Mulberry Street

You would think that a commute into the city would be a mundane sort of thing. Metro riders buried in their newspapers, or nodding off on their way home. Suits swinging briefcases, heels clicking along sidewalks to get to their various climate-controlled offices, and back again.

But there is much more to see if, as the sage Dr. Seuss advises, if you keep your eyelids up.

One day, it is a woman with hair so long she lays it across her lap on the train, brush-brush-brushing it as if it were not actually a part of her but as if it were a particularly beloved pet. Another day it is a procession of a dozen white-robed priests walking down 2nd Street, singing so quietly I am immediately uplifted, even though I have no idea what sect they follow.

These snapshots are everywhere: a pair of young men walking in lockstep down the sidewalk, matched so perfectly it is as if some illustrator has drawn them there: dark pants, dark shoes, pin striped shirts, computer bags slung just so, the only difference is the length of their shirt sleeves. A middle-aged African American woman wearing her hair in a blond Mohawk. An animated business man chatting on his cell phone while pedaling his bike, fast, down F Street. A young mother nursing her newborn at a sidewalk café. A fast-walking young man placing an icy cold soda in the outstretched hand of the homeless guy at North Capitol and First as he passes, no words exchanged, just a small gift on a hot day. A drunk careening into traffic, saved by less-drunk friends unsteadily pulling him back to the sidewalk.

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” follows Seuss’s young boy as he imagines his way home from school past elephants and Eskimos, a magician, a brass band. ”Say! That makes a story that no one can beat,” he said, “When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.”

I wonder what he would see here?