You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
Team-wide e-mail, today, 11.04am.
Staff will notice that the lead report in yesterday’s issue was not, as planned, Magda’s analysis. That’s because her analysis sucked. Here are the reasons it sucked, (a) – (g). Shame on you, Magda. Since Magda is senior staff, let’s roast her here, so you, fair peons, don’t get trapped in her sticky web of stupidity. THIS IS VERY DISAPPOINTING. LET’S NOT LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN.
I’m paraphrasing, certainly, though that all-caps bit is verbatim. (and is that really necessary? Caps lock is so last season). There are lots of things I could say in response, starting with “it was called ‘first draft’ for a reason,” and ending with “I’m the youngest senior staff anyone’s ever seen here, so chill the frick out and stop assuming I’m going to be brilliant all the time.”
I’m not brilliant all the time. I can’t be. The truth is, I don’t feel half as smart as I’m often assumed to be, and I spend a lot of days waiting for the ceiling to crumble, the stars to fall down, the clock to strike midnight; I wait for that moment of bright illumination where my paper degrees will dissolve into ashes I’ll have to walk through with bare feet because my shoes have disappeared. I suspect something will also turn into a pumpkin, because that’s just the way my life goes.
While I wait, I’ll bite my tongue, practice my delete-key skills, and just roast here for a bit. Mmm. Smells like fried chicken. Time for an early lunch, I think; time for a breath away, then back at it, with head held high, carrying the charade through another day.
Being “smart” is significantly harder than they lead you to believe.
Playing tourist on Saturday morning, I trekked up to Arlington Cemetery—for living here, I swear, I do pitiably little on the All Time DC list. I last went to Arlington on my 7th grade trip, but I hardly think that counts; all I remember is that someone called Craig (or was it Carl?) was really cute. Really cute; consume-all-my-time cute. I suspect he didn’t reciprocate my feelings, seeing as (a) I was dressed in purples and pinks and t-shirts all decked out with tropical fruits (thanks, mom; thanks a lot); (b) I was possibly the most awkward 7th grader you could imagine. Sigh.
Fifteen years on, a lot has changed. I’ve let go of the fruits for a tie-top halter; the purple shorts are replaced with a ridiculously short denim skirt. My camera is in my Kate Spade as I walk through the Women in the Military museum; new in 1997, so the me of yesteryear missed this completely.
I’ve always been fascinated with World War II. Some of this may be owing to my early love affair with Molly the doll, yes; but there was a wholesomeness there, a patriotism I think is harder to come by anymore.
I want a Victory garden. I want to skip sugar for a cause, and save up gum wrappers to help build weapons. I want to knit blankets for our men overseas while listening to radio programs late at night. Back, of course, when “late” means 8pm.
I want to joint the WASP; I want to be needed and to be a bit rebellious. I want to break tradition; I want a cute uniform and a job that would horrify my parents. I want to ride on the wire and operate a hand radio. I want to do something daring, to work for a greater cause, and to have wild adventures. I want my mischievous smile on museum walls and in displays for posterity.
Alas. I am stuck in 2009, with a career in a country that is now totally equal-rights. Being a pilot would still be cool … but it wouldn’t be the same. I often think I was born in the wrong era completely.
There are bits of the WASP-that-could-have-been in me, for sure. I think the exhibits this weekend inspired her to come out; to be a little bit bold, to see the world just a little bit differently.
She toured condos she can maybe almost afford, and asked all the right questions (i.e. did not say “I’m in love! Hardwood floors! Granite counters! Walk-in closets! Sign me up!,” but asked instead about condo fees, and parking, and property taxes. Blaaah). She orchestrated and single-handedly executed a mattress rotation (she’s savvy, see, and realizes that eight months alone spells “uneven wear”). (Has it been that long?). She didn’t blink when loading a completely cute (but not completely necessary) bookshelf into the Target cart, the backseat, the elevator. Once home, she assembled it all on her own. Hammers and screwdrivers? Totally her friends. Totally.
She bit her tongue and didn’t make out with her friend’s painfully hot roommate after he drove her home from a party downtown. The tension of anticipation inside that car was as hot as the air outside, but she found equilibrium by rolling down the window as they passed the Washington monument, the Lincoln Memorial. She kept it together even after he kissed her cheek on arrival. Standards, she thought, and commanded her lips to say goodnight. Good life choices, WASPy magda. (But Oh. My. Goodness, this man is beautiful. My eyes hurt looking at him. He might not be human).
