There lives in me an innocent voyeur. The child who is content to sit on the sidelines and watch. And perhaps content isn't really the right word, because there are times when I really enjoy being witness to a world that I am not participating in.
It's been a weird week. The snow and ice storms that ripped across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and New England states on Tuesday/Wednesday have given teachers in Montgomery Co. Maryland the week off. And I have used the time to work on a quilt, read a couple of collections of poetry, re-introduce myself to my kitchen and enjoy cooking real food again. But mostly stay warm and indoors. The bitter cold that followed the snow compacted it and transformed a mere ice crust into a solid cap smooth, slick, treacherous. Just getting my garbage to the curb on Thursday evening was quiet the production!
In times like these, when I have no expectations placed upon my time, I begin to live like an astronaut in outer space. Though the sun continues to rise, it doesn't exert an exact power over my temporal sensibilities. I nap when I'm tired, and rise and think and read and cook, etc.; when I'm not. As a result I am often in bed in the early evening and up in the middle of the “night”.
And so it was Friday morning that I arose around 2 AM and was ready to be awake, but felt the cabin fever of my home. So in spite of the icy blanket covering my yard, and the bitter cold, I bundled myself up and decided to go for a drive. At first I really didn't have a plan, and I needed gas. I headed over to route 1 near the University of Maryland thinking that I could find an all-night service station or convenience store. And to my surprise the main strip was hopping with activity. At 2:30 AM, with a wind-chill in the single digits, hoards of coeds milled about on the snow encrusted sidewalks (some without even the benefit of a jacket, let alone a coat). And I thought, this is what I missed by attending college in a “dry” county at a school where drinking was verboten!
The gas was found, and with proximity to 1-95, I set my sights on Baltimore and merged onto the highway in the company of a semi-truck at 2:44 AM. Cruise control set, El Zol 99.1 providing a steady stream of Latino Pop/Reggeaton as background, I was free to think and wonder. Baltimore is actually only about 40 minutes north of me, so it was far enough away to count and close enough not to become a burden. I decided to tool around to the north side of town and then return south via Charles Street from Towson. A very familiar route.
Now to return to my original thesis: Voyeurism. Have you ever toured a city in the dead of night? It's a fascinating thing to do. And Baltimore is a fascinating city. Towson is actually not Baltimore, but a suburb that sits on the northern apex of Baltimore. It's a college town anchored by a series of shopping malls, government buildings, Federal Court I think, and solid middle class homes. I actually began my visit on York Road and after passing through the heart of Towson, made the easy merge onto Charles Street.
Charles Street on the northern side of town begins its path in the midst of decidedly upper middle class homes. Tawny little strip malls and private schools run by Catholics and Quakers. You pass the Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and scarcely a mile further an apartment building designed by Mies van der Rohr. In between the two is the campus of Loyola College of Maryland and St. Mary's Seminary and University. I have driven past these building dozens of times, but in the middle of the night I was struck by their grandeur, scale, and openness. Stories of glass that when illuminated from within exposed worlds cloistered from view by the light of day. And there were people conversing, reading, and engaging one another in the middle of night, in the warmth of the interior, safe from the bitter cold of the winter world.
The next notable feature along with way is the campus of Johns Hopkins University and the grounds of the Baltimore Museum of Art. By now it was 3:15 AM and again I watched young people trekking along sidewalks transformed by rock hard snow, laughing, embracing, oblivious to the sober reality of the moment. Jealous? Perhaps....it's a voyeur's prerogative.
Once you pass JHU, Charles becomes a one-way street heading north and so you are shifted onto the neighboring street that is one-way southbound. This takes you through neighborhoods of row houses and corner shops in an area of town friendly to Gays and right around Northern Avenue, Koreans! Go figure. Here I passed a police van that was slowly shadowing an ill-clad black man who was stumbling along the street. In my review mirror, I saw the police stop and engage the man. No good night for anyone to be out wandering alone.
I passed Union Station on My right (a classic American rail passenger depot), and then I came to the west side of Mount Vernon. The street I was on afforded me a passing glance at the Washington Obelisk that crowns the Mount Vernon neighborhood, and then the backside of The Walters Museum of Art (Baltimore's other's traditional art museum). A block or two further and I was waiting at the light at the corner of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe. It's an amazing building, and here I turned left to get on the other side of Charles Street for my final descent into the business district and inner harbor.
Stopped again at a nearby light, I saw two men leave a hotel embrace and kiss before heading in opposite directions. At the next light a lanky black man crossed in front of me allowing his gaze to linger on my car. A block away from the harbor, I encountered the signs indicating the path back to the expressway. Following them, I passed a deserted and well lit Camden Yards baseball complex, various stoplights operating for nobody's benefit but my own.
Once on the highway again, I set my accelerator to cruise and drifted back to DC. By now it was quarter to 4 AM, and traffic was picking up. Yet without incident I was back home and ready for a nap by 4:20. Today it feels like a sort of waking dream, and not unlike the story line of my dream world. It's also the sort of thing I do when I've been reading poetry!
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