Rio de Dios

Joy Ride (2)

93 Joy Ride (2) Both doors off, rotors warming up, cameras set. Mickey Mouse headphones pinch ears. Then no soundtrack, no bon voyage from the crowd, just some acronyms with the tower and then we do not start flying it is just that the ground falls away, body as halo, glass bubble rising through ceilings of light. Hover in place while pilot remembers to put on his seatbelt, chastised by the tower because they could see it dangling free out the open side as we held steady, fifty feet up. Higher and north now as horizon swings like a compass bubble, banking past the Queen Mary to pull straight up the main channel, upstream from tide and harbor as the river bottom thins out into broad green algae patterns, aVersailles of moss, against which little exploding flocks of birds catch the light, drop into shadow, reignite five feet higher. Reference points dissolve trying to tell the gulls from the trash, is that somebody’s sleeping head or is it a pirate’s spilled spray of pearls. Eyes burn; moss is gorgeous plush. Cross wires dance in Santa Anas and slanted light.A trailer park is laid out in a concentric circle, Stonehenge doublewides, all worshipping Rec Hall center point. Open cockpit: don’t drop anything.We pivot in place as I change film and try to find the trick to stay lucid, sober, to be science, to be that which observes, memorizes, writes, names, counts. Counting ibis in a patterned flock, 94 counting the number of red cars crossing a bridge like jaunty bugs, counting the different layers of river water, deeper medial channel scored straight down the centerline, dissection point to divide the quadrants of the torso. Air is layers of hot, cold, hot, and the wind keeps catching in my mouthpiece, burns the intercom with afterburner static until the pilot turns me off. Leaning out to shoot, slipstream velocity pushes back my face into cartoon grimace.Wind lifts my camera straps off my head, tangles them in the headphone wires, so I wrap them around my fists like boxing tape.Traffic and trains right angle across the anonymous river, the only space with no billboards. Clear view of hulky, corrugated mountains, clusters of downtown high-rises scuffling around like kids nervous in a new school, afraid to look in the eyes of the barrios hemmed up on all sides. Lozenges of swimming pools start appearing near Glendale, run all the way to Chatsworth, lagoon blue and blister perfect. A magnolia tree blossoms in points of white fire. Palm trees burn from below as the first sodium vapor lamps switch on. False-fronted house roofs: red tile up to the streetside peak then flat grey tarpaper. Blinking headlights of LAPD response car, radio traffic on the headset, our helicopter handed off from control to control, freeways open in one direction, slow in another. Crossing Griffith Park to detour to the Hollywood Sign and back, flushing two brush-brown mule deer. Paths and trails through the chaparral rush into view, drop away, 95 too slow to keep up. Shutters in synch at a thousandth of a second, shoot the sign then turn around back to the grid lines of the river, back to Spearmint Rhino billboards, container trucks parking, railroad tracks laid out like wiring blueprints, small strands uniting into thicker bundles. Changing film again, pilot trying to hold my side steady downwind, like a bigger horse trying to protect a smaller one in a snowy wind.The river is less lush from the air, more constrained,its willows and feeder storm drains looking trivial,almost frivolous amongT-square commerce.In Atwater I think I can see a house I used to live in, a bar, then a market, then can see roller-bladers, can see tarp villages sprawling inside a palisade of arundo cane. Golden light of the hills, not from the west but lit from within,rows of newly framed houses,more swimming pools backed right up to the edge of the river. If we had planned it differently the river here could have been Malibu, riverfront property looking out over green water and punt docks, Meg Ryan seen walking a Pomeranian past that new place that is so popular for brunch. Maybe we would rather have the homeless. Now it is furniture factories and parking for the Metro line.Houses,streets,schools—are people so...