Finally saw Taxi Driver.
YES I've made it to almost 30 years old without watching it. I DIDN'T watch it when I should have when I was a teenager, and desensitized to blood and guts and then I just never got around to it. Then tonight I was babysitting, and therefore knitting in front of the tv and checking out the list of "free" on-demand movies (which is a like a tiny, crummy, depressing video store. I can't remember most of the 100 or so movies there were, but The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Evil Dead 2, Leonard Cohen (A biography?) stuck in my mind. I stopped when I got to Taxi Driver, because, I thought, "When else will I sit down and watch Taxi Driver?" It was, of course, brilliant and awful, but I felt a little ashamed with all that cussing and assorted nastiness on the screen with a sweet little girl asleep upstairs.
I was babysitting for someone who lives in the Navy housing in the middle of a huge park near here. I felt a little creeped out driving through the unlit park at midnight, then once I got out, got lost in the suburb that surrounds the park. (Comically I got lost because I was behind someone. I thought I was going the right way, but the streets were little and quiet and I became unsure. As soon as I did, it occurred to me that if I were not on the arterial, then I was just following this car around a quiet neighborhood at night and probably making them nervous. This convinced me to NOT pull over to make them possibly feel better, which if FUCKED UP I know. As I pulled onto 15th at Dravus, there was a guy face down in the road who had obviously just fallen out of his wheel chair. I pulled over and helped him into his chair... and helped him cross the street. He was very drunk, and kept trying to tell me this over and over again but failing. I got him underway and went and sat in my car in an empty parking lot for a minute. I'd offered to call 911, but he'd told me not to(because he was drunk) but I was pretty worried for him since he was in a really busy place with people whipping around corners and very hight curbs... right before I saw him, I saw a dude totally blow through a red light.
In my head, Travis, the taxi driver was pissing and moaning about all the scum and trash and garbage in the street and scowling at the poor guy (Did I mention he was wearing only one shoe) and my favorite meditation teacher was telling me that nothing was wrong, that I just needed to see what is without judging it, and my yoga teachers were all telling me to do no harm. (?!) The bitter, scarred coworkers I had in the shelters told me I knew better than that guy about how to keep him safe, and the better ones told me that he deserves to make his own choices and I had no right to intervene and betray his privacy. Finally, exhausted and confused I stopped thinking and called. I took the easy way out. It's interesting to think about the things that are automatic for a person. Because of one job that I had, calling 911 is just as comfortable and mindless as moving a child's glass of juice away from the table's edge, blessing someone when they sneeze. Just automatic, easy. (The meditation teacher's got a lot to say about that, I bet.)
After I talked with the dispatcher I made a small loop, but I didn't see the guy. I felt dumb, because so many of the people I knew who wandered around this city at night in all kinds of vulnerable, loaded, disabled states were usually, stunningly fine. I felt a little better that he was gone, that he was right to tell me not to call, and my call only made me feel better and didn't do anything for him.
Then I came home and turned on some bright lights and drank some orange juice to cheer me up. It's almost working now.
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