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The Wild West

The Wild West

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All this walking in the suburbs is fine — until the suburbanite can’t find her car. Yesterday I parked in  the new Reston-Wiehle Silver Line garage. I had errands to run after work and with easy access to the highway (which the station straddles) I was looking forward to an easy afternoon.

That was before I stepped out of the elevator on level A3 and realized I had no idea where I parked. The three-lane exit I spotted was nothing like the one-lane entrance I’d used at 6:12 a.m. But before I could panic, I spotted two yellow-vested Metro employees on golf carts.

“Can’t find your car?” the older one asked, in what sounded like a Greek accent.

“No,” I said.

“No one can,” he said. “Jump in. I’ll help you find it.”

 For the next ten minutes we trundled around the garage, and he regaled me with stories of car misplacements. “Many people think they parked here but actually parked in the other garage,” he said, shaking his head. Maybe he was making this up, but it made me feel better. At least I was in the right garage.

Aren’t these spots for hybrid cars?” I asked when we were on the highest level, A1. “No rules now,” he said. “This like Wild West.”

A few more loops of the garage and there was the car, right where I left it — on Level A3 of the Wild West. It was a wild ride.


(W.H.D. Koerner, Cattle Stampede)

A Commuter in the Suburbs

A Commuter in the Suburbs

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I dreamed all day of walking home from the new Silver Line station. I plotted the way before my feet found it. And when I began, it was just as I imagined — segments of trail, mostly paved, with clear markers of distance gained.

Strolling south across the highway, I meandered through the leafy association campuses and a golf course, its wide greens calling. A short tunnel took me to parkland paths with benches and a bridge, then up a steep dirt path to a shopping center.

I passed golfers putting, teenagers dawdling, dog-walkers walking, crepe myrtles blooming. Ambling south out of the center, I strolled past a community garden and pool to the lot where I parked my car in the morning.

One day I’ll add those two extra miles and walk all the way to the house. But for now, this is bliss: to make my way home (mostly) on foot.

Feels Like the Future

Feels Like the Future

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My first day on the Silver Line, camera in hand, I soak in the experience as if I was a tourist. Which in a way I am. This is a new place, this strange new commute.

My first thought: It’s a long time to spend on the train. My second thought: I wish we could barrel straight down the center of the Dulles Toll Road without that long detour through Tyson’s Corner. Four stations is a lot of stopping and starting.

My third thought and most overwhelming impression: this feels like the future. It’s not the future yet. Some of the stops lead to sad strip malls and car dealerships. But that will change. In 25 years, maybe even in 10, Tysons will be another Ballston or Clarendon, the Orange Line’s great urban density success stories. We have a way to go in this part of Fairfax County, but the Silver Line is a start.

Welcome to the future. Almost.

Taking the Long Way Home

Taking the Long Way Home

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If the car is in the shop, then the driver rides the bus and walks home from the corner … which is two miles away. This is fine, this is good, this is necessary, even. One should always walk the routes (or part of the routes) one drives. It’s a good way to stay humble behind the wheel.

But yesterday’s stroll wasn’t humility-provoking. It was liberating. It was divine. Late afternoon, perfect summer weather (hot but not unbearable), sweater over my shoulders, music in my ears. I crossed the busy road early in the stroll (whew! worst part behind me) and hit a good stride as I ambled beneath the hedges that lead to Fox Mill.

Here’s what I never would have seen from the car: A shy pudgy girl with some sort of instrument in a padded case on her back; we traded smiles. Was it a cello? I think so.

Two workmen mixing cement for the fence posts they were installing. Beside them, almost hidden in the grass, was a microwave plugged into a long extension cord and a couple of empty Tupperware containers. Lunch!

The last leg of my walk was along a little dirt path that I don’t usually walk in work clothes. There was a bracing incongruity to it all, and most of all to sauntering up to the house — arriving home on my own steam — that made the rest of the day a breeze.

There’s a lot to be said for taking the long way home.

All Aboard

All Aboard

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It doesn’t always happen this way — in fact, it usually does not — but today I didn’t so much ride the train to work as float here. I opened the novel at West Falls Church, left it out of the bag to read while waiting for the Red Line at Metro Center, and only reluctantly tucked it away when I exited at Judiciary Square.