She’s sitting here at work with a We Can Do It! attitude. Imagining that these trademark disputes are war bonds that need processing; this issue release important stenographic work that must be done to help win the war and bring them home. Keep ‘em flying, Miss USA!
Yeah, I might be delusional. It’s more than likely. But hey, it keeps life interesting.
“Nothing is ever lost,” my mom is fond of saying, though I usually find these words easier to utter than to actually believe. Maybe everything has a purpose, and I want to believe that it does. I want to believe that what I see is only a slice, a sliver, of a much larger picture; I want to believe that all things happen for a reason, and all that. Maybe someday I’ll see everything from a new angle and all of the ridiculousness will suddenly make sense. That day is certainly not today. It won’t be tomorrow, yet something about acknowledging that unknown makes the little connections I do see that much sweeter.
The older I get and the longer I’ve been here, the more I see my life as a tapestry: something in progress, not just threads going every which-way, tangling at my ankles and tripping me as I go from here to tomorrow. It’s still a struggle, this whole everyday life thing, but I have more of a foundation now. I see things from a slightly better, slightly taller perspective, standing here on these torn-off calendar days.
It will come as no surprise that I’ve about checked out of the catholic scene (hi, they’re all scary); between the dates that were and weren’t, the sex that was and wasn’t, and the theresas who … well … they’re just insane, a girl is left with very few options, yeah? It’s about time to disengage. Disarm your missiles, captain; abort! abort!
I may have fallen out of their everyday loop. Still, keeping ties with the scary catholics has its perks, and not just because these people drink like one glass of wine (I bring the bottle, I finish the bottle. Policy). More liver-friendly plusses are their connections. They are nothing if not fiercely loyal. If you have a little sister who’s passionate about social justice and is applying to work for a catholic relief group, even though she’s only a fraudster like me? It’s nice to be able to call one in. To be a recognized number in scary catholic cell phones all over the city; to be all, heeeey, remember me from that date that wasn’t? Great, see I need this favor …
And suddenly, voila, she has an interview.
Messes can have unintended upsides. Like Friday, right, when I was running around on the devil’s errands and misplacing things? Inspired to save the day from being a total wash, I busted out my charming networking self. (She rarely, rarely comes out. I’ve always been a bit of a wallflower. Unfortunate in this line of work, surely). It goes like this. One of the meetings I sat in on in the afternoon was grievously dull and not at all worthy of a story. I couldn’t have that–I mean, I LOST MY KEYS for this story, so damn it, it was going to be good. I cornered one of the fancy lawyers after the meeting for a comment; for “more information.” It’s very whorish, but this is always my strategy: act all innocent, be all “I just want to learn!,” and they generally give me what I want. This lawyer was especially good-looking. (And no wedding ring! cha-ching!). I gave him my card.
And he e-mailed. Professional at first; “it was so nice to meet you, call me if you ever need more comments.” I wrote back, mirroring his meeting-me sentiments, and promising that we’d “be in touch.” I may have added “hopefully soon.” I thought about writing “and then we’ll get married,” but I’m pretty sure I never actually typed that in. He responded with questions about me; I answered and asked some of him. Again, and again, and again, the work-y-ness devolving down the delineations. I’m better at flirting on e-mail.
It may be nothing more than passing time. With my luck, he’s in a serious relationship with a picture-perfect model/stewardess/med student who’s saving the orphans while making lasagna from scratch, and he’s about to propose; he’s just having a bit of fun, he’ll later say. Fun’s good, though; fun’s healthy and normal, yes? Fun fun fun. It’s getting me through the day, in any event.
It’s a very grey and wet day, and I wear a turtleneck to mask the massive sunburn that seems ridiculous against such a dreary backdrop.
Life is full of puzzling disconnects like this, twisting corners and unsure endings; pieces that blend in but just don’t seem to fit anywhere. I like my life to follow the “Ages 3+” family of puzzles; I like my days to progress in an orderly and predictable way. I like to wake up with all the pieces, look at the box, and fit them all together by day’s end.
It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the lid disappears, and you’re working without a guide. Sometimes the picture you’re solving isn’t the one you have the pieces for at all. Sometimes you’re just totally in the dark.
