A Pilgrim’s Digression

Metro car doors do not open when striking a foreign object. I found this out this morning when I slipped through the door onto the train just as the door was closing.

“Doors closing. Stand clear of the door.”

I felt the door strike me, and I squeezed through, all except for my left arm and my bag. I yanked my arm free quickly and painfully, then had to struggle to pull my bag out of its grip. I almost fell backwards when it came free. I felt pretty foolish, certain that people were watching me with ironic amusement.

My mind has been elsewhere today, occasioning all sorts of foolishness such as trying to squeeze between two closing Metro car doors.

For one thing, I am still sick, my head thick with mucus, my ears as congested as my sinus passages, to the point that any sound originating outside my own wheezy chest passes through my auditory nerve as clearly as molasses through cotton.

Yesterday I thought I was getting better. Today, I still feel miserable and I wonder if I have another week of this ahead of me.

On the train, I feel unbearably hot. I wonder if the heat is not too high. Or perhaps I am running a fever. I decide I am not feverish, just hot. Still, when the train stops at Capitol South, I am glad to break out of there. I enjoy the feeling of the cold air on my bare head as I ascend to the surface on the escalator.

Riding this long escalator from the underground, I am always reminded of that day in April 2002 when I first ascended from here, on my way to my job interview. The way the Cannon House Office Building, and then the Capitol come into view as the escalator delivers me to the top, still thrills me every first day of work of the week.

Above ground, it is still dark, the air damp and chilly in a way reminiscent of spring. The man hawking the free Examiner newspaper is there at the top of the escalator, shouting “Free paper! Get your free paper here!” I always find him vaguely annoying, the way he shouts like a nineteen-thirties newsboy shouting “Extra! Extra!”

I never take his newspaper, even though I’ve heard that he only has to work until all the papers are gone. Then he gets paid and can go home. Sometimes I feel I ought to take his paper, even if I turn around and throw it away, but I never do. It annoys me that newspapers waste paper printing the damned things, which are mostly advertisements and classifieds anyway. They are nothing more than litter for the streets and buses and subway cars.

How many days begin like this? Me walking to work in the darkness of early morning, thinking mostly these same thoughts about the same things. I walk up C street, past St. Patrick’s, where I used to go to mass on my lunch break, and I think for the millionth time that I may go to mass today. But I know I won’t.

I pass the spot in the churchyard where once, on a morning like this, I was startled by a homeless man lying on the ground behind the fence, beside an old gravestone. I stopped to look at him, unsure if he were alive or as dead as the corpse buried next to him. Finally deciding he was just sleeping there, completely exposed, I walked on.

Then up Second Street and down Pennsylvania to Starbucks, where I order the same thing as I do every morning, a medium coffee (always medium, never grande) and a bacon, egg, and cheese on english muffin. So predictable that the woman does not even ask me what I want anymore and sometimes places my order for me while I am still waiting in line behind several other people.

I order the same thing partly because I think she might be annoyed if I were to change my order, just once. Even when I am tempted to order a Peppermint Mocha, I don’t do it if she is the one taking orders. I feel like I know her about as well as I know anyone else in this world, which is to say I don’t know her at all, but I see her nearly every day. I used to think she was rather cold and abrupt, but now she smiles at me. I don’t know her name. She is probably a little older than me and she may be the manager. She is dark and foreign, and I used to think she might be African originally, but now I think her accent is probably Caribbean.

There is a new girl working today, though–there seems to be high turnover here, except for the manager–and when the manager tells the new girl my order, the new girl thinks she said “bagel” when what she said was “bacon.” The manager has to tell her twice, pronouncing “bacon” more distinctly each time.

Back down the street to the office. Crossing from Pennsylvania to Independence, I suddenly find myself in the middle of the eastbound two-lane street, crossing on red, cars coming at me. How did I get here? Distracted again. I hurry across to the island and wait carefully to cross Independence…too carefully, it turns out. The walk signal has gone from white to red by the time I realize I can cross.

