2004-01-25 - 8:52 p.m.

LA is one of the strangest, living dicotomies that is utterly consummed by itself because of the constant influx of suctioning dreams.

today i went to one of my favorite spots on earth, downtown LA. Drove through Chinatown, windows down to here the struming of the modest new years celebration stomping by. fat chinese kids tucked into traditional costumes and a long threding dragon like a slinking pearl necklace.

then to little tokyo past the wishing well and japanese baked goods, on a mad search for ninja shoes.

we went to the fashion district with wide metal doors rolled up to show off socks, fabric, knock off purses. persian men inviting you in to the depths of the store, selling just one dollar more. coaxing it out like a sure turtle.

we drove through the streets. streets meaning the area upon which human beings subsist their every day on concrete and asphalt. barely exhisting. pushed far out of neighborhoods that would prefer 'them' to be swept up like the styrofoam mcdonalds cup in the wet brown gutter.

in a block i saw two old black men, one bumping across torn ground in his 1950's electric wheelchair with an oxygen tank hooked up from the back. another was walking by carrying an oxygen tank. why the tank?

people skirting buildings like birds adapting to the siding of paneled houses. thousands of people

living

like this.

what is the worth of a life?

is there some expenditure of a life? a life is worth it if something is 'done' with it? if something 'valid' is 'produced' by it? what if what gets produced is a chemical agent to color a product that slowly permeates cancer or some useless commercial selling us on happy skin shineing products in warehouses called target. walmart. kmart.

is the trade that if we are able to 'improve' our world, then we have more worth then the next human breathing the limitless, clogged air, consuming the food. what is the worth of a golden, superstar, with plush lips and extreme youth and movement, constant flittering, uncatchable movement?

afterwards i went to my clients who are agents in town. we watched the golden globes and they mentioned several people they knew. and suddenly i'm vacummed into feelings that ultimate worth is walking by on a red carpet. that i'm nothing because i'm not that.

worth.

with in the boundaries of this city lives so many contrasts. so many lives expending days like fruit waiting to be old enough to decay back into the ground. i am a ghost crossing into all of these worlds at once, invitation regardless.

it makes me feel shaken. examining whether my own stream of rolling days

are meant for anything at all. most say its all for love or procreation. love, yes, but only for the fufillment of my own meaning, personal meaning. but what about the 'massive' meaning that idles above or beyond us all? what do we ever contribute to that? are we supposed to? is it all incoherently meaningless? just random cycles birthing and expiring that will somehow stop when this planet hurtles itself into another star mass of energy and it all just was a moment, suspended and in each of our minds we really believed that it all exhisted. that i am