Home Sweet Home

While I try my damnedest to be as many places as possible, there is a place that I call home. There is one place, and in particular one house, to which I always return. My home is Washington DC, Chocolate City, the nation's capital. I have returned to live here after running around for over a decade, and I love it. 

DC is important to me because I was born, raised and politicized here. Becoming reacquainted with this city I used to know, this city that provided the soil for my roots of consciousness to grow, has been a lot of fun. We are both very different from before, from the last time we lived together. We've both grown, and changed, which is simultaneously sad and infuriating and exciting. Many aspects of us are also the same, which is comforting and disappointing.

The DC I have been in for the past month most immediately strikes me as political and artistic. There is a lot going on around town. Second, it strikes me as proud. Most cities and its inhabitants are proud, full of boast and swagger, but after living in NYC and SF/Oakland, places that are bigger, flashier, and unencumbered by the association of being the seat of federal government, I was surprised about how hard DC reps itself. The DC flag and its three stars are omnipresent.

On walls:

On license plates:

In crosswalks:

In tattoos:

thanks marco 

In art:

At coffee shops:

And even in the form of star-shaped gummies that have been liberated from its box and fallen to the sidewalk:

I am so excited about this reunion and return, for rediscoveries and revelations, and am not only proud to be from here, but to be back again.