First Impressions

It's a city, but it's more than a city, if that makes any sense. There's a sense of Place, here, that this Place is specifically set aside for the buildings and the people and the actions and the power that the District contains. When you're here, you're at the seat of a government and the capital of a nation that still holds greater sway over the actions of the world and the humanity on it than any other leader or organization in the history of History. And you can feel it. The air is saturated with influence, you can feel it seeping into you, and pressing on you from all sides is what seems like a long history of dreams and ambitions.

And I live here.

I live at the corner of a street called Pennsylvania Avenue. It runs diagonally through the District, and is interrupted twice in the center of town: Once, two blocks from me, by the U.S. Capitol, where Congress has met nearly continuously for over two hundred years, and again fourteen blocks later, by the White House, where the President lives. When I stand in the grassy park that serves as a median, I see a gas station, several bars, a couple banks, some row houses, and lots of trees, beyond which I can make out my neighbors a block over, the Library of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and just beyond, the Dome of the United States Capitol.

Looking up Pennsylvania Avenue SE, toward the Library of Congress  (front) and the U.S. Capitol (behind).

I've been in Our Nation's Capital for a week now, and the enormity of actually living here is only beginning to sink in. I've visited several times before. I've always been amazed by the beauty and the grandeur of the architecture and organizations populating this place. I've always been delighted by the fact that we, as a nation, have chosen to line the path linking our branches of government, not with ministries or memorials to warriors, but instead with spaces for art and science and history and learning. I've always been humbled by enormity of the great American Experience, and the genuinely brilliant, brave, and skillful individuals who made all of what we have possible.

But I also always left saddened that all of this was reserved for one place, the seat of government, where our leaders could walk by and, hopefully, be inspired, but which the rest of us would most likely only see on television, or in the movies, or on the Internet.

And now I live here.

The largeness is difficult to digest. The National Mall, at eye level, is easy to underestimate, bookended by structures so large as to defy understanding. The U.S. Capitol building sits at one end, four blocks wide and with a Dome that dominates the city, the Washington Monument at the other end, incomprehensibly tall and originating from a point not quite visible in the distance. The largeness of these buildings, combined with the Capitol’s breathtakingly beautiful and ornate features, warp and skew perspective, growing impossibly grand and beautiful as you approach. The eyes cannot take it all in, the brain requests a do-over, and so people pose for pictures and play soccer and picnic in front of a skyline that seems unreal, as if we were all extras in some high-budget film, and the backdrop will all be rolled up at any moment.

I'm sure my daily life will normalize into a series of steps. Of course, I will still be surrounded by the extraordinary, events and milestones and opportunities I would not have if I were elsewhere. There’s a long list of places that I must visit and experience for myself while I’m here. And I’d hope that that sense of humility in the shadow of History remains, a reminder of the uniqueness of this privilege and the importance of making this opportunity count for something. Still, I'll adapt to new circumstances. Already, I can mostly manage to walk around without my head swiveling about, trying to take in everything all at once all the time. And that’s good, I suppose, because there will be work to do, and as much as I still feel like a tourist, that’s not really true. For the first time, I’m not just a visitor, here.

I live in the Distict.