Tonight Dominick and I went to a movie. We lasted through the first twenty minutes or so of Quarantine, a remake of a movie I've never seen. Whether or not that makes any difference, I'll never know.
I don't know which of us damned he movie more. Dominick said it reminded him of The Blair Witch Project, but wasn't as good. I replied that I felt like I was watching The Exorcist without the charm.
Because it was made in a psedo-documentary style, I can see the connection to Blair Witch. On the other hand, the sheer grotesqueness of some of the footage does recall The Exorcist. The only problems are that the story isn't as compelling and the acting isn't anywhere near as good in Quarantine.
Anyway, getting out of there gave us an excuse to wander a bit and laugh together. We were passing time and neither of us wanted to go home. So he drove up 36th Street into the upper part of Astoria. It looked like someone was staging a miniature version of the San Gennaro festival, complete with greasy sausage and pepper sandwiches and zeppole.
Since we both know better than to connect anything in a "festival" like that with our heritage, Dominick and I didn't eat any of the food or partake in any of the arcade games. The still air grew colder under not-quite-silver three-quarter moon, so we didn't want to walk outside. Instead, we ducked into the church for a few minutes.
Carvings that looked like gargoyles adorned each end of each pew. The bulbs on the string of lights outside the stained glass window created the kind of image Van Gogh might've if he were simply melancholy among people who tried to cheer him up.
But it was enough to spark my imagination: I practically floated down the aisle seperating two rows of pews in a long, billowy dress to meet him on the altar. Somehow, as non-religious as each of us are, we cannot imagine doing it any other way, in any other institution. At least, Dominick tells me he feels that way.
18 October 2008
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