Mark's Pages

November 2, 2009:

The grounds were perfect: shiny as new, designed around private arbors where groups could talk or individuals meditate. There was always someone polishing the doors, or the wooden tables in conference rooms, or the corridors.

I'm not sure I ever saw it all. On lunch break one day I found a gym with an indoor swimming pool I'd never heard mentioned. The space was so large and so well-funded it wouldn't have surprised me to stumble into an airport or a submarine.

At the end of my tenure I rented just across the grounds, next to a creek and a hiking trail which once had been an historical railroad bed ringing the city. Of an evening I'd walk to town through clouds of fireflies. There were good restaurants and bookshops and small movie houses, and a Metro station if I wanted to spend a Saturday downtown.

That moment was only a way station in life, a career stop outgrown in 18 months. It moved me where I needed to go, and I left it behind.

But, I have afterwards often felt there could have been more, not so much in the job but in the town. Some experience, maybe a friend, maybe a girl, some expansion of life's horizon hinted at but not achieved. Today I frequently dream of being there: more often than my home town, or the places where my friends live, or any other space associated with regret, or loss, or lack of conclusion.