Edit: I posted this yesterday to get it rumbling around in my brain. It's from a year ago. This was such an amazing morning for me and I wanted to revisit this version of it to see if I could flesh it out and to see if my writing has changed or grown.
Here it is.
NE to SW: 06/01/2007
Category: Travel and Places
Going home at 5:14 in the morning, today, and the first bus passes me.
I walk to the Rose Quarter. There are roses there bigger than my two fist side-by-side. They are a pale, creamy yellow in color. They nod slowly in the wind.
I walk to the wrong station and see three buses and a train going the right way. I miss them, see the next train is gonna be arriving at the other station, walk over. I sit down and there's an angry guy who keeps finding metal objects to unleash his rage upon. He's off to my left and behind me, lurking and sulking.
(Have I mentioned that a lot of people use a lot of Meth around here? They stay up for a whole lot of days and they become a whole lot of crazy).
The train comes. I board it and realize it's headed the wrong way. I exit onto the next platform, the one that I had left a moment before, so as to not wait. Another bus going downtown passes by on the road behind me and that same angry and probably on meth guy is standing in front of me on the opposite platform and staring dejectedly and intensely at the phone book.
The phone is the next object to feel his wrath. It's slammed definitively into its cradle. Twice.
He spins around and he seems to notice me. He crosses the northbound tracks. He stops at the chain separating the north and south bound lines and stares straight ahead. I walk slowly to the bus stop behind me. I consider it a tactical retreat, a street smart move.
It's gonna be ten minutes before the next bus arrives. Three for the next train. I think fuck and goddammit, I just wanna get home, it shouldn't be this hard.
I go back again to the original stop and the probably meth inspired madman now occupies the middle of the platform on the same side. I stand on the far end. I realize that not sleeping is making me feel lucid and a bit clueless. I feel open to everything about me but unable to make sense of any of it. Its an interesting thought. Its also causing a bit of frustration.
While waiting, two people ask me for directions. There's a lady going to Vancouver and a Sikh looking for the waterfront. Another contrast that somehow seems to have relevance to my last thought. It seems funny.
Finally...public transport is boarded. Senor Metholator and I board different compartments. The Max moves soothingly, smoothly, over the tracks. The River and the clouds and the mountains and the bridges and the City are gorgeous, alive and overlaid with a sweet dreamy layer. It's a candy colored dawn with shredded cotton waves of purple and pink and white all lazily trading places in the sky. It's a good moment.
Beside me, a young man is reading Hebrews. It's a chapter about faith, he informs the guy next to him and they lean in understanding towards each other and begin to backslap each other over a shared sense of righteousness. It's loud and aware of those listening and followed by a nauseating conversation about God and human fallibility and Christian Rap and fishing that's carried on without any sense of originality or awareness or cogency. It's 5:45 and these guys are turning my feeling of lucidity into a headache.
There's an older, spectacled gentleman with a basketball shaped and sized paunch across from all of us who is staring at the young man. Intently. He's a bit inscrutable.
I feel like the train can't stop soon enough. It's too goddamn early to listen to that kind of crazy talk. It finally stops. I look out the window and off the train and across the street, there's a guy wrapped tightly in rain gear, with only an iris shaped sliver of his face visible. He's staring straight ahead, not moving and talking to himself at sixty miles an hour.
I exit the train and there's another guy singing songs to the pre-recorded rhythms of an old Casio keyboard. He means every word. It's uplifting and it's utterly mad.
I feel like this City gives so much to me, like a lover, like a curious and certain muse.
It's Home.
Here it is.
NE to SW: 06/01/2007
Category: Travel and Places
Going home at 5:14 in the morning, today, and the first bus passes me.
I walk to the Rose Quarter. There are roses there bigger than my two fist side-by-side. They are a pale, creamy yellow in color. They nod slowly in the wind.
I walk to the wrong station and see three buses and a train going the right way. I miss them, see the next train is gonna be arriving at the other station, walk over. I sit down and there's an angry guy who keeps finding metal objects to unleash his rage upon. He's off to my left and behind me, lurking and sulking.
(Have I mentioned that a lot of people use a lot of Meth around here? They stay up for a whole lot of days and they become a whole lot of crazy).
The train comes. I board it and realize it's headed the wrong way. I exit onto the next platform, the one that I had left a moment before, so as to not wait. Another bus going downtown passes by on the road behind me and that same angry and probably on meth guy is standing in front of me on the opposite platform and staring dejectedly and intensely at the phone book.
The phone is the next object to feel his wrath. It's slammed definitively into its cradle. Twice.
He spins around and he seems to notice me. He crosses the northbound tracks. He stops at the chain separating the north and south bound lines and stares straight ahead. I walk slowly to the bus stop behind me. I consider it a tactical retreat, a street smart move.
It's gonna be ten minutes before the next bus arrives. Three for the next train. I think fuck and goddammit, I just wanna get home, it shouldn't be this hard.
I go back again to the original stop and the probably meth inspired madman now occupies the middle of the platform on the same side. I stand on the far end. I realize that not sleeping is making me feel lucid and a bit clueless. I feel open to everything about me but unable to make sense of any of it. Its an interesting thought. Its also causing a bit of frustration.
While waiting, two people ask me for directions. There's a lady going to Vancouver and a Sikh looking for the waterfront. Another contrast that somehow seems to have relevance to my last thought. It seems funny.
Finally...public transport is boarded. Senor Metholator and I board different compartments. The Max moves soothingly, smoothly, over the tracks. The River and the clouds and the mountains and the bridges and the City are gorgeous, alive and overlaid with a sweet dreamy layer. It's a candy colored dawn with shredded cotton waves of purple and pink and white all lazily trading places in the sky. It's a good moment.
Beside me, a young man is reading Hebrews. It's a chapter about faith, he informs the guy next to him and they lean in understanding towards each other and begin to backslap each other over a shared sense of righteousness. It's loud and aware of those listening and followed by a nauseating conversation about God and human fallibility and Christian Rap and fishing that's carried on without any sense of originality or awareness or cogency. It's 5:45 and these guys are turning my feeling of lucidity into a headache.
There's an older, spectacled gentleman with a basketball shaped and sized paunch across from all of us who is staring at the young man. Intently. He's a bit inscrutable.
I feel like the train can't stop soon enough. It's too goddamn early to listen to that kind of crazy talk. It finally stops. I look out the window and off the train and across the street, there's a guy wrapped tightly in rain gear, with only an iris shaped sliver of his face visible. He's staring straight ahead, not moving and talking to himself at sixty miles an hour.
I exit the train and there's another guy singing songs to the pre-recorded rhythms of an old Casio keyboard. He means every word. It's uplifting and it's utterly mad.
I feel like this City gives so much to me, like a lover, like a curious and certain muse.
It's Home.
If I wasn't writing a screenplay *this very second* I'd read your blog. I can't kill the inspiration with a separate story's words.
I'll be back.
She'll do way worse to her own self without my help.