You no longer the man, that’s a bitter pill to swallow/All I know is I’m wallowing, self-loathing and hollow…

It all seems so festive from here. I’ll bet the air is filled with competing music bleeding into the promenade from the various bars and restaurants. I imagine new couples still in a whirlwind of new emotions basking in the welcoming glow of the neon lights. I envision the embers of older romance being sparked by the electricity in the air. I imagine the escape this area provides; the veil of serenity lightly shielding all that awaits after the parties and the sweet smells and the pleasant breezes. I look on from my world of worry onto a whimsical harbor where everything is new, the Wheel rotates seductively on the pier, and the setting sun bounces rays off the river, making everything seem more vibrant. And as I make my commute from one deflation to the next disappointment, I see it all so painfully vividly.

The pearly white beams and twinkling golden hue of the MGM stands amongst its surroundings as the centerpiece of a reclamation project. Its perch, slightly above the other buildings situated in the valley of the National Harbor, dominate the eye from all that surrounds it. It’s exorbitant. It’s opulent. It’s immaculate.  And I fucking hate it.

That damn building is omnipresent. I see it when I leave for work. I see it when I come home. I see it FROM my home. I see its glow, continuous and confident, refusing to be dimmed by short days and long shadows. I see the Wheel meandering about lightheartedly, while its patrons look onto the frigid and congested urban sprawl, memories no longer focused on having to navigate it daily. The moment is fleeting, but in them I can’t help but to long for living temporarily, and not the Sisyphean task of simply surviving.

As the traffic crawls along on I-495, I routinely glance over to see something jubilantly defiant in its existence and juxtaposition to all that occurs around it. I see a happiness that I can’t seem to find and an assuredness that I grasp at futilely. I loathe what I see because I loathe the unforeseen obstacles placed between us, and because of this, I envy something that I don’t even have a full view of.

I’m enamored with a dream, a promise that is often unfulfilled and underwhelming. What I believed to be solace and protection only exists to exacerbate what I feel. What was supposed to be an oasis from a distance is really more of the norm up close. There is no momentarily escaping life, because life’s only escape is permanent.

But that’s how it works, this pesky, nagging depression and self-doubt. It can make things seem whole and pristine and exorbitant and opulent and immaculate. It can fill you with resentment for all the happy people, happy things, and happy places, jealous such pleasure doesn’t exist in your own psyche. It’s neither healthy nor rational. It’s absurd to torture myself by envisioning this place as if it were simply a laminated postcard hanging askew in a drafty dungeon. Furthermore, it’s embarrassing to long for a place that I never found to be anything but a source of great annoyance…

The air is filled with a mishmash of sterilized pop songs and asinine teenage gossip. New couples aimlessly walk hand-in-hand, oblivious to others that have to swerve into fresh manure to get around them. Their love is fresh and broadcast for the world to view and like and comment on with each filter and pointless caption. Older couples sit at restaurants sipping Pinot quietly as they both make fruitless attempts to recapture what has long been dead. They retell the same stories and traffic in the lives of their friends, as if attempting to flee their own shared misery. I imagine this place as the Phoenix of hipster racism and undeserved vanity flying across the water from the charred remains of a city that once proudly flaunted its diversity. As I walk among it all, I’m oddly comforted. What I deemed to be whole is comprised of a bunch of pieces as broken as the rest of us.

I’ll be back 2018 to give you the summary. A.J. Armstrong is the creator of The Fly Hobo and His World of Oddities