Just some thoughts from a recent trip
Someday, I won’t be here, and neither will you.
Someday, I won’t be here, and neither will you.
On Friday, between the hours of 2PM-5PM, I drove by myself from Philly to DC to go see Black Eyes, Irreversible Entanglements, and Clear Channel play at the Black Cat. I was supposed to go with three others in someone else’s car, but one-by-one throughout the week and up until the morning of the show, plans changed for each person. Fuck it, I’m going anyway.
I started my drive in afternoon sun and finished in after-dusk twilight at the top of the hill on Georgia Ave NW, somewhere just off of Howard University’s campus. Read the parking sign about five times like I did eight months ago when I was last here by myself to see Duster at the Black Cat, not even back from Montreal for 24 hours and driving straight from the high school parking lot of my work. The day before I had seen Duster, I had spent that day driving down 87 by myself from Montreal, through the Adirondacks, in its coniferous forests, past the frozen lakes, past the ice-covered rock walls frozen with snow melt, in sweet quiet air that I only know exists there, past the big-titted Betty Beaver, past the subpar Stewart’s Shops, past the Sunoco I always filled up at that sits at the southern foothills of the Adirondacks - depending on which direction I traveled, it was my one stop that regularly served as my welcoming to a real winter of subzero temperatures that were sometimes -25F/-31C, or a farewell to such. Past the blue and chrome Ambrosia Diner dining car I never went to but within its confines have always wanted to enjoy a meal, past the Silo roadside attraction Sonia and I went to and got chocolate peanut butter and fried-in-store apple cider donuts during our first drive together from Montreal to Philly - a drive we took together days before the world went into pandemic lockdown and we were separated by international border for six months - past brutalist Albany, to the final stretches of NJ-27 and New Jersey Turnpike. Not feeling back in the US until I reached New Jersey and its highway litter of business and LED gas station signs.
I read the parking sign about five times like I will always do any time I get this parking spot directly in front of Nu Vegan. “This spot is too good to be true?” is what arises from the anxieties in my stomach, anxieties instilled in me from dealing with the Philadelphia Parking Authority for most of my life. I proceeded to walk into Nu Vegan, got myself a buffalo chicken sandwich with a side of mac and cheese and some crinkle cut fries. After being handed my food, I left it at the register and then took a shit in the bathroom after sitting in the car for three hours, and wondered about the black Cintas - or whatever business rental carpet - crookedly slapped out on the floor underneath my feet. How much piss from other strangers is soaked into this thing? If it weren’t black, what would this thing look like? Why is there a large rectangular carpet in the bathroom placed in front of the toilet? This is fucking nasty, man, but I really gotta shit.
The person working the register was sweet. I told him this is always my first stop on the drive in from Philly. He told me he was an Eagles fan and apologized for the Eagles sucking the past two games. It was dark in the restaurant. I grabbed my food, walked outside, and ate my dinner in its eco-friendly takeout container in my car by myself. One pack of salt and pepper in the plastic-enclosed utensil/napkin package is not enough. Thought about going back in to use the salt and pepper on the tables, but fuck it.
I eat dinner by myself in my car a lot. I do this because I can open or crack the windows and hear the city go by - if the restaurant is empty and dark, I don’t want to be in there. I’m starting to eat indoors again after just having had COVID for the first time over the Thanksgiving holiday, but fuck it, itsdarkandbigandemptyandsadintherewithchristmasdecorationsdrapedoverchairswhereiseverybodyitsdinnertime. I just drove three hours, and I only had a couple of hours before the Black Eyes show - I want to see as much of the city and be aware of being somewhere else as much as I can, even if it’s just staring at the same block and traffic I stared at on my own eight months ago. The last time, I sat on the tailgate of my car and enjoyed 70-something degree weather, the first sexy and horny warm days of spring that bring their own melancholy - this time, it was too chilly and I had to sit in my Prius. The last time, I shared photos of my dinner with Sonia because she loved Nu Vegan when we went there with Matty four years ago. I could have shared this meal with anyone else this time, but I just didn’t feel like it.
I eat dinner by myself in my car a lot. I do this because I am alone most of the time.
Fed myself, drove toward the Black Cat, parked somewhere off the busy U Street commercial corridor between a BMW and a Land Rover with only an inch between my front and back bumpers and luxury SUVs. As I looked at the space between cars, a couple, or two friends, asked if my car was stuck - to their surprise and appreciation, I said, “No, I just parked.” They tried to get into a car and realized it wasn’t theirs. We all laughed. Minutes later, they walked by again and were still looking. The three of us shared another laugh together.
