Scouting Locations

I've been hanging out in some interesting neighborhoods recently. Just looking around. Trying them on for size. My plan is to spend several months in one of them so I need to get the lay of the land. Find out who the neighbors are. And where the bodies are buried.

If you are going to spend time in a new place, you need to know the people. Now, it is true that people are the same everywhere. But that just means that they all participate in the seven deadly sins and attend twelve step programs as penance. They are who they are because of (and sometimes in spite of) where they live and who they admire or hate.

Most people tend to fall into three general categories: good guys, bad guys, and place fillers. The good guys usually attract your empathy (if not your sympathy). They are doing something you are interested in and their motives are usually clean (if not pure). Their actions and thoughts tend to move them in fairly direct lines and often times they don't even believe or understand that they are one of the good guys.

The bad guys can be pretty complicated. Unless they have gone completely over to the dark side, they usually think they are doing the right thing. They know they are breaking laws but, in their world, laws establish the ground rules for the game they are playing. The law is a means of choosing sides for each team. But once they've chosen sides they are usually team players and they live and play and die by the rules of their side. Their actions and thoughts can be fairly convoluted because they truly trust no one and often times they don't believe or understand that they are one of the bad guys.

The place fillers are like bit players in a movie. These guys can be happy or sad but, more often than not, they are just doing their jobs. And even though they tend to appear stereotypical, they too can be complex. Life is about trying on a series of masks. Sometimes to fool others and sometimes to delude ourselves. The place fillers are masters of the masks. As a result you can't believe everything they say but you can't discount it either. It's more of a filtering process.

A lot of the neighborhoods that I've been checking out look fairly normal on the surface. But I am scouting for certain alleys and buildings. The ones with a recent dark past. I'm looking for the part of town that makes you check the door locks as you drive through with your windows rolled up. A place where rumor and fact are just a matter of timing. Where a gunshot is never mistaken for a backfire.

So I'll be moving into a room over the diner or maybe I'll take a corner suite overlooking some intersection of places and events. Where the sodium vapor lights sizzle in the rain and the only sounds you hear are the hiss of tires on the wet pavement, the tinny music coming from a joint down the street and possibly a woman screaming in the distance... or was it the wind?

I'll be in my perch, taking down everything I see and hear each night. And in the daytime I'll walk around and see what people have to say about it. I'll try not to take sides and, hopefully, I'll answer more questions than I ask.

When I get back it's going to be with one helluva story.