Debunking Euclidean Geometry.
Ashley came down this weekend, which was both good and bad in different ways. It was good in the sense that I was able to see her; it was bad in the sense that it was, in actuality, a cruel tease - or better, a demonstration of how quickly and coldly time can pass and be done with.
When I decided to come down here one of the first things I can remember thinking about was picking her up at the airport. I’ve flown into Reagan National once before and I’m familiar with the Metro stop there; thus I could lay the scene out perfectly in my head when I was daydreaming and bored waiting for the bus in Ann Arbor around October or November. For some awful, and embarrassing, reason I was listening to Plans by Death Cab for Cutie a lot around that time and I always pictured the action progressing with the album’s opener, “Marching Bands of Manhattan” going on in the background. I don’t know why I chose that; I really can’t stomach Death Cab or Ben Gibbard, but what can you do.
Seeing her was nice but, as always, I felt like I rushed things. I’m pretty hasty about everything and our hug and kiss and “Hello!” went a little bit too fast, cause I feel awkward about having emotions or smiling when it’s expected. We took the Metro home and I remember being anxious to be the fatherly tour guide type: “Now, we’re crossing over the Potomac-That is actually the Jefferson Memorial…” etc. etc. I feel kinda dumb about that now. We got to my room and laid down for a bit before dinner.
Our conversation that night was slightly terrifying. Have things changed too much? Here am I, hypnotized by Washington, D.C. and law school. I’m, to be fair, a lot different now than the guy she got when we first got together. I was a lot funnier then and a lot less serious. I’m a lot more boring now. What I find exciting is not what she finds exciting, and vice versa. Perhaps our lives are too parallel train tracks that coexist harmoniously and pleasantly for a span and then slowly pull apart and head off in different directions.
We tried to go to the monuments on Friday but it was too dark and too cold. We walked around somewhat aimlessly trying to find something to do. Eventually we gave up and headed home. We spent the night together in my room. We slept in the same bed for the first time ever. Yeah, after over three and a half years of dating. It felt nice. So nice, in fact, that we’d do it again the next night. I was more comforted by her presence than I think I have ever been, at least for quite some time.
Saturday was a whirlwind of sightseeing: Holocaust museum, lunch at Union Station, Archives, capital, monuments, dinosaur bones, etc. The weather was incredible and we really enjoyed just being together. We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Friendship Heights, which was excellent, and saw Match Point, which was also excellent. We came home late and slept.
Sunday we woke up and listened to a church sermon on my computer. She did homework and I ate cereal. The whole day was a perfect “last” day: gloomy, rainy, dark, grey. We went to the zoo and it is bizarre being there in less than perfect conditions. The trees look like dead fingers and you try to convince yourself it is summer. We saw the pandas and lions. Then we hurried off to the Modern Art wing of the National Gallery, trying to squeeze in one last drop of the weekend. We left ourselves about forty minutes to just lie around back at home. I think I fell asleep. I woke up and realized she had to go.
I don’t think we talked much as I dropped her off at the airport. I remember at one point laughing and forgetting she was leaving. I think it was at the Chinatown station. I remember exiting the Metro tunnel by the airport: the sky was dark, it was dusk and somewhat cloudy and in stark contrast to the cheery atmosphere of Friday afternoon. I realized I had never had a mental image of dropping off Ashley at the airport, only of picking her up. I guess that’s to be expected.
We were basically silent as we took the shuttle from the Metro to the terminal and then as we walked from the shuttle stop to the security check where, thanks to Osama bin Laden, everybody says goodbye now. I set down her bag and realized we had reached the point of no return because an old couple next to us were kissing each other on the cheek and saying goodbye. And of course Ashley had to be crying, which made me have to fight crying, because I act like I’m really tough but I’m not. We did it quick (“It’s like taking off a band-aid”) and then left - I guess this is probably the best way to do it. I walked away feeling like a bomb had gone off inside of me, which I will elaborate on in a minute. I stopped to find a song on my iPod, I knew which one I wanted to listen to, and after the 30 second search, I turned around. She was still in line for security. I saw the back of her for a second and then made myself walk away.
I, for some reason only know to perhaps God, put on “The District Sleeps Alone” tonight by the Postal Service. Perhaps it was apropos. Maybe I needed emo at that moment…. Ha! To think of it. And I began to wonder why I needed something so banal at that instant, and I came up with the answer. Banality, triteness is the product of necessity - at moments that you’re the most destroyed, you need simplicity. So I let Ben Gibbard (a recurring star of the weekend) do the talking of my hurt insides for a few moments. The scene itself was just like a movie: I walked through empty corridors of yellow metal and dark marble floors, with arched windows all around me exposing a lit up runway in the middle of darkness. The towering, expansive lobby of the airport was quiet anistheptic and appropriately desolate. I kept trying to figure out if the people walking were happy because they were saying hello or trying to feign happiness because they were saying goodbye.
I tried to figure out why I hated this moment so much. After all, we’d see each other again in a few weeks. That wasn’t that long, and Lord knows so many people do longer all the time. In fact, I was handling expertly being away from her for the three weeks prior to her arrival; we were both, as we stated, “alright.”
And then I realized that is all cyclical. That life is surrounded by fat expanses of outward growth (the three “alright” weeks prior) with periods of convergance (this weekend). That our dinnertime conversation on Friday made complete and perfect sense: our lives are so mind-blowingly separated, isolated and different, our passions could not be more dissimilar. I think a quick examination of our lives does show that we are two tracks curving off in our own direction towards the horizon. Mine leads to law school and, in a sad way, away from her. Hers leads to nursing school, and in a sad way, away from me. But, debunking geometry, that doesn’t mean the lines aren’t still parallel; the beauty of the rest of the weekend showed that math doesn’t work when analyzing emotional, human relationships. For all our dissimilarities, our lives are incredibly similar because we’re working towards a common goal: the preservation of our relationship. The relative force or inertia or gravity of this goal catalyzes a debunkink of geometry by pushing our parallel lives to an intersection. And I think that’s the secret to long-term (and currently long distance) relationships. Take that, Euclid.
On Friday, we weren’t back together yet. By Sunday, we were stuck together. But like your R.E.M. cycle (or, I guess like sex), if you pull out at a point of convergence it’s just way too hard. Your insides blow up (or you wake up feeling even more tired than when you went to sleep.) This isn’t supposed to happen.
Perhaps the most ironic, and unintentional cycle of the weekend was music. Ben Gibbard brought her to me, and Ben Gibbard took her away. And, my gosh was he prophetic.
“D.C. sleeps alone tonight.”