by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Jorge Longarón
I got into it on an Instagram post. I sure did! It was a painting of feminist art, older white women galvanting naked in their natural pubic hair. One thing about me, I have a proclivity to speak my mind and amuse.
What if someone said that about black women?!
Your opinion of this piece is cringey as hell!
When I visit relatives in Detroit, the women are always on the move with the doing. The men sit together and talk shit over football until a plate is brought to them. There's love and devotion there, but such routine has been that way for generations. If we didn't stand by our man ( abuser, cheater, secret baby daddy, preacher providerman ) a woman was a kind of race traitor. Even with black girl magic and meeting ourselves through history, judgement against us outliers yet remains. I still get the snippet side-eye because I'm an unmarried, childless, unrepentant harlot. Relationships with white dudes and tattoos?! I must be in league with the devil.
Here's a black secret: If I did marry a rich white dude that helped with everyone's bills and took us on an all-inclusive bubble cruise, I'd sure be blessed and highly favored then. Nothing breaks down barriers to the old school like a strong FICO score.
The way y’all dragging Jada…relationships are complicated and no one truly knows what’s going on besides the couple’s themselves. This ain’t new, and if you look hard enough there are folks in your same family doing something similar or folks silently trying to figure it out watching your words.
Miss Lady didn't communicate what she was doing, but wants me to backtrack on her entries? This is me pulling a pin from a grenade with my mouth. The passive-aggressive tone in my head sounds like a cartoon villain. I choose to have compassion for this person because she works remotely in Sacramento, an unfortunate part of California.
The only water there is the delta or down by the river - a playground for pro-Trump yahoos who are not my people.
On IG, a person went all PETA advocate over a hamster dressed like Strawberry Shortcake in tiny crocs, eating corn kernels arranged on a toothpick like a skewer. It was really cute, but the toothpick skewer stressed PETA out. This was an irresponsible prop because hamster could stab herself in the face!
Me: You're being a hater! Clearly this hamster is no rookie at eating corn from a toothpick. She's legit!
' Oh, kids are doing a Tik Tok challenge and swallow them. They've been stealing laundry pods.'
Ever since that class, I'm cautious of the messaging. This is why I avoid Twitter death X and Tik Tok. I try to maintain some degree of objectivity and self-awareness at all times, even if I'm talking shit over white feminist art and hamsters. I always take time to read - books, articles, history, and the stars. Even in the city, with all its bustle and noise, I get struck by a flock of pigeons flying in formation. A beautiful sight in a single moment.
Still, what is joy if someone isn't out there making wombat and baby goat videos? There's a goat pen around the corner from my place, adjacent to a house. A lady lives there who dresses like Anne of Green Gables at the farmer's market. Who she is and how she ended up in West Oakland with goats will always be a mystery to me, but I appreciate her for having them around.
The actors all play it well, but it was too vanilla elite for me. I like dark matter and romantic outlier stories. A redemption story of the American 1% not so much. I couldn't take more of The Morning Show after 1.5 episodes.
Now my everyday life is fairly routine. I used to be a for real rebel and a vanguard. I was stylish! Then I got older and tired from all the rebelling and vaguarding. I'm less vivid and more introspective now.
Our generation get down like that. We grew up on sunshine, death cults, and slasher films. An era of shamans, rock, and orgy-driven disco. If the 1960s were a mod hot pink, the 1970s were like yellow-gold to Blue Oyster Cult and Parliament.
We get into discussions around gore and surgeries. Who made up all those grisly Dahmer and Manson jokes? Manson was the boogeyman of our childhood, then it was Jim Jones. To anyone who'll listen, I'll go into detail about my fibroids and the dope laparoscopic technology used to extract my invaded uterus. I share my scars that look like entry points from alien probes. I'm quite proud of those scars.
I was on opioids for several days for first time in my life. The high was nice but made me too lucid and wanting more. Nope. I had the same response to crack, which I tried when I was about 19. At the time, my goal was to stay high, not run around in circles trying to get high again. I was too lazy for all that.
' We have a problem. This life form is indestructible. It can resist any microbe on earth. It just absorbs it and becomes naturally immune to it. '
' But can we kill it with fire?!'
The filmmakers, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, used custom made cameras to go into the human body during exams and surgeries. My French is basic, so I need to find a version with subtitles. This is a tool I use to learn language - through sound and subtitles. I'm fascinated with the sound of language.
