Monday, July 23, 2007

bĂȘte comme fedora


"dessin numero 1" from Le Petit Prince

At the age of six, Saint-Exupery tells us in Le Petit Prince, he made a little drawing of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. When he asks grown-ups if the drawing scares them, they answer, "Pourquoi un chapeau ferait-il peur?"

As the 750 Rapid rolls through the Reseda intersection, on the other side of Ventura Blvd, at the edge of a furniture shop that features kitschy cast iron sculptures in its outdoor lot--a reclining black bear with cub, a pony tailed girl in swing--I calculate.

In Chicago, before the realignment of Lake Shore Drive and the construction of a campus extending Grant Park to the south, the Field Museum was separated from downtown by five accelerating lanes of southbound LSD. One summer day I saw a man, apparently piqued by the crosswalk light's delay, calmly step into the rushing torrent and stick out his hand like an intrepid Charlton Heston parting waters in The Ten Commandments.

Fifty yards before impact, oncoming drivers begin laying on horns with the persistence of a kid discovering the fun of a glue gun only to be left with a crumpled sketch of a replica Robie House for the Jack Russell--Brandy--a backyard of disastrously sentimental sawdust and a sticky mess running down the inside pant leg. After cars screech to a halt, the target of our urban knight's shock-chivalry walks nervously across the bridge of bumpers created for her.

Seeing a gap, I dash across the four west-bound lanes, pause between the center yellow lines, look right, dodge a couple cars turning left from Reseda and jump in front of the bus. The driver opens the door and asks, "Do you have a death wish?"

With a grown-up grimace I answer, "Pourquoi une voiture ferait-elle peur?"

Monday, July 16, 2007

Spirits Rejoice


(19th annual Four Square Gospel Church Convention. Los Angeles Examiner photo from Bancroft Library.)

Last Monday a bomb threat at the Van Nuys Fire Station nearly closed down the meeting of MTA's San Fernando Valley Governance Council. Instead it brought the fiery spirit of Aimee Semple McPherson down upon the Marvin Braude Constituent Center. The sterile corner room became a tent of old time revival that had me rocking in my chair.

"Alleluia!" Angels moisten the eyes as the Chair calls for signal preemption to replace signal priority on the Orange Line.

"Amen!" Sweat beads collect until tiny streams roll down cheeks of harmonic tongues on swaying indigo robes that form the choir sonic ecstatic, affirming the Chair's demand for crossing gates at Orange Line intersections.

"But wait!" A growl builds from a pigeon's whisper as the necessary lesson of vigilance against corrosive power enters the homily.

"I know L-A-D-O-T..." A hiss bursts from the crowd, like the static clarity from the man playing a Fender knock-off through his boom box perched atop a shopping cart in the parking lot of the NoHo Ralph's, as "D-O-T" is mouthed, "will raise a jurisdictional ruckus at the challenge to north-south traffic. But we must get people out of their cars!"

The congregation erupts. Shouts of "Glory be to God" and "Praise Him!" roll through the chamber.

But the crown is yet to be placed.

"The astonishing success of the Orange Line, which in less than two years has surpassed the Gold Line in daily ridership shows the Curitiba model can work in L.A. For a fraction of the billions spent on a single rail line, we can build a rapid transit system throughout the city!"

Suddenly, a handsome man of about fifty with slicked back hair leaps onto his back row chair. He writhes and digs manicured nails into a double breasted Zanetti suit clad body as if ripping away leeches found after bathing in a murky pond. His lungs trumpet forth voices of the Pentecost like the horn of Donald Ayler on "Truth is Marching In" as it must have sounded at Coltrane's funeral.

He falls to the floor and crawls, a trembling salamander, toward the podium. Sweaty palms hoist unsteady limbs upright, saliva drips from lips moving frenetically at the mike, "bblbbbl...yayaya...I-I-I-I-I-I wawawawa was blblbblliind. I wawawas blind. I was blind. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see!"

Monday, July 09, 2007

The Time of Your Life


A sign with "Apt for Rent" inside a large red arrow, below which is written in bold black marker "BACHELOR SINGLE", hangs beside a white plywood and brick complex on Tujunga Ave. On the curb in front sits a Jaguar XK8 battered from collisions whose wounds go unrepaired. Clear plastic sticks to a parking light above a rear bumper held up by red duct tape on one side--in a small effort to match the maroon body--and several strips of black on the other. The passenger door looks crunched in by a fire plug and all that remains of the left headlight is a bulb that hangs loosely from a gray wire. Below it a greasy red ribbon signals the loss.

The maroon of dried blood that flowed from a deep gash forms a long curve across the forehead of a man sitting next to me. Don Johnson shades, missing the right temple, sloop down his nose where flakes of skin peel from sunburn. He murmurs a thought train softly, and I let it blur through me to become the buzz of a child who runs with arms stretched as an airplane.

Suddenly he looks at me, "How old are you? In your 30s, huh."
"I recently turned 42."
"Ah, Ah, just wait 'til you turn 50. That's the best time of your life. Yeah, oh yeah, believe me, that's the greatest."

Long after the death of 24 year old James Dean at the fork of California Routes 41 and 46, the accident tale recounted reckless speed in a Porsche Spyder. But the wreckage and position of Dean's body indicated his speed at 55. Just before impact he muttered, "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us." 52 years later, the trauma of internal injuries still lingers.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Al Fresco Feeding


Image from Picnics Inc

The sad trickle of liquid from mustard packets along with an empty bag of Buddig deli meat lay scattered under the highway overpass, remains of a slapdash lunch for the itinerant eater. The pavement above displays saltines and grapes on a plaid picnic blanket curling in the wind. These picnickers, mimicking their ant companions, swarm with an obsessive hunger--a hunger for asphalt.

The uncurbable appetite for pavement sparked the great HOV revolt of the 1970s. When Caltrans restricted existing lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway to carpools, Maoists of the middle class brandished radiator grills to demand their bread of life not be robbed from starving wheels.

Caltrans administrators, in fear for their bureaucratic lives, promised from then on to only create carpool lanes when freeways were widened.

Billions are now being spent to complete the HOV lane system throughout L.A. county, while a recent study shows they are often no faster than lanes where people go solo.

The next fight is over congestion pricing--charging drivers to use express lanes during peak times. Not having them has cost the county federal grant money for transit projects.

The revolutionary avant-garde fighting for motorist rights is the California Automobile Association. "Freeways must be free! Car drivers have too long been oppressed! We need more lanes not less! Create double decker freeways if we must!"

Mmmm, double decker freeways. That sounds delicious. Pass the mayonnaise.