16 Hrs + 2997 Miles = “Rain City”

Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington, Photo by Mr. Blue

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Nelson Mandela (1918 - ), 'A Long Walk to Freedom'

Dead Man Walking

Dead Man Walking

The sky is turning steel grey as the sunset highlights wisps of the remaining jet contrails hanging above the worn tarmac. The scene has a sterile industrial appearance with the soft light bouncing off the polished metal machines which line the gates like bees on a honeycomb. The routine has become almost to routine as I follow a well worn path without thinking in a subconscious response like breathing. Entering the concourse through gate B3, I turn left and slowly shuffle with the ear buds pumping Greg Allman singing “the dark side of the road” into my brain as the moving walkway reminds me of its termination for the millionth time in that exceedingly androgynous voice. It’s late and the concourse is largely abandon only littered with a few gate agents milling around waiting for the next cattle car to arrive as I head to gate B21 for the final leg of this trip.

The crowd has always begun to assemble into three simple lines waiting for the jetway door to open. I take my place in line to begin the wait with everyone else. Pain has been welling in the muscles of my lower back which is now attempting to compete for center stage with the low grade thumping headache that has been my companion since Hartford. As my feet burn from standing for the past two days, I mumble to myself "I can’t believe that it’s only Tuesday". The voice over the intercom is droning in the background, but the sound drifts past without importance because it’s someone else’s flight to nowhere in particular. I’ve been conditioned to only respond to the specific drone of my gate like the penguins that can identify their youth after months of separation purely by the small sound of their voice. Like a baby penguin I quietly wait for a familiar drone which begins the process of perpetual motion all over again.

The gate opens as four serious TSA agents scurry down and disappear into the jetway to discover hidden gels and liquids. Travelers have already adapted to the new regulations adeptly discarding all types of viscous personal items without blinking. Less than three days since the spoiled plot to instill fear into the general public, the routine is once again commonplace. The public’s attention span is now so short and dysfunctional that we now act like the last act of terrorism is nothing more than a rerun of a bad sitcom from a show that has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Terrorists are going to need to get creative in order to capture our undivided attention and concern. That’s a problem any more; no one is being creative and simple concepts are being recycled over and over. Even the most diabolical insane terrorist can’t come up with a new idea.

As the door opens again the lines perk up and we start a noticeable shuffle while standing in place. Approaching the gate Ray Charles singing “America the beautiful” filling my head as the TSA agents scurry back out of the jetway past me. I reach up a salute the first TSA agent as he goes by. It just seemed like the thing to do, I guess Ray made me do it. The TSA agent immediately slows to take a good look while a complete shakedown of this potential deviant crosses his mind. The remaining TSA agents press forward distracting him with more important things to do, as they march off like a pack of Elmer Fudds chasing the mythical Bugs Bunny dressed in fatigues and a turban. The line begins to dwindle as I approach the gate in a painful slow baton death march.

Holding out the lottery ticket to win a ride to another location, I’m stopped cold as the gate agent says, “Sir you’re on the next flight.” Stunned I look down at the ticket and see the wrong departure time. “Please step aside, this plane is full.” You mean I’ve been standing in line for the past 45 minutes for a flight I’m not on? What happened to me gate B3 to B21? Sheepishly I wander back to the concourse and start heading to gate A9 for the next flight, when it strikes me that I didn’t need to look at the monitors to know the next gate. I know the 7:40 flight is out of gate B21 and then the 8:55 flight is out of gate A9, then the 9:30 flight is gate B15 and the last flight at 9:55 during the summer is back at gate B21. This realization is deeply troubling to me as I follow the routine and slowly march to gate A9.

Some people might consider this insight and knowledge of airline operations as a badge of honor or a sign of a brilliant photographic mind, but I find it a sign of a hopeless routine of waiting for time to pass. I begin to think that maybe I need a vacation, observing the gates I’m traveling past on my way to A9. B15 Washington DC……no I was there last week. B13 Ft. Lauderdale…….we just got a project there, so I’ll be traveling there a lot. B11 Hartford……….out of the question I just came from there. B9 Detroit……..no way I had a project there a few years ago and I’ve been there enough for a long time. B7 Boston………I was there three weeks ago and will be going back next month. B5 New York……..another trip next month. After awhile I come to the conclusion that maybe a vacation is not such a great idea. I would just be standing in that line instead of this one.