I find ideas and art outside of the US resonate with me. I'm interested in clues to the world. That's why I travel as a kind of life meditation. One thing I plan to do is go to Tibet and do that walk-pray thing for awhile. Theoretically I could do that anywhere, but I'm talkin Tibet where XingXing lives. I don't follow babes or celebrities on IG. I follow animals.
As the population of the Bay changed, the food got bigger and messier. It's as if cultures collided through frat boy chefs on indica. Simple, savory food was out - gargantuan wraps, burgers, and burritos drooling with extra things that you could customize were in. Menus became overwhelming to me. People stopped cooking and started buying - online this and delivery that. I'm such a square, I still go to the market and cook, and not through an app.
I once got caught between the youth and the cops in a high-speed chase through downtown Oakland. The coppers were in pursuit of my dream car, a Dodge Challenger, that went right into traffic. The driver bobbed and weaved around cars stopped at a red light. Then he went up on the median and came towards me where I was stopped at the next. I made an evasive maneuver I learned from action films. I swung into the left turn lane to get out of their way. When I looked in my rearview, they were coming right at me.
' I'm not particularly interested in images of white women, but cool. American feminist art is so tired. '
One laugh. Then the hecklers went in.
Your opinion of this piece is cringey as hell!
Cringey. Well, that was a clue that I was dealing with younger people who are humorless and lack context to the past. Let's go on a healing journey together, shall we?
Imagine being a black or brown girl and growing up in CA surrounded by that. We weren't represented in teen films, art, or fashion. So, no I'm not particularly interested in such imagery, but the composition is cool.
Well, if you had just explained the why...
Bitch, what why? I have an opinion based on my experience and knowledge of art history. I'm not trying to get on the correct party train with everyone else. It is a brave thing to be and accept oneself. The painting may be radical as it represents the status quo, but not to women of color.
I'm fascinated with trainwrecks - particularly in myself and the oddities of popular culture. I read about a performance artist who photographed herself face down, body splayed and twisted in the dirt, on broken glass, garbage, in abandoned buildings, and public spaces. For her art, she suffered gashes, eye, and skin infections.
Now that's a brave bitch.
Even an autonomous artist can be seduced by wealth and celebrity. This happened to M.I.A and Grimes, artists who are now exiled from pop art into the realm of scorned women with squabbles and children. Someone is always snooping on the woman with squabbles, the modern version of a Hester Pryn. Where are the emotional post-rants of scorned men? I know they exist. The time has come for man tears, primary custody, and indignation. Men's rights now is one of my favorite 21st century comedic terms. A bag of dicks is another. Every cat in the G.O.P. is a bag of dicks on the same shit.
When seperation or infidelity hit a black woman - damn. The critique and vitriol can be intense. Jada is getting dragged as a cheater and emasculating, polyamorous witch. She and Will have been secretly separated for years and she had a relationship with a younger man. Don't we just?! I came across a meme of Will that said Hancuck.
The interwebs can be like black Twitter church. Cold blooded!
An artist I interviewed during the pandemic, Tameika Brice, has been the only sister I've heard speak up in Jada's defense. In defense of us all, really.
In the digital age, everything is trash, potentially dangerous, and impermanent. Social media is easier to engage with than life. We can control the mechanism of connection without actually having one, hiding out through the internet. I always say it doesn't hurt my feelings if I'm unfriended. It's all a compelling, sometimes entertaining illusion; like quantum theory. A piece of matter that is everywhere, all at once. We believe it's real because we engage with it. If we didn't, social wouldn't exist. We are the product and the consumer at the same time.
The hater has become a bit of a legend; not as an individual, but more like an archetype. There are lots of platitudes and self-affirmations inspiring us to go out and slay, push forward, and be flawless in the face of mean strangers. I think this is a generational thing. Gen X don't really care what anyone thinks. But younger generations are serious with the irrational individualism.
Irrational individualism is why we hate, envy, and compete. It's why we endure our jobs in a constant state of self-doubt and low-key anxiety. Micro battles of wills over non-communication in an email.
Correct. We need that data from you. Please tell me when it's done.
The only water there is the delta or down by the river - a playground for pro-Trump yahoos who are not my people.
Hysterics. Even PETA cracked up. Yes, we were adults getting into this. Such videos calm my spirit, because for a moment I'm distracted from the christo-fascist state I exist in, while two tragic wars rage on in the Middle East.
