That D.C. Life [take 3]

I've gone to D.C. a lot in the past year, but particularly in the last few months. Each trip has been fun and it's wonderful to see friends and, most importantly (the reason I go there at all, really), my boyfriend.

Some trips have been more anticipatory or nerve-wracking than others. Like jumping on a plane in January to see if anything would happen with a certain young man I had been corresponding with. Spoiler alert: It did. But you don't know that when you jump on that plane with your tickets and heart in your hand.

Recently, I've driven to D.C. instead of flying there. Because I can drive there! Which is awesome. But also scary for me, because driving is not my favorite thing to do, and driving on the East Coast terrifies me. I spent the good portion of my first month in New Jersey getting lost, staying in the far right lane, driving too slowly, and clenching my hands on the steering wheel.

So driving to D.C., which is a three-hour drive complete with tolls, bridges, traffic jams, and the Beltway, was quite a feat for me. (And, hahaaaa, I screamed when I got onto the Beltway. In a way to release tension and stress. I screamed. I felt it was an appropriate response.)

It's always lovely, eventful, and fun being there. It's fun seeing friends. It's nice to study in the National Portrait Gallery and the Library of Congress. It's wonderful to go to museums and see works of art and historical artifacts. And there's certainly a romance to the city. There's so much energy in that city and it's so young. I'm always blown away by how, oh, our country is being run by 25-year-old staffers. It's a young city. It's an ambitious city.

D.C. is a place that matters to me in different ways than I thought it would. I always thought I would end up there. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my mom a month after getting home from my mission, and I said, rather unprompted, "I think I'm going to end up in D.C. after graduation. Or Boston. But probably D.C."

And she said, "I think the same thing."

Neither D.C. or Boston has been in the cards for me. England has. And the East Coast has. But not D.C. in the way I was thinking (and in the way that so many young professional Mormons think--of a place where you'll be for a few years, have your first job or go to grad school, interact with scores of other young Mormons doing the same thing, and maybe date--or not date--other aspiring young Mormons). It's been a place that has featured prominently for me in my life (and in my dating life) but it has not been a home like I thought it would. It might be someday, but it won't be in the way I thought it would as a young 20-something. And with the way my life has played out in the past five years, it's better that way. Much better that way. Still, it is a city that means something to me. It means a lot of somethings to me.

D.C. has been a place to conquer fear. Whether jumping on a plane to take a chance on a guy, driving on the Beltway, or facing people I'd rather not run into. Jump in and let go. It's been a place to jump into that fear and let go. Relationships and dealing with people sometimes takes more courage than you'd expect. But it is rewarding (and sometimes a comedy of errors, which is rewarding in its own way).

D.C. has been a revelatory place for me, especially in the first half of this year, with deciding to date Sam and also making decisions about where I would go to grad school. Things have calmed down--the past few times have not felt as weighted when I go to D.C. It's become more familiar. But D.C. is a place of decision-making for myself, and a place to reflect. Perhaps because it isn't home, it performs the same function travel does for me--where thoughts and plans and dreams crystallize a bit more and I am able to come home more determined, brave, and clear-eyed.

I have a complicated relationship with D.C. It's not what I thought it would be for me, but it is a place that I am growing to love. And as I head down to Maryland and the D.C. area for Thanksgiving, I'm both nostalgic for this city that will never completely be mine but also looking forward to the memories I will make--and grateful for the memories associated with it, too.

[Also, just as an aside--fall is the perfect time to visit D.C. Not busy, crowded, or hot at all.]

churches and trains, they all look the same to me now

Churches and trains

They all look the same to me now

They shoot you some place

While we ache to come home somehow. --"Amsterdam", Gregory Alan Isakov 

i've been on a gregory alan isakov kick for the past, oh, like, two weeks? ever since fall break (which was really great, btdubbs, just in case you were wondering--truly rejuvenating and good for my soul.) ever since driving down from princeton with samwise down to the land of dc and we listened to gregory alan isakov for a good portion of the trip. it's perfect music for road trips. just beautiful. soft. soothing. smart lyrics. and an acoustic guitar. perfection. 

[10/10 recommend the music. and the music video is lovely, too.]

i've been listening to a lot of gregory alan isakov outside of road trips, too. like while i've been on my couch, sick. yes, friends. i got sick. really sick. like, walking pneumonia sick. which is not as bad as regular-pneumonia sick, but still pretty miserable. i'm so much better now than i was this weekend. still, i have a lingering cough that i probably will have for a month and whenever a colleague asks me how i'm doing (since i missed a couple days of class to recover), i say, 

"much better." 

"did you find out what it is?" 

