Walk

It was 45 degrees at 3:30pm when I went for a walk in Sterling, Virginia today. The streets were unfamiliar but the names were not: Compton Circle, Wilmington Drive. I'd never been to this part of the country (about 45 minutes west of D.C.) in winter. The desolation of the landscape is unsettling. It reminds me of the desert north of Hermosillo in the summer. On one kind of tree the leaves remain brown and hanging like corpses on forked crosses. The wind tries to shake them out of their death but is only able to get a rustling that sounds like a nearly dried up waterfall. Branches grow on branches like a pile of old menorahs. The rustling is like a couple of Aztec dancers shaking their rattler leggings.

Unlike the previous two days the sun was out today. This does not feel like the holidays. This does not feel like December. It's all wrong. Where are the palm trees?

I don't think Arnold lives around here. He's the juggling, utensil-trick chef who served us at Benihana last night (he dropped a spatula and a pepper mill). As soon as he stepped in front of the grill I knew he was a compa. A quarter into an Asahi Dry, my wife asked him where he's from. El Salvador, he said. she wanted to talk to him in Spanish. Would he be offended, she asked me. Fifty - fifty, I told her. He could be insecure about his accent and his English, so he wouldn't want to call attention to it. He could be an extrovert, who couldn't care less about his accent and would be amused to find fellow Spanish speakers. Arnold did not speak Spanish the whole night.

Parts of the big snowstorm are left on the edges of the sidewalk. Footprints left in the snow will run as water down into the drains. And into the rivers? The blow up polar bears deflate in front of homes. Their motors are dead. Snow pulled down some of the gutters above several doorways.

A few couples are out walking their dogs. One of the couples smiled at me, the other didn't. If you take away the homes here it's easy to see the hills rolling like they do in El Sereno or like the hills between Chula Vista and Mt. San Miguel.

A sign that reads "End State Maintenance" is missing an exclamation point.