WHERE (PERCEPTIONS OF) WORLDS COLLIDE

( The color is chosen in honor of my friend CAMOON, whose alma mater venerates that color. Her world is kind of stressed now – more than usual, so she needed the props) Sure, its all still Pasadena. LOST’s three traveling companions on the road to the Rose Bowl are wide eyed and excited and talking of things that 14 year olds talk about – sports, sports, and yes, more sports. LOST thinks about his own days of being that age, and in tow with his brother, to a different venue, for the same purpose. The experiences are similar but different. The smells are similar – there is almost a smell for excitement, a raw energy set in motion by the sheer number of people drawn together for the same globally insignificant but momentarily life-altering experience of watching and cheering a team or school on to victory.

Is it the lighting? Is it the not-so-subtle Fall chill in the air? Is it the steel grayness in the dusk-laden sky? Is it the ambient noise of excitement mingled with the air of fried onions and airborne garlic? It’s all of that, enough to make one feel as though one blink of an eye and it would be 1973 again. A full head of hair, a trim – okay, trimmer waistline, a range of possibilities still stretching out ahead like some highway to everywhere.

Sadly, though, this is different, too. It is different because with adult eyes we can see where the action behind the lines is ongoing, much like when the young adult spies the speakers on a Disney ride for the first time, and what was once thought of as magical trudges toward the ordinary. For this form of entertainment has stratifications to it, which range from the obvious – the chain link fence separating the general admission folk from the “reserved seat” ticket holders, to the sublime. There is an unspoken sadness present here in the faces of those who work behind the counters of the concession stands. What used to be younger people, n many cases more cheerful people, has been replaced by the gentrified and the gray, hopeless. They are moving as fast as their six decade old bodies will let them, but it is not fast at all, and the impatient crowd of those waiting to be served grows ever more disgruntled. This is wrong. Tired and haggard sixty-somethings should not be in a place where their survival depends upon slinging lukewarm six dollar burgers and four dollar hot dogs for seven bucks an hour on a cold Saturday evening to an impatient and wholly unconcerned consumerist rabble.

This same ground is populated by those who seem bent on re-creating their living rooms on grassy spots south of the Bowl – complete with multiple seats, canvas topped cabanas wrapped in faux bamboo fabric, and generator run giant screens. None of this nonsense was around in the 1970’s - hell, there was one or two games on TV in a given Saturday and this was it. Today there is saturation. Today there is a two-pronged clash-mesh hunger to avoid missing out on some important game-of-the-century, while also telegraphing to your parking lot neighbor that you and your state of the art 42 inch flat-screen and RV have arrived.

Finally, there are those whose screams are the loudest in a language that can most expediently be labeled as coarse, cheering for a team for which they feel kinship, but for an institution which is likely as foreign to them as any village in Kandehar. Well, perhaps that assumption should not be made; after all, for these vociferous, off color “fans” are themselves much closer to service age, and who is to say whether one or more of them had ever slogged boot by boot through that war-wrenched region of the world in the past 4 plus years. None of them are uniformed today – in that 70’s world that LOST romanticizes they would have at least gained admission to the game (in uniform) for a measley buck.

There are the grim reminders that 1973 was a long time ago, too. They are in the form of the people in the spectator crowd – souls fortunate enough to have avoided the grim treadmill of service behind the counter, but not so fortunate to avoid the other unkindness of advancing age. These are the folks who, in that magical time past would have bounded up these OSHA-unfriendly steps without a second thought, but who now need the wary assistance of their children and or companions, to aid them in their struggle down the rail-less flights of weathered concrete.

It is, overall, a bittersweet reminder that things change and stay the same. That disparities continue to divide us while teasing us with echoes of continuity lost.
This is supposed to be fun, but it remains so only on the shallowest of thought levels. Contemplating it with any deliberation is cause for sober reflection, if not in some aspects utter despair.