Alleyway Puccini, City Lights empties, moonlight spying
Getting home took three and a half hours. The odyssey began with the wrong bus--but its doors were open... and the driver was so kind and waved me inside even as I said I didn't have the quarter... We sped off towards Van Ness when I wanted to go to Market, but he let me off at a corner and pointed out the right bus, which obligingly showed up a minute later. My spring-green, fawn, and light yellow scarf begins to itch. I get off the second bus a stop too early and cross Civic Center in wide strides and duck into its yawning underground entrance.
So much of our life is spent waiting for things that will whisk us away and over whose comings and goings we have no direct influence. I'd brought a selected anthology of Yev with me, but had already finished it, so I sat staring off into the fluorescent lights like everyone else. Eventually, I realise that there is no connecting train back to school for another hour and a half and the air had gotten considerably chillier. Off to the near horizon of the train station, loomed two lit-up places I could go. The 24-hour cafe I'd been to once before for a cup of Hershey's syrup + watery milk = hot chocolate on Halloween. The middle-aged Asian-American man manning the hostess/check-out counter was a Star Trek someone with a streak of green hair. Today, the other invitingly bright place was of all things, a Hollywood Video store. I had noticed it before, but with scorn. Tonight, it didn't look too shabby. I had a feeling they would be selling used DVDs for cheap and I hadn't yet gotten my movie fix of the weekend. I left the white glow of the station and crossed the dark asphalt streets of the airport town.
The videostore was smaller than I was used to though many of the signage and lingo was disturbingly resonant with my beloved r video. I felt rather sneaky and undercover as I examined the way they displayed their DVDs, the colour schemes of the supposed decor, the total lack of ambiance or aroma of top quality popcorn fragrant with pure safflower oil ::sniffle::... Their "foreign" section was abysmally stunted and there were no cool subsections like "women bonding", "werewolves", "Asian martial arts" (vis. a vis. other ma's), or "Ireland" to name a few. I felt sorry for the employees, too, youngish men who looked like they were there because their dads didn't want them on the couch all night squeezed into ill-fitting flaming purple button-downs... All of a sudden, I felt fortunate: at least we had cute little black tees that I now use for wushu workouts. The Hollywood people also had enormous--cow-bell size--name tags dangling around their necks on a plastic cord with their first names printed in fat arial script underneath something akin to "Hi! I'm here to help you. My name is". I took home three cheap DVDs: two silly, girly indulgences because I've been so masculine lately and "Master and Commander" to recommend to my dad because it was so superb and full of intelligent adventure and period anthropological intrigue. The most striking thing about Hollywood was that the clerks were pretty neutral and helpful. Very professional in a detached sort of way. Sean would have been proud of them, but O the shirts, the bleeding-heart-purple shirts! My heart goes out to all the employees living under Hollywood Video's thumb.
Wow, this is getting long, but since it's for my senility, no matter. City Lights proved disappointing. Not only did they have no Yev, but there have also been a string of cancelled in-store lit events. The good news was that I noticed "A Clean, Well-lighted Place for Books" haphazardly on the second bus to the station. I'd always wondered where that would be. And Green Apple, where a skater-bum friend's mom has always wanted him to work. Still, I have enormous affection for City Lights because of that party I crashed to meet M. Ferlinghetti. The staff there now is kinda cranky. One bald youngish guy seemed irritated to ask me how to spell Yev and wasn't too helpful beyond, Nope, haven't got it in. Was tempted to buy a postcard of Miles Davis standing beside a dissipating cloud of smoke he just blew out in thought-taken exasperation for G., but decided to paint him a picture instead. Why does it take so godawful long to put together one care package? Maybe this is it. Maybe I'm just not able to get logistical stuff together and this will be the pattern for the rest of my life. ::shudder:: Maybe it's the sangria that's making me all bare-naked like this. Made it last night although I knew the peaches and nectarines missing in winter were what made it so light and fresh in the summer.
Last memory I'm putting into print from today. As I walked to City Lights on Grant, where a giant Hello Kitty store used to wave its pinkness at the world, I heard strains of an aria that I thought was playing on a side street somewhere. The luscious music was in fact coming from a small stereo system AND a portentous woman with arms outstretched in imaginary embrace in an alley behind the Hermes boutique. She was singing with her arms open to the orchestrations on the stereo. A number of people stopped and listened. It was Puccini. I couldn't place the aria, but it was at his sentimental best and her top notes in particular were clear and true. Each one touched my heart like a silvery beam. Her voice was sweet and to the point, but not quite generous enough to fill a house. That was a pity. I wanted her, she who seemed to love the music as she brought it to us, to be able to make it her life if she wanted. But some of us when born land in a ditch, under a weeping willow, or on a straw mat inside a house with shingles. I leaned against the corner of a white building and fished for my wallet. A wicker basket with a duct-tape bottom sat in front of the stereo. When she finished her aria on a quiet levee, smiling, the small audience applauded and I put in my bill. I walked away singing and my eyes stinged. Music is perhaps the most mysterious of the arts and moves closest to god.