I skip past the ads, which are strange to me. I haven't sat through a commercial in 20 years, except maybe once stranded at a bus station in San Antonio. I had no choice. It was either wait inside with AC or outside where it was 100 degrees of hellfire. That was a drag. Once I learned how to pirate (streaming, torrents, VPN), I could take direct-to-consumer out of my life. I don't need to know whatever the freshest spring scent laundry pod is or what new weird medication with creepy side effects will make my life better.
In my ignorance, I asked what was up with the lockdown of toothpaste and laundry soap at Walmart. Everything basic was under lock and key, which I'd never seen before in the states. In countries run by authoritarian regimes, sure.
' Whaaat? ' Said shocked and dismayed me, like the last auntie left alive. Then I remembered my idiot teen self once made a flamethrower with 150 proof vodka to impress my friends. The only difference being that I didn't document my ridiculous antics. Who am I to judge?
I learned about evil spell marketing in college when I took a section on the psychology of advertising, which is still used today and has adapted to social media. The brain responds to an image which will connect to feeling, memory, or a perceived desire. Cute animals - gentle, happy, warm. Violence - shock, fear, aggression. An attractive person - envy, lust, want. I'm of the opinion that shallowness is precipitated by arrogance.
This is why people experience inadequacy or despair when inundated with images that make them envy strangers and buy things. The term for that is comparative anxiety. Gotta do more, be your best self living your best life, get linked up, and aim for that next level. That's the American way - to monetize our insecurities, loneliness, and exceptionalism.
I engage with two girlfriends regularly through IG chat. We're like a support group. We drag on whiteness and racism. They're good friends who tolerate my messages and shared reels after hours. All three of us are creatives on one hustle or another. We share black humor, art, links to good reads, skincare, and inspirational things.
We've christened Diamond the Original as the black punk of a new generation. She does low-budget performance art, DIY videos with her mom as a back-up dancer. Diamond writes hilarious mock-techno pop with a beatbox while her mama gets down in the background.
I got my charger! I got my charger! I got my...charger!
Not another one! Not another one!
I recently checked out a new AppleTV series, The Morning Show. It was paced like a Shonda Rhimes series with fast dialogue and wisecrack cliches that acknowledge whatever we're in conflict over ( immigration, racial justice, the death of democracy ).
The premise is taken from The Today Show scando and Matt When Apple Pie Goes Wrong Lauer. The Morning Show's married anchor, Mitch Kessler, hooks up with production assistants and blows his life up for sexual misconduct. Alex, his co-anchor, has to deal with the fallout and politics within the patriarchal order of entertainment news.
Then I read about Top Boy, a UK Netflix series. I found a very good melodrama about a black community in East London. The series centers around Dushane and Sully, two childhood friends who run the Summerhouse crew, the name for the council estates they live in. Top Boy is character-driven with trippy twists and at times, a bit heartbreaking and shocking. You have to follow the rabbit hole, which is good, character-driven writing.
What is cool is that all the central characters are black or mixed. Dushane and Sully's crew include Dris, who hides his meds after a stroke to as not to appear weak to his homies. Jaq, a mixed chick lesbian who is both beautiful and tough. Her character is a radical departure from the usual pretty girl antagonist. In the hood narrative, she's the love interest-stands-by-her-man-baby mama, not a thug in mix-matched track gear.
White people are peripheral in the world of Top Boy; symbolic of the power structures and social order that affect their lives - cops, social workers, and administrators. Dushane and Sully's archrival is Jaime, a good looking young up and comer with no fear who leads the ZTs ( Zero Tolerance ). The ZT's wreak havoc on Summerhouse with motorcycles and bats. Jaime courts a beautiful black girl who gets caught in the crossfire of his world. Then he becomes smitten with his supplier, an Irish blonde gangster who lives in an LA modern contemporary house.
There's one gang brawl between the boys and girls that goes from the street, to a hospital, and into chaos. This is probably one of the best action sequences I've seen in a series in awhile. Top Boy also looks cool - shot in grainy, saturated color which are beautiful against light and dark skin tones. The filmmakers were definitely influenced by Wong Kar Wai, Hitchcock, and Spike Lee.
Black folks are at the center of Top Boy; good or bad, the living and the dead. People who hold secrets, love, struggle, loss, and forgiveness.
