Das Capitol

[Sojourner]

At 01:00 PM 7/17/97 -0500, Henry Musikar wrote:

On 17 Jul 97 at 11:53, Sojourner <sojourner at vt.edu> wrote: 

<bunch a crap i snipped hee hee>

>Sojourner,
>
>Um, didn't I mention racial division? The lack of decent, old 
>buildings is a mark of the city's gentrification at the expense of 
>the poor. If these are not the mark of a city, then what is? Should I 
>have mentioned DC's infamous crime rate/mayor/board?
>
>Oh, yeah. 'Bout "Congressional Lane." I live in the burbs for the 
>same reason I live in the DC metro area at all. Hardly a matter of 
>choice; hate the burbs. No city buzz, no country peace.
>

Oh your mom won't let you have the bath pillow?  haha you seem to insist on
making your reason for remaining a deep and mysterious one, so I'll take my
shots in the dark till I hear the cry of "You sunk my battleship!" **

<grin>

yah i worked heap big time in DC, specially downtown, ferrying blood from
le Croix Rouge
on E street down to "this ain't cold enough to be" Minnesota Avenue,
walking between the silent
immobile living corpses of the broken kidneys, between silent old men with
organs worn from
the abuse of time, and young kids cut down to the quick by the awful
properties of crack.  I even et
at the Chili Bowl oncet or twice, and been stoned by kids whilst driving my
car on my errands of mercy
for Mervis, he of the Diamonds.  

But all in all, the place I'd rather be is the city, and all in all, the
racism is diffused in those bustling streets.
When my car broke down (ah, the only decent way to meet totally new people
totally when you
do not expect it or want to) in the 'burbalicious burbs, an elderly man in
a cadillac shouted at me to
keep away from him and that he had heard of thieves like me on TV, when I
simply asked him if
he had any jumper cables.  All the patrons streaming out of Sutton Place
gourmet likewise did their
absolute best to ignore ME, me the savage, me who had broken the code of
car idolatry, who had
failed to give an offering to our God, and had thusly been justly punished
by the mysterious forces
of Out-To.  

And yet, on a day quite like today, the hammer of the sun beating on the
good citizens of DC, in a very
downtown and unlikely spot for human interaction, a kindly woman spotted me
FROM A DISTANCE, a 
woman of a different "race" (excuse me while I spit out the nastiness of
that word) and out of the stream
of humanity flowing past me, she reached out the hand of kindness in that
concrete swamp and without
her, I wonder if my sanity would be still with me.

Yes, the city is full of rotten things, but yet, it has the sweet air of
intelligent and kindly minds.


	"If there's one thing a man likes to get
	 his hands around, it's the two mutant
	 cubelings at the bottom of the cup."

		--Sojourner (circa 1997)