Blog Resurrection and Musings on Heritage

Well, that was a hell of a (now two) week(s). Taken partially to just mean a whirlwind, but partially to imply periods of outright hellishness. Between being introduced to DC, decamping back to State College for the surprisingly affecting nostalgic/regretful 2012 State High graduation, and being diagnosed with early-stage Lyme disease (initially debilitating, but fine once knocked out with antibiotics) I haven't gotten much writing done. But rather than fall into the old pattern, and leave another bare-bones blog to languish on some distant server, I'm pushing myself to come back while it's still fresh, while a hiatus can still be salvaged from becoming outright desertion. In the nearly two weeks since I've been living in and around the Metro DC area - and particularly since my aunt, whose apartment I've thus far shared, is in Tennessee for a week - I've become acutely and poignantly aware of the potential for loneliness in a city like this, and, moreover, the absolute necessity of keeping some social self alive, if only to remember how to communicate in something other than laser-focus research memos and terse cafe orders - the logistical jargon necessary to get through the day. On those days when I don't manage to connect much outside of my internship, when I Metro in, walk, talk, do my job, Metro out, it's as if the circuits in my head that keep me connected and dynamic, keep me from just getting caught up in my books and my own head, get rusty. My own variation on cogito ergo sum, I suppose: scrivo ergo sum, I write, therefore, I am, a statement that's resonated all the more as I settle into my Facebook withdrawal, and recognize how integral words, particularly online, are to the bare project of existing, now that distance relationships mean physical existence doesn't quite cut it.

These few weeks weren't my first time in D.C., but it was certainly my first encounter of the city – as, on some level, a single dynamic organism – where I assessed it through the lens of one of it’s current and possibly future denizens – that ubiquitous mass of be-blazered, purposeful striders slipping through the SmartCard turnstyles and sliding through the glass doors of Commerce, or OAS, or any of hundreds of non-profits or low-level agencies. Riding the Metro, there’s a strange combination of unity and completely alienation: fellow passengers likely share your fatigue, your high-heel scars, your preoccupation with the election, or with global news, but at the same time, D.C. is most certainly not New Orleans: everyone moves, comfortably and politely, but firmly, in their own little bubble, floating throughout downtown to wherever their destination might be.

Most of you probably know or would be unsurprised to learn that I’m an avid fan of West Wing, a political drama spearheaded by Aaron Sorkin in the late 90s and early 00s (do we have a name for those yet? Zero-ies? Two-Thousands?) chronicling the ins and outs of White House life, from press detail to speechwriting to political crises to actual crises to Oval Office humor to simple camaraderie among impossibly smart (fictional) people. I think what I loved most about West Wing, and what I appreciate most now about actually being submerged in the working culture of D.C., is the sense of moving towards some future, of being able to fix in my minds eye some work to which I could conceivably imagine dedicating myself once I - if I - ever "grow up". Not to dive too deep into the abyss of TMI, but for me, the biggest curse of adolescence was a constant sense of needing to repair past mistakes, to do-over moments and relationships and experiences, a Gatsby-esque drive to recreate some pre-divorce sense of identity. Sure, I was interested in academics, and school, but entirely in the abstract: it was a game to play, to keep myself busy, not a practical set of means to an end. I'm certainly not going to pull an Avenue Q and claim that i've miraculously "found my purpose" on the vulgar, brusque streets of DC, but it did have the effect of reorienting me to where I'll be two years from now, when Tulane spits me out with a shiny degree, and I run out of pre-formed steps on the "what's next" ladder. I don't have a definite answer yet, but, who knows, maybe this summer will serve as an incubator. 

People-watching around the Jefferson pier - a point in alignment with White House, Capital, Lincoln and Jefferson memorials - never fails to amuse, but sometimes it gets me to thinking about and inevitably waxing poetic about the symbolic power of a city like this, a conscious, intentional capital where notions of Americanness - were hammered and molded and erected in a time of utter uncertainty. What appeals to me about DC is the fact that it is what came next, after the revolution, after the war, it was the foundation of a new social order that the colonists had won the right to form. As everything from the French Revolution to the Egyptian one to the Hunger Games has taught us, the high human drama of conflict is all well and good as spectacle, but legacies are formed from what people do with the political capital war brings. Rather than an organic city, steeped with the haphazard tides of history, DC was a city planned, calibrated, and built to be a center of government, built by a hubristic cohort of men and women who wanted a national identity that wasn't simply geography or heritage, but something they created. You see it flickering out in the absurd statue of Washington a la Zeus, in the much worked-over homages to reason and symmetry. I'm not going to go into the whole separation of church and state business, but I do think there's power in people - at least officially - making a conscious choice of what they would worship, what they would weave into their streets and marble, and daring to create those objects of worship and respect from scratch, rather than tradition. It shouldn't be *over*romanticized, and that worship of the ingenuity of man has, at points gone horribly wrong, has led to arrogance and selfishness and stultifying loneliness, but as an experiment, I still find it pretty damn compelling. 

Don't worry - there'll be no more National Treasure style babbling about the symbolic wealths of DC, but I couldn't help myself just this once, especially as I get ready to go visit the Mall. I left religion behind years ago, but on gorgeous Sundays like this, turning over the transcendental - whether through poetry, contemplation of science, of philosophy - in your minds' eye is too tempting to resist.

Through rusty, creaking writer's block, 

Cody

Arabic Word of the Day/Weel: Wasaatiyya, the middle way, moderate. A title adopted by certain anti-colonial Islamist intellectuals in the late 20th century, advocating a dialog-based Middle Way between Westernization and radical extremism.

Quote of the Day/Week:"Absolute peace is an unattainable goal...but it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed upon it as a traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation" Aung San Suu Kyi