OUTSIDE THE GATES
Spending 3 weeks smack in downtown Washington, D.C. has temporarily upended my “sense of place.” Away from the secluded universe of my pretty retirement community behind gates not far from a magnificent sparkling stretch of Pacific Ocean, I am aware of the much more real world of a big city. Trucks whizzed by with sirens blaring and flashing propeller lights whirling around. “Something must be going on,” I remarked with concern to the friend from New York who had come to spend a couple of days in D.C. with me. “No,” she said with surprise. “That’s just normal in the city.” I’m used to seeing lots of paramedic trucks in our small community, but they aren’t allowed to use their sirens inside our gates. I’m not sure who decided on that rule, but I’m grateful for the solace inside the gates. In the big city of D.C., you can actually walk and get somewhere. You can walk to work, to entertainment, to parks, to the grocery store, to meet friends. It is indeed lovely to walk inside our gates - but you can’t actually get anywhere other than to pretty places to walk. In fact, our whole community inside the gates is a park. There are, of course, gyms and fitness centers in the city, but you can walk endlessly for free.
The metro in D.C. is as efficient as it is ugly. Uniform gray concrete stations can only be differentiated by reading the signs. If some joker managed to switch signs, no one would have a clue where they are or where they’re going. D.C.’s metro lacks the artistry of museum-quality subways in Moscow, or commercially colorful Hong Kong’s down under. D.C. people are well trained to stand on the right of escalators and wait for passengers to exit before they go into the identical metro trains.
I can’t help noticing how young people are outside my retirement community gates. Besides being of various races, sizes, and ages, they are in constant motion. D.C. people move in a blur, always in a hurry. They stand at stoplights rather like thoroughbreds tensely waiting at the starting gate.
There are those talking out loud to someone on their cellphone or attached to an earpiece. There are also those talking to themselves because they imagine someone listening to them.
Street people are everywhere in D.C., begging what they can, or sitting forlornly in a heap somewhere. I’ve seen homeless when I lived in New Orleans, and passed the cardboard shelters lining some Hong Kong streets and around the Greyhound terminal in Los Angeles. Little round or square parks are all around D.C., but there’s bound to be someone seriously sleeping on the benches or on the grass. Even in warm weather, they are bundled in heavy coats, often surrounded by carts holding all their possessions.
In my community and surrounding small suburban cities, homelessness is - well, simply not allowed. Someone may stand by a busy street intersection holding up a sign of desperation, but they are gone the next day.
I read in a newspaper actually put out by the homeless of D.C. and sold on the streets by homeless people, that many of them do work, but still can’t afford a place to live. Shelters close during the daytime, so night workers sleep in the safety of the public parks during the daylight.
Among the homeless are old men, often black and full bearded, the mentally ill, the addicted, the drunk, and the out of luck. Not all are dangerous, but the man who angrily threw the plastic trashcans to examine their contents rather than rummaging through them worried me enough to leave my quiet reading spot lest he decide to up end me to see what might come out.
I don’t know what to feel in the reality of life in D.C. There are so many good causes to get caught up in. There is so much life, energy, and beauty in the big city. There is so much to worry about. There is so much history to learn from.
Although I spent many years of travel in the big, broad world, I have downsized to the small, safe world of my retirement community in which old age and illness are the problems of most concern. They are also serious concerns, but more connected to the natural evolution of going to the sunset of one’s days.
It may be uncomfortable to shake up my patterns, to shake up my mind, but it’s necessary and good to occasionally go beyond my element outside the gates.
Tags: Travel