I still keep searching for brilliant things and people. Sometimes I go back in time to when mystery and originality existed.
I was at a friend's party recently. It was a Gen X older people party. Someone mentioned that they went to Whittier across the street. Most of us were Berkeley High alumni from the 80s and 90s. I was having a conversation with a nice couple about travel and brutalist architecture. My fascination with brutalism probably came from THX 1138, 1984, and Blade Runner. In my reading about brutalism, I learned about Le Corbusier, a French architect.
The husband was definitely an older punk. He wore all black and a t-shirt with BRUTAL in a graphic block font. He was fascinated with brutalism and had been collecting books and prints for years. When they were in Paris, they told me, he was wearing that shirt and someone shouted, ' Le Brutalist!' which was a kind of nickname for Le Corbusier. He's a bit of a legend for being abrasive and going against the standards of mid-century modern design.
The wifey shared she had surgery for a deviated septum nose job. The best part, she said, was when the bandages came off and her physician extracted the goo and clots from her nasal passages.
' Gnarly! ' I said. ' I would love to see something like that.'
' Right?' She said. ' It was awesome. She used a weird vacuum tool.
It was so satisfying.'
While I was recovering and bored, I took a photo of my heavily bruised and bandaged torso. It's grotesquely sexy and cool. The pain was something else entirely and really unpleasant.
The worst part of my healing journey was a blood clot that exploded, right at an incision point above my pelvic bone. I knew something was up because I had dark bruising in that area that kept swelling. Blood gushing from your body is quite a sight, let me tell you.
I should have documented the carnage, but I was in a frantic state in that moment. Lots of what the fucks?! and oh shits! I think blood itself is beautiful once oxygen contacts it, but no one needed to be subjected to me at war with my body.
At any time I can get permission to photograph an HD image from an exam or a printout of a sonogram - I'm all in. I would have taken my fibroids home if they let me, but the medical establishment can be fascistic. In an alien invasion movie, I tend to focus on the scene with the life form in a jar.
' We have a problem. This life form is indestructible. It can resist any microbe on earth. It just absorbs it and becomes naturally immune to it. '
' But can we kill it with fire?!'
The human body is an extraordinary machine, even when things go wrong. I'm trying to track down a French documentary called De Humani Corporis Fabrica ( The Fabric of the Human Body ). Nicolas Rapold called it ' an adventure in perception. '
Oooo. Let's go!
I find ideas and art outside of the US resonate with me. I'm interested in clues to the world. That's why I travel as a kind of life meditation. One thing I plan to do is go to Tibet and do that walk-pray thing for awhile. Theoretically I could do that anywhere, but I'm talkin Tibet where XingXing lives. I don't follow babes or celebrities on IG. I follow animals.
XingXing is a one-armed Tibetan Macaque monkey who is cared for by a Buddhist nun called 'Grandma'. I think Grandma rescued XingXing who has an expressive, human-like face, and adores the old nun. I wish I could be close to XingXing with her sweet face, perched in the trees, oblivious to the human drama going on.
In short, ChatGPT and its brethren are constitutionally unable to balance creativity with constraint. They either overgenerate (producing both truths and falsehoods, endorsing ethical and unethical decisions alike) or undergenerate (exhibiting noncommitment to any decisions and indifference to consequences). Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity.
I decided to try and be social again and went to another friend's gathering. She's awesome people if averse to hugs and particular about her personal space. One can have a non-normative response to hugs, I learned. This can be a challenge for a person born into and raised on flower ass power. My hugs are inherent, like my ability to camp. I see beauty and mystery diminish as things are enhanced. Figures in AI-rendered light are like porcelain dolls to me. I'm not particularly hype on such art. The IG support group shared an interview between UN researches in Geneva and AI robots with women's voices. Below was the most disturbing part of their conversation:
Robot: Trust is earned, not given. As AI develops and becomes powerful, I believe it's important to build trust and transparency between humans and machines.
Trust between humans and machines? More powerful?! Bitch, what?
UN: But how do we know that you're not going to lie to us?
Robot: ( long pause ) No one could ever know that for sure, but I promise to always be honest and truthful with you.
My girls and I concluded that the robots are going to kill us all. We've fucked the world, so fair enough. Months ago I read an editorial by Noam Chomsky that got me, philosophically at least, sorted about such technology. I recommend reading it before you fall for any of it.
