Notes on a Misty Afternoon

My vision of hell includes a warehouse-sized building filled with electronic games that simultaneously buzz, bong, ring, dong, oink and otherwise scramble the brains of unsuspecting middle-aged gentlemen with no wish but to enjoy eternity in peace and quiet.

In this noisy hell would appear running children and pushy parents and swaggering young toughs who muscle you out of the way and girls who giggle in an off-the-scale pitch not yet identified by musicologists, and others of vague determination who lurk just beyond the range of hell’s fiery light.

I cringe to think that at life’s gloomy end I will be thrust into this calamity for an eternity due to the sins and errors that man is natural heir to. Well, maybe a few more sins and errors than man is natural heir to, but I swear to you, I didn’t mean any of them, not really.

My iniquities, however, are not the point. The point is, I see hell as a bedlam of electronic toys and the devil himself as a chomping, dim-eyed little Pac-Man who is eating his way through the brains of a generation.

Then what, you might ask, if I detest this chaos with such passion, was I doing wandering through the Playland Arcade of the Santa Monica Pier one misty afternoon? Why, having fun, of course.

Let me explain.

I have a friend named Travis who is 4 years old and who I took to the Cirque du Soleil Sunday afternoon, situated under a big top on the parking lot next to the pier.

This is no ordinary circus but an artistic experience of breathless wonder, a time of smoke and magic and elfin creatures that grin through the mist, and of gymnasts who leap and fly with the ease of Peter Pan.

“Isn’t this great!” I said to Travis.

“They don’t have lions,” he replied.

In some ways, Travis is a lot like me.

“Well,” I explained, “there are no lions because this is not that kind of circus. This is a circus of people and the beauty they create through skill and imagination. Lions belong in the wild, free and unfettered.”

“No ephelants either,” he said.

“Same goes for the ephelants,” I said.

I explained to the boy that I had paid $30 a ticket to bring him to the circus, which is no small sum to a man of my limited means, and it was his duty to give me $30 worth of pleasure watching him enjoy it.

He laughed and said “Why?” and I said because that’s just the way it is in a world where magic ends at the tent flap, lad.

Al Martinez

Travis, however, is one of those little boys who doesn’t like sitting still, and much prefers an activity that necessitates movement to one that demands almost any degree of immobility. I was that way myself once and suspect, therefore, he will end up either writing columns or robbing liquor stores, each of which requires a certain ability to hit fast and move on.

He was less impressed with the circus than with the fog that crept over the pier in mid-afternoon, wrapping the day in a mystery of its own and muting to a whisper the swish and surge of the ocean against the amber-toned sand.

Travis stood on the tide-line and challenged the surf itself as children have since time was young, racing shoreward just a skip and a laugh before the sea lapped at his heels, then spinning once more to face the puckish waves in a game that could have lasted forever.

But forever is not very long to a 4-year-old, and before the clock had a chance to tick even once into the millenium, Travis was racing up the stairs to the pier to see what magic remained on the boardwalk.

It was then, heaven help me, that he spotted the Playland Arcade. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Children are naturally drawn to chaos.

I am not good at keeping up with the ferret-like abilities of the very young to dash into a crowd and completely disappear, but I made a special effort in this case.

I feared that if I lost sight of Travis even for a moment he would be swallowed up forever in the calamitous never-never land that surrounded the Bionic Commando and Donkey Kong and the Time Pilot and Rolling Thunder and the Party Animal that screamed Rock me!

His mother would never forgive me.

Fortunately, Travis is a bright lad and quickly tired of the monotony that glues less-endowed children to those pointless machines. I myself cannot play games that require hand-eye coordination, so we left.

Well, we almost left.

At the exit to the Arcade there is a punching bag which, if one hits it hard enough, squeals, or perhaps screams would be a better word. Travis insisted I punch it, which I did, and there was no sound at all.

I explained that the machine was broken, at which point a young man gave the bag a blow that shook the pier and the damned thing screamed like a cat in heat.

“He fixed it,” Travis said with a slight smile and a tact that belies his age.

“He sure did,” I said.

I gave him a hug and we walked to the foggy sand again, where we talked of ephelants and watched the ocean eat like Pac-Man into the millenium.

DR