I walked around for an hour before the 8PM doors at the venue. Followed part of a black history tour/trail about the neighborhood. I wondered if cities see the irony or not of celebratory things like this - things like this generally exist because the area has lost that population or were redlined into becoming ghettos, and the trails are there to preserve whatever little is left, and most of the time it’s just an idea. Sweetgreen and Walgreens is not the culture. “Are they celebrating displacement?” Took the escalator down to the U Street metro - appreciated how much of a piece of shit it isn’t, compared to SEPTA, thought about how sick it would be to skate the natural transitions down there.
Rode the escalator back up. Stood in line.
Someday, I won’t be here, and neither will you.
I made my way down here via the same way I took through Delaware and Maryland eight months ago - avoiding I-95 and driving through mostly rural areas that resemble much of the Delmarva Peninsula. Delaware is like purgatory, a place that feels like nowhere, a place that feels like nothing. Very black asphalt. Nice roads. Fresh white dotted lane lines. A clean, basic circle surrounding its state highway numbers. Expensive infrastructure for all who are just passing through. It’s just a place.
Someday, I won’t be here, and neither will you.
I think people with love for Delaware reading this or who know Delaware will find offense. I admittedly do not know Delaware, but as someone driving through, what the hell is it? The First State feels something more like the godawful boring expanses of Ontario that resemble a bootleg US, but with gigantic intersections containing many cars at endless red lights that do not match the nothing surrounding it, and a Wawa. Brick homes that look like military barracks. I do love New Castle County, though. I’m sorry. And I do love the Delmarva Peninsula, but something about Delaware is sad unlike anywhere else. I never said I don’t like it - it’s just a weird warp and I do find plenty to love about it, and perhaps it’s the warp I love.
I cross into Maryland via US-301, and it immediately feels different. Duster’s “What You’re Doing to Me” plays on repeat. I listen to Duster and think about how the last time I made this drive eight months ago, I was on my way to see Duster at the Black Cat. Two days before that April drive, I was listening to the same Duster record - Moods, Modes, a collection of songs from various 7”s - with Sonia, Gen, Winnie, and Mel as we drove on snowy blue Quebec country roads to make our way home from Cabana Sucre. Much of that last trip to Montreal was spent sleeping at Gen and Winnie’s, after we were hit with a historical ice storm and a majority of the island was left without electricity for days. On that last April drive to DC, the Maryland grass was new and had some of the most saturated greens I had ever seen - trees beginning to bloom their baby flowers, risen with Easter a vibrancy so sublime, but surreal and scary in the Delmarva openness. In this area, I feel sensations similar to how I felt when I was a kid - and still feel - while watching the music video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” on MTV. I felt uneasy in nature’s beautiful beckoning. This time, December, yellow grass and bare trees. A crisp blue sky. A kitchen knife of a sun to cut through it all.
I thought about how different my life is now compared to my life eight months ago. Love is always a risk, regardless of what is involved in the relationship, romantic or not, be it a place, friend, partner, family member, job, a pursued passion or interest. Years ago, I took a risk of love by entering a partnership, and months ago it was that same love that had me tell someone I love differently than anything on this planet that I want the healthiest and most loving relationship with them, and that for me being partners does not seem conducive to knowing such a love with them. Still, unlike how we are conditioned, I don’t believe partnership is the pinnacle of knowing love, or is the best way of practicing - it’s just one specific and very desired way of trying. Sometimes, it’s also just not the right time. All I want is to know it, be it, live it, and do it, whatever and however that is done. As of now, doing the same but different drive I did months ago, I feel healthier, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy.
But I do not feel lost, for love is my compass. Love having led my life for so long, I trust that the results of my actions committed to surrendering to it, along with time and patience, will never lead me or those around me astray. I do not have control, but I do know love. I do not have power over life, but I do have a choice to love. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I am not sad. It doesn’t mean I am not terribly heartbroken. But it doesn’t mean I am not happy. It doesn’t mean I am unfulfilled. And ultimately, it means I am bursting at the seams with an undying love, one that nurtures my respect for time and patience, a love for everything and everyone in my life. A love for you, the person reading this.
I do not take this for granted. I do not take you for granted. I hope we all die together, after we all live this life and navigate relationships and enter and re-enter and leave and become together again or don’t in this life. I just hope for us to do it in ways we know will bear the most bountiful bushels of fruit to share with each other, a love that will outlive us. Just because you prune a tree doesn’t mean it’s gone. You do it for a reason: because you care for it and you love it and you nurture it. It’s changed some, but the tree remains and grows, and so you do, and you hope to someday enjoy its new fruits, and they may be sweeter than you had ever imagined possible. But, that’s the risk we take.
I am here, and I personally see no viable choice but to surrender in doing love, to trust in time, to trust in patience, and let life do its thing in the meantime however it ends up.
I don’t know shit about the future. All I know is that I am here right now, and I know what is my compass, and I know that I have hope.
Someday, I won’t be here, and neither will you.
This is wonderful
as someone who spent 30 years of their life in delaware, i can say it’s a complete and utter black hole. no offense taken.