Atmospheric Perspective by David Gordon Whittaker
I Miss My City
Missed Connections from DC
It’s the walking mostly.
Wide expansive sidewalks frame blocks built for pedestrianism.
Many stay alive with people into the early morning.
DC is a city for walking,
and the short statured buildings let the sun shine on your neck while you do it.
I miss the restaurants, too: passionate inventive cooking, and ethnic richness.
I miss the women I met at bars, the bar food menus, the record fairs, the buses
and that fucking Metro when it ran on time.
I miss a newspaper that doesn’t suck and a collection of people that read it.
I miss quick wit and straightforward talk,
but the old saying goes,
you can never go home.
Her Two Cents
I’ve recently re-discovered the fun in preparing meals and navigating my way through discovered recipes. This new enthusiasm is greatly enhanced by a kitchen with more than a square foot of counter space and proximity to grocery stores offering food groups beyond beer and pre-packaged meals. Just thinking about the process of cooking ushers in happiness, so I set out to find a message paying homage to the romantic qualities of this activity. ~ Instead, I found my heart gravitating to this piece about the home you cannot return to. As I read our DC poet’s list of missed connections with their much-loved city, I also started a list about the city I used to call home. It’s amazing how the mind can suddenly create an emotional response for people and places you haven’t thought of in years. My buoyant cooking-inspired mood began to ebb until I made a realization – the last apartment I lived in before leaving, an amazingly crazy building with a melting chimney, karaoke drag queen, and a porch that fell off the building during a rain storm, had a 1930s style kitchen pantry. Cabinets painted white with large glass panels reached to the ceiling and the light made the dishes, glasses, and bowls look a bit prettier than they really were. My kitchen now is the kitchen from that time. It’s a different era, but the light and white and glass are all there. And the dishes still look pretty, too. Whether we realize it or not, little bits of history travel.
