hates California
it’s cold and it’s damp
It’s past midnight when I get off the train at Montague and notice the picture of Sinatra in the poster shop window – a 1935 mug shot from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office, featuring a twenty-three year old Frank, clear eyed and with pompadour. I can’t help but think he wouldn’t dig it, this public and iconic representation of a mild, youthful misstep (he was arrested for “carrying on with a married woman”) even though the image is the epitome of cool today and the kind of bad boy street cred Justin Timberlake would likely kill for. I like to imagine Frank would think it makes him look like a punk.
I turn the corner and note the varying colors and patterns of damp, fallen leaves glowing under street lamps and highlighting the wet pavement – oranges, yellows, browns. New York weather can vary wildly between seasons and a late November chill has suddenly and dramatically given way to comparatively tropical temperatures and a steady downpour. Leaves whose hold was weakened by last week’s freeze release their grip in a relatively warm, blustery rain. I’ve become more attuned to the changing seasons, not because it’s the east coast, but because it seems to be going faster. The parents visited for Thanksgiving and Dad commented on how quickly the week passed. It’s been six years since the towers fell. Soon it will be Christmas.
On Sunday night I went solo to catch a film. I’ve been on my own in a lot of theaters in recent years. The movie was “No Country For Old Men.” It was good, but I may have to see it again to determine its exact moral message. The ending will likely bother some people, but I paid more attention to the writing. In one scene, the Sheriff (played by Tommy Lee Jones) stands with his deputy, surveying scattered bodies on the desert, the result of a drug deal gone awry. “It’s a mess, ain’t it Sheriff?” the deputy observes. Jones barely pauses before his reply: “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.”
(11/27/07)
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