in memory of mansions

[rm]

Yesterday, I wound up having to go down to DC for the day at the last minute. I used to live in DC (it's where I went to uni and I stayed for a bit after), but I haven't been back in years. sykii and I were planning a trip there together shortly after 9/11 and then 9/11 happened. Since then, time's just gotten away from me.

It's remarkable, really, how it all remains exactly the same. And there was something about being in business clothes and walking out of Union Station, all smart and sharp, into the cold to wait for a cab. I was there to Do Business, and really, it's hard not to feel a thrill of being part of the supposed machinations of our world.

Of course, I hit the cab driver jackpot. Immediately, he's ranting at me about the right to bear arms (frustrating, because does ANYONE have a middle ground on firearms? Because apparently I do, but I was not pro-gun enough) and making racist statements about the guys who do the deployment at the cab stand. I was already an hour and a half late (thanks to snow on the way down) or I would have gotten out of the cab. Instead, I smiled and nodded and felt a pang of weird sorrow when he talked about his daughter the black-belt army officer and her three tween daughters.

So I did my meeting. And then another meeting, and then it was coffee with some of the people I work with and there I was drinking hot cocoa while men talked about their fixation with WWII history and didn't even look to see if I was still in the room. I smiled into my cup and thought of the greatcoat in my closet at home and all the wrong ways I always learn about important things.

Then it was off to the World Bank. The building is new and wasn't there when I lived in DC. And I'm not really much for modernist architecture, but my god, you know how we were promised flying cars? This was flying cars. The inside of the building is a huge, dimly lit atrium, with ambient light coming from some softly glowing pyramid sculptures. Everything is bluish and offices rise up around you and you can't look up without feeling these cities of numbers and hope -- I should have done maths, I should have gotten a PhD. I'd tell you to go look at it, and maybe they have tours, but yesterday it seemed pretty clear we couldn't get in without an invite and an escort.

When I lived in DC I fell in love with mansions. I put personal ads in CityPaper asking what we would do on a date, and I went to a bunch of embassy dinners that way -- the Russians, the Moroccans, the Swedes. Maybe that's the only time I was really ever a girl, like, the way you're supposed to be.

I was rarely happy in DC -- school was a struggle because I often found it hard to care enough and my interpersonal relationships were chaotic -- but I had mansions and monuments, a world sorrowful and all to myself. DC's a funny place - if hell mouths were real, there'd be one there, maybe two; I have never spent a single moment in DC when I didn't feel like the ground was trying to put roots up into my body and take over the whole of my veins. It just, the soil has a funny energy there. And it sounds nuts, unless you know DC, spent nights on its stoops listening to blues music from the bar next to the voodoo shop down the street from the Masonic temple and up the block from the restaurant with the taxidermied fucking panther hanging from its ceiling.

DC formed my way of seeing and my way of grieving and my sense of selves squandered. And so yesterday was strange (and tiring -- I left our house at 5:15am and got home at 11:15pm) and I spent the few quiet moments I had thinking of when I wanted to be a war reporter and of the Torchwood/West Wing AU I keep swearing I'm going to write.

It's such a bright city of such terrible things.

Comments

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

I have found that people who lived in DC proper rather than in the suburbs tend to have had a different experience.
I live in Bethesda, MD. =)

I have also wondered if I have some kind of social deficit, or if I had the bad luck of being around an unusual number of unhinged people.
I think it depends; do you continue to have issues connecting with people, or was this something you only experienced in DC?

And when I say "antisocial", I mean having to sit next to a guy in American History who was a bit TOO into Hitler, getting jumped in the locker room by a chick who flipped out after I told her to leave my friend alone, spending a day on crutches due to a sprained ankle and having people say to my face I was faking it.
It sounds like you had some pretty rough experiences growing up-- but I'd argue that most of it *could* have been due to being in junior high/middle school, rather than the city itself. That's a pretty torturous set of years, and my own experience (in Lexington, KY) was horrendous.

Of course, once I left high school at 15, life changed-- it was still the same city, but people matured.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

I think it depends; do you continue to have issues connecting with people, or was this something you only experienced in DC?

After a lot of sitting and thinking, I do still have problems making contacts due to the fact that I operate under the *presumption* that I bring out the spring-loaded hostile in others, and as such, must be very careful around people. Vicious cycle, I know.

I have found that moving across the country (due to having to go where the jobs are rather than fleeing anything) and getting established in my career field has helped a lot. I am a person who Knows Things and is Listened To at work, and when I mention what I do for a living (collection manager at an art gallery), folks are genuinely curious as to what I do, and seem to really like my explanations.

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

After a lot of sitting and thinking, I do still have problems making contacts due to the fact that I operate under the *presumption* that I bring out the spring-loaded hostile in others, and as such, must be very careful around people. Vicious cycle, I know.
It is a vicious cycle, but it's one I certainly understand.

Usually when we brace ourselves to be hurt by other people, it's usually because we aren't feeling very confident about the way we look in their eyes. What they do and say matters to us, and that's why you're always bracing in order to protect yourself from the blow.

I have found that moving across the country (due to having to go where the jobs are rather than fleeing anything) and getting established in my career field has helped a lot.

And this goes right along with this, you feel confident in your job-- people look up to you, and this centers and strengthens you.

The key is being centered and strong about all facets in your life-- not just your professional one.

It's a challenge, I dealt with my own insecurities (still am actually), and have come a long way with good therapy.