Ilivethebeat

I remember wandering through the woods around my neighborhood when I was around five years old. Back then I lived with my mom in a multi-racial community of apartments on the west side of Alexandria. I saw a group of black guys with a spanish girl. I wasn’t sure what they were doing except that the girl was completely surrounded by all the guys and their pants were down. One of the guys spotted me and quickly let the others know. I knew the girl. She was the daughter of the pastor from the church my mother and I went to. She was also my babysitter. I always played in those woods, just getting lost and finding my way out. But that was certainly the first time that I had ever seen anything like that. I had certainly never seen my babysitter in the woods either.

The guys had all pulled their pants up and began lighting up their cigarettes. She came over to me and began asking me what I was doing out there.

   “I’m just exploring.”
   “Baby, you need to go home. You can’t be out here alone what if you get stolen by somebody?” I remember how much I loved looking at her, she was 15, much older than me, but even a 5 year old like me could tell you that she was very pretty.
   “What were you doing out there?” I asked innocently.
   “We was just playing. We weren’t doing nothing. Can you make me a promise?”
   “Ya I can promise…” She turned around and looked back at the big, black guys. They were looking over at us and I felt scared of them. None of them were smiling and they all looked like they wanted to hurt me.
   “Promise me you don’t tell my dad or my brothers you saw me here, ok? You promise?”

Me and her younger brothers played together all the time so I knew they would tell on her if I told them. I promised her that I would never say anything. I kept that promise, even until today I never told anyone what I saw that day. Once I hit puberty, and that memory floated its way into my mind, it all began to make sense and I began to understand what was going on that afternoon in the woods. I didn’t see anything to graphic, but I saw enough that my innocent eyes understood those kids weren’t playing, not with their pants down.

I can use this memory know as an analogy for the way things seem to happen in my life. As I wander and explore, I always seem to come across things that I just would never expect. Things that I don’t always comprehend until later. Sometimes I discover things that would have been much better off if had never found them at all. When I finally realized years later about my babysitter that day, it made me angry that she would subject herself to that kind of treatment. She was so pretty, so young, and she was a warm, loving, maternal latina who for some reason couldn’t love herself enough to stay away from those men. I remember how caring she was with me, and I always wished she was my older sister. I remember the way she would talk to me about her problems at school, about her dreams, all while she massaged her hands through my hair on her sofa.

The last time I saw her she was 17 and pregnant. Even though at the time I was seven, I didn’t understand why she would have a baby. As far as I knew she was still young and in high school and it didn’t make sense to me. I almost felt jealous. Wasn’t I just as close to her as anyone of those other guys? I remember one time, she took me into her room, and started crying and I held her hand and told her not to cry. It made me sad to see her cry. She picked me up and started kissing me on the lips. It wasn’t just a small kiss either, it was making out. And at five years old, I had recieved my official first kiss. How long ago that seemed when I saw her with her full belly, walking alone as I passed her with my mother.

It was the last time I would see her before my mother and I moved to a better neighborhood right by Old Town, but I think about her from time to time. Just a few months ago my mother apparently came across her at the grocery store. My mother came home exclaiming her encouter with my old babysitter Karina.

   “She’s huge. She’s gained so much weight!” My mother isn’t the most modest person in the world. “She has three kids! All with different fathers!”

No matter how I try I can not imagine her that way. The same jealous feeling even came over me alittle bit. Why would she let that happen? Where did her dreams go? To me, in my mind, she is always going to be the caramel skinned Salvadorean girl, with the poofy, wavy, black hair. I will remember her with her dark, black eye liner, cat-like eyes, and her thick, pink lips. She was thin, curvy, beautiful, and was my first real crush.

It’s memories like these that keep me wandering. It’s memories like these that keep me running. It’s also memories like these that keep me dreaming for better things. I would never let this happen to myself or to anyone else that I care about. It bothers me that I could not talk to her through those tough years, but I was only five. It’s these memories that make me who I am today, as odd as I am. But that’s life I guess. Karina if you’re out there I will always remember you as I do in my mind. You are always going to be beautiful to me and I thank you for taking care of me when no one else could.

Today I went down to the National Mall to take some pictures of an Obama rally. The walk was supposed to start at noon but I arrived about two hours late. I got off at Metro Center walked to the camera store and bought some extra film then took the long walk all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial. It was sweltering today. I started sweating within 10 minutes of just walking outside. I considered it to be classic DC weather. Ever since I could remember, every time I would come down to the mall, the sun would be high in the sky burning everything insight. It would always be accompanied by humidity that just clung onto your skin and made your clothes wet with sweat. Today was certainly one of those days, but it had been awhile since I had gone to DC just to see the sites.

I made it to the Lincoln Memorial and found a very weak rally. I realize I was a good two and half hours late, but I had been to other political rallies before that had alot more energy to them. I was met with a nice small stage full with Gospel singers clapping and chanting. It was nice excpet that there were barely any people. The only people there were tourists who stood around taking pictures and talking among themselves wondering what the celebration was all about. I arrived hoping to capture plenty of great shots, but there wasn’t anything that was really catching my attention. I had walked for a good hour and decided to get out of the heat alittle bit and take refuge over on top the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I sat down and just did some good people watching.

As I sat I looked on at the whole scene, it was a picture perfect setting. The George Washington Memorial stood prominently before me, with its reflection angling off to the side in the reflective pool. The Capitol could be seen resting right behind it. I was tempted to just start snapping pictures but it just didn’t inspire me enough. I was using black and white film and I knew that the picture would come out looking alot different if I could use color. I started thinking about how symbolic those monuments were standing before me and how it single handedly represents the area in which I live in.

I grew up just across the bridge in the small city of Alexandria. I was lucky that I grew up in the best part of town which is Old Town, a small historic colonial settlement right off of the Potomac River. I would go there often as a kid just to look at the water and off ahead in the distant, I could always see the city glowing, calling me. In my mid teenage years I would often run away to Old Town and just sleep on the benches by the river (ususally during the summer when its warm enough to stay outside). Back in those days I hated my neighborhood. I hated boring, plain old Northern Virginia and its people. And although I had been exposed to the streets of DC I never looked at the city as a place of opportunity. To me this place just didn’t feel like home. Old Town was a place where I felt secure. Maybe it was because my mother would take me there from a very young age and get me ice cream and walk with me around the boardwalk. She would take me there when I felt restless and bored, and I was always satisfied when I got there.

These memories flooded my mind today sitting at the Lincoln Memorial. I thought how amazing this place was. I was sitting right where Martin Luther King held his speech. At the place where thousands of people have gathered in monumental, historic moments of American history. I felt proud today that I stuck around living here, because I have always felt odd here. I have always felt isolated and different, just so different. My parents were immigrants and they came just over 20yrs ago. I always wonder what it was that brought them here, to DC. They could have settled anywhere else in the US, but they came here.

I left laughing at all the tourists. Walking by the Vietnam Memorial I saw a young lady getting her picture taken in front of one of the memorial’s walls. I found it strange that someone would take their picture alongside the names of hundreds of dead soldiers. I thought how tragic that was. I wondered how America has soldiers now and what kind of memorial they will recieve for their duty, as I am sure they will. Is it just me or does it seem that America goes to war just to make memorials? I caught some French and Japanese tourists filming the squirrels hopping around the lawns and I couldn’t help but laugh. They were so amused by the little animals and I realized that they were more interesting to the tourists then the wall upon wall of dead soldier’s names.

I arrived home at King St. Metro happy to finally come home to my own little piece of the world. To me the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall, and the cobbled streets of Old Town are all tied in together. I feel that after all these years of wanting to run away, instead, I want to run into the streets and continue to explore. I feel like I am rediscovering my home and I am proud of it. But I am still the same strange person and the reasons for my wandering are many. I have to find a reason for coming into DC now because I lost my dog walking job. So Im thinking just to wander into DC just for the hell of it. I’m going back tomorrow.

Just the other day I landed a nice little part time right smack in the middle of downtown. Coming up the escalator, I immediately began to hear a saxophone wail away as if to welcome my entrance onto the city streets above. I felt the sun pierce fiercely into my eyes through my shades as the sound of a Navy band began to play. The saxophone was smooth and warm and I couldn’t help but notice the abrupt change of my environment. I had hopped onto the metro from King St.  and within twenty minutes I had arrived at the very heart of DC, at the height of lunch time hours on a very busy, sunny weekday afternoon. The music embodied the feeling that I got in that busy street corner just blocks away from the US Capitol. It carried me into some surreal jazz induced dream where everyone around me seemed to be a part of a very well rehearsed play.  Within the few minutes that I had arrived, a bum had fallen into a fountain and nearly drowned himself. People rushed to come save the man until finally paramedics arrived on the scene within minutes. How exciting, this just didn’t seem to be real. You would never see this kind of thing where I was from. For the brief moments that I walked aimlessly onto the Navy-Archives Memorial, I completely forgot about my new part time job walking dogs.

Yes, I had come to this beautiful metropolis to walk rich people’s dogs, but it didn’t matter. Half the reason for why I took the job was so that I could walk through the busy streets of NW and the cozy Burroughs over at DuPont. You would never find me feel so mesmerized by my neighborhood in Northern Virginia. The people there and the architecture seem to lack in personality. It’s certainly not alive enough for my taste. But the city makes me feel inspired for some odd reason. Not only did I get to experience the city’s vibrancy, but every-time I walked into a client’s home to walk their dogs, I would submerse myself in what was indeed, fine DC living. These people had some nice pads, and I had the privilege of being offered a glimpse of something that I had truly never been exposed to. I walked those people’s dogs as if they were my own, as if I was a resident walking casually through my neighborhood absorbing the sights and the smells. I gawked at all the beautiful woman and I stared at the contours of the roof-lines above me, taking mental snapshots for me to take home. I wanted these sights to be my own, but it almost felt better just to dream or pretend that this was a part of my daily life. At least for now they would be with my new job.

When I was done for the day, I perused my way through town from DuPont Circle to 14th St. It’s not that I had never been into DC before, I just had never appreciated it so much as I have now. I left a good three hours after my job was officially over for the day and I noticed how people rushed to their homes walking desperately to catch the trains out of town. If only there was a place for me to stay, or place for me to fit in. When I think about that day, I tell myself that I must fit in, if not in DC then where else? I guess I must explain how peculiar I feel living in Northern Virginia. But this also brings about the question of what in fact makes it so perculiar to live just across the bridge in Alexandria. That probably leads to the question of who I am and what my purpose is here in this town. I leave these questions for tomorrow. I need to rest my feet because tomorrow, I must walk more dogs. It’s going to be a beautiful day in the city.