My brain is not functioning today, and I wonder if the people in the cars stopped not two feet from me are saying to themselves, “Why is this idiot standing there?” That is what I am thinking to myself, anyway. Why is this idiot still standing here?

I still think I am probably destined to die crossing the street in Washington, especially if I continue to do thoughtless things like jaywalking across a busy street. It’s relatively safe in the early morning, at least, though not much so. I may yet end up like Margaret Mitchell, and I don’t mean that I will write a best-selling novel. And how many times have I thought of Margaret Mitchell when crossing the street? Innumerable times.

Arriving safely at my office, I place my bag on the conveyor for the X-ray. I walk through the metal detector; it goes off. I always purposefully leave my cell phone in my pocket. Some days, it sets off the detector, and some days it does not. Most of the time it does not set off the metal detector, but today, it set it off. I walk back through, take out my phone and put it on the conveyor, then walk through again. The two police people (police folk?), a man and a woman, don’t seem to be paying attention to me. The man is talking knowledgeably and intently about NASCAR while the woman looks diffidently at the floor, nodding occasionally.

If this is the mating ritual of the Washington red-necked Dodo, the female of the species is apparently not impressed by the male’s display.

Finally at my desk, I take out my handkerchief and lay it out to dry. I have to carry two per day, one to get me to work, where I can then use tissues, and one to get me home again. If I leave the wet one in my pocket, it is usually so soaked that it seeps through and dampens my pants pocket.

This reminds me of that scene in the third chapter of Ulysses, I think it is called the “Proteus” section, in which Stephen blows his nose in an already dirty handkerchief, then looks at the snot reflectively. My wife once told me that she thought it a little old-fashioned, even a bit disgusting, that I carry a handkerchief. I admit it took some getting used to, carrying a piece of cloth around on which to blow my nose, but now, like Mr. Bilbo, I don’t feel quite right without my hanky. It’s also quite useful in public restrooms, which cannot always be counted on to have paper towels or blow driers.

At this point, I often recall a scene from one of my favorite films, Barton Fink. In this scene, the dandified, alcoholic writer Bill Mayhew, after noisily vomiting into a public toilet, rises from his ablutions and ceremoniously folds and puts away the handkerchief he has spread on the floor so as not to soil the knees of his trousers as he kneels.

And how many times before have I thought these exact same things, right down to the literary and film allusions?

Is repetitive thinking a sign of incipient neurosis? If so, then we are probably all neurotics, for the repetitive monotony of our lives encourages repetitive thinking. Most of us do the exact same things every day, at the same time, in the same way. I even find that when I am waiting for the train in the morning, I stand in exactly the same spot, and somehow, unconsciously, I stand exactly where the door will open when the train stops. I don’t know how it happens. And of course I sit in the same seat on the train, as long as it isn’t taken…and when it is taken, I feel slightly annoyed, as if the interloper has tread on my foot without apology.

I am not sure I expected adulthood to be quite so routine-laden, when I was a child. I always thought adults had the most fun, and no, at that age I probably did not mean sexual fun. I guess I thought adults were somehow more free, not realizing just how free childhood really is. Adults are mules hitched to a circular grinding mill, walking round and round in a rut of routine.

One can almost understand why great artists and writers rarely work at ordinary jobs for very long. It can be stultifying to any semblance of creative thinking to go every day to a regular 9 to 5 job. Still, I have great respect for those that did it: Wallace Stevens, the Mutual of Omaha insurance salesman who also wrote some of the most complex poetry of the 20th century, and…well, Stevens is actually the only one that comes to mind right now. Carlos Williams was a doctor, but somehow that does not seem quite as “man in the gray flannel suit” as being an insurance salesman. At least a doctor has the mysteries of the human body to occupy his thoughts.

Me, I am now here at work, contemplating the mysteries of my all-too human body. There is no poetry in me anymore, unfortunately, only the prosaic thickening of the phlegm in my head. I sit and write, and meanwhile I walk in my rut, but it is a better rut than most people have to walk in, at least. At the very least, the hay with which I am paid is very good hay indeed.