Monday mornings seeming to be coming faster and faster, I don’t even know what the deal is. The weekend wasn’t near long enough to untangle the messiness of the now.
It started, see, when my life. in the form of my master keys and all forms of work ID, disappeared into the void sometime Friday morning. I was running here and there and everywhere; dodging between the doors opening, doors closing sing-song of metrorail in the midday on all sorts of little missions. Chaos ensued.
The keys—to my office, to my apartment, to the mail—can be replaced. A hassle, but do-able. My work ID badge can similarly be re-issued. The congressional press credentials, however, are a bit of a stickier situation.
There’s a real humility that comes from calling one in; calling your boss, who’s working from home (surprise), and saying yeah, about the work I was meant to do today? Not happening. I’m going to the Hill to swear out an affidavit to replace my press pass, because if I don’t do it rightnow, I’ll be freaking out about it from here to all eternity. That and I’m not really inclined to go on the Capitol Police’s blacklist, thanks anyway.
In and out, up and down. Pieces get lost.
Sometimes, too, they just don’t fit the way you thought. Saturday afternoon, I’m on the way to what I think is a date with a guy I know through church. We went on a series of somewhat-successful dates a while back, and have been in sporadic touch; an e-mail late in the week asking me to coffee seemed like a corner piece to bank on.
He’s fifty-five minutes late, and what was meant to be a quick inside meet morphs into a long lunch on a bench at the waterfront; hours of conversation about his new girlfriend. ?? Apparently we’re back to being just friends. I don’t know how I missed that.
He wants my advice. She’s young, he says, which worries him. “Younger than me?” I ask. (and for the record, he’s nine years my senior). “Yes,” he says. Cradlesnatcher, I think. She’s also struggling with some pretty serious eating disorders. Sounds like a real winner. (I know. I’m so mean). “But she’s a writer, such a good writer!” he adds, as if that saves it, and explains it, and justifies everything. I want to strangle him.
Instead, I sit there with a listening ear, while the back of my neck, the tops of my arms, the scoop of my neckline exposed, slowly turn beet red.
It’s just pink at first, of course, and easy to dismiss; a tinge of disappointment, maybe, but I’m so good at this that the conversation doesn’t even hit a bump. Now, though, with that elapsed time behind us? It’s angry, and red, and it hurts. He isn’t right for me, and I think I always sensed that. But still! He picked a flawed introspective 12-year-old over me, and had the audacity to ask me about it. That’s a burn, I think.
He goes out to dinner with her, and I come home, alone, and read the Virginia Computer Crimes Act late into the night. Nice. He writes later to say that I’m “a gem”; words deleted, post haste.
I bare my confusion to a friend over a few Guinnesses later in the weekend. I love her times a million when she tells me, with all the heart a girl can give, that Magda, you are a disaster in relationships, you love too much and you have no boundaries.
I’m getting new keys and, it would seem, some new skin. It’s a new week, and it seems like it’s time for some new perspectives as well.
The sentences of my life this past week have been punctuated by the occasional commas and semi-colons of two aggravatingly similar, yet oh-so-distant, characters. They sweep in with impressive agility and grammatical flair, only to bow out with a premature period; clauses never concluded leave me hanging here.
I have learned to accept sentences ending in prepositions. I’m okay starting with “and” or “but.” I don’t even know what happened.
The Japan Man and I haven’t been talking in awhile, which I think is good. Our last conversation, weeks ago now, had him all eloquently analogizing us to neutrons that defy the laws of physics; once they enter each others’ orbits, he explained, they keep in synch, no matter how far apart in space, separated by no matter how many planes. We talked about family and faith and I was melting away. (Dear magda, please retain some dignity. Love, yourself). He said he’d call “soon.” That was sixteen days ago.
He sent me a text a week ago today, though. My suspicion is that he was coming out of Maundy Thursday Mass. I? Was on drink number five celebrating this girl’s birthday. “I hope you have a blessed Triduum, Magda,” it said.
Triduum. Word even rejects its spelling. It’s an archaic Catholic term for the three days preceding Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. I never knew it existed till I converted. A brief poll of my sisters, co-inmates for eight years of Catholic prep school, decreed it foreign.
I wished him a happy Easter, and safe travels home.
