Q

During the past 24 hours, movements and environments have gained a sharper distinction from my awareness. This has come from a breakneck shift. Jetlag disorientation.

I've noted:

Debris from crumbling buildings. Remnants of disappearing graffiti. Trace of repainted walls. Loose telephone wires. A helicopter that hovers still overhead, making its overbearing presence known to all below for 45 minutes. Dust and grime riddle the sidewalk. Wounded lug their belongings and drag their limbs across the rubble and cracked streets. Crushed cigarette packets and beer cans, empty artillery from a battle that's been waged carefully and gradually in war zones of Watts, East Los Angeles, Compton, South Central, and other communities. Glass shards and needles.

This occurs while everyone sleeps. During Spring, the chemical agent known as smog holds still, well into the Winter: the only difference is in visibility. This is simply one among many. 

Children of the ruins run around deserted landscapes; something feels wrong. Everyone is complacent. Conspiracy of silence. Everyone accustomed to everything. Desensitized. Numbified. Despiritualized. Someone should wage a battle for their conscious; Someone should wage a battle for mine; the only revolution. Que Viva...que...queue..quetza. Que que? 

Right outside of the L.A. County Jail on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue an ex-POW, a veterano, waits for the bus in his post-war uniform. He dons a pair of loc shades, perhaps from having seen too much and not enough, and he holds his head high and back, as though he has regained a sense of confidence and memory that bear down on his laid back strut. Leaning sideways, he lights a cigarette. On the back of his palm, the face of the sun sticks out its tongue, perhaps a reminder from a movida while in the pinta. He's full of cool and confidence. He's headed back home. He's headed to the Eastside. He's headed to Aztlan.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.”