Kansas City-a photo essay

This was going to be a photo essay. I took pictures on the way from the seat in the metro, the window of a plane and the windshield of a car. Somewhere along the line I lost the camera. It had gone dead anyway and was no longer of use to me. I am irresponsible about things like cameras. I lose them. I lose everything.

The first picture:

On the metro at 6 AM, I take a picture of the sun, looking like an orange ball of fire rising up between the telephone lines. When I'm riding on the metro, I can never decide if the collection of wires, bricks, graffiti and burned out buildings are hideously ugly or transiently beautiful, a sort of monument to human failure that is almost touching. On the way, behind the back of a large dilapidated warehouse is a large plastic play set, tucked behind another two story building that is either apartments or abandoned. Who put that playground set there in the middle of this dirty city? What were they hoping to do?

Normally when I travel I like to look presentable. On that day, I looked like someone who had been run through the wash on the hot cycle for an hour. I barely remember the airport, the people. We were all asleep on the plane ride. Every one of us. Who knows if any of us were flying? One hopes that pilot at least was awake, keeping alive the dream of the living. I fear planes. I hope if I ever crash that I'm sleeping like a baby. I don't remember my dreams. In them, I suspect that I have learned to fly.

The second picture:

I take a picture out the window, trying to capture the strangeness of being above the tops of clouds. Somehow, I wait too long and as the plane descends I get a picture of us inside the cloud, which turns out to look like nothing. Why aren't we amazed by flight? I suppose a plane is just too much like a van. I suspect that's why people fly small planes, to feel a bit more like Icarus. Later, I take a picture of the topography around Kansas City, the long beige strip that signifies a freeway. From up on high, the land makes a different kind of sense than it does from below, you can see how everything is just grids. You can understand how from that height, even an all loving God could have conceived of a flood. It's just a collection of rises and depressions.

At the rental car place a nice lady named Andrea recommends several neighborhoods, and we exchange some banter about whether I want the insurance or the upgrade. She says, "I can tell you want too." And she was right. I did want to say yes to an SUV, but I didn't. I told her instead about the bachelor party. She said, "Which one of you is from Kansas City?" "None of us," I told her and she looked back at me like I was crazy. Perhaps that should have been a sign.

The third picture

I don't know if it's a good idea to take pictures while you're driving. I do know that it's hard to hold the camera steady. Luckily, I learned from my father-in-law just to hold it steady against the wheel. I take pictures of the Kansas City skyline, of oncoming traffic, of a train, nestled in the foreground, the only mode of transportation that I felt like I was missing. The airport in Kansas City is forty five minutes from the actual downtown, though drive past another, downtown airport, that makes you feel like you could have done better, though you just know the flights out of there cost thousands of dollars.

The skyline is impressive, though my directions take me right past it. I've heard wonderful things about the BBQ, but when you've slept four hours all you care about is finding a place to sleep. I drove down Main Street, waiting for things to get cute. You see signs that say historic, and then point in a different direction, and you just know cute things are happening in historic Westport. You know that people are getting tattoos and making artisan beers and selling jewelry and eating at pubs. Somewhere, there has got to be a reference to the Dust Bowl.

I eventually arrive in a neighborhood with nice, big houses, of the sort that you figure people own in a place like Kansas City because you can actually afford to. The house we're staying in has tomato plants and other veggies growing in the planter box. Before I even step in the door I tell the owner that he has a beautiful home, though, I haven't really seen it. It seemed like a good guess though I immediately regretted the stupidity of the remark. Sadly, it turns out he's cleaning the house, so I'll be unable to get a badly needed second nap of the day.

I program the old GPS and head down to a local park. I take my camera, now lost, and a back pack to the park to continue my photo essay. The fourth photo was going to be of that is massive tree, the sort with nob like arms and offshoots that are just begging to be climbed. Sadly, the camera, now gone, is out of batteries. This was the end of my photo essay at Kansas City. I'm at Loose or Loop or something of that nature park, watching everyone jog around on this ninety degree weather looking kind of miserable doing it. I try and sleep underneath the tree with a backpack as my pillow, but it turns out that I would never cut it as a homeless person, because I'm allergic to grass, and hardship, and beards.

I'm forced to walk back to the car to take a hot nap. The car is roughly 115 degrees, but I lean the seat all the way back. Sadly, people keep walking by, as I'm keeping the windows down to keep down the heat, and I keep popping up when I hear them and scaring the shi- out of them, as they scare me. Eventually I move to the back of the car and get a short nap in, though I also occasionally pop up when I hear voices, and in my current state I overhear someone saying, "Some of them are in the area," and I assume they mean cops because they think I'm just some crazy person sleeping in a car playing a game of peek a boo.

At one, a hot, sweaty mess, I drive into the Kansas City neighborhoods.