rediscovering d.c.

I've covered miles this past weekend in the district. It has been too wonderful to not be outside. Friday night I walked from Shaw with, quite possibly, a huge grin on my face. There was a cool breeze that kept me from being too warm while walking quickly home, and with that breeze came the faint scent of honeysuckle, a scent that I remember from my old house in Dallas when we used to bike out in the street past honeysuckle vines snaking up the alley fences. It's that scent that says spring to me perhaps more than anything else.

At least, until I moved out here. Now cherry blossoms will truly signal spring to me. Last year I remember visiting the last weekend, when the blossoms fell down like snow with the slightest whisper. Yesterday I was down at the tidal basin where the blossoms are still white and still budding. Even there, occasionally, I caught honeysuckle. Or maybe I just imagined it...pretended it was there to weave my springtime sensations.

The Japanese enjoy cherry blossoms because their bloom is so fleeting and so beautiful. Beauty and life are fleeting, and the cherry blossoms are a reminder to seize that, to take time and enjoy that which is fleeting. Carpe Diem, as Robin Williams so immortalized. "Seize the Day boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

When we're not working 40+ hours a week, our minds are still back on work and how we can get more and get ahead, to get there. But where is there? Where's the destination? Is it a certain title, the proverbial corner office? One thing I often find myself wondering is how many times am I going to look back and wish I'd done other things, or done the things I only think about: taking the plunge and jetting off for a week in Paris, finally walking through the historical streets of Boston during a weekend away that I never quite seem to take, putting trust in someone, telling people the things you always think and want to say but never do, learning a new language (or revisiting the three I've studied), planning dinner parties around my coffee table...who cares if it's Bohemian?

So even though it's that time of year and the grassy paths around the monuments are packed with tourists, I hope you take time out to enjoy the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms and the scent of honeysuckle. Forget about work for an hour while walking down there. Your peace of mind will thank you.

I know you'll see me down there.