Day 132/365 - Above and Below

This is the exit from/entrance to the Metro subway stop at Union Station in Washington, DC. I popped over to Union Station during lunch today to grab a bite to eat and pick up a grounded plug converter for my laptop from the travel store in preparation for my trip next week. And while I was at the store, I also found a cool messenger bag that I think will be perfect for carrying my camera, umbrella, book, and assorted other junk with me while I'm trekking up, down, and around Venice.

I was having trouble deciding which day bag to take with me. Taking a backpack makes it a hassle to swap out lenses, so I'd made up my mind to instead take one of the jillion messenger bags/satchels I have. That left me with a Goldilocks dilemma, however: some bags were too big, others too small. But then I found this new bag and it seemed just right. Plus it's yellow, my favorite color!

Okay, I'm starting to get a bit alarmed at the note of girliness that has manifest itself in my 365 project of late. ; ) Yesterday it was a bubblebath. Today I'm all atwitter over a new bag I bought. What's it going to be tomorrow, a discussion of shoes? Grrrr, I feel the need for some beer and sports and jokes centered on bodily functions.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 44/365 - The Temple of Ra

I could list a dozen things that are wrong with this shot, but none of that seems to matter because I love it anyway. I guess that's the nature of love, though -- it's irrational, impractical, exasperating, irrepressible, intoxicating, exhilarating, and a thousand other adjectives both converse and complementary. It's destined to make you whole and destined to break you apart. It's everything we want and everything we dread and... and it's love. In the end I guess that describes it better than anything -- love is love.

Apologies for the somewhat morose note to today's entry. That's what a bottle of wine on a cold Friday night will do to you, and I don't even like wine. Champagne yes, wine no. I took this shot while riding the escalator up from the Metro station next to my office this morning. I love (there's that word again) coming up out of this station. You start out in the dark deep underground and then you see the broad beams of morning sunlight streaming through those square openings high on the wall and then they strike your face and you feel their warmth on your cheeks and it's like a baptism and a rebirth all in one. And it's even better when the guy with the saxophone is playing at the top of the escalator.

The way the morning light pierces the openings in the wall always makes me think of ancient Egyptian temples and the way many of them were designed so that they would be swathed in shadows until at a certain time of day the sun would be at the perfect angle to shoot a ray of light into their darkened hearts that would then strike the innermost shrine, the holy of holies, and bathe it in a golden glow.

That in turn makes me think of the ancient Egyptian solar myth, wherein the sun god Ra descends into the underworld each night to travel on his barge through the caverns of darkness where he wages his eternal war with the evil serpent Apep before re-emerging above ground at dawn, and that then makes me think of my daily commute on the subway train that resembles both a barge and a serpent and that carries me through darkened tunnels before the escalator brings me back up to the surface and the benediction that is the light of day.

It's cold here today. I need to go back to Egypt. It's 80 degrees and sunny there.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)