L visits old friends and discovers the hive of adulthood.

There is something horribly contrived about the national monuments, I thought to myself today, even as I took the obligatory snapshots of the memorial parks and national mall area. It's as if each is designed to evoke patriotic fervor, but fail, only producing a transitory response. Everyone seems to know that the monuments should illicit some--any, really--feeling of pride, and then goes through the gestures of displaying it, be it through an utterly pointless photo shoot of the monuments or a recounting of American historical mythology to a child. The whole touristy thing did, however, give me the chance to visit two old friends who symbolize Washington D.C. to me: Ellie the Elephant and Wooly the Wooly Mammoth at the Natural History Museum. I've seen the two every time I've been to D.C. since I can remember and, as I've gotten older, I've made a point of visiting. I could hear them chuckling over Man's silly attempts to make his mark on this world and wondered about the "desire for recognition" Hegel and Fukuymama were so obsessed with. 

In an attempt to distinguish myself from the tourists, I bought a SmarTrip card (these things are amazing! And, at $5 a pop, they should be) and entered the Metro, where adults travel in flocks of black suits and white collared shirts. (I call it the Hive because it looks like one.)

And it was the Hive--not the Capitol against a setting sun or the American flags waving graciously under the Washington monument--that offered the message to define our days:

Always. 

(Still no sign of J... Should I be worried?)