Commute thy sentence

Yesterday I turned on a space heater and made soup.

These seemingly mundane tasks tell a story. While most people would dismiss them as soon as they happened, I am dwelling on them. Outside, the sky is dull, the kind of dull that hides the earth from airplanes, and though the trees are still green and flowers still grow, they, too, show signs of listlessness. Inside, I am hiding from October.

I do not like the time when death comes to the world around me. Once, it meant back-to-school and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now it only means cold and drear and barren trees and thick clothing and being imprisoned indoors. Right now, before the real cold has even arrived, I feel like Spring will never come, that this is how life will always be - covered skin, false heat, the drear, oh, the drear.

I had a back-to-school of sorts a few weeks ago when I started a new job. The firm is out in Herndon, Virginia, technically a suburb of DC but way the hell out there. Now, I am one who always said, "Live where you work." I would if I could. I didn't choose this; it chose me. Finding a job in DC was proving rather difficult for several reasons, and anyway, Chris and I love our neighborhood, though not so much the actual dwelling place, and the rent we pay will allow for me to save some money. He works downtown, so moving closer to my office isn't fair to him, either.

It's an hour and a half each way. I'm spending three hours a day on trains and buses, and it's already getting to me. Now, the morning commute I don't mind so much, although it's getting up so early that is the biggest problem of the entire commuting business. I'm not a morning person. I never have been. It's scientific fact that some people don't function well in the morning, and that some need more sleep than others. At least the length of the commute gives me enough time to wake up a bit. I take my coffee on the train and try to stimulate my brain, first with the commuter paper crossword puzzle, then a book. By the time I've reached the Wiehle stop to catch the bus to my office, I'm ready for my daily Lumosity games. (Seriously, these work. I've seen marked changes in my concentration level and quicker thinking. I'm going to purchase a subscription, I think.)

In the beginning of commuting, I created an Instagram account. It started as an attempt to make fun of hipsters and the crappy images that people post on Instagram. I even wrote "Commuter chronicles on Hipstergram" in my profile description. But it's turned into something else, a challenge to find something unique in a quotidian ritual, a commentary on the way we organize our society. It really is a challenge. But there is something oddly appealing about many of the photos I've been taking, something that captures the essence of life in Western society. A sunset on the Metro, for example, seen at the right. This was one of the earlier images I captured, when I was still intent on doing the hipster thing. But when I took it, it was a real moment. I felt a bit of awe, even amidst the suburban sprawl. There was another time when the moon was as big as The Ritz and it jumped from side to side as the train twisted and turned through the modern Virginian landscape. That was really something. 

Most of the shots are in or around the Metro system, obviously. It really is a gorgeous system, if you're into aesthetics. I like to play with the reflections while inside the train. This is when the Instagram filters become useful rather than just a way for hipsters to make a bad photo seem "artsy." 

The captions are important to me, too. I'm not just going to take a photo for the sake of taking a photo. A photo is a story, and, unlike when I initially started using Instagram, the images I am capturing are taken for a reason. Stuck on the tracks. Waiting to transfer. Where I used to live. Just wanting to get home. Then there are the societal things - the McDonald's Citibank, the warnings of underground dangers, the endless advertisements, the ugliness of concrete. 

I don't see the world like most people. I see more of it. I see the details. It's going to be a challenge to find something new as the commute becomes just a part of my day, but I think I can keep it up. Finding the sacred in the profane. The unique in the mundane.

But back to the space heater and soup. I went to the farmers market and bought seemingly one of everything to put into the soup. It wasn't that cold, but as soon as I opened the door to go to the market, the chill put soup into my mind. That was my Saturday. Soup and sleep. Boy did I need the sleep. And the soup.

Hey, look, the sun just came out!

Follow me on Instagram.

Kangaroo Boxing Club - Pigs and Cows Eaten with Pleasure

Chris and I ate out last night.

You probably don't think this is a big deal. It is. We've been on such a tight budget for so long that to be able to go out to dinner represented a major change in our lives. Even when I was at the political research firm, the salary was such a pittance that our nights out were limited. Now we can go out to dinner without having to rearrange something else in our lives.

We ate at a place called the Kangaroo Boxing Club, located a mere three or four blocks from our house. We had neither visited before nor knew of its existence, because we tend to forget that a world exists if we turn left from our house instead of right. The 11th Street corridor of Columbia Heights has changed drastically in a short time, and KBC was just one of many options from which to choose. I suppose we'll have to try them all.

The night was exceedingly pleasant, so the streets were packed as if it were the weekend. All of the restaurants along the corridor have outdoor seating; we walked by looking at what people were eating to make our decision. In the end, BBQ won.

As soon as we sat down, I liked the place. We sat inside where there was no wait. The BBQ sauces on the table reminded me of Burbank's in Cincinnati, a restaurant I had loved to visit on the way home from Reds baseball games. The pulled pork there at one time had been spectacular, and I always chose the tangy sauce to smother it with. KBC had a similar tangy sauce, and the pulled pork was of the old Burbank's quality. There was a lot of it, too. Chris had the pastrami. We both were so happy with our food that we continued to eat even after we were full, and then we realized that we had left too little on our plates to take home, so we resolved to eat it all and did. It was too good to leave.

It was a simple place, small, with the bar taking up half of it and the tables close together. We chatted with the guys at the table next to us as if we had gone out to dinner together. Old photos of Washington hung on the walls, some with images of KBC's owners photoshopped in. They had some etchings on the light fixtures that were of interest, and a picture of SNL's Pat hung on the bathroom doors to indicate gender. Ha!

I was pretty shocked when our check came and it was under $50. We'd eaten enough food for four people and had some beers and I just kind of figured we were splurging for once. 

I watched two men with interest sitting at one table. They didn't talk to each other - they were too engaged in their phones. One had a beard in the trendy style of gross - rather unkempt and stating "look at me" - and his morose, disinterested demeanor made me wonder what bands he had discovered and discarded during the week. Everything about him screamed hipster, and I feared KBC was a hipster joint. But the guys next to one side of our table weren't hipsters, and the gay couple with the visiting parents on the other side weren't hipsters, and I didn't see any hipsters sitting at the bar, so everything checked out. Whew. We will return.

Oddly enough, I had watched that viral video of the two kangaroos boxing in front of a guy's street early in the day.