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Pentagon Mornings

Pentagon Mornings

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Some wear fatigues, others dress uniforms, and I could say good morning to many of them by name, since they wear their names on their sleeves — or close to them.

If I keep at my new walking route long enough I’ll know some of these Pentagon workers by heart.  The hordes who pour out of my standing-room-only bus, the others who stroll in from satellite parking lots and from the apartments off Army-Navy Drive.

Almost all of them are walking to the Pentagon — while I’m walking away from it.

The reason, of course, is simple. I work a mile or more away from the place. I just jump off the bus early to stretch my legs.

But I have to confess that it gives me a thrill to walk against this particular traffic.

My mornings at the Pentagon … are brief.

The Regular

The Regular

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It was the wave that did it. A simple, familiar wave from a man I’ve watched for years, an “older man” (older than me!), who mows his lawn in a circle around a central clump of bushes.

I’ve noticed this man and his wife for years, shoveling snow, planting annuals, vacuuming up leaves (this weekend’s project). He is, for lack of a better term, a regular. One of the folks I see on my walks through Folkstone, one of the ones who (because I’ve never gotten to know him) is known more by the color of his shutters (green) and the method of his leaf removal (tractor) than anything else.

But it was the way he waved to me — familiar, off-handed — that made me realize that, just as I see him as a regular, so he sees me.

I’m the woman in the worn white running jacket, a little worse for the wear, slowing down as the years pass — still at it, though. I’m “the woman who walks” (sometimes runs). A fixture of sorts.

In other words, I’m a regular, too.

A Run in the Park

A Run in the Park

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Just a sliver of time this morning, enough to squeeze in a run in the park. Not just any park, though. But this one.

And it felt like so many of the years that have passed did not really pass, and the me that was running, creaky-kneed, through the brisk November morning was just a breath away from the me that lived here so many years ago.

There are morning glories still blooming on the fence that borders the sheep meadow. There are the same gaggle of runners and bikers and baby carriages.

New York City is a well that never goes dry.

The Morning After

The Morning After

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This is no “morning in America.” This is more the way you feel when you learn that someone you love has been hurting more than you possibly thought they were. Why didn’t you tell me, I feel like saying. How could things have been this bad, to produce this end?

But they were telling me, telling us, and we wouldn’t, couldn’t listen. Because listening across party lines is not something we do much anymore.

The great rift exposed by this election has been a long time coming, and it will take a while to repair. I’m not a politician, but it seems to me that the best way — maybe the only way — out of this is to pull together. Unfortunately, the campaign has eroded our ability to do the very thing we need to do for our recovery.

In my office now there is much gallows humor, talk of relocating to Canada or some tropical isle. It’s a good time to leave for Indonesia and Myanmar (which I do on Friday). But I’ll be back soon. How much will this have sunk in by then? How inured will we be to this new reality?

One-Eyed Walker

One-Eyed Walker

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I walked before sunrise this morning, wearing a headlamp to get in practice. (At least one of the places I’m going has no electricity.)

There I was, the Cyclops of Folkstone Drive, one wild eye bobbing with every dip and divot of the road.

I felt powerful, in a dark and crazy kind of way. Could I blind the drivers coming toward me? Didn’t matter. There were only three of them. And anyway, I lost my nerve, averted my eye at the last minute.

Better to muse than amuse. I thought about how the wide cone of light allowed me to see only a fraction of what lay in front of me. Just enough to tread carefully. Sometimes that’s all you need.

A Writer’s View

A Writer’s View

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Alistair Macleod’s No Great Mischief is a great-hearted tale of family and place. Set on Cape Breton Island and elsewhere in Canada, it makes me remember a trip there more than two decades ago.

What a rugged, misty place it is, the sort of place that would never leave a person. And it never left Macleod. I read this morning that he returned to his ancestral home most every summer to write exquisite short stories and this one fine novel. His writer’s cabin was perched on a cliff where he could look out across the sea to Prince Edward Island.

Some writers prefer to ply their craft in a closeted space, physically confining but mentally liberating. I prefer (though unfortunately do not practice) Macleod’s method — drawn back year after year to the place that created and nurtured me, with a simple desk and a view that captivates and frees.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Open Office

Open Office

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After days of rain, sunshine is once more pouring in the back half of the office, and the National Airport control tower stands out in high relief.

Unlike my old office, which fronted on an alley and whose lighting was controlled by whichever truck happened to be unloading at the time, this new office is like a vacant piece of sky.

Clouds, wind, rain — the place is open to all of these, and as such it takes on the character of the day. On rainy days the place feels cozy, almost like a big house where you stop and chat in the kitchen.

On sunny days, like today, it feels closer to the sun and clouds than the interior world of elevators and conference rooms. It’s a little like a tree house, with the same openness to trees and wind. The windows and the reflected light, the glass and steel — they all bring the outside in.

Beyond Comparison

Beyond Comparison

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Penn Station, New York, N.Y. , 6:45 p.m. I mill around by the big board that announces train tracks. It’s a people watcher’s paradise: a mix of commuters and long-distance travelers, people with big bags and small bags and pillows and backpacks. People with coffee and salads and bagels to eat in the train or take  back to the folks at home. Every so often a train will be announced, followed by a predictable swarm to E10 or W13 or whichever gate has been tagged.

Fast forward three hours. Union Station, Washington, D.C., 10 p.m. The train arrives right on time to a station that is far too empty, far too clean. It even smells of disinfectant.

I could go on … but I won’t. It’s home now. Or at least the gateway to home. And it’s almost beyond comparison, the two cities are so different.

Let me just say this, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson or whoever said it of London … He who is tired of New York is tired of life.

Long Walk in the Big City

Long Walk in the Big City

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Yesterday I took a long walk in the big city. I started in the theater district, made my way south and west to pick up the High Line, which is now available at 34th Street!  From there (where I snapped this picture and then very quickly ran out of charge), I strolled to Gansevoort Street, then down Jane to the West Side Highway and over to the long, skinny park that runs along the Hudson.

The sun was flirting with us, in and out from the clouds. At times it seemed as if it would pour. But it didn’t (until today), so I had five blissful hours of ambling.

It’s really the whole package that does it to me here in the city. It’s the energy of the people and the place. It’s all the hundreds of details — from the grumpy Penn Station employee yelling at a woman who could hardly lug her suitcase (“Why did you pack so much?”) to the crazy wedding parade I found myself swept up in at the end of the day (complete with a kazoo band).

It’s good to be here. Life enhancing, as a matter of fact.

Layered

Layered

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An early walk this morning before the true heat sets in. I think about how well I know this place, my regular route, my neighborhood.

I remember when four sycamores were planted in the yard of the yellow house. It seemed such an extravagance at the time, trees already past the spindly stage.

The homeowner has since moved out, but I can see him there at the edge of the yard, surveying the work, his lanky frame not unlike the tall sycamores.

It is what one hopes for in a neighborhood, that it be layered with memories and associations, so much more than a suburban streetscape. A living, breathing record of life.