A Whooshing Sound.

 

     You look like your anger; face pressed against the windshield of your car, flying through the intersection in an utterly absurd state of motion; your body hugging the steering wheel, but it is your expression that will remain. 

     Things are not well in the city of angels, Los Angeles, California; now an overmarked third world country where the locals are rude, inexplicably arrogant and proud, strangely unaware of the poverty lining up the sidewalks. Perhaps it is the reason they demand that their movie stars show up on television perky and happy. Always.

     The postcard for the anger is you, and I ask myself if I would have felt different if you were a good looking girl but the memory of the speed in which you passed by me brings me back to the reality of you condition: you are as ugly inside as outside, lacking any empathy to your fellow bystanders as you hurled your 3 tons object a foot away from each and everyone of them. 

     Your face registers with me as the second ugliest face I've seen in my lifetime; the first being of a mother sadistically mocking her own daughter. Faces one can't forget but ought to try; so I search my memory bank for the face of my mother and find nothing but one scene that never fades: 

I'm sitting on a bench. You are tying my shoes. I, too young to understand the importance of that moment, didn't memorized your face; instead I look down at my shoes.

     One bunny ear. Two bunny ears. Cheeky to cheeky now. Embrace. Zig and zag. Pull it apart until I feel the pressure on my little feet and hear the sound of the leather coming together. A whooshing sound. 

A sound film editors know so well: : "Gimme a whooshing sound." ask producers worldwide. I know why. I know the feeling they are after. 

In each encounter with the sad, the angry, and the ugly, I crave it more and more.

The boy and the barista

from the series LA NIGHTS | tab above |

     

Los Angeles, 07.01.2021                                                         

Day 1

     Inside a landmark café in the city of Los Angeles enters a boy; the word boy brings back many feelings when spoken out loud. Boy. You can go back to the first days of school and remember writing the three letters that encompasses an entire life: brothers, sisters, mother, father, grandparents, friends, neighbors. An entire community surrounds this being.

     At his early stage of life, hopefully, one is busy with being a kid: playing, attending elementary school, falling in love for the very first time. Boy and Girl, the very reason we exist lies in the romantic notion of these two nouns.

     This particular boy is nameless; one of thousands that wander the city, while, the city in question, Los Angeles, now asks what to do with them all. This particular boy is tall, has curly hair, a goatee and is as handsome as the young stars Hollywood sell to us as the new face to watch. He carries a blanket; filthy. He takes three steps into the store and looks around; turns on his heel, opens the door and tosses the blanket outside, before walking to a barista and ordering: " Two glasses of water, please. No ice."

     The young girl does not flinch, which makes me think that this has happen before and she is used to it. She treats him as well as any of her other customers, probably feeling a sense of accomplishment, because this might be the only humane interaction he will have all day. This café has a reputation for training their employees extremely well and if dealing with homeless was part of her training program she has not forgotten the lesson. 

     He does not engage with her in any way; doesn't look at her in the eyes, doesn't talk to her at all. His eyes are distant somewhere. I've seen this gaze before since starting this assignment. Some of the homeless I encountered have mastered it. Models have the same gaze; I will venture a guess that, for the very same reason.

     I have an untouched cappuccino in my hand; I ask if he would feel offended If I gave it to him. He does not look at me. He does not answer me. He does not acknowledge my question in any way. I am not such a hopeless romantic that I don't understand where I am; the very next thing I do has to be the right thing not to offend this kid in any way. I look down, avoiding looking at him and turn away. The barista is looking straight at me and tells me softly that, " he just wants his water." confirming with the pronoun "his" that she has served him before. He has a friend in the city, at this café. I make a mental note of this and understand that at some point I ought to sit down and investigate what does that mean: this relationship.

     She is casual about the whole thing; pleasant and yet I do not see any indication that she is following any protocol of engagement. She deals with it as if this is the most natural thing in the world; a young good looking boy, homeless, who has enough awareness to toss his filthy blanket outside the store before ordering a couple of glasses of water. His demeanor is the same as the girl by the bridge. You don't care for me, so I don't care for you. I deny you and your attention regardless of your intention.

     The interaction had me thinking about the properness of offering him anything, after all, I have never approached anyone in the store and offered to pay for their coffee. My action reminded me of Madonna and the late, unbelievably misguided, Michael Jackson, who visited the country I was born, Brasil, and asked to tour the favelas. As if poor people were an attraction they schedule during their visit, after they had become bored with their other activities.  

     I wonder if this boy cared enough to give me a second thought. I wonder if I ruined his perfect day. A beautiful barista who treats him as a human being and a clueless writer who treats him as a homeless. The road to hell is paved by good intentions. I wonder if my motive, my reason, my failed attempt at humanity registered with him at all. My guess and hope is that it doesn't. We gave up on him. He gave up on us. Just another day in downtown L.A.

     When you visit downtown L.A. try asking for direction to a passerby,  your fellow human being, Nine out of ten times they will ignore you completely as if you don't exist. Yesterday, I saw someone in front of a couple asking for directions and they went around that person in a synchronized movement, as if they had agreed that  'we will venture outside our pristine, meticulously manicured expensive building, in the middle of this mess, but we will remain inside our little bubble."

     Today, a tall gentleman gave me directions, so I engaged him: " why your fellow Angelinos don't like giving directions?"  He smiled. " They get bombarded daily with beggars so they got used to doing this." So I put it into context: " Even for people that are obviously not homeless?" " It is easier to just avoid everyone." he said.

     I had to smile at that; my mask prevented him from seeing it. I thought with meus botões, "this must be a new clause added to our social contract."

     I am not signing it!

Missing Freddy tonight...

 

| Love of My Life  |

A Brick...

Alone,

you get to decide

where a brick goes:

you can put it here

you can put it there.

In your hands,

a brick is free

to be anything or nothing.

A poet,

from the baltic sea,

found grandiose desires

in each brick he saw,

and when he parted this life,

he had not a brick to show;

yet his structures

will outlast us all.

If you have

all that you soul desires

you can place a brick

behind your doors,

to prevent someone

from taking your possessions.

I wish

that bricks were free

to be anything it desires,

God,

made it eternal,                                                                                                       

and cursed man with free will 

and infinite crossroads

with no undergrowth

only plenitude.

With so many roads ahead,

man despairs,

and in doubt,

grabs a brick

and set his roots 

here, there,

anywhere:

creates a village, meets a girl

makes other man

to sacrifice for.

Nothing makes a man prouder

than sacrificing for a new generation:

among all the species,

man is the only one

that can exude heroism

while in full retreat.

The bible

talks about man

but it says nothing about bricks:

man was created

at God’s own image;

but man perishes

in a well of uncertainty,

bricks are everywhere:

solid, determined, eternal.

At the end of his life  

every man should have nothing but a brick

to leave behind,

somewhere,

for a child to find.