Cinematic Lifestyles

The movie was good, I had heard about it for months from NPR Movie podcasts, it sounded fascinating from the beginning. The sewn eye was something I immediately looked away from, but the scene where his father calls him and neither can visit the other is heartbreaking in a terrible wonderful way. The alphabet is repetitive, but I had been told for months that it was amazing, so I did love it. 

Anyway, tonight Em and I went downtown via MAX to have a pool party. We went to the Boiler Room and Blitz, briefly passing Hobo’s which had pool tables but also seemed like a film set, fancy and piano music and smoky but not too smoky. It just didn’t seem like the place for two alcohol-drinking multilingual seniors to be having a crazy little time in. Anyway, that was kind of odd. BUT THEN.

As we were waiting for the Yellow Line to return to NoPo, a person approached us. “no, i don’t have money for you” said my normal downtown voice. He said “if you know how to get around, please help these two cowboys get home.” What? They were dressed as cowboys, adorable little plaid shirts and genuine hats that didn’t care the older one was standing right under a waterfall from an awning. They didn’t understand the MAX, they live in Clackamas. They were here at the Colliseum for a Rodeo. The older one’s brother had punched his friend here and left them, stranded them. They were really genuinely cowboy people, and I gave the older one a bus pass. The other had one already. It felt good, and was minimal social experience with maximum output. Also I have a lot of bus passes so life is good.

Em and I almost went out to our pool party with fake names: Starlight (her) and Moonbeam (me) from Fairbanks, Alaska. There because we watched Into the Wild last night. Like the father-son scene from Diving Bell, the beginning of Into the Wild made me almost cry constantly, because I knew how it all ended, having read the book in solitude in Maguey Largo, Mexico. As the end grew nearer, I was less and less on the verge of tears and more anxious for when and in what circumstances they would show it. I understand why they ended with his death, but most of the facts I remember were from truths outside of his journal, things not known until after like the poisonous qualities of the seeds, the first visit his parents take to the bus, the fact that there was a way to cross the river only a few miles away and only because he refused  a map did he die. … spoiler alert? I have no remorse.

Anyway, it’s not like my Hispanic Cinema class is blowing me away, and it’s not my first exposure to knowing more about movies than what you see without knowing shots and angles and soundtrack and movement and light. It’s curious but I like it. I hope there’s a happy ending, and that I get a better writer to resolve everything gracefully in the conclusion.