A Month of Sundays?
Furloughed Pentagon employees may have gone back to work, but plenty of federal workers have not, so the commute and the walk are still very much like Sunday.
Instead of parking on the back ramp or the front ramp in the Metro garage, I park on the lower deck. Yesterday afternoon it took me a few minutes to find my car; I’d started looking for it too far back.
In one way, of course, this makes living easy, like I’ve suddenly been upgraded to first class. On the other hand (and I can’t believe I’m saying this), it makes me feel lonely. Where is the jostling, the great burst of pedestrian power? Where are my compatriots?
Shutdown!
It’s the first day of October — and the first day of government shutdown. I’m imagining what the Metro will look like tomorrow (today, employees must still report to work, only to fill out some papers and then go home).
I imagine the trains and buses will be emptier but the roads busier. Home improvement stores will be bustling as the furloughed ones use this time to catch up on projects.
One doesn’t have to live here long to realize what a company town this is. A company town the business of which is government. A business that has shut down.
Away Message
Every month at work I receive an inbox full of away messages courtesy of an e-newsletter my office sends out. While I typically think of these as an annoyance and delete them without a second glance, the last time I decided to read some.
I decided that there’s an art to the away message. Some are terse, no nonsense: I am away from the office until August 19. I will answer emails when I return.
Others offer a ray of hope: I will be away until August 19 with limited access to email. “Limited” is not defined, of course. Does this mean a response later in the week? the day? the hour? I’ve had all three experiences.
Many propose alternate forms of assistance: If you need immediate help, please contact … Often these substitutes are obvious ones, the colleagues anyone who’s in touch with you would already know. But listing them in the away message provides some coverage, some control.
The best away messages are the ones that already carry some of that devil-may-care vacation spirit. “I’m in Bora Bora till the cows come home. Deal with it, wage slave!”
These are the messages that can cause a contagion of sick days. They are not polite, not corporate. And they don’t end with “Thanks” or “Best” but with “Ciao” or “Later.”
The away message of my dreams.
Still Day
The clouds have pulled a big curtain between us and the sun. For once I don’t mind. It’s cool and still for this time of year. Insects muted.
A distant truck downshifts as it maneuvers over the speed hump. I hear the clatter of plastic wheels across pavement as the little boys across the street play a summer game.
In the backyard birds dart and warble. They like these kind of days, too, everyone taking it easy.
I stop for a moment, catch my breath, see the big picture in the page proofs I’m reading, glimpse the forest beyond the trees.
Collegiality
A hard day yesterday, one of several. There was too much work and not enough time. There were the typical absurdities. But there were also revelations, shared laughter, plans for drinks after work. There was gallows humor. In short, there was collegiality.
Every group of people creates its own force field. As we interview candidates for openings in the department I think a lot about the ineffable qualities that make for a trusted colleague. It’s a similar approach, a complementary attitude, a sense of humor. Sometimes you get it right; sometimes you don’t.
People who write have a tendency to get caught in webs of their own thinking. It was in part to avoid this trap that I entered the office world again. I can’t say I haven’t second-guessed my decision hundreds of times. But I didn’t yesterday.
Collegiality is often a haphazard affair, a
byproduct, the luck of the draw. But once you’ve known the joy and purpose of working together toward a common goal it’s difficult to go back.
Tweaking the Commute
The general idea is to shorten the commute, find the cut-through, the shortcut, the (quicker) road not taken.
Lately, I’ve done the opposite, adding a longer walk in the afternoon and sometimes (today, for instance) in the morning, too; strolling to a Metro stop farther from my office, savoring the time I spend in the places in between.
En route I think of my great commutes in New York City, walking to and from midtown Manhattan from the Upper West Side and, later on, the Village.
The goal is to exercise, decompress, let the day begin (or end) on a vigorous, active, mind-toggling note. The reality is even better.
Wild Ride
The magazine I edit is stored in the second (deepest) level of the parking garage under the building next door. Ferrying our shipment of magazines from truck to cage involves a handcart that slides under the pallet so it can be lifted and pushed to its destination.
But when its destination is down two steep ramps and there are more magazines than usual, it’s a wild ride.
“This weighs 1,200 pounds,” said the driver when he surveyed the scene. “You want me to push it down that ramp?”
“Yes,” I nodded, adding something vague about how there must be more boxes this time, the delivery is usually no problem.
The driver used the side of the ramp to slow the momentum, but there was still a point when I thought we might have a runaway pallet on our hands. “This is like a ride at King’s Dominion,” the driver said.
The boxes eventually reached their destination, but it would take another guy and another handcart to finish the job. Along the way I moved some pallets and boxes myself.
Woke up this morning with aching arms and back. What gives? I thought at first. Oh, that’s right, it was yesterday’s delivery. It was a wild ride.
Photo: bestcardboardboxes.com
Sustenance
On a walk the other day I saw a robin perfectly posed, a worm in its mouth. It was showing me its best side, with the worm in profile, and I thought about the great battle for sustenance, how it dominates.
Even in the suburbs, hawks circle their prey, crows haggle over carrion and squirrels horde their acorns.
We think we are immune, but of course we are not.
Our houses are empty from dawn to dusk, our children grow up in an instant —and all the while we are driven, too. The great battle for sustenance consumes, subsumes us all.
Commuting in the Dark
The Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the Metro, is well known for single-tracking, off-loading and other commuting horrors. It’s often not given credit for the tens of thousands of folks that it safely transports to and fro every day.
True, it is difficult to understand why it takes two years to repair an escalator, but I imagine there are the usual bureaucratic hurdles to surmount. All this is to say that I hesitate to complain about an “improvement” — but now I’m going to do exactly that.
One thing WMTA does right, at least in my opinion, is it keeps the lights low. When your fleet is aging and your platforms have seen better days, that’s a wise move. But if my stop is any indication, that’s ending. Bright lights now illuminate the top tier of the station. That which was hidden is now revealed. And it’s not a pretty sight.
All those dim platforms and stairways, which gave commuting the blurriness that made it bearable, may be going away. Sunglasses on Metro? That may be next.