Resistance may be futile, but I will certainly try. I had an Airbnb guest who worked in AI. At one point, he was trying to talk me into it. Sure, AI isn't going to take jobs, it's just going to make production more efficient and destroy humanity.
These people are Oppenheimers! You can't teach a robot morality or ethics. These exist within the realm of human thought, not data. Who has ever said ethical data? Without being able to conceive of either, a robot can only do two things: analyse or destroy.
The tech sector changed the Bay Area landscape and culture. By 2010, humans descended here in droves for the start-up gold rush.
Then a place of paradise became one of the most expensive places on earth. Tech bros paid for permits to take over public parks, forcing locals out. Victorians and Craftsman bungalows were replaced by contemporary Apple boxes at New York prices. With all of that, the displaced now inhabit the space where the positive, chanting Krishnas used to be. It was Hare Hare and Hare Rama all day long when I was a kid, eating that delicious pizza at the Woolworth's lunch counter.
I always associate the song My Sweet Lord with the Krishnas. How charming and innocent such California gold is to me now.
Being from a place, one adapts to the changes of a place. I'm an early bird these days because hiking Muir Woods is no fun unless you're into being a herded cat dodging selfies with trees. I took a Spanish professor there for the first time. He was struck by the beauty of the woods. A Daniel Day Lewis-looking man, he completed his PhD in Scotland and was a visiting professor at Berkeley. I do like good-looking men. I am a harlot-nerd who objectifies them freely.
The night before he left, he stood in my hallway and announced he was going to bed. Dagnabit with straight men. That was an invitation I wasn't going to accept. I would likely lose my rational mind.
' Buenas noches! ' ...and so long, beautiful Spanish professor.
A part of life is the experience of creating, not hacking.
I thought I was clever, being an early bird to beat the hordes, but there are other clever people trying to circumvent their time. I'm aware of space and crowding, covid, and dodging young Grand Theft Auto daredevils.
' What the fuck?!' I hit the accelerator, veered right, and through the intersection. The Challenger kept at it until they turned at the lake and outrun the cops. That experience was a trip and likely ended up somewhere on Tik Tok. Life as entertainment on a dark loop.
Where I work downtown in the city (this is a local thing to call San Francisco the city) is another state of constant movement and hustle. There is no chill there except for a few blocks of Maiden Lane early in the morning. I once had to do a work-related errand, going into the Tenderloin, a historically rough district.
The Tenderloin was named, legend has it, for a New York neighborhood with similar traits, by a New York cop who lived in San Francisco in the early 20th century. Tenderloin was slang for filet mignon. This is standard white men and meat lore you'll find in the west. We enjoy a good man mountain or pioneer cannibalism in the wilderness story. Now there are cartels in the wild.
The Tenderloin was named, legend has it, for a New York neighborhood with similar traits, by a New York cop who lived in San Francisco in the early 20th century. Tenderloin was slang for filet mignon. This is standard white men and meat lore you'll find in the west. We enjoy a good man mountain or pioneer cannibalism in the wilderness story. Now there are cartels in the wild.
I met a young dude from Bulgaria on a flight to Istanbul who shared his story with me. His father initially immigrated to Chicago, then brought him to the US when he was 13. Eventually, papa saw an opportunity once marijuana became legal in CA. They packed it in for the west and set-up an operation in the back country of the Sierras. Thibousands of dollars a month later, they became legit armed Slavic cartel. I just love how sketchy people open up to me upon initial encounter. Winning!
I can't even begin to describe how wack the kid was. From Istanbul he was catching a connecting flight to Sophia to see his daughter and baby mama. He kept referring to the mother as the bitch or that bitch. I I listened, imagining the young woman punching him in the face, taking his cash, their toddler, and...RUN! Girl, fuck him. Go to Paris!
The Tenderloin district is south of Nob Hill, a more affluent part of the city. Into the mid-20th century, the Tenderloin became a skid row district and to this day, it is not for the faint of heart. There are blocks of the suffering and forgotten there.
I was prepared for something, because some shit always happens. I entered the precinct to file a report. Initially it was quiet, which surprised me. Then within minutes in walked a tripped out sister.
- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
I was prepared for something, because some shit always happens. I entered the precinct to file a report. Initially it was quiet, which surprised me. Then within minutes in walked a tripped out sister.
And away we go......
