Falling In Love

When we went to Paris a few years ago I kind of fell in love with that city. It was so rich and full of history and beautiful architecture and great food (always a very important element in my travels). Yesterday I realized I was falling in love all over again with Washington. I would never have guessed it but here I am wandering the streets, finding myself pointing at all kinds of amazing buildings and monuments, etc, loving everything I see. There's a feel in the air here that is not what I expected (not that I know what I expected) and the beauty is certainly far beyond what I had envisioned somehow.
I was talking to John about that yesterday and wondered aloud if it had something to do with where I am on an inner level these days rather than just being about the city. As I said, I loved Paris but this is a whole new level of appreciation and wonder I have never experienced in all my travels. I'm like a kid seeing the world for the first time who is in absolute awe and joy all the time.
We've been walking miles and miles just appreciating every district we wander through. Yesterday we were in the Dupont Circle area where there are lots of great restaurants and there was a farmer's market going on. We took the Metro (we love the Metro) up to see the National Cathedral and had plenty of opportunity to observe a very different part of Washington as we walk to it from the station then we took a different route to a different Metro station back which took us through a beautiful residential district. The cathedral rivals anything we saw in Paris or Rome in size, workmanship and beauty. We even had an impromptu choir of teenagers trying out the accoustics in one of the chapels downstairs that was mouth droppingly awesome. I thought it was piped in music at first then as I looked more closely at the little group in front of us I realized they were the ones singing this beautiful latin hymn . Blew my socks off.

It's a wonder I have any socks left on at all at the end of the day, that's how awed I am by it all. Perhaps it is in contrast to how I had been feeling for a few months where nothing much mattered, I was feeling quite disconnected from the world as I focused on dismantling the structures of belief that I knew were blocking my vision. It is certainly an ongoing process but if this is any indication of what's beyond all those murky beliefs I'm more than happy to keep right on taking them apart.