Deja vu

So having started this adventure with the realisation that I have a tendency to just mark time and not get on with living I of course changed my ways and have spent the intervening two months living life to the full... :)

Yeah, well not so much. Why does it take so long to get a lesson learned in the head to actually change you? Or is that just me?

I've been trying to learn the 'don't leave work to the last minute' thing since GCSEs - my brother Phil will probably remember escorting me to get my results and my full journey monologue (babbling) about how I should have studied better, earlier (at all? - it is hard to call my revision methods 'study' with a straight face).

It is a sad fact but one of the things I haven't been doing to the full since I got here is writing my thesis. Suddenly I've woken up again and look, wow I'm kinda behind.

It struck me last week that having been here for two months right next to DC I have been into the city a grand total of once. I still hadn't seen the Lincoln memorial which I had planned to visit as soon as I could, having not quite managed to get that far when I visited in the Summer.

So last weekend I actually took a Saturday off not doing anything and went into DC to see some monuments. It appears I accidentally chose a good weekend as apparently DC has a reputation for having amazing cherry blossom displays and they are really beginning to kick in (will try to put the pics up on the photo blog later but having a digital camera has kinda made my shutter happy camera habits even worse so I need to sort through quite a few first).

I had meant to go shopping as well (weather is beginning to hit the high 20's - when it isn't below zero - yeah the weather here is nuts - and I brought a wardrobe for -10degC weather).
But in the end by the time I had walked round all the main monuments my feet couldn't face shopping so I headed back and watched the latest '24' disc supplied to me by netflix that morning.

So anyway I walked from Union Station (worth a few photos itself - so of course I have several fews) up to the capitol and took a few pictures looking down the length of the mall. Was very pretty, though somewhat spoiled by the anti-circumcision banners of the protest going on :) Stopped moving for too long putting my camera away and was engaged in conversation with one of the protesters, was a strange conversation including some claims that'll put you off anti-aging products for life. The guy was earnest, sketchily aware of science and German, which also seemed a little odd.

Once I managed to get away from him I found that as well as being cherry blossom season it also appeared to be kite season, with literally hundreds of kites lining 'the avenue' and even a fighting kites competition at the end.

The monument (big spike thing - it appears the US went through an egyptian envy stage) was tall and unfortunately out of tickets to visit the top. The war memorials were suitably reflective (in more ways than one - see pics) if a little focused on 'the power of the human spirit' in the case of the WWII one, but the one that surprised me the most was the one I had most wanted to visit - the Lincoln memorial.

The thing is it was ever so slightly wrong feeling. The pictures and glimpses you see of it in movies don't really give you an idea of just how big his statue is and there is just something about it that is ever so slightly un-american and un-Lincoln.

Inside a massive statue of him sits on a throne like a king at court. Above his head is an inscription talking about him as enshrined in a temple and in the hearts of the people. I don't know that much about Lincoln but what I do know speaks of a man who would be horrified by his own monument. I associate him with humility and wisdom, and the words of his famous state of the union addresses, inscribed on the walls of his 'temple' are the words of a man with a deep respect for God. Yet his memorial seems like a temple to a god of ancient Rome or Egypt.

The building and the numbers of mainly american tourists are a clear sign of the extent to which he is revered in America, but the strange thing is that it is clear from the very words written on his temple walls - his own words - that if he made the same speeches today, noone would even vote for him.

His speech refused to demonise his enemies in the middle of war with them. His speech places doing the right thing above and beyond the very survival of his country. And it is all based on his respect for God. His monument is so very impressive but it seems to have been built without a memory of who he was and what he believed.

Kinda reminds me of the human church in some ways. How much have we built hallowed structures that bear little or no relation to the foundations?

I walked back to the metro station via the white house (see photo blog for picture of a white house squirrel) and got an unexpected bonus. The post office here is about to release a range of Star Wars based stamps and as a promotion they have made up some of their post boxes to look like R2-D2. I found one on the walk back and got a shot of it (again see photo blog).

So not much to report really, even though I have managed to wibble on for quite a bit.

Hmm slightly scary - just watching a news item about a guy wandering round the area I was in on Saturday randomly stabbing people. Fortunately seems to happen at the time of day I don't see much on weekends - I think it's called morning.

I have managed to get involved with the music at church and will be singing in their easter choir this weekend. Still not in a smallgroup as the coordinator is on holiday at the moment, which means I am without much Christian friendship(or just real friendship). Am really missing you guys back home on that front. But all being well I will be seeing my bro and his family in Florida soon, so hopefully some more interesting blog entries to come.

Right now to make sure all those photos I referred to actually exist by the time you read this.

love
Dx