Washington DC - In and Out

I wrote this in the morning but didn't have time to post it until now...

My Scenic Byway...back in Washington, DC. Sigh. I do miss this place. Oh there are plenty of things I do not miss (the traffic for one), and I love being out in Salt Lake City, but this place is so familiar - it was home for 20 years. Even though I've been gone coming up on 2 years, it doesn't feel that way. I am sitting in friends' home in Woodley Park looking out the windows and - I miss the buildings and the types of houses, the way the streets look, the vegetation...everyone hustling about. I still miss getting and reading the Washington Post in the mornings. Reading the news on line is just not the same. I miss my friends and the wide web of people I was connected with here, most of whom I won't even be able to see during this trip as I am here for work, with one of those very DC, very insane, overbooked schedules of meetings all day long every day followed by business dinners. Having arrived last night I have a brief respite here before the insanity begins.

When I lived here I often felt like I was at the center of the Universe. Many people do here. Washington has a way of doing that to you. The bubble effect. Life here is such a way that you start to forget that its different in other parts of the country. Of course you know it is, but you don't really know it until you leave. Knowing it while you live here and then knowing it when you've left and live somewhere else - its different. 

Now I am this outsider - a former resident looking back in, and it does feel different. But these streets! I know these streets. Twenty years spent walking and driving and learning the ways. Its all burned into my being. And memories flood here, there and everywhere as I drove to my destination last night driving along the patch I would walk between home and work, and spotting the places I used to work and shop and eat and hang. All the memories I have on these streets, matched by similar yet unique ones from thousands of others before and after me. Such a vibrant, passionate, intense city full of young, bright people seeking themselves and their dreams. I was one of them once. It gives me a warm feeling when I look out on this place.