind? Do they realize their dreams or do they fall into disillusionment, drowning in the waters of mediocrity that wash over the world.

I wrote those italicized words four years ago...to the day. You can look through my archived posts and see for yourself. At the time I had just been laid off from Diamond Properties, a budding career cut short by the indiscretions of a boss whose treacherous schemes rivaled that of any Bond villain. Although I was disappointed to have lost my first job, I was also inspired by a sense of the limitless world of possibilities that lay before me. No longer was I tied to a desk job that I loathed. No longer must I drag myself to an office only to watch the slow hand of the clock tick drudgingly forward. No longer would I also collect a paycheck, but at last I digress. A real opportunity was before me, an opportunity that I am ashamed to admit I wasted. No great risks were taken. No great passions indulged. Instead I let countless months pass before I even found another job and then fell back into the same routine I had strived so desperately to escape from. The trappings of success had bound me once again and yet I had nothing to show for it.

Fast forward four years. I got laid off...again...today. This one I have known about for some time and have had ample time to prepare for, a luxury I was not afforded when first I walked down this road. When I arrived home today after my final day of work, I revisited my old post and ruminated over those words I had written all those years ago. The man who wrote them was certainly an optimist, a great voyager unafraid to raise his sails so that the winds of change might cast him mightily forward. He was an adventurer in search of faraway lands, an artist with an empty canvas before him and a brush in his hand. Now, as I sit here four years later without any great adventures to recount or masterpieces to behold, I wonder...has he disappeared?

He has not. Instead, he has merely gotten four years older, but in some ways hopefully wiser.  My passion is still there, a love for the written word and the spectacular worlds it can create. But there is something more now. A specific outflow of this passion into a tangible project which has a real chance of changing my life for the better. It is a project I have been working on for a year now and is finally coming together in the way I always hoped it would. If you'll forgive the ambiguity, it is something that I have only shared with a select few, one of whom dances with me in the ballroom I am creating and doesn't even know it.

Though uncertainties still abound with the loss of my job, a few things remain certain. I will never work in an office again. I will finish this project before taking another job, devoting myself fully to its completion lest it forever becomes my white whale. And one more thing, I am moving back to Washington DC, a city I never should have left but which fate deemed necessary for reasons I am only now beginning to fully understand. I have some unfinished business to take care of in that city, business that may yet lead me back out onto the ballroom floor. I do so hope she will accept my invitation when I ask her to dance.

 

There and Back Again

"What's your decision?" a female voice from the telephone asks, its expectant tone just enough to make me pause.

I sit in my office, phone clenched tightly to my ear as I vacillate between two answers. I've gone over the decision a dozen times by now, weighed the benefits and pitfalls of both...even took a three hour walk to let my mind wander to places my feet had yet to go. Each time the decision was the same. Each time I knew what answer I would give.

I start to speak.

"I..." Something stops me. Am I making the right choice? Do I really want to go down this road again?

"Bobby, we really need your decision. What are you going to do?" she asks again, this time less patiently.

I lean back in my chair, the receiver never leaving my ear. My feet are up on my desk now as I count the number of loops my laces travel through to reach their destination. Fourteen...I never noticed that before.

"Bobby," she begins again before I interrupt her.

"I've made my decision," I say. "I resign."

One year, eight months, and twenty three days. That's how long I've been at this job. Longer than any job I've ever had, though barely an instant in comparison to most other men. My intention was not to resign, once again casting myself into the perils of an all too perilous labor market. The memories of my previous sojourn to the unemployment line left a sting upon my pride that has not soon been forgotten. Countless applications for menial work coupled with an extended period of living back home is, I dare say, a burden that renders any task more enviable. But with the shuttering of our office here in Birmingham, I was given the choice of either continuing my employment for another year in Atlanta or resigning outright and accepting a severance package. My options were clear; my decision was not. I ultimately choice the latter option, deciding to close this chapter of my life to once again start anew. It is a familiar routine by now, but one whose further acclimation only serves to facilitate impermanence. I'll pack up again, fitting my world into an old Chevrolet Impala to cruise down life's highways. But where will I go? And who will I see when I get there?

