Perspective

Perspective

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The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our nation. That will happen in less two hours — and about 36 miles from where I’m sitting.

It’s not the transfer of power that I was hoping for, but that’s not the point. It’s a transfer, and it’s happening. After it’s complete, we can move forward, doing what we must to protect the nation, which has weathered wars and riots and a near-fatal split. 
I remind myself that eight years ago others were as worried and disappointed as I am now. I might think I have more cause for concern (and I do!), but I imagine those folks would disagree with me. 
Perspective — I’m working on it today. And I will be for quite some time.
Listing Creative

Listing Creative

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I usually write blog posts early in the day, and that’s for a reason. They take advantage of my first blurry minutes in the world — sometimes good for musing. By this time of the day, I’m like most other folks — going in scads of directions and about as creative as a wood post.

Which reminds me of something I often think about: the divide between creativity and  efficiency.

Efficiency is brisk, a snap of the fingers and click of the heels. It thrives on lists and crossing tasks off of them.

Creativity is slow and sinuous. It doesn’t like lists and it doesn’t like timetables. It will not be hurried.

Most of us have a little of both tendencies, and how we behave depends upon what is being asked of us. For me today, it’s efficiency. So you’ll have to excuse me now. It’s time to cross “write blog post” off the list.

Spanning Worlds

Spanning Worlds

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It was still light when I drove home yesterday, and as I made my way along the parkway the planes rumbled, soared and landed, and the river flowed by as it always does, with the cars flowing beside it, a liquid line of red lights and exhaust fumes.

Still a novice car-commuter, especially on this route, I marveled at the sights before me, as clogged and crowded as they were, marveled because, for all the bother of living here, there is sometimes something so right about it.

I feel it when I drive along the parkway and see Memorial Bridge, its stone arches and masonry as hospitable a welcome as any city could provide.

I think it is the southerness of Washington that speaks to me through this bridge. Or perhaps the in-betweenness. Spanning two worlds.

Dim and Quiet

Dim and Quiet

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It’s taken a while for the morning to gather itself. Clouds linger; fog does, too. Only a few lights are on in the building across the street.

A train chugs by and sounds its low, mournful horn. Air moves through the building with a presence less notable than its absence.

Inside, the overhead lights remain off for a few more blessed minutes.  
It’s a dim, quiet start to the day.
Armchair Amble

Armchair Amble

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A quiet morning here, made possible by cloudy skies and sleepy parakeets. (It helps that I haven’t uncovered their cage yet, poor things.)

A cold has kept me inside for days, and I’m feeling the psychic effects of it. Time for an armchair amble.

I walk out the door, slip between the houses across the street and find a familiar path. It’s almost overgrown now but I pick my way along until I come to the road. There I find the familiar landmarks: the horses and the stream, the big house on the hill, the pasture that (if viewed from the right angle) almost seems rural.

Air fills my lungs and my stride lengthens. I’m in the groove now, moving quickly in the chill. How good it feels to be alive and in the world. When I’m in it I often don’t appreciate it. But now that I’m not … well, it’s good to have a reminder.

Mind Picture

Mind Picture

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No time to snap a photo of last night’s full moon, so I tried to snap a “mind picture,” as Suzanne would call it.

I remember when she first talked about mind pictures. It was on one of our family vacations, can’t remember which one. I’d smiled, reminding her that she couldn’t share mind pictures the way she could real ones and that her mind wouldn’t always be as clear as it was then. That there might come a time when it would be as jumbled as mine — mind pictures tangled up with old phone numbers, Associated Press Stylebook comma rules and all the other bits of information and trivia I’ve remembered through the years.

But I have come around a bit. As long as you don’t take too many, as long as you are mindful when you snap that lens open and closed … who’s to say that, in the end, mind pictures aren’t better.

I can still remember with great detail a mind picture I took more than two decades ago. I was visiting Kay in Paris, and had forgotten my camera. It was April, early evening, and as I walked along the Seine, the towers and spires of Notre Dame were set off against a perfect late-day sky.

I’ve taken tens of thousands of photographs since then. But that’s the one — without film or any other form of capture — I remember best.

Tick Tock

Tick Tock

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The house is as quiet as my house can be, which means that in addition to the blood rushing through my ears I’m also listening to the twitter of parakeets and the steady tick-tock of the cuckoo clock.

The “cuckoo” part of the clock has been long since been disabled, but the ticking mechanism remains. The metronomic beat of this timepiece is the soundtrack of my life.

On the rare day when the clock’s not wound, the stillness is deafening. I can hardly hear myself think.

Which raises the question: What has all this ticking done to my brain? Has it weathered it with pockmarks? Or has it smoothed and polished it, eroding those pesky irregularities that often stand in for real thought?

Trees’ Company

Trees’ Company

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I recall a line from a poem by James Clarence Harvey: “Oh, the saddest of sights in this world of sin/Is a little lost pup with his tail tucked in.”

Not that my heart wouldn’t melt at the sight of a little lost pup, but a sad sight all too common this time of year are Christmas trees beside the road. There they are, the once-proud bearers of bright lights and family ornaments — now reduced to so much yard waste.
These two have the right idea, though. A stiff northwest wind rolled them together the other day, and now they’re partners in crime/shame/escape. May they live forever in mulch heaven. 
Shadow Commuters

Shadow Commuters

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Since Friday, we have been in the deep freeze, with temperatures in the teens or lower. I’m remembering all over again why I no longer live in Chicago. There, the deep freeze was the norm. Here it’s the exception.

Working in Crystal City, though, I have a secret weapon: the Underground. One of its passageways leads from Metro to the building across the street from my office. It’s a little longer as the crow flies, but ever so much warmer.

I notice now a definite uptick in the number of Underground pedestrians, people like me, scampering in the warmth, eschewing the wind and cold.

There we were, dressed for the chill in boots, scarves and gloves — walking down what is essentially a hallway. Are we shadow commuters, or the real thing?

After Downton

After Downton

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It would have happened last night, had it happened. But there was no seventh season of “Downton Abby” — and so I start this week without Lady Mary and Bates and Anna and all the crew.

Instead, I begin the week with “The People Vs. O.J. Simpson,” an excellent mini-series that just won a Golden Globe. But it did not take me out of myself and plop me down in the English countryside. It did not transport me to a place of elegance and ease.

For six years, there was Christmas, there was New Year’s — and there was Downton Abby. I don’t know if the scheduling was intentional, but it always seemed the perfect show for easing into the new year. It took the sting out of reentry.

Luckily, we live in an era of such television bounty that I couldn’t even be bothered to leave the house for a first-run film like “La La Land.” I needed screen therapy, and I got it — without venturing outdoors. But I didn’t have Downton. And that’s what I needed.

(Photo: PBS.org)