I recognize myself on the face of lost children; sad children, with eyes that beg an answer to unanswerable questions: why am I here? Where are you, mother? Why did you leave me here so alone? I am two years old, four, five, ten, twelve, fifty-seven. The questions are still there reverberating through the years but now I am certain there isn't an answer; or maybe there is, but it is not what I expected.
There is no rhyme or reason for anything that happens to us except for the magical explanations we created to try to make this life bearable. Desperate to feel nothing disturbing, others of my kind invented positive thinking, and they tell me sometimes: " I like to deal with people who are positive." I just smile. "I know" I think, but say nothing in response.
It hurts feeling life to its fullest so they need all the help they can get: alcohol, drugs, sugar, bread, coffee, positivity, visualization, God.
I hear and see and read in comments throughout the fabric of social medias. The "hurting ones" professing God's power and benevolence as the Los Angeles streets fill with tents and trash and homeless people. We have so much in common with the children of the documentary " A House Made of Splinters trying to make sense of their place in the world while every wall surrounding you reminds one of how immense life is. A child needs to be socialized into the common magical narrative of the community he/she/they lives; but orphan children learn only about reality.
I sit in my office in Santa Monica and watch people come and go, so full and certain of themselves, creating their Shangri-las. Some young, some old.
I watch them and I ponder if they believe it will hold for a lifetime; the thin, brittle magic veil of delusion they wear to keep life at bay.
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