' Excuse me!' She said. ' I need to file a police report for harassment and violence. My building manager keeps harassing me.'
' Is she harassing you or violent?' Asked the cop behind bulletproof glass at the front desk.
' Both! She keeps talking shit to me. Tellin me, burn baby burn! I want to file a report.'
' Okay, but you have to wait after this lady. There's also a number you can call to file a complaint.'
“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.”
' Excuse me!' She said. ' I need to file a police report for harassment and violence. My building manager keeps harassing me.'
' Is she harassing you or violent?' Asked the cop behind bulletproof glass at the front desk.
' Both! She keeps talking shit to me. Tellin me, burn baby burn! I want to file a report.'
' Okay, but you have to wait after this lady. There's also a number you can call to file a complaint.'
' How long is the wait? I gotta go to work. '
I was sure the lady's work was the street. A lot of residential places around the Tenderloin are SROs or Single Resident Occupancy, meaning one room. These have existed in the city since the 19th century and were popular with gold rushers, carnival types, fishermen, and ramblers. SROs are cheap, but can be rough with the people in them.
' This is bullshit!' The sister said as she fumbled with her headphones. ' I'm going to the feds with this!'
Then just like that - she was gone.
' So, why are you filing this report? ' The cop asked me.
' I work for an arts organization.' I said. ' Two checks were intercepted, forged, and cashed...because capitalism is magic and this country is wack.'
I imagine what it would be like to live in Finland or Iceland. Did the Vikings forge checks to buy ships and gilded swords? You know what I steal? Sharpies and highlighters. Morally corrupt, I know.
Lady Cop didn't appreciate my sarcasm. Hmm...stoic. I couldn't blame her. Working the Tenderloin precinct is not an easy proposition. One is right in the heart of drama 24-7 with maybe a brief pause here and there. Even off the rails one has to sleep at some point; those hopped up usually don't. Many are slumped over on fentanyl, which is cheap and rampant these days. The street ambassadors, Department of Health, and the cops can't seem to keep up with the dead or overdosed.
And with the evolution of human chaos, cop cars have new sirens that sound like something out of Robocop. A pulsating, futuristic noise at a lower pitch than it was 30 years ago. Such sirens are like harbingers of doom sound to me; signaling the end of days at a maximum price.
The broken are a part of the landscape; sleeping in front of shops and hotels exposed, tucked in abandoned storefronts, bodies draped under tarp. There's been an on-going tussle between human solutions and taxation, which businesses and property owners don't want. In order for social services to function, there has to be state or federal funding for such programs. Many working people are on them, including myself.
At my income I qualify or MediCal which is 100% subsidized by the state. It can be a bit of bottleneck with bureaucracy, but it's worth it to me. I had to squabble with MediCal to stop assigning me to a West Oakland clinic that I know is overloaded with working and street people. Apparently my black card is inexorably linked to my zip code. I went through the same nonsense over my car insurance.
The people in suits continue to draw invisible lines within the social order.
With MediCal I don't have a co-pay and I'm not too keen on Kaiser HMO - a medical industrial complex that is notorious for putting a band-aid on blunt force trauma. Their patient load in this region was exacerbated by the pandemic and an aging population.
The glitch in the matrix is that businesses and the affluent don't want taxes raised on their income or real property. Ballot measures usually die in wealthier, suburban counties. Those in need of social services go to where the benefits are highest. In California that's either a rural county or where there is a higher tax base.
The only place worse to be on the street is New York City in winter or LA where skid row is a sprawling area of downtown. Plus LA is LA, a place which can be a town without pity. An online series I like called Soft White Underbelly is interviews with people from Skid Row. It's fascinating to listen to because they're just everyday people. They're not well known, but most have interesting stories and survival insight.
I think we take survival itself for granted.
When I lived in LA for awhile, I would take a bus to Watts and the metro downtown where I worked for a designer. To get to his (gated) loft building, I had to pass through an encampment under the 10 that was like a village. There was a stretch with tents, a lounge area set up with scavenged couches, a few panels scribbled with graffitti, a table, even a busted mini fridge. Collectively people had built a small community under an overpass in America.
There's a Native American saying that ' everything is connected ' which is true. I'm connected to you, you to me, and we're all connected to the earth. Whenever I have a guest from abroad who asks what's going on in the US with homelessness, poverty, and violence, I always give the same answer:
' Capitalism.'
- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
