Surreality Check
A couple days ago, it was Opening day at SBC Park, our still-new local baseball stadium. It's an impressive place, and that whole part of town has been transformed from low-rent broken-down industrial outskirts to Gentrification Central in the past few years. Lots of brickwork and ironwork and cobblestones and such. I barely recognize it. Not being a huge sports fan, I don't get over there much. But back before the Stadium was built, I did a lot of work down in the area. Now it looks a little like Lower Downtown Denver but with a waterfront, and the newly-high rents have driven out most of the small businesses I used to work with. But it looks quite nice, if you like that sort of thing. A few too many tourists for my particular taste, especially on a game day. But not as bad as some of the REALLY touristy parts of town -- the parts that everybody outside of California associates with San Francisco: Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, the 'crooked' part of Lombard Street, and all those other horrid Vegas-like places that people who actually live here avoid like the plague.
Most people who visit here never see the real San Francisco; they see the Rice-a-Roni version.
Anyway, there I was, getting off the light rail by the Park -- not to see the game but to see somebody in the area about something unrelated, and suddenly the entire Earth seemed to rumble, my very bones rattling and my ears popping from the force of some seemingly impending disaster of Biblical proportions, and I jumped out of my skin.
Was it an earthquake? The Big One, the blind fear of which (thankfully) keeps people in hurricane, blizzard, flood and tornado-prone regions from moving here? No. It was just a tradition. The Blue Angels, the US Navy's Official Propaganda Team, did a very low overflight at insane speeds as the crowd cheered and some sort of metallic confetti filled the air. Opening Day! Baseball! America! Yay!
But call me clueless; I didn't know it was going to happen and I just about wet my pants. The awesome power of those four F/A-18 Hornets careening in perfect formation a few hundred feet above my head was enough to knock my ass onto the concrete, and I nearly had a heart attack -- as did several other unsuspecting people around me, who subsequently pointed to the sky in awe and pride.
Now, the Blue Angels are some talented flyers; and those airplanes are indeed a wonder. One could endlessly gasp at the technological progress they represent in barely a hundred years of powered flight. Watching the spectacle of their performance could be an exhilarating experience in the context of pure testosterone-driven lust for power, and certainly in appreciation as well for the beauty and grace of machines that seem to defy the bounds of nature. I AM a guy, after all. When I was a kid, I loved stuff like that. Part of me still does.
So why, as my heartbeat quieted to a healthier pace and the crowd around me clapped and roared with delight, did I feel so DISTURBED? Sad? Even a little frightened? Why were my eyes welling up, and why did I feel like an alien in an alien world as I made my way in reverse against the game-bound masses toward my destination up the block?
Simple. I'm just not like the others. Not anymore, anyway. If I ever was.
Because, you see, while everyone around me howled in excitement and American patriotic pride at the splendor of Game Day and the overflying supersonic circus of blue-painted steel, part of me was cringing. Part of me was imagining myself a terrified man in Iraq or elsewhere, frantically searching for his children in the chaos as these fearsome machines blasted across the sky, not in fours but in hundreds. I imagined the deafening roar multiplied a thousand times as buildings exploded around me and the panicked tears that streaked my face blurred images of blood-spattered wreckage and twisted limbs and dead animals and babies blocking my path. I imagined falling to the ground and praying to whatever god would listen for it to stop, please just stop.
And I watched in slow motion as all the happy Giants fans scurried by in an endless parade, all waving banners and wearing their colors and marching toward the stadium without a care in the world on this beautiful sunny Opening Day of baseball season, rubbing my eyes and pushing through the crowd as I wept silently for my country and my world and my fragile yet powerfully self-destructive species.
And I felt more alone than I've ever felt in my life.
* * *
Most people who visit here never see the real San Francisco; they see the Rice-a-Roni version.
Anyway, there I was, getting off the light rail by the Park -- not to see the game but to see somebody in the area about something unrelated, and suddenly the entire Earth seemed to rumble, my very bones rattling and my ears popping from the force of some seemingly impending disaster of Biblical proportions, and I jumped out of my skin.
Was it an earthquake? The Big One, the blind fear of which (thankfully) keeps people in hurricane, blizzard, flood and tornado-prone regions from moving here? No. It was just a tradition. The Blue Angels, the US Navy's Official Propaganda Team, did a very low overflight at insane speeds as the crowd cheered and some sort of metallic confetti filled the air. Opening Day! Baseball! America! Yay!
But call me clueless; I didn't know it was going to happen and I just about wet my pants. The awesome power of those four F/A-18 Hornets careening in perfect formation a few hundred feet above my head was enough to knock my ass onto the concrete, and I nearly had a heart attack -- as did several other unsuspecting people around me, who subsequently pointed to the sky in awe and pride.
Now, the Blue Angels are some talented flyers; and those airplanes are indeed a wonder. One could endlessly gasp at the technological progress they represent in barely a hundred years of powered flight. Watching the spectacle of their performance could be an exhilarating experience in the context of pure testosterone-driven lust for power, and certainly in appreciation as well for the beauty and grace of machines that seem to defy the bounds of nature. I AM a guy, after all. When I was a kid, I loved stuff like that. Part of me still does.
So why, as my heartbeat quieted to a healthier pace and the crowd around me clapped and roared with delight, did I feel so DISTURBED? Sad? Even a little frightened? Why were my eyes welling up, and why did I feel like an alien in an alien world as I made my way in reverse against the game-bound masses toward my destination up the block?
Simple. I'm just not like the others. Not anymore, anyway. If I ever was.
Because, you see, while everyone around me howled in excitement and American patriotic pride at the splendor of Game Day and the overflying supersonic circus of blue-painted steel, part of me was cringing. Part of me was imagining myself a terrified man in Iraq or elsewhere, frantically searching for his children in the chaos as these fearsome machines blasted across the sky, not in fours but in hundreds. I imagined the deafening roar multiplied a thousand times as buildings exploded around me and the panicked tears that streaked my face blurred images of blood-spattered wreckage and twisted limbs and dead animals and babies blocking my path. I imagined falling to the ground and praying to whatever god would listen for it to stop, please just stop.
And I watched in slow motion as all the happy Giants fans scurried by in an endless parade, all waving banners and wearing their colors and marching toward the stadium without a care in the world on this beautiful sunny Opening Day of baseball season, rubbing my eyes and pushing through the crowd as I wept silently for my country and my world and my fragile yet powerfully self-destructive species.
And I felt more alone than I've ever felt in my life.
* * *
posted by brioSphere at 12:10 AM
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