Monday morning at work finds an e-mail from—oh yes—the scary catholic. We haven’t spoken since the horrendous trying-to-sleep-with-me shame of February. To his credit, he issued some valiant words to salvage the situation, and legitimately seemed, at the outset, willing to “start over” (his term); I’d tried to get in touch (Dear magda, please see previous note. Thanks), but garnered absolutely no response to my charming e-mails and texts peppering the long month of March. No response met no response, and I ultimately gave up, pushing him out of mind.
Then, out of the veritable blue: “I hope you had a blessed Triduum, Magda.”
WTF.
(Also: could he, possibly, have given me up for Lent? Am I to him an object? Past precedent would scream YES. Let’s ignore that).
I wrote back and got nothing.
I’m immensely frustrated with paper-perfect men with big vocabularies and proper churching who just can’t perform. Be perfect or don’t, but please, let’s not prolong the agony. How dare you trot in with your properly spelled and capitalized Triduum, only to vaporize the moment I raise my eyes to you! How dare you.
Looking back over the past years, I feel like I’ve known some of the coolest, best guys, but my e-mails scare them, they never write back; they disappear into the void of only sometimes-calling. The men who have stuck around, the men who have said they’ve loved me, have loved but my surface. “This is who I am,” I said, and that’s all they saw. “But look at my words, look at the acrobatics I’ve snuck into this e-mail; see how clever I am and the extent and depth of my love for you,” I wrote, but they missed it. They may have read my words, but they have consistently failed to understand what I’m saying.
Words. Words hold a special importance for me. I have a lot to say, I have a lot of thoughts; I think in words on paper better than I do out loud. Always have.
Somewhere he’s out there, the man who will love my words and my mad hair, my hopes and my heart. Someday our paths will cross, and my life will be full of Triduums and fancy words forever more—but this time with the balls to back them up. Figuratively, yes, and literally.
My alarm went off this morning, a Saturday, and I got up. I tied up my mad hair, pulled on a Princeton t-shirt (and no, I didn’t go there), my nike pants, and my track jacket; I made a coffee, and drove my car out into the pouring rain. At 8.30am. (And for the record, when I say “made a coffee,” I mean a full-on latte. Because yes, I am from Seattle, and yes, it wouldn’t be a Saturday without it. And I am, in fact, an awesome barrista, chez moi).
It was a very Seattle morning, in fact. My car was hydroplaning more than I’d like (notes for the darling’s next check-up), but all in all, my trek to 9 o’clock yoga was validating. See, I am one of you, you the people who wake up at a sensible time routinely; you who do trendy and posh things with your weekends. Count me in.
I’m not really of the yoga persuasion; I can do the stretches and keep the balance (thanks, childhood dream of being a ballerina), but I just can’t see it as a workout. Oooh, stretchy-stretchy; but where’s the sweat?
My yoga-partner-in-crime and I cruised through some shops as we waited for lunch to open, though it wasn’t until we hit Williams-Sonoma that we really found trouble. There we were, two single girls, each of us at our prime yet each living alone in ridiculously small city-dweller apartments. That ravioli maker! That waffle press! That strawberry-destemmer! [RIGHT, because that’s so hard]. The point is, they all seemed so alluring, glowing so temptingly there on their wooden shelves. “Buy us!” they called. “You can be perfect and domestic, too! Just bring us home!”
We must have taken five turns around that store. “This is what it’s like, to be adult,” she said to me. “To spend Saturday mornings lusting after kitchen things. If we were guys, substitute power tools, and yeah.” And yeah. We’ve neither of us husbands or children to cook for, though; the mission was mostly fantastical. She leaves with a bagel slicer; I with a pastry tip.
That pastry tip has been seeking its revenge for having been purchased au solitaire. It is, in fact, wanted as an accomplice in what I am calling The Great Kitchen Catastrophe of 2009.
I am not a graceful cook. A competent cook, yes. Efficient, though? No. Neat, or orderly? Lord no. If there are dishes, they will get dirty. I learned to love cooking when I was about five, when half the fun was showering flour everywhere. Probably the only time that making a mess was celebrated, in fact, in the kitchen; I think that’s stuck. My kitchen is, as I write, in chaos. We’re talking hurricane-level destruction: hours of clean-up. Bits of mascarpone and strawberry positively everywhere. Eggshells tossed haphazardly in the sink, their innards drawing a trail from bowl to final resting place; flour dusting the just-washed dishes. Icing hardening in its bowl as I pour another glass of wine and document the madness, all internet-style.