Arriving at A9, I assume my place in the pre-ordained line, this time at the right gate. As the door opens for the flight crew to enter the jetway when I notice that it’s the crew that flies the Chicago-Kansas City-Baltimore-Islip route. Again my sense of well being is shaken by the fact that I can associate particular crews with particular routes. Worst of all the flight attendant smiles and waves as she passes, letting me know that she also recognizes me. I’m of no particular striking physical persona that would make me memorable, just another face in the crowd, in her case a crowd of thousands of new faces each week. Five legs a day at 225 per flight equal almost 6,000 passengers a week, but she remembers me? I must have crossed over into the realm of that stupid little short commercial that bludgeons the airways so frequently that you can’t ignore it. I need to ask this airline about my pension options when I retire, I’m putting in as much time as the crews.

The gentle vibrating of my cell phone is a welcome relief from the depressing thoughts of the retirement dinner the airline will hold for me. I’ve have not heard a ring tone from my phone for the past five years, I prefer to keep the settings on silent so I’m not the idiot that jumps up in the middle of a funeral because his phone begins belting out Barry Manilow. A recent study found that one third of cell phone calls in public are faked because the person is trying to impress the public into thinking they are important. One out of three of the idiots babbling about crap are doing it so I think they are somebody? I need to inform them that I have never found anyone with a cell phone crammed into their ear important, interesting or anything close to a form of intelligent life. Cell phones are an entire subject that I better not get started on.

Answering the phone I recognize the voice of my closest friend for well over 40 years. “Hey mon, you are not going to believe this I’m living your life right now……I’m stuck in Mr. Blue’s hell.”

Knowing that we are now entering our long running game of can you top this I start “Yeah I bet you haven’t been standing in the wrong line for the past hour?”

“No” he replies “I’m been sitting my ass on a broken plane in Seattle for the past three hours and they are now giving me the news that we will arrive in New York at 3:30 am.”

Breaking a smile I need more so I ask “So what’s up with the plane?”

Feeling the anger begin to well he says “They have to replace some stinking part and they don’t have the part here so they are flying it up on the next flight from Los Angeles”.

Knowing he is on the edge and I don’t have a prayer of winning this contest, I begin to badger him, “So what’s the big deal?”

With that little poke it comes rolling out “Dude! I’m in Seattle the home of Boeing, the world’s greatest airplane manufacturer in the world. I’m so close to the factory I can almost see where they make the parts from my seat on the runway and I’m on a fucking French made Airbus!!!!”

There comes a point in our simple lives when we gain comfort in the misfortune of others, smiling I reply “Hey I though you were the one who said how important of a global economy is.”

Interrupting me he says “Mr. Blue don’t go there, right now or else I’ll push this plane to Chicago just to kick your ass!”

In a friendship that has been forged into steel over the years, close the conversation “Hey sweetheart be sure to give me a call when land in New York I want to be sure you made it home okay.”

Placing the phone back into my pocket I hear him talking to himself” I can’t believe I’m Mr. Blue stuck on some god dam plane…………”

For a brief moment my life is brightened knowing that I’m not the only “dead man walking” today.

The Freak in Funkytown

Recent travels have placed in Seattle every month for the past half year. I’ve found an edgy urban neighborhood which has a grittiness that I find interesting. It reminds me a lot of the urban future portrayed in the 1982 film Blade Runner. The hotel where I stay is a euro-style hotel in the Capitol Hill neighborhood which caters to the upper middle class 30 something crowd.

Capitol Hill is a study in sharp contrasts. It is the most densely populated neighborhood in Seattle. A local travel guide describes the neighborhood. “The hill itself is one of the most prestigious old neighborhoods in Seattle, with countless mansions and stately older homes, quite a few of which are now elaborate bed-and-breakfast inns. At one time local politicians dreamed of making this the location for Washington’s capitol building - hence the name. Today the campuses of Seattle Central Community College and Seattle University mark the southern edge while two commercial centers attract visitors: a small, fairly quiet strip along 15th Ave. E, and the busy, on-the-edge Broadway Ave. E stretch.”

“Because of a strong gay and lesbian presence, Broadway has been likened to San Francisco’s Castro District, but it could also be Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue. It’s a great place to people-watch, and to catch up on the latest fashion statements for the youthful art crowd. You’re guaranteed to see more black leather skirts and jackets, frenzied florescent green hair, tattoos, nose rings, and pink triangles here than anywhere else in Seattle.”