The sangria has clouded my eyes. Time to put away the heavy-duty heart and sink into the comforts of a bed under a roof.
So much of our life is spent waiting for things that will whisk us away and over whose comings and goings we have no direct influence. I'd brought a selected anthology of Yev with me, but had already finished it, so I sat staring off into the fluorescent lights like everyone else. Eventually, I realise that there is no connecting train back to school for another hour and a half and the air had gotten considerably chillier. Off to the near horizon of the train station, loomed two lit-up places I could go. The 24-hour cafe I'd been to once before for a cup of Hershey's syrup + watery milk = hot chocolate on Halloween. The middle-aged Asian-American man manning the hostess/check-out counter was a Star Trek someone with a streak of green hair. Today, the other invitingly bright place was of all things, a Hollywood Video store. I had noticed it before, but with scorn. Tonight, it didn't look too shabby. I had a feeling they would be selling used DVDs for cheap and I hadn't yet gotten my movie fix of the weekend. I left the white glow of the station and crossed the dark asphalt streets of the airport town.
The videostore was smaller than I was used to though many of the signage and lingo was disturbingly resonant with my beloved r video. I felt rather sneaky and undercover as I examined the way they displayed their DVDs, the colour schemes of the supposed decor, the total lack of ambiance or aroma of top quality popcorn fragrant with pure safflower oil ::sniffle::... Their "foreign" section was abysmally stunted and there were no cool subsections like "women bonding", "werewolves", "Asian martial arts" (vis. a vis. other ma's), or "Ireland" to name a few. I felt sorry for the employees, too, youngish men who looked like they were there because their dads didn't want them on the couch all night squeezed into ill-fitting flaming purple button-downs... All of a sudden, I felt fortunate: at least we had cute little black tees that I now use for wushu workouts. The Hollywood people also had enormous--cow-bell size--name tags dangling around their necks on a plastic cord with their first names printed in fat arial script underneath something akin to "Hi! I'm here to help you. My name is". I took home three cheap DVDs: two silly, girly indulgences because I've been so masculine lately and "Master and Commander" to recommend to my dad because it was so superb and full of intelligent adventure and period anthropological intrigue. The most striking thing about Hollywood was that the clerks were pretty neutral and helpful. Very professional in a detached sort of way. Sean would have been proud of them, but O the shirts, the bleeding-heart-purple shirts! My heart goes out to all the employees living under Hollywood Video's thumb.
Wow, this is getting long, but since it's for my senility, no matter. City Lights proved disappointing. Not only did they have no Yev, but there have also been a string of cancelled in-store lit events. The good news was that I noticed "A Clean, Well-lighted Place for Books" haphazardly on the second bus to the station. I'd always wondered where that would be. And Green Apple, where a skater-bum friend's mom has always wanted him to work. Still, I have enormous affection for City Lights because of that party I crashed to meet M. Ferlinghetti. The staff there now is kinda cranky. One bald youngish guy seemed irritated to ask me how to spell Yev and wasn't too helpful beyond, Nope, haven't got it in. Was tempted to buy a postcard of Miles Davis standing beside a dissipating cloud of smoke he just blew out in thought-taken exasperation for G., but decided to paint him a picture instead. Why does it take so godawful long to put together one care package? Maybe this is it. Maybe I'm just not able to get logistical stuff together and this will be the pattern for the rest of my life. ::shudder:: Maybe it's the sangria that's making me all bare-naked like this. Made it last night although I knew the peaches and nectarines missing in winter were what made it so light and fresh in the summer.
Last memory I'm putting into print from today. As I walked to City Lights on Grant, where a giant Hello Kitty store used to wave its pinkness at the world, I heard strains of an aria that I thought was playing on a side street somewhere. The luscious music was in fact coming from a small stereo system AND a portentous woman with arms outstretched in imaginary embrace in an alley behind the Hermes boutique. She was singing with her arms open to the orchestrations on the stereo. A number of people stopped and listened. It was Puccini. I couldn't place the aria, but it was at his sentimental best and her top notes in particular were clear and true. Each one touched my heart like a silvery beam. Her voice was sweet and to the point, but not quite generous enough to fill a house. That was a pity. I wanted her, she who seemed to love the music as she brought it to us, to be able to make it her life if she wanted. But some of us when born land in a ditch, under a weeping willow, or on a straw mat inside a house with shingles. I leaned against the corner of a white building and fished for my wallet. A wicker basket with a duct-tape bottom sat in front of the stereo. When she finished her aria on a quiet levee, smiling, the small audience applauded and I put in my bill. I walked away singing and my eyes stinged. Music is perhaps the most mysterious of the arts and moves closest to god.
The sangria has clouded my eyes. Time to put away the heavy-duty heart and sink into the comforts of a bed under a roof.
posted by greenyew at 11:41 PM
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