Ghostown, oakland, california, USA

on the way home...

A young girl helps her boyfriend to avoid the obnoxious eardrum tightening that happens when the BART heads closer to the center of the earth. She reaches out to him and rubs one ear canal vigorously with her right hand. Then reaches up with her left to rub the other. She then reaches up to her right ear and rubs, her left ear, rubbing. She repeats the whole process.

A sign on a fence reads, "Warning, car battery theft area." The vehicles inside the fence are all white, armored trucks. The armored trucks appear frightened. They have protected themselves a with a second layer: an elaborate barbed wire fence, complete with an extra lining on top: thorny spikes.

A lone diaper chills on the sidewalk. Disney princesses decorate the front flap. The sun has faded their once shining beauty.

The small church next to the local convenience store is blasting praise music.

The young neighbor is drinking a 40 just after noon and spewing raps.

Ghostown is alive like a forest. You have to stop and listen.

deja vu que viene

I can feel that deja vu that comes to me every March. The one that makes me remember the time I knew I would have a recurring dream about a gorgeous dragon, and then I did. I had many, many dreams of the same dragon, red with metallic specs of green and indigo, undulating quietly through clouds. I'm coming to the time when I remember that every year, one year ago from each second, is a completely different story. Every year is something completely new in these years. And I love it. I wouldn't change it.

I felt the same shift at the beginning of this year as I felt three years ago, the papers in the closet peaking out of the box, reading old thoughts that ushered me into the new. And March is upon me. It's a month where a lot of shifting happens. I think it's because it holds my parent's anniversary.

rules for grassroots postmodernists

I'm taking classes right now at a wonderful school called SIT Graduate Institute. It is located in the great, wet, green state of Vermont. Tomorrow, I plan to check out a class called "Leadership, Community and Coalition Building." Readings at this school so far have arrived much like romantic gifts from loved ones: just the right surprise at just the right time. As I left Los Angeles, I was aching to learn more about what was happening in terms of shifting the paradigm of this strange experiment we call THE United States of America. Each time I read, I receive more pieces to the puzzle of different players around the "two-thirds" of the world who are every day trying hard to maintain their identity and to maintain control of their own ability to provide for themselves with the food they make and their own creations.

My reading for the class tonight brought me to an old book that many have read before me: Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky. What a gem of a book! So many of the problems it touches on from its era of the 1970s still exist today! But, it's so sad that the book speaks to a whole generation whose flame has died out, who have given in to the idea that they need loads of money to survive in their old age instead of their surrounding community. The book in the first chapter seeks to remind "radicals" that they should not fall prey to pointless statements or simply swearing at the people at which they are angry, because that gets them nowhere. True engagement comes with genuine talks that reach to the heart of people.

Coupled with Rules for Radicals, we are reading Grassroots Postmodernism, which focuses on more current examples of people around the world trying to survive beneath the forces of something strangely called the "free market." What is this "free" market and where can I find it? This book really deconstructs even idea I learned last semester like the need for "progress," the idea of "human rights" (i.e. are we just using the idea to say-- oh look, your human rights are taken care of basically, so we've done our duty), and "minorities." Because, does progress mean that all peoples will continue to consume materials that we don't recycle until the earth is devastated? Do human rights mean that as long as a person has AN education that everything is ok? What if their educations shuffle them back into living situations where their health is in jeopardy? We need to elaborate and say what is the end of the means called "human rights." Why are minorities called that when they are actually in the majority around the world and when they will soon no longer be a minority in the USofA? These are questions we need to be discussing face to face and not just in bloglandia. But I hope this writing will cause you to talk.

I'm happy to get this blog going. I hope to post here and there. Especially about what I am learning and news related to the above themes.

the toy district

I was looking at one of my favorite websites today called Polar Inertia Journal, a photographic essay journal with esoteric photos of rare places. One of the essays was on the toy district in Los Angeles, which I happened to spend an entire day exploring once as I was filming for a man working on a Transformers Fans documentary.
James Bucknam, the writer/photographer of the photo essay, sees in the toy district a quiet stillness and a place of peace. He remarks on its pureness, its spatial moments, and its chaos and randomness. He shows a different side of the toy district as literally no toy nor anything donning a brilliant color appears in his photos save some siding on a truck and some shooting targets. The chaos and overwhelming mixture of plastic and cheap Chinese imports never make a debut in his Polaroids. He chooses to photograph bare walls and empty streets. I am wondering why this is.

Because in his last explanatory paragraph,

the essayist has this to say,

"The Toy District is a vivid case study into LA’s psyche and social construct. It is a collective of spatial moments with no emphasis on the whole, or the end result. It forces you to recognize that Los Angeles, in contemporary reality, is a vast rural wasteland of human confusion. LA is a collection of juvenile cities and districts, and we have much to learn."
(James Bucknam, polar inertia journal.)

The spatial moments he portrays through his photography ceaselessly reflect a bare wasteland where nothing resembling toys or selling exists. But the 'human confusion' and the 'collection of juvenile cities', where are they? To encounter the juvenile and the confusion which is actually just people trying to live better, one must cross to the other side of the stucco wall, underneath the foggy, plastic tarps, inside the brushed metal doors. There you will find humans and the players of the confusion. Their faces and movements are the psyche and the social construct. I think a look into their lives would better serve an analysis of the area. Or at least to place them next to the bare cement. We are constantly being thrown at the cement or across it, like marbles across asphalt.

I resonate with the observation of the lack of emphasis on the whole. When I visited the toy district, rain came from a grey sky off and on all day. We were cold and afraid of the camera getting wet at all times. And we were constantly on the move, hopping around chunky cement and then pouring into lopsided plastic aisles in search of just the right toy... is that it? No that's a fake... that one? nope. It was an endless search for a recognizable object in lakes upon seas of treasures.

Though the stores are connected, much like most shopping malls, it's every store for itself, so owners must employ tactics to entice you into the store. They are hoping that you will find that one recognizable object as well and that it would be at their stand. Though perhaps the people in the stalls have relationships, many buyers sail through from another world, like spiderwebs being blown together by the same breeze.

But this maze of colors is created in such a small space because that is what has been given. Los Angeles, yes, does have a lot to learn, but we have a lot to learn from it. Is it only the wind and the internet that wraps up our cobwebs and will we always continue to take pictures of blank walls?