I thought of you when I made my decision. I wondered what you would say, how you would feel if I told you I was coming back. Coming back to the fields of Columbia to tarry across open plains amidst those mountains of history. Coming back to walk through halls of freedom beneath the shadow of that sacred dome. Would you believe me? Would you even care? Most of all, would you wonder if a man would come halfway across the country just to see you?

I am. For the reasons enumerated and many more. For the impossible desires that only a fool would carry in his heart for so long, refusing to abandon this one dream in the hope that it might one day be fulfilled.

I am returning to Washington DC, to a place that I thought was my past, but which I now realize was always my future. And with my arrival I will cast my eyes high over the future's horizon, only looking back to rediscover all the wondrous treasures that I left behind.

Stream of Consciousness

Perhaps my days here are numbered. Perhaps the heavy curtain is closing on my time here in Birmingham, its ruffled edges hanging lifeless on the stage that once paid tribute to this listless routine. It's not that I planned to end my sojourn early; far from it. I intended to settle here for three years, three swift years that would carry me into my early thirties and finally usher in the hallmarks of adulthood that forever elude me. But this was but an idle dream. A single note from my employer saw to that. 

"Not meeting expectations," it said.

Three words to remove any doubt of what I inwardly knew to be true. Three words to lay bare the apprehension of a man already racked with fear. In an instant I realized that the charade was over; I had been found out. My desperate attempts at professionalism could no longer conceal the plain truth of my predicament. I simply don't know what I'm doing. I'm not qualified. I have always known that, and what's worse, they knew it too.

And yet there is something fundamentally liberating about the prospect of losing one's job. It signals an old chapter's end to be sure, but does it not also open a new one? Does it not remind us that life is more than a paycheck, more than a daily routine interrupted only by the occasional gnawing of hunger both biological and existential? Losing one's job is indeed a loss of livelihood, but it is not the loss of life itself. It is not the loss of identity. And that is what I must continually remind myself of. This job is not my life, my purpose, or even my passion. It is a paycheck...all it ever should be.

After receiving the news I called my father. His wise counsel is never far from me and its endowment is a gift I readily accept. I told him I was frustrated, frustrated at myself for giving so many of the best years of my life over to the pursuit of fulfilling only my basest needs. I need to eat, I need clothes and a roof over my head. But at times I feel that I sacrifice my soul to attain such things. I crunch numbers into a spreadsheet while my quill remains dry. My father reminded me that my responsibilities at this point in life are only to myself. I have no wife. I have no children...I suppose I can take some solace in that. Should I choose, I could pack my world into my car and set out for new adventures and a new place to call home. I have done this before, many times in fact. There is something alluring in such freedom, a rush I have felt in nothing else. But this routine grows old and I do long to settle down sometimes. 

Next week I may be fired. Most likely, the hammer will fall three months from now. Then where shall I go? In my free time, I find myself daydreaming of returning to DC. The memories I have of my time there tarry through my mind like glimpses of some distant Xanadu with all the promises its myth entails. I fantasize of slowly strolling the weathered trails of the National Mall and ascending the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to watch the westward sunset. I long for the thrill of DuPont and the unforeseen revelry a night spent in its unique corridors entails. More than anything, I need to be at the crossroads of the world, a place where our fathers' footsteps never stray too far from my own. I need to feel the rush of history sweep me into another time where for a moment my path intertwines with an eternal grace. It is a strange thing to say, perhaps even a distinction that has seized me within its own peculiarity, but I fell in love with that city and my longing to return has never been far from my waking mind. 

A stream of consciousness is all this post is. The idle ramblings of a man once again about to lose his job and facing a most unsure future. But I have a plan this time. My business is going well and I know what sort of job to steer clear of going forward. Most importantly, I found my passion. It is a passion given meaning by a goal, a goal that moves nearer to completion every day. I will not speak of it here, but if it fulfills my expectations then there will be no need to keep this true passion of mine hidden any longer. It has provided an insulation against the professional turmoil that my floundering career seems inexorably tied to. And if I lose my job, if boulders from the Rock of Gibraltar come crashing down upon me, I will simply step aside and seek refuge behind this sculpture I am creating. Each word hews David from the rock. Each pen stroke brings me closer to freedom.