Being a continuation of the story begun with "tear the roof off the sucker".
Take me to the river
Wash me down.
--Al Green
Someday a REAL rain will come
and wash all this scum off the
streets.
--Travis Bickle
I'd been feeling sluggish. Doctor told me I just had a virus. "You'll get over it."
I got out of my appointment in time to catch a matinee revival. -Taxi driver- was as good as I remembered. Unsettling plot-line and resonance aside, I could have easily sat back and immersed myself in the gorgeous big-screen photography. Coarse grain and diffracted light show up the night to be more vibrant than the rainy and overcast Manhattan days that haunt these lost souls. The salt and scum of the earth appear in ruddier-cheeked health than do the wan complexions of a white-collar world that seem unreachable to these shaggy dogs, making their way through a romantic horror movie, rare moments of peace watched over by a sax solo love theme that floats longingly from between brooding drum rolls and doomed brass.
For all the dingy tenement locations and bleak sentiments, there is great poetry in these images: as windshield wipers catch and try to reverse the the flow of rain, the struggle is lit with a rich slow-motion wash of neon colors and traffic signals that meet and blur in this tiny wave that breaks against the glass shore.
I was worried how it would feel walking out of the theatre into the weather we'd been having; despite my fears, the cool DC rain was soothing, cleansing. I was sorry I didn't catch this during its revival in Seattle a few weeks back - it might have made me look at the drizzle as good brainwash.
I may have been too excited as I headed to Seattle. I had had a great time out here last summer; and although I flew out the day after Valentine's Day, my big date with a duffel bag the night before just stoked me for the trip. Skies were clear as I flew over great plains, black hills, the mouth of the Missouri, the continental divide.
The sun shone on me when I landed in SeaTac.
The sun shone on the passengers of the bus I took into town; it shone on the man with rotten shoes and a ratty beard that reduced his sly grin to crows-footed eyes. He boarded near the veterans hospital, where he had just picked up his free medical care card. As he explained out loud to noone in partciular, bless his heart.
The sun shone on a doe-eyed coed sitting across the aisle from the vet. To her great credit, she took her cue that a body talking to itself should not really be so lonely, it would be a goldarn shame; and politely, without a hint of patronizing, she chatted with the vet. Congratulating him on his fortunate medical coverage. Reassuring him that, despite his abrupt admission, "Boy do my feet STINK!" and the empirical evidence that clearly supported his theorem, "Oh, I don't notice it!" Maintaing grace when, pointing to a facial blemish, the vet asked her "What's that on your CHIN?!" Bless his heart, he was coming on to her. "A pimple", she answered almost inaudibly.
The sun shone on her, thank God.
The sun shone on University Avenue ("The Ave"). The sun set through the windows of the Wingdome, on the clapboard that bore a representation of the Seattle Kingdome, engulfed in flames and superimposed with the motto
HOT WINGS COLD BREW BIG FUN
- and that was the godfearin' truth too. Graduating from three alarm to four alarm wings, my host Jason and I shared a pitcher of Hefeweizen (I forget which local brewer spawned it, but it was as hearty a beer as I have quaffed), and the sun said shine on you later.
The sun shone through the windows of Bruegger's Bagels where I breakfasted next morning on bagels that were smaller and cream cheese less generous and coffee less outtasight than I remembered from my summer trip here. The sun shone on the parade of humanity who walked before me on the Ave in blatant rejection of the fashion bibles of all races and creeds: facial hair battled against cheekbone, body ornament rudely interrupted contours; a bald man in round glasses, a hunter orange gown, and sandals appeared as a veritable J. Crew offering compared to the unselfconscious mistakes I gazed at open mouthed. I dig laissez-faire as much as the next person - casual can be refreshing and unpretentious; but the cumulative effect of so many people letting go of superficial hang-ups looked an awful lot like they were really hung up about being casual.
I would later be assured that these Ave rats were not typical Seattle pickings. That was a relief; the smirks on many of those once beautiful faces and figurelines made dissonant announced a pretentious tude that annoyed the living piss out of me.
Later that morning, the sun stopped shining on them.
The sun shone on the pink plaster tow truck that marked Lincoln Towing, honoring Honest Abe with a giant pink foot and a giant pink big toe poking out in parallel with the Space Needle visible in the clear distance. That was the last I saw of the sun for two fucking weeks.
Pat