One day I was on the DC metro heading to work at the World Bank, gradually the crowd thinned out and revealed a young lady maybe in her late 20s sitting in an isle seat and fussing over her small baby in a stroller alongside her. Mom was wearing an expensive lime green track suit purchased on the demonstrated presumption that conspicious, consumption trumps taste. She complimented this with a striking multicolored, gloosy pair of what must have been designer sneakers. She would lovingly fuss over the baby, pulling up it’s blanket, adjusting it’s little hat, touching it’s face and each time she finished she would fully insert her thumb in her own mouth and gaze admiringly at the baby. There was no eye contact. Everyone pretended not to notice.
My friend here at work, Muriel hails from Dundee and has arrived at retirement with her accent and sense of humour intact. She and her husband have worked all over; Canada, Africa and the US. They have bought a small farm out in Standardsville in Virginia and she sometimes brings back tales of the life bucolic.
Like the story of her 88 year neighbour, a widower of 13 years who having survived prostate cancer decided to make an honest woman of girlfriend who is a mere 62, and stopped by to see Murial’s husband to check if, for his honeymoon he should be purchasing Viagara or Cialis or would one suffice. He wastold that one should be adequate and off the happy couple went for a weekend at a luxury resort arranged for free by another friend, a travel agent.
The only risk, which they would have to resist, was that the free package was provided by a company that would require them to attend a dinner and sales session trying to sell them a condo on the golf course. The gentleman, being something of a skinflint, over indulged with the free drinks over dinner and had to be put to bed on Saturday night, was hors combat on Sunday and on their return the bride reports that regrettably the weekend was conjugally unconsummated.
On Sat. 25 April I was on my way to work and exiting Farragut North metro station was confronted by the sight of about 20 young people on the sidewalk with masks pulled up over their faces and carrying signs protesting the annual World Bank meeting of the worlds Ministers of Finance. The kids were surrounded by police on motor bikes and in cars. Off to the side were some older people with brightly coloured caps and carying notebooks.
I stopped and asked what their role was and they told me they were with a group of retired lawyers working with Global Justice Action the group organizing the protest and acting as witnesses to the demonstration. As I walked the 10 blocks towards the Bank building, I work in on 19th and I streets, I noticed police helicopters overhead and another group of demonstrators with the police again trying to isolate them. This time in cars, on motorbikes, bicycles and one on a Segway. One of the kids was carrying a sign saying “Capitalist meeting in progress, Keep Quiet please.”
The younger policemen were nervous and one got out of his car holding a can of mace at his side and shaking it, so I walked over and said hello, it’s a nice day. He did not say hello. As I got close the Bank main complex there were barriers around the building and you started to see the young muscular guys with short haircuts, flesh coloured ear pieces talking into their wrists. And standing waiting to get through the barrier were a line of waiters and waitresses each with their white shirt and dark jacket on a coat hangar, all of them from Centra America, waiting to serve expensive food to international misinters of finance here to solve the problems of the world’s poor.
Another morning I was coming up the escalator from the same station and heard this guy playing a long improvised solo to a familiar song. Different people play there on different days, the Chinese guy that sometimes plays the one string violin has not been around this year.
But todays guy has been playing there on and off for many years, a big guy who plays an amplified guitar well, sings and has his dreadlocks up in one of those Jamiacan style knitted hats. As I arrived at the top he started singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and he did it well so I stopped listened for a while. I decided to give him some money but only had a $5 bill so signed that I was putting in the 5 and taking out 3 and he said between musical phrases, cool I work on the honor system. I said I love the sound of Cohen in the morning and he said the dude is coming to town to perform and as I walked away he sang the next line “maybe theres a god above, and all I ever learned from love, was to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Amen
YOLO Take your smiles where you can find them