afternoon, Thursday July 16, Museum of American History cafe ….subway debacle

I am eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and looking out at the Department of Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency. I have been through the First Ladies exhibition to see some of the inaugural gowns of the presidents’ wives. It was a disappointing exhibit because a)most of the gowns aren’t there and b)the exhibition is laid out in such a way that the information about the women and their dresses were not in the same place, nor was anything organised in chronological order. I couldn’t get a good sense of the flow and relationship of fashion, history and women’s changing roles.

Lately I haven’t felt much like writing, other than heartfelt and unsent letters to MS. I am still in mourning for him and angry that I am so. I finally sent an email this morning expressing my disappointment. I needed to do something so I could move on.
I’ve been enjoying my time with my sister, N, and stayed with J last night. We had dinner with N and her feminist friend and the four of us argued over noodles at a Thai restaurant. I ordered spicy Thai soup but it wasn’t a laksa.

Afterwards, J and I headed to Gibson’s, her favourite bar. Gibson’s is modelled after a speakeasy, all dusky earth tones and only accepts a certain amount of people into the bar at one time. J gave her mobile number to the host at the bottom of the stairs and we hung out at the bar next store while we waited for our text message telling us there was space in Gibson’s for us. We drank old-fashioned cocktails and yabbered about boys. Then we went back to J’s apartment, which she has decorated herself in awesome fashion, and continued talking over wine. J’s bathroom is a good example of her design skills. She painted one wall in black and pink strikes, hung a black-and-pink art-deco-patterned shower curtain, put a pelvis (bones) on the wall and a Barbie on the toilet top.

Yesterday I went to a talk at the Library of Congress. An academic lectured on the lack of acknowledgement of women’s roles in decolonization history. It wasn’t a very interesting talk for me. Most of what was said wasn’t news.

More interesting (and distressing) was my intrusion into a total stranger’s life. It happened in the public transport system. On the way out of a subway station I stuck my ticket in the turnstile and it beeped at me. I didn’t know why it beeped at me but the guy behind me stuck his ticket in, the gates opened, and we walked through. A female security guard swooped on us immediately and began questioning us. Did we know each other? Why was he letting me get through on his ticket?

N and I explained that I was a tourist and didn’t understand what had happened. It happened so quickly, and I hadn’t realised my ticket didn’t have enough credit on it. The security officer let me go and pay for the ticket but she insisted on fining the guy who came through behind me. N and I waited for him to emerge from under the shadow of the vicious guard so that we could apologise, offer him money, at least give him N’s details so he could protest the ticket. But we never saw him emerge from the station and we eventually left, all flusteredly worked up and horrified.

I am now in the Library of Congress Jefferson Building. It is insanely beautiful, with tiled floor, collonaded balcony, stained-glass ceiling windows, and bright gold, yellow and deep blue frescoes along curving ceilings. The walls depict hazy sunny murals and famous quotes from literature.

This whole town is insane. The magnitude of its architecture beats Europe, I think. It is all so clean and sparkly and enormous and grand. No wonder the self-importance that goes on here. These government buildings were built to glorify the public servants that work in them. Unlike in Canberra, where public servants work in office buildings like the rest of us.