Twilight Now

   I met Elvis this evening, true story.  As I was waiting for the bus to take me home from work, who should I see standing beside me but The King.  Now, before you think I’ve escaped from a bad Tony Scott movie, I understood full well that the man beside me was an impersonator.  I’d seen plenty of them in Memphis and most have a certain mindset: they are channels, pentcostal vessels alight with the  fire of the great man’s Burnin’ Love, they are Taking Care of Business.  This Elvis’ hair was a big perfect  mop with even  bigger sideburns.  The glasses weren’t the cheap overwrought gold that everyone, including me, who visits Graceland buys,  these were sleek half tints straight ftom 1974.  From the neck down he was a different story: sensible slacks and a generic parka, not very kingly.  After pretending not to stare for a few minutes, I felt I had to get something off my chest that had bothered me for a long time.      “Excuse me…” I said as he looked over to make sure that I wasn’t looking at him.
    “What?” He answered in a defensive voice that was high pitched with a distinct Brooklyn accent.  The sound of it was unnerving and he was obviously not in the mood for conversation.  I paused a moment before speaking again.  I apologetically babbled “I’m sure you probably get asked this a lot but, are you a professional Elvis impersonator?” 
    “I’m retired.”  He said this in a way that implied that the converstion was over before it started, move along.  But you can’t retire and keep the hair.  I was going to say my piece.
    “You know, something’s always bothered me.  Out of a twenty year career, Elvis was only heavy for the last two or three.  If you look at the pictures of him with Nixon, he’s still lean and vital.  But everybody thinks of Fat Elvis mumbling songs, doing fake karate and bursting out of his jumpsuit when they remember him.  Fifties, and even ‘68 Comeback Elvis are a different person that doesn’t even get impersonated.  Meanwhile, Jim Morrison, who was thin for only one year of his four year career, is remembered as a sex god, the Lizard King,  no one impersonates fat bearded, vomiting on himself  bastard.  It bugs the hell out of me, why is that?”
    “How should I know?  I… Don’t… Care, I’m retired!”  That was the end of it.  Elvis turned his back to me, me, a kindred spirit, a fellow devotee, a champion of the sacred image he was so poorly preserving!  The bus came, he waited for me to get on first, obviously trying to make sure I didn’t sit next to him on the ride home. 
   
    In the service of full disclosure, I’m not really an Elvis fan although “Suspisious Minds” is a near perfect song.  I went to Graceland because I was in Memphis to call an auction, not as a pilgimage, but the Elvis/Jim Morrison duality has always bothered me.  While I’m sorely tempted to end this with an “Elvis has left the building” crack, I won’t.  The King is, in fact, dead.

  Twilight.  In the evenings, after dinner, my mother would call us out to the front porch to look at the sunset, announcing it with all the enthusiasm of a solar eclipse.  While indeed beautiful, it usually looked pretty much the same from night to night, a velvety blue sky slashed with swaths of red, purple and gold.  But that wasn’t the point.   It was the hour.  There was something special, almost dreamlike about sitting on the stoop in the waning light.  Everything warm and familiar, softened into beauty. Ugly was momentarily forgiven, plain became pretty, and pretty became wondrous.  Sometimes half light shows the potential of something, more than the just the maudlin surface illumed by an oblivious daylight.   Neighbors sitting scattered about on the private islands of their own stoops, nodding, waving or sighing a half intelligible greeting.  A friend ambling up the street to share the days events.  Nothing was ever rushed, those ten or so minutes of red, blue and gold were an eternity.  I think now that my mother just wanted us to see. She was always pointing out little details as we would walk, a gargoyle carved in a facade, the difference between two types of brick or the progress of a leaf being blowing down the street.  The ability, and desire, to Look is probably the most valuable gift I was ever given.       Twilight in the city is different than in the countryside.  In the country it is a given.  It’s always there, just another part of the daily cycle. In the city, it can pass unnoticed like a thief; if you are distracted at the wrong moment, it’s gone.  If you look at the wrong thing, make a phone call or take too much time eating dinner, it’s gone.  This can make it all the more jarring when you do see it.  Not the postcard cliche of a vast city skyline but something intimate, those few moments when garbage disappears, traffic sounds quieter and everyone looks like they’re just ambling along.  At those times when you take time to actively look, you see it and you want to announce it with all the enthusiasm of an eclipse.

’’’’

Like everybody else on earth…  Initially I will probably be reposting some things from my myspace blog, laziness combined with embaressment.  Stories, things that aren’t worth updating my site (painfully needed) and other odds ‘n sods.  Thank you for your patience.