It’s not the book itself I want to write about here, but the act of reading.

Sometimes I’m the person staring into the tiny screen of a smartphone or tapping on its keyboard. And the newspaper also has its allure. But books are the best commuting companions. They are the ones that blur the miles, that stitch home to office most deftly.

But just as books are good for commuting, commuting is good for books —100 minutes of almost uninterrupted mind space (round trip) — time to lose myself in even a boring tome, to say nothing of a moderately engrossing novel.

After the Deluge

After the Deluge

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The pipe burst on Friday, the day after I sent the magazine to the printer. I was working at home, but colleagues noticed water seeping under my door and puddling on the carpet. They called facilities, which sent personnel, shop vacs, large fans, drying machines. My desk and file cabinet were put on blocks.

The hard work paid off.  Other than a few water-damaged boxes (which I’ve tossed) the place looks better than it did last week.

The waters came, raged and departed.

They left behind a stiller, calmer world.



(This may not look still and calm, but compared with last week…)

The Top Button

The Top Button

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Slogging through snow on my way to work this morning, burrowing my chin deeper into my soft, warm and utterly indispensable purple-and-blue patterned wool scarf, I paused for a moment to appreciate an essential item — the top button of my winter coat.

It’s a wool coat, aubergine, medium-lined, not the uber-heavy long black number I wore in New York. This is the coat of a suburban commuter, exposed to the elements in moderate doses. It’s a coat that’s been pushed to its outer limits this year.

And nowhere has it been pushed more than its big, top, purple button. This is the lynchpin, what keeps me going, what ensures that the scarf is up tight around the neck, what anchors the ample  collar that can be turned up to keep the cold breezes at bay.

Since I like a lot of scarf between my neck and the elements, the button is pushed to its limits. Every time I fasten it, I think, it’s bound to give way soon and — horror of horrors — I’ll actually have to do some sewing.

But so far, it holds. I cinch my belt tighter, zip up my boots, trudge to Metro — and remind myself that spring is right around the corner.

Day Job

Day Job

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Eight years ago today I began working at my current job. This is a fact I’ll ponder today — but it’s one I notice every day, given the framed snapshot of the girls on my desk. It’s 2006, our summer trip to California, and they are 11, 14 and 17.

What I’m thinking about now, though, is not just the improbability of their current ages — 19, 22 and 25! — but the fact that for half the years I’ve been working this day job, I’ve been writing this blog. I like the heft of this ratio, and will like it even more when it grows from 1/2 to 3/5 or 3/4.

This is not to disparage the day job but only to say that for me, and for many others, the creative work that happens before and after the eight hours is what matters most. It’s a funny, bifurcated way to live, straddling worlds, but there are compensations.

I savor them however I can.

Radiant Way

Radiant Way

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For me it’s a return to work after two weeks off — a good day to celebrate the Epiphany, a feast that marks revelation, the manifestation of the divine and, in the words of James Joyce (courtesy of the Writer’s Almanac), the “sudden ‘revelation of the whatness of a thing,’ the moment when ‘the soul of the commonest object … seems to us radiant.'”

The workaday world sorely needs some radiance, some shining representation of its meaning and purpose.

So today, on my return, I will look for it.

The Transcriptionist

The Transcriptionist

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My work these days calls for lots of interviewing — which in turn entails plenty of transcribing. While I’ve adapted to many new technologies, my taping equipment is decidedly non-digital.  I transcribe interviews as I always have, slowly and labor intensively, with many hits of “pause” and “rewind.”

This gives me time to ruminate on the human voice, on the pitch and timbre of it, and mostly on the pace of it.

Some reflective souls, bless their hearts, speak so slowly that my typing can keep up with them. Those conversations are a cinch to get down on paper.  Other subjects — I call them fast-talkers — are fun to interview but a nightmare to transcribe. They chatter, they enthuse, they barely pause. An hour with them takes four or five hours to capture.

Best of all are the conversations that seem opaque in real time but in transcription reveal a deeper, richer undertone. Makes me wish for a more all-encompassing rewind button — a replay for life, I guess you’d say. What would I choose to listen to again?