The happy result, however, is that I have made the most spectacular cupcakes for Easter brunch tomorrow. This is what it’s like, to be adult: to bake complicated things on a jam-packed Saturday; to drink the better part of a bottle of wine and not care. To have friends, and a community, and a life; to clean up the messes, but to know all along that it’s worth it. It’s so worth it.
It’s no secret that I’m really not a sports kind of girl. I didn’t go to a big school, I have no brothers, and it just never really stuck. Still, I’m a little bit embarrassed that the whole March Madness “thing” just totally blew by me. I’ve never filled out a bracket, and have never really gotten into it in the past, so maybe this isn’t surprising. Gooooo team? Wait, who are we rooting for? Anyway.
When a conversation starts with “Did you see the game last night?” or “WHAT A PLAY!,” my general rule is to tune right out. Not my style. Yesterday, though, it was freaking everywhere (don’t these people work?), and it took me a good long while to piece together that this madness of march? Is officially over.
In truth, it took me all day. All of those blog posts? Meh, sports, I thought, and read on. All of those headlines? Next. All of that chatter? Ignored. It wasn’t until I was standing at the printer, lonely at 5.30pm, that I finally worked it all out. Most of my compatriots here check out at the stroke of five. Ding! Five o’clock. Peace out. Others of us, the dare I say responsible parties on this crazy ship of us, stick around to tidy things up. It’s amazing the lessons that can be learned in the copy room after-hours.
One of my staying-late kindred spirits, see, went to UNC. (If you’re slow like me: they won the championship). Waiting there at the printer, he gave me the run-down, and was superexcited to tell me all about it!! With lots of exclamation points!!
I was listening patiently (and keeping my extraneous punctuation in check) until I heard it. Right in there, sprinkled in with tales of the action, a reminder: a UNC win means shame for Duke. Ahh. Victory. The lights came on, and my war whoop came out. For various possibly unfair and not entirely articulable reasons, I hate Duke. A serious hate; hate with the fire of ten thousand suns. Fascist swine, the lot of them.
My new UNC bff was thrilled to hear of these predilections, of course, and happily informed me that Duke didn’t even make it past the sweet sixteen (it’s possible I googled that term. Shut up). To that I say BWAHAHAHAHA. Suckers. If I could get my hands on one of those “Anyone But Duke” t-shirts, I’d so wear it. I might even get into the game, and the more I think about it, the more I find this UNC fanship idea seductive. No reason, really; I’ve never, aside from Mr. Printer, known anyone who went there, and have never so much as set foot in North Carolina (ah, fair neighbor to the south). Is it wrong to assign loyalty based solely on ill-wishes for the opposition?
It seems I am headed that way. By this time next year, I may well be bracketing it up and following the action (while singing a tarheels tune). Stand by.
I mailed my first package to an FPO address yesterday, and it was a thoroughly excellent experience.
A friend of mine was just deployed; he’s in the Navy, living now on one of those movie-worthy ships somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Before long, an airplane will land, all top-gun style, and uniformed men will unload my envelope. It’ll be a little bit more tattered, a little bit faded; the crispness of the lettering may have gone, but it’ll be there. It’s amazing the journey real words, pen-on-paper words, take when removed from this Internet space.
They didn’t say anything special, those words; just a card to say hi, I’m thinking of you, and thanks for doing what you’re doing, with some Easter candy I found at Target over the weekend tucked in for good measure. It’ll undoubtedly get there massively late, but whatever; Easter is a season, right? Like, it lasts for a long time? (Seriously though, the possibility for candy packages notwithstanding, I so need to be BANNED from Target. Effective immediately. Banned, else allowed in with only the cash and correct change for the things on my list, because really, going with tasks valued at, eh, $10, and coming out with a receipt topping $90? Very! Bad! Behavior!).
Sending military mail just has this enormous patriotic sense to it. It’s hard to describe, but filling out that customs form, watching all the stickers get slapped on the outside of that envelope, totally got me going. It redeemed what was otherwise an afternoon of me banging my head into the wall with stress and frustrations because WOE IS ME people keep suing each other, courts keep reversing themselves, theories keep changing and somehow it’s me who gets to translate out their tangled cords of sometimes-logic.
I shouldn’t need a foreign mailing to the men on the high seas to remind me that things are never as bad as they seem. That my life is blessed in ways I can’t even comprehend.
