stilljewish

It took me about an hour and a half to walk about four miles today. I had a couple of hours to get from 72nd street down to 4th street, so I figured I might as well go on foot to use the time. I didn't get a lot of thinking done, which I put down to having to keep dodging and weaving through crowds - that kind of thing's easier when there's nobody in my way, on foot or any other method of transportation. Which is on me for sticking to a busy street at a busy time of day than walking a few blocks over and trying on that.

There's also my head's not here or there, and I need to find some space to drift.

This last Friday afternoon, I held my hand out and a ladybug landed on me. All I'd seen was a tiny bit of movement coming my way, and in holding my hand out, I gave a ladybug a place to sit a moment. Yesterday, I got sunburned from walking around under early cherry blossoms on an absolutely gorgeous late March day. I'm still sore and a little itchy, and I'll be wearing high-necked clothes for a while. There was boba tea, and three different bakeries, and pizza and tacos and a lot of fandom talk with the friend I was staying with - making the other laugh was something we both tried to do a fair amount of, in a game where both sides come out ahead of where they started.

The train got me there early, and got me back a little late. I gave my friend excuse to take me to some of her favorite places, and reason to visit a few more. The both of us stepped away from our regular lives for a while in a mutually beneficial relationship, and now the prospect of the real world looms for tomorrow morning. There was a lot of freedom to be found in basically cutting myself off from the internet - the extent to what I could do on a practical level was check email. My phone wasn't connected to a wifi network, so I couldn't get anything but plain text messages, and it was a surprise to see how many non-text messages I'd missed when I got back to my place.

Bread Furst, Rose Ave, Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, Comet Ping Pong, 801, Spot of Tea, various Smithsonian cafeterias, my friend's kitchen. Various Smithsonian museums, the tidal basin and its various memorials, the circle at Dupont Circle, Metro stations, my friend's apartment. Her roommate and her two cats. A short walk along an urban trail that took us to the Ann and Donald Brown House, which I knew looked impressive enough to be worth talking about. A lot of time with nothing to do and no reason to worry about that. Some TV watched, some movies, not much writing but a good deal of reading and talking. She'll be leaving Washington DC soon, possibly to another coast, possibly somewhere still reasonably close by. I'm glad I got to visit her before she left, when I could still do it by train and be home well before bedtime when it was over.

We’ve watched four movies this weekend: Meet Me In St. Louis, Tommy, The Wizard of Speed and Time, and The History of Future Folk.

Overall, I found Meet Me to Ben the weirdest and least accessible.

In DC, safe and well-fed on ramen, my friend and I waited for the bus to her place. I looked around in the full night of a city I’ve rarely been to, in a neighborhood I’d never visited, and couldn’t shake an odd feeling.

Then it hit me, and I had to say, “Holy shit.” I’d needed a specific spot for something in a novel, and it’d looked familiar because she’d taken me to a spot just around the corner.

It wasn’t quite deja vu. More likes dream where you know the building already, even though you’ve never been.

Time I would've spent writing this evening was spent on cooking risotto for lunch and filling out tax forms as best I could. I opened the document and poked at it a bit to feel something and say I'd at least poked at it, and that helped me relax from the taxes enough I can think about doing something else with the night. Not much, but something else.

It's probably just going to be a couple days' of Stardew Valley, though.