Minus the Spine

If any of you have ever been in DC and flown in and out of Dulles Airport, then the purposeful monochromatic dullness that this poem by Stephen Burt
in Slate conveys will make a whole lot of sense: Dulles Access Road. And if you haven’t, then you will still relate because I can’t think of any major city’s airport that promises a scenic and charming drive. And what’s more, you’ll be able to relate because we all understand the way that life can begin to feel mechanical and rote. I made the drive along the Dulles Access Road probably 1,400 times (I actually just clicked around on my computer’s calculator to get that figure) to and from work until fairly recently, and part of the reason I decided to move was that weirdly incongruous feeling of inertia that comes from hurtling down a highway, day after day after day. So now I climb up and down subway stairs with a wash of people, a human traffic jam. The other day in a crowded subway hallway some douchebag goes, “mooo!” mid-transfer. It was hilarious and obnoxious but exacting all at the same time because we all knew this about the commute, the coffee, the daily meeting: “its monochrome certainty ordinary.” The everyday is unremarkable until someone or something points it out, and then it isn’t anymore — it’s today instead.