so, at the moment i've been hanging out in DC, getting my research started at the libe of congress and walking around, seeing the sights. despite its status as the mausoleum of disneyfied americana (or maybe because of this), i love DC. love love love. i like that it's south as well as east, i like seeing the serious govuppies, robed like priestly initiates off to a slaughter, little govindas with lotus necklaces draped around their bodies, oxford shirts instead of saffron robes, jaunty side-parts instead of shaven pates. it's a relief to be in the center of power and find it outfitted in powder-blue and creased khakhis. or perhaps it's a disappointment. either way, i feel okay here.
once again, i've been pitched headlong into a new living situation, although in this case one that is peaceful and pristine, with caressing autumnal breezes rather than monsoon rains and garbage-flooded curbs. imagine that. i'm living with an interesting older woman, a retired former environmental lawyer, an ex-employee of the DoE or the EPA - a nature pig, in other words. she has friends in similar lines of work. they like long, brisk walks and are generally very fit, gracious and liberal. we've been talking about obama a lot, these women and i - my landlady is an old blue-blood whose ancestors came over not on the Mayflower, but on the other ship, and her friend is the granddaughter of italian cotton-choppers, an unbelievably spunky louisianan who i keep calling "blanche" after my own spirited grandmere. this lady used to be married to someone called "ambassador wooden." one morning the two had coffee while i looked on, invited to the table but a bit hesitant to chew on cheese-toast amid all the bitter detritus of old sex and love strewn all over the place (or so i imagined). these things are inevitably messy, but everyone acted very well.
the ambassador turned out to be quite the character: this unassuming bald-headed man who had served in burundi, barbados, syria, iraq twice, rwanda, malawi, the congo, and i think djibouti, among other locales. he'd been evacuated several times for political coups and once for some abstruse environmental reason; his experiences being airlifted out of there told him that the bush administration is not very good at evacking. he also had a really incredible story about a fellow diplomat who was shuttled into rwanda after having been an english professor at duke and oxford; full of sunny ideals (or "idylls," as sarah palin might pronounce them), this liberal arts man decided to align himself politically with the majority tribe (not sure if it was hutus or tutsis), against dean wooden's better judgment. he (the prof) figured that the majority tribe had more people and thus deserved to get his american stamp of approval. what he didn't think much about was the multicentury, ongoing tribal warfare that had ravaged the country long before he'd come to inhabit the rwandan ambassadorial mansion; it got to the point where there was a tutsi warrant out for his head, and he had to be evacked out of there. apparently the guy went back to his endowed chair, whilst wooden hooted with laughter and resumed his activities at the maintence-prong of the US foreign service. it's been a long while, i confess that i don't really remember, but i believe that DW told me that there were four 'prongs' or 'streams' to the foreign service, one dealing with political affairs (affrays?), one with economic, one with maintenance, and perhaps the last with cultural/kunst, don't recall. well, wooden worked the maintenance line, meaning that he supplied the bodyguards, sandwiches, and whiskey bottles for embassy soirees and fetes. he complained of the difficulty of providing swanky food and drink on a shoestring budget; he told us about cutting corners by reusing booze-bottles. he also remarked on meeting bush and various dumb republicans, and he said that despite all the dysentery and malaria, he preferred being in africa to germany, which felt like "the dc suburbs." it was sort of a fascinating breakfast, and it went on for several hours. you can always tell that something is fascinating when it goes on for several hours.
anyhow, let's see what else...oh, the usual ups and downs, hormones playing tricks on me, but everything's all right. lurching from one impulse to the next, i feel like i'm taking part in some crazy virtual reality game, something like laser-tag. where are my enemies, where my friends? well, at least i don't have any conspiracy theories, am not intimidated by people, have had a series of amazing ethnographic/interview experiences in recent past (working toward my dissertation, of course - i'm on the verge of blogging about the latest two, in fort greene and bay view, respectively), and am in generally high spirits. i might be transcending something or getting to know something here. also, sleeping on the couch of my very good friend is making me feel more grounded and centered than ever, like there's some stable point in a changing universe on which i can hang myself. it's good. the worst thing is when you question your judgment about people; i've learned that my judgment has not always failed me. good thoughts prevail. meetings will prove productive; fortune cookies open and spill forth their parabolic guts.
