Washington monument, our nation’s capital

Well into the afternoon the house still smelled like bacon. I sat and watched the lawn sprinkler, tried to think about nothing. The last day in D.C. I got up at 6 and walked down to the White House, the prostitutes and full moon were still out, both looked funny in the morning like they didn’t belong there. I got closer to the White House than I thought, a small tribute to peace across the street, a homeless guy with a Trump T-shirt, some asleep in the grass, wrapped in sheets…and with the ballroom lights on inside, the fountain out front, the red flowers around the base, I wondered if he was in there: but unlike other presidents here was only repulsion, the idea of meeting him, it reminded me of the Tolkien film from the night before, when the camera pans and the color palettes shift: Gollum, Frodo and Sam cutting through the Dead Marshes…showdown at Helm’s Deep with the Uruk-hai…Saruman’s servant Wormtongue…and the camera pans to the puppet mouth of Don Jr. the day the story broke about the Russians, the dirt on Clinton, the dirt on Trump. And in the morning it’s 85 already with a heat index of 100 and everyone is out running, and it doesn’t take long for the ice in my iced coffee to melt, for it to go muddy brown. Here, a quote on the Treasury building by its Roman columns, Bancroft: Commerce defies every wind, outrides every tempest, and invades every zone. And back to the Smithsonian castle at the top of my loop, where we tried to end the night but couldn’t, we stepped out on the garden terrace with the full moon yellow and I said this has nightcap written all over it—but it was hours before we were through still, and well past the time the bartender in the hotel lobby made that sawing motion with his hand across the neck saying no more, last call, and someone from our group negotiated another round, “be careful what you wish for.” There’s a spot on the map that’s marked The House Where Lincoln Died, and it sounds like a book. And they’re setting up a circus on the National Mall, and there’s army helicopters buzzing like horseflies, the threat of a storm all week but it won’t break, and I have to get my passport renewed so I can go back to the Alps but now you can’t wear glasses in your picture, and if you smile you can’t show teeth, so I decide I’ll do neither, and frown.

Categories: musings, prose

Tags: Bancroft quotes, Beastie Boys, DC, dystopia, Lincoln, prose, stream-of-consciousness, Tolkien, Trump, White House, William Pearse writer