I think of him, out there on that ship. I think of his fiancée, waiting patiently, hopefully, dutifully at home. I think of their dog, wondering where he’s gone and when he’ll be back to dropping scraps from the dinner table. All the days and nights, all the memories missed or put on hold. It’s a huge sacrifice.
He tells me of the things he’s seen, the poverty that meets them on their missions. The infant mortality rate is 50%, he’ll write; children die here every day.
There’s a lot to life that I don’t see in my world of laptops and late nights, couriered opinions and angry lawyers on line 2. It’s amazing to me that people like him take it on themselves to do something about it. To give yourself so wholly to something so much bigger … that’s a hero for you.
Topping all of this off is a video my sister sent me last night. She made this movie, this girl who’s somehow mine; this is her project, her passion.
Puts my Target spending into perspective certainly, and makes me so glad that people, good people, are caring and doing something. It also makes this bleak office, this cute suit of mine, seem ridiculously inadequate. What am I DOING with my life? Valid questions, sure, but I think it’s important to remember that we can’t all be out on the front lines; we can’t all be getting our hands dirty. For some of us, our job is just to be aware and informed and supportive. To send packages and nice e-mails, words and smiles and well-wishes. To never stop saying “thank you,” and to never stop doing what we can to help.
The world needs them, and they need us; it’s some kind of circular and wonderful. More wonderful still I say with treats a la Easter aisle, but that could well just be me.
It’s easy to hate on the tourists that descend on this capital city when the weather is right, when the sun is out; it’s easy to bash the sidewalk cloggers who spoil the nice weekends I wait all winter to embrace. PEOPLE LIVE HERE, I want to cry out. I LIVE HERE. That D? No. We are not Disney—Columbia. We are DC, and this is a real place, a real city, with real people.
That girl sitting next to you on the metro, the one who’s reading her book, is not visiting from anywhere. She isn’t here with an agenda. She’s used to quiet trains, and self-absorbed passengers; the hum of an ipod maybe, the rustle of a newspaper. She’s lost in her book because your loudly accented chatter—and the loudly accented chatter filling this car, spilling out through that crack in the doors and pouring into this subterranean tunnel—is foreign to her. She knows the shortcuts and is immensely frustrated when you persist on standing on the escalator’s left not because she’s pushy, but because she does this every day. You’re doing it wrong, she thinks. You’re doing it all wrong, this isn’t what we’re about, you aren’t seeing the real thing. You drop everything because WOAH, that’s the Capitol, what a perfect Kodak moment! You snap your pictures, you grab a sangria, you buy an “I Was Here”-style t-shirt. You get on the wrong train because you don’t realize that Yellow to Huntington means imminently headed to Virginia, and if you want to go downtown, you need Mt. Vernon Square. “Yes,” that be-noveled girl will tell you, “they’re both Yellow. But look at that map: Yellow runs north AND south. This train heads south.” Is she sure? Pretty sure.
It’s equally easy to learn from them a sense of place, though. You and your tourbooks and your backpacks; you and your sunscreeened faces and your tennis shoes. I float among you. I pass through your ranks, all ethereal-like; I tote a bag, too, but I pack up frosting-stained tupperware, tucking in the last of the cherry cupcakes I iced just hours ago. I bring picnic leftovers back to my refrigerator, to the apartment that waits for me on the other side of this pulsing street-fair of What We Want You To See. I get to live here. This city is mine, and not just in pictures.
I get off of the train, and while you head to your hotel rooms of maps and stiffly pressed sheets, I stop at the Whole Foods for organic milk. The milk I’ll need to make a coffee tomorrow. I wake up, in my own bed, with pictures much like yours on my memory card. I hop in the car and head to Palm Sunday Mass. I take a leisurely brunch with a friend, and stop at the carwash on the way out; I buy groceries and, driving home, may appear in the background of the picture-postcards you take back with you. We were here, you’ll say. But you, you and your pointed lens, see but a shutter’s snap of what really goes on. That’s the signature of travel, certainly, but perhaps in your novelty I find one of my own. How odd to live in such a hub; how strange to know that you and your comrades will be back next weekend, and the next weekend, and the weekend after that, coasting in on borrowed, temporal energy. Meanwhile, I am here. I am here for always, for now and tomorrow. There’s a comforting stability in that.
