I see your face bright in the eyes and full in the lips and I remember seeing that same face when there was nothing but loss and I remember seeing that same face when there was nothing. Scratchy pops and vinyl antiquities are mixed with prerequisites and adequacies. Scorned but not at all, who is it that says there was even a beginning. All these days and hours blend before I thought they would and those yesterdays and yesterweeks and yestermonths blend all the same. There was one more sip left or maybe there was never a drink at all.  “Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”

The cab driver almost killed us.

I watch pre-dawn Washington wake up. The gear bag hangs heavy on my shoulder and the coffee cup in my hand contrasts the coolness of my body. The sun peeks over the top of buildings jammed together like tired soup kitchen patrons from depression-era photos. I am in business clothes and my business shoes make slight clicks with each step as I take a business walk to a business spot where I will make business talks with business men. It’s always new and I don’t think I can ever get over the novelty of it.

The sidewalks are clear save for the occasional jogger. It’s not long before I reach the metro station. The escalator creeps and the slower traffic stays right and the business dressed take extra steps along the left lane and I figure I’ll join them. I’m fueled by a continental breakfast of a banana and coffee. And a cheese Danish. I’ve made a point of eating a cheese Danish in every hotel I’ve frequented so far. DC has so far taken the cake. Or the Danish.

Compared to the morning chill of the above ground, the subway maintains a humid warmth. Maybe it’s the coffee, but I feel a layer of perspiration form on my forehead and back. A train arrives right on time.  The ride is short. Ten minutes of bouncing along the tracks in a light that wasn’t much different than the pale navy of the outside sky.

I disembark at the Friendship Heights station where I’m greeted with another escalator. The dawn has passed and morning begins and the sidewalks remain populated with coffee carrying denizens of various sizes and shapes. Technology guides me through a few crosswalks and a few sidewalks and I arrive at the jobsite.

I shake hands with my partner Steve. Steve and I had previously met during our training and immediately hit it off. Steve is sharp as a tack and doesn’t show his young age. He’s proud of his fiancé back in Delaware and his recently born baby girl and never misses a chance to show a picture of her and that’s completely ok by me. He relates stories of his upbringing on a chicken farm in Delaware, stories of walking into ammonia laden chicken houses, of waking up on a spring morning and smelling chicken shit in the air no matter where you are in the state. Carrying buckets of chickens. Emptying buckets of chicken blood.

Steve is very good at what he does, and we kick into high gear and fly through the job. It isn’t a hard job compared to my adventure last week with LaMarr. We actually have a/c and we actually have office chairs to sit in and actual toilets to relieve ourselves in. We aren’t surrounded by droves of construction workers and the only noise pollution we have is that of the attractive office workers typing away silently in the cubicles, stopping only for the occasional gossip or jest.

We put ourselves to the grindstone and decide that it will be in our best interest to work a fourteen hour day. My clothes are coming off as soon as I enter my hotel room. I shower. I iron. I fall asleep.

Adventure. I supposed that’s what I’m encountering. The past month and a half has been a series of ups and downs and victories and defeats and different cities and hotels. It happens so fast and feels like none of it happens at all. In time I’ll cover it all. I have learned that life is good, life is great, I am happy and lucky to be me. I have done and will do things that many wish they could do. I learn this at bars with Steve and Rob. I learn this in the ASC training room in the CB1 building of Lutron Headquarters. I learn this while telling Tim S. and Carly about events and the whys of my life. I learn this in emails from the boss I’ve never met. I learn this while laying in a bathtub in Philly. In that same city’s black streets surrounded by buildings that watch me with eyes that don’t exist. Standing where Rocky stood. Tom, the bartender at the Sheraton. Natalie, the waitress at the pub. Eric, the teacher. Loving and hating myself and dreaming about her. Meeting LaMarr’s dad in an old and comfortable Cadillac. Being bitter. Hotel Breakfast. Loneliness and no loneliness. Kid Cudi. East coast “Mexican food.” Hotel gyms. Living in a world that I didn’t know existed or didn’t know I could belong to but in fact I flourish in.

And it just started.