Dragonfly Among Hippopotami

Blogs are the next news source and the scourge of the mainstream media for this reason: we are the hive mind of news. We are everywhere and nowhere, a fog of facts that cannot be struck down. We are equal parts relentless watchdogs and introverted navel-gazers, an occasionally relevant and powerful indie rock 'zine of the 21st century

Here's the next breaking bulletin to blow up the blogosphere: it is hot as a motherfucker in my apartment. I live in a ground-floor studio apartment in Washington, D.C., and the heat and humidity in here is like the interior of a Saint Bernard's mouth.



I went for a run just as the sun was dropping, and the air was positively sublime. Yes, it was hot and humid, but the scents and textures of the air itself were so beautiful. I don't know how it is in other cities, but jogging through parts of DC give one the barest hint of what it must be like to be a dog with its face out the car window.

Columbia Road is a riotous nasal cacaphony of old vomit, hot pizza, Pollo Sabroso (Peruvian spit-roasted chicken, a nearly sexual food experience itself), fragrant panhandlers and car exhaust. All of these things sound disgusting together, but real beauty is seldom pretty, and the high one gets from this rich tapestry gliding past the olfactory receptors is unreal.

After the hard-core smells of the main drag, turning right onto Adams Mill brings a gentle change, sort of a cleansing aperitif before the road ahead. It's more tree-lined and oxygen-rich, sort of a long aromatic color field before the Duke Ellington bridge.

Jogging over the Duke Ellington Bridge feels much the way a pirate's ghost must feel while haunting a densely populated reef. You can feel the steady thrumming of the pavement underfoot like an ambient backing rhythm of waves overhead that the phantom pirate must feel, and passing through massive whales of cool oxygenated air from the trees in Rock Creek Park below is simply incredible. Sometimes I can feel myself, soaked in sweat that amplifies the sensation, slipping between small and clashing warm and cool fronts colliding and thrashing invisibly across the surface of the bridge. Every time, I pray that I am there at the freak moment when the micro-front rub each other just right and cause a tiny storm three feet above the sidewalk.

Schools of young people move across the bridge from the Metro, oblivious to this curling, cooling oxygen phenomena. Some of the women are ready for an evening out, chattering to their friends and releasing gentle perfumed puffs as they clack along. Some of the men are walking briskly and talking urgently, verbally puffing their chests into tiny hand-held electronics. I feel like a dragonfly among hippopotami, or one of those tiny birds that flosses crocodile teeth with its beak. For a few moments, I am not 6'2" sweat-soaked and clumsy, but speedy, sleek, and hyper-perceptive.

Then I get back to my apartment, take a shower and sweat the shower away ten seconds later, sitting in front of my computer. I'm back to being big, human, and jobless, and the only way to reconnect short of getting back out there all over again is to wank into cyberspace like this...

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 10:05 PM