"oh yeah. i have walking pneumonia." 

and then they give me a look like i am walking death or carrying a zombie disease. which might be true. but the truth is, it's my own personal sorrow. 

how did i get it? karma? maybe. maybe it's just life telling me that i should be kinder to people who are mean to me or maybe it's life telling me that i should really focus on what matters because i don't plan on getting much out of my readings for the next couple weeks. and maybe ever. which is just life. for my table is still littered with tissues and empty cough drop wrappings with empty mugs which used to be filled with licorice tea. 

but i have learned a bit more of the kindness of people. of colleagues who show up to my apartment with bags of soup and orange juice and herbal tea, and friends who bring panera muffins and thermometers, and other friends who find me on campus to give me more herbal tea. and kind messages and a longsuffering boyfriend and a mother and sisters and brother and father who talk to me when i go stir crazy. and doctors who believe me when i say that i've taken a turn for a worse and then prescribe antibiotics which are saving my life. (and also the people at the pharmacy counter who were super patient with me as i was near-delirious trying to figure out why the prescription hadn't come in yet and called the health center to make sure that i could leave with health in my hands. thank you all of you.) 

i've had some classic meg moments recently. like when getting aforementioned antibiotics and the nice lady said to wait fifteen minutes and so i decided to wander around the grocery store in a daze, grabbing chicken noodle soup and gatorade. and then ten minutes later i ended up seeing that nice pharmacy lady also shopping, but then i felt like i had to avoid her, but then kept almost running into her and it was so embarrassing. 

but not as embarrassing as going into a professor's office hours and then somehow my water bottle opened and spilled a disgusting amount of water onto the floor and that was just great. just really, really great. eh. it happens. 

so does fall. it's still happening. and it's beautiful. 

You say you want a revolution

"But we have learned once and for all
That blood only smells like blood."
--Anna Akhmatova, The Scent of Freedom (1933)

100 years ago today, the Russian Revolution took place. It is worth remembering and commemorating, I believe, since it changed the course of so many events--and impacted so many lives. The Russian Revolution set the backdrop for so much of the 20th century--the struggles, the fears, the politics, the idealism, the demagoguery, and the blood.

It is easy to get swept up in the ideals of the Russian Revolution. Peace, land, and bread. A world of peace and love and true brotherhood and sisterhood, where people actually look out for each other and everything is shared in common. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that world, especially after seeing so much decadence and incompetence exemplified by the tsars? It sounds too good to be true. Truth be told, if I had grown up during the 1920s in the Soviet Union, I probably would have been a devout Party member, a good member of the Komsomol, with a cushy secretarial job in Moscow.

And then I probably would have been purged along with millions of other people in the 1930s.

For along with the ideals of the Russian Revolution, there is also the bitter reality that millions of people suffered for those ideals--and not only for those ideals, but suffered so that a few men could stay on top and control how those ideals were understood and implemented.

Reality is always so much messier (and bloodier) than ideals. And although I don't pretend to really know or truly understand what the Russian Revolution has meant to millions of people, I have brushed shoulders with the Russian Revolution, because I have brushed shoulders with people who were directly impacted by it. I have broken bread with women who wished with all of their hearts that the days of communism and Soviet butter were back. I have walked past a towering (and now-overthrown) statue of Lenin in Kharkov's main square. I have met people who survived, and met others whose family members died, in the Stalin purges and famines of the 1930s. I have seen the mementos of the Soviet era--the old men selling Soviet kitsch on the sidewalk, the plaques commemorating revolution.

These lived experiences and memories are part of the legacy of the Russian Revolution, too.

When I took a Soviet History course during my undergraduate years, we read a book called Journey Into the Whirlwind, a memoir by Yevgenia Ginzburg. Ginzburg was a staunch Communist who was arrested and sent to the gulag during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Her memoirs document the banality, horror, and learned normalcy of her hellish life in the gulag system. One of the overarching themes of her memoir is her struggle to come to terms with her arrest. Since she was a staunch Communist, she couldn't bring herself to believe that her arrest had to do with some fault of the system--rather, it had to be with her, didn't it? But how could it?  She was a good Party member, so it couldn't be her. Her arrest must be because of someone else. But not because of Stalin. And certainly not because of the Party. They just didn't know who she truly was and how committed she was to the cause.

But as her memoir continues, she starts to realize that she--just like everyone else--is to blame for the madness, blood, and destruction associated with the communist regime. She struggles with her complicity:

"In each heart a mea culpa beats, and those two words resonate in the deepest part of our souls. During sleepless nights they are heard very clearly. Those sleepless nights in which, as Pushkin says, we all 'reread life with horror', and we shudder, and curse. 

"When you can't sleep, the knowledge that you did not directly take part in the murders and betrayals is no consolation. After all, the assassin is not only he who struck the blow, but whoever supported evil, no matter how: by thoughtless repetition of dangerous political theories, by silently raising his right hand, by faint-heartedly writing half-truths. Mea culpa . . . and it occurs to me more and more frequently that even eighteen years of hell on earth is insufficient expiation for the guilt" (Within the Whirlwind). 

It is easy to get swept up in ideals. It is easy to think that what you believe is right and that no one else can be right. It is easy to think your system is right and shift blame onto someone else or some other system or some other way of thinking. But, ultimately, we are all at fault for something. Mea culpa. In some way, it is our fault. And I think that is a lesson of the Russian Revolution.

[Section of Reynier Leyva Novo's Five Nights, an art display representing works like Mein Kampf and other authoritarian tracts which provided the foundation for so much suffering in the 20th century. This one represent's Vladimir Lenin's The State and Revolution.]

A while ago I was talking to a friend in Ukraine. We were talking about the state of the world, and at one point he simply said: "Mir--eta my." The world is us. The world is made up of us. We do have the responsibility of recognizing our culpability and choosing to do something about that.

Good and evil is not as simple as party lines or class. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Who, indeed.