And yet, I own a house. A free-standing house, surrounded by a small yard and sidewalks, hooked up to sewer and gas and electricity via individual connections. I pay NW Natural every month for heating I don’t share with anyone else. When I turn the porch lights on, they light nothing beyond my own little patch of earth. Everything in my house, from toothpaste to toilet paper, is an assault on the balance.
Sunday was a pleasant though strange day. In the morning I read yet another article about the utter hopelessness of the suburbs and the horrific ways we’ll all eventually pay for it, kind of like the Wall Street bailouts. Once we’re out of gas, all of it, according to this article, all of it is going to simply collapse, which will be the end of life as we know it, probably much sooner than any of us, me included, care to consider. These articles are depressing, so wrought with despair and metaphor that I read them two or three times, just in case. Then I usually log onto Netflix and see if there are any related documentaries I can add to my list. That’s because reading about short-sighted stupidity and its disastrous implications is not enough for me: I need more.
On Sunday afternoon a friend and I went to see a movie at the Academy Theater, a few short blocks from our homes. As we were standing in the lobby in the line for popcorn and pizza, I got to thinking. The pizza is from two doors down. The coffee is from across the street. And after 6, the sign behind the register announced, sushi from the new restaurant two blocks away will be available. I noticed a sign for PBR on Sunday, but most of the beers there are locally brewed. Then there’s the theater itself: it’s on a street with sidewalks and businesses and people. Within a five-minute walk of the front door there are hundreds of homes, both singles and apartments, and two major bus lines. Within a 15-minute walk there are four major bus lines and light rail. There used to be a street car line that went right past the theater – I’ve seen photos of it – but that was torn out at the beginning of our love affair with highways. You don’t drive into a parking lot to reach the theater: you buy your tickets, which cost $4.00, while standing on the sidewalk. Sometimes, if it’s raining, you get wet while waiting, and sometimes surly people walk by, going to or from the pub next door. The Academy offers babysitting services, and, true to its name, it held a free screening of the Academy Awards a few weeks ago. Most importantly, though, it occurred to me on Sunday afternoon that the Academy Theater is an actual theater, an old one, one that was built long before I was born and will probably be here long after I’m gone. It had fallen into disrepair, of course – even “the movies” fell for the apples handed out at the mall – but a few years ago it was bought and restored back to life. As I’d imagine was once the case with the little groceries and barber shops and hardware stores with an actual person’s name on the front door, my neighborhood theater is a quiet, understated presence on its block. The lobby, with its mood lighting and curvy elegance, reminds me of an old-school cruise liner. Standing there I recalled what one of my brothers, an architect, said a few years ago: There is no amount of bamboo flooring that can make new construction green. Perhaps that’s why places like my neighborhood theater don’t generate a lot of self-congratulatory razzle dazzle, amped up with terms like “green” and “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” – terms brought to us, I believe, by the same kind of people who not long ago were pimping the good life that lay just on the other side of stately entrances to gated communities, where four-member families could remain strangers while living in 5,000 absolutely new square feet. And that was when I had the kind of moment I try so hard to avoid. I stood there with my friend, smugly at peace, thinking, for a blissful second, this, this right here and now, is how it should be. Then I snapped out of it, and my friend and I took our seats and watched a movie called, aptly enough, An Education.
