Boston (1)

Taking a moment away from my story of the city, my new/old home of Albuquerque.

As I write this, the final act of a recent tragedy out in Boston has played itself. The two men…boys, really…who seem to have been responsible for the brutal, bloody, stupid acts at the Boston Marathon have been identified. One is now dead after a dramatic firefight with police. The other has been captured.

Fortunately for me, everyone I know back East is safe. No one I knew was at the race. No one I knew was caught up in the exchange of gunfire that killed the first terrorist. Though, it was a near thing. My son knew the cousin of one of the policemen who was badly wounded. And, my son's girlfriend lives just eight blocks from where the two men lived. A man I publish, one of the writers for the Belfort and Bastion, has an apartment not far from the police command post set up after the incident.  Meanwhile, some very close family friends, a couple with two young children (we've known the mother since she was a toddler), were awakened in the night by the sound of firearms and sirens.

Still, there is something horrible and enlightening about all of this. At least there is for me. Even given my distance from the actual events.

To wit, I'm struck by how much life rather resembles an old fashioned cinema, the type I used to visit as a boy, in those long lost days before Surround Sound, CGI, and megaplexes.

You would go into the theater, your popcorn in one hand, your cola in the other, and you would seat yourself somewhere near the front. The screen would glow silver and white (yes, I recall the days before color was ubiquitous). You would hear in the background the comforting rumble of the projector. You would lose yourself in the adventures of the lights and shadows on the wall before you—comedy, adventure, Three Stooges, James Bond, Disney, cartoons and cartoonish humans. The plot would contain no real surprises. The characters would be true to their stereotypes.

And, for most of us, most of the time, that's what life is like. It goes on its predictable way. Sometimes bad. Sometimes good. But largely uneventful.

But then…

Sometimes, when I was a boy, and you went to the cinema expecting to see Clint Eastwood claim his Few Dollars More, or Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux confront the Morlocks in their fury, there would be an interruption. A flash! The film would break. You would see the scene shatter before you, be replaced by light and fire and white emptiness.

The Projectionist, asleep on duty, or indifferent, or gone for a cigarette out front, would do nothing. And you (a child) would be forced to go forth. Crippled by your shyness, you would have to explain to the authorities that somehow the Hollywood epic in its wonderful blandness was gone.

Well, it's like that. We live our stories. We assume they are important. We assume they are reality, or at least all the reality that matters.

And then we reminded.

By the light. And the fire. By the emptiness.

There is something beyond the screen.

And it may not love us.