r u LA? The Grove

Its a beautiful night tonite in Los angeles. Probably like many other nights that I'm never made aware of because I'm too involved in some imaginary pre-apocalyptic surreality. 

The Grove on 3rd & Fairfax is one of the many improvements to this fair-fare city and stands extraordinarily chic even by this Montrealers standards. An outstanding outdoor mall with the best shops and restaurants in town.

Even the cover band is decent. They just finished playing that song, " STOP , hey whats that sound , everybody look whats going down".....and I can't help but wonder. What IS going down?

I am gripped with a sense of uneasiness amidst all the wealth. So much money.

All these people shopping, spending, enjoying themselves . A little grandma stops a dozen yards away from me to do the shimmy shake to "Brown-eyed Girl" and it makes me smile.

But the uneasy feeling has not left me. I thought of all the countries where people are literally dying in the streets from hunger and disease. Places where people are killing each other and no one is safe... the outskirts of Los Angeles....

Somehow none of what is before me seems real. Everyone is so relaxed or is it oblivious? Only half an hour away where I live in Downtown LA people are eating and shitting on the streets, begging for their next dose of heroin, crippled by mental illness and emotional death. How can these two worlds live side by side so close to each other and so impossibly separate. This is what the soldiers are fighting for.

The American way of life, so we can luxuriate in thousands of variations of yogurt flavors and handbags. I wonder if anyone here is truly happy. I wonder if I am.

Tears well up and this surge of emotion burns me in awareness of the imbalance. 

Why is it that we can make million dollar movies and yet there are grandmothers on the street? Does it not bother anyone as deeply as it bothers me? What is it that keeps humans so cold from one another. When I was younger and harder and had built a sullen shell over my vulnerability I never gave the drunks and homeless people a second look. 

Now that I'm human I feel so much it overwhelms me.

Its not just selfish sorrow , it is truly this inability to understand satisfaction when there is so much that begs for attention.

If I could raise 30 million dollars would I make a movie or make this life one? 

Life is the movie and the art direction sucks. And the extras are not getting fed properly. 

Theres a sense of impending doom that I'm facing for the millionth time that I cannot seem to come to terms with.

Is this it? Is all this capitalism and indulgence and luxury normal and I've been a starving soldier in a war of my own making or is it indeed possible that , like its advertising, its too good to be true. Someone is paying for all this. ...we are,with our freedom.

The bling that comes from the diamond mines that black slaves literally have their hands cut off for trying to steal as a quick fix to their condition. People lead lives of slavery for that bling around yr neck that ironically and blatantly decries the rise from the ghetto.

And all those cows and animals that we eat that give their lives for our thoughtless consumption, that is making us fat and sick and stupid..... How can this keep going on without some kind of repurcussion. The US alone makes up 25%of the entire world waste. 

Is it worth it? Do we really need all those bad movies, disposable items, fat mindlessness? 

I still hear intelligent people saying things like...we have to dumb it down for the masses. When truly the opposite is what is necessary.

How many people here are truly happy I wonder? What is the solution?

Is it a problem? There is a beautiful blue sky with fluffy everchanging clouds that speak the mysteries of the universe to ones heart if anyone is looking. Is anyone looking? 

I feel privileged to have starved and hurt and slept on the streets.

To know happiness in the green grass. Yes, I'm a simpleton or do I really just have the best taste? Will that day come? When we're all just living in oblivion following thru with our shopping and errands and all the things we have to do to put food on the table and it it will come.... Some bomb will drop out of the sky and everything will be chaos and confusion and survival. The very earth will rise up against us and slaughter us the same way we exterminate roaches in a ghetto apartment.

We are everything in front of us, around us and in us. Eveything we do and say is all that we are. O Goddess help us, why have we gone so far from the Garden...is it only to attain it again with consciousness. I can't do it. I won't do. I have enuff stuff.

This oblivion and indulgence that everyone chooses as a tourniquet to their vulnerability could so easily be replaced by conscious living. Face the doom , face the problem face the repurcussions...and make better choices. We ARE the machine. theres no point in raging against it. Just stop. Feel more / Buy less.

The world is a playground we were meant to be one with, not something to deplete.

It takes so little effort to make change...just constancy, vigilance, truth. It's fun!

I believe in America and in people and the world. The potential is there. (this was a few years ago...sorry)

Will I be fooled ? Is mans self destruction and corruption deeper than I can imagine?

Two girls just sat next to me with their hotdogs in styrofoam containers beautifully oblivious. Could I blame them?

No, do I know better? yes....will it make a difference? Who knows....I want a hot dog too made out of protein soy plant.

Is that what life is all about? The right to be happy without worry or a care? Complete faith in the perfection of the moment in all things. And I can't bear the synchronicity and smile at the song now playing. The soundtrack of my life right now is Bob Dylans 'Rolling Stone'. 

Ironic and personal and relevant.

I used to spend endless nights wondering, who am I what am , am I LA? is it the place for me? Or like so many others, do I just not know better.

Damn good weather tho

How about you?

r u LA ?

the world is inside me.

Kali