Community

Photo by Diving Dog Creative Solutions.

If I won the lottery, I'd buy a house in Oxford, the town I grew up in, and I would throw myself fully into my writing. If it was a big enough lottery, I'd move a bunch of friends with young families down there with us, so all of our kids would know the town as their home. It's a pretty simple dream, as dreams go. Idyllic, maybe.

I was telling a friend recently that there are two times when driving that I can feel my soul lighten: 1) driving eastbound across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and 2) slowing down to 25 mph as you come into Oxford and looking up Town Creek as you round the causeway. These are moments when I truly know I am home.

I've been working in Washington, D.C., for close to four years now, with a summer sabbatical thrown in this year. Prior to my across the pond commute, I worked for 10-plus years for two non-profit organizations that were big parts of the Eastern Shore community. My job kept me dialed in, whereas the past four years have kept me tuned out. Though I live here, our girls go to school and play youth sports here, I haven't felt connected.

That's why I can't thank Eastern Shore Savvy enough. The two articles I write for them each month have helped me reconnect. I've caught up with an iconic high school teacher; dug into the history of the church I grew up in; and explored the tradition of Oxford's Town Creek Christmas lights. Here's a working list of the people and places I've written about.

These are stories I probably wouldn't have written. They don't really fit into the local paper, and working full-time in DC, I'm not about to go shopping story ideas around. And with every interview, rekindling connections with people and places, I feel more a part of what's going on around me. I'm exploring things I'm curious about and maybe telling stories that wouldn't be told otherwise.

I'm feeling more rooted. And more like a storyteller. Amen.

Beautiful Afro

She had a beautiful Afro. Transcendentally beautiful.

She was walking across the overpass over 201/295. She had on a gray jacket and headphones, which only added unspoken cool to sublime beauty. She made me think of Lauryn Hill, if she had been in the Digable Planets.

If I could have stopped and stared I would have, but you can't pull that shit on 295.

It was a moment. A glimpse of beauty when you don't expect it--randomly on a freeway in a rundown neighborhood, where all you're thinking about is getting to work.

The Rolling Stones "I Just Want to See His Face" was playing, off of Exile on Main Street. Her headphones may have been playing the same tune--she walked perfectly in time to it. I wonder if she was the song incarnate, conjured up just to show the way you move to a groove. Maybe it was her theme music.

If Mick Jagger had been riding shotgun, he'd have sung about this girl, or her Afro. Or he would have cat-called. I don't know Mick, so it's hard to say.

For me it wasn't a cat-call situation. I'm married. I've found cat-call sublime beauty that way.

For me it was a moment. A reminder that there is this capital "B" Beauty out there, at unexpected times, in unexpected places.

Pay attention.

Before Work, Thursday

6:20am - standing in Giant looking for unbeaten Honeycrisp apples. I recognize the lyrics from Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child of Mine," and realize it is Sheryl Crow singing. I'm not big on covers/remakes but oddly I don't hate it.

On the commute I can't get the word REDACTED out of my head from reading hebrewcat41 over coffee this morning. Until a circa 1970 white Dodge former Seattle Police car cruises by on Rt. 50. It looks like a cool vintage car until you see the badge stamped on the side, which propels it to Bluesmobile cool.

Driving over the Bay Bridge the rain and clouds and headlights have a cinematic commingling, making it seem like a movie pursuit scene with a Tahoe bearing down on me.

Kristin Hersh's album "Crooked" owns the drive. Hersh has got it and whatever it is, you want it. Inspiring, enchanting, provoking, possessing, her voice and lyrics, guitar riffs, tempos, melodies register beyond audibly to where after a single listening the album may be forever imprinted in your subconscious. I hope so. I never listened to Throwing Muses, but can certainly see her as a muse.

As I hit DC it's legitimately raining. Not cats and dogs or cliches, but maybe rat terriers since they don't fully count as dogs. It's raining enough that cars kick skimboardable wake and you've got to be sidewalk weary not to get drenched by a bus or car.

Cresting the Frederick Douglas Bridge, the Washington Monument is camouflaged into the sky, an odd color for sky, so I barely notice it getting uprooted as Optimus Prime clotheslines Megatron on top of it. The budget just went up for Transformers 3, being filmed now in the nation's capitol.