Blade Runner 1982

The area is packed with counterculture small shops and restaurants. Tattoo parlors, piercing shops, adult supply stores are dispersed between art galleries, music stores, hair salons and book stores. The restaurant trade is affordable and highly ethic with wide ranges of Asian fusion cuisines mixed with Spanish, Mexican, Italian and British style fish and chips restaurants. The street life is vibrant and edgy where the hippy, grunge and alternative lifestyles are mixed with gay, anarchist, counterculture and artist communities. Although Seattle’s desperate heroin problem is fully evident, there is not a feeling that the area is unsafe. I began calling the district is “funkytown” because the residents perceived themselves as ultra hip and trendy. Maybe they are? Who am I to judge? I perceive them as more insecure, adolescent teens screaming for attention in a harmless but comedic fashion.

Slowly over a number of trips I began to realize that I was the freak the street life was marveling at. Although the street was obliviously tolerant of diversity of lifestyles, the extended stares and surprised looks informed me that I was the outcast. I began to wonder what in my appearance was so apparent. My attire was was suitability nondescript with a faded pair of blue jeans, a beat up tee shirt with Zapata the Mexican revolutionary staring at you with coal black eyes and a pair of sandals. I was dressed in the official street uniform. The dark sun glasses and ball cap reasonably disguised my age. What was it?

It came to me! I was totally undecorated. My body did not contain a solitary piece of body art. I had no tattoos, piercing, nose rings, chains, split tongues, fake contact lenses, paper clips or implanted horns. I have found it so unnecessary to decorate myself like a Christmas tree that I was never compelled to even pierce my ears. I was the equivalent of an albino freak in a circle tent. My nonconformance was glaringly oblivious to the self appointed fashion judges. I was so out of bounds to the trend setters that I began to crossover into the perverse cool. There’s a freak in funkytown.

I have spent a lifetime examining and attempting to understand tattoos. Yeah, it’s a form of free expression, a statement of what the individual stands for or what group they belong to. It’s a way to remember life events, good or bad. Whatever you want to call it, for god’s sake don’t call it art. It’s about as far from art as Muzak is from music. Most tattoos look like the individual was unconscious and their worst enemy was allowed to pick out and place a tattoo of their choosing in order to inflict the most humiliation and embarrassment possible on the victim. Take a good look at most tattoos and ask yourself, why was this individual compelled to place this scribble in this location? For all I know a person may just go out and play paintball with a group of buddies and after the game they find the location of each welt on his body and assign it a new tattoo. Placement appears to be that random.

How many millions of teenage girls have scarred their beautiful bodies by making themselves “special” and picked the ubiquitous dolphin, butterfly, heart, cherry or gecko tattoo. It makes them about as special as a Denny’s grand slam breakfast. I once asked a friend of mine why he always dated girls with tattoos? He said “It tells me she likes to abuse her body.”

If you want to impress me with a tattoo show me the Greek letter sigma from members of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. By scorching their left shoulders with a brand of the sigma, their values of brotherhood, scholarship and service are physically a part of them. In case you didn’t know branding (which is a form of tattoos) is burning the skin to create permanent scarring in a desired design. Instruments used to brand include a range from a blowtorch to a wire coat hanger bent to the desired shape, immersed in boiling oil and placed on the skin. That’s got to hurt.

I will admit that there are a few tattoo rituals that I would consider art. The Japanese full body Kanji Tattoos and pure tribal or Celtic tattoos. But have you ever seen one in person? For every photo of an artistically interesting tattoo I’ve seen a couple thousand really bad tattoos. Some are so bad they are comical. You just know they got up the next day and said “Shit! What the hell did I do that for?” Mike Tyson was probably one of them.

I’ve got a proposition to help society out of the carnage of human graffiti. Before an individual is allowed to get a tattoo they need to show a certificate of graduation from an art appreciation course. The class would teach them to understand form, color, texture, proportion, scale, rhythm, balance, contrast and contradiction. They could learn the fashion risk of placing figurative Japanese design next to a black biomechanical design. They could understand the impacts of different colored inks and the patina of the skin’s aging process. The process of getting a tattoo could be elevated to a sophisticated gallery opening instead of a drunken ghetto car wreck. We can only dream.

Maybe the nonconformist judges the world too harshly. The next time I’m hiking across the Capitol Hill district, I should stop and get in touch with my feminine side by getting a tattoo of a butterfly on my crouch just to make me feel “special”. If I did that they would no longer stare and say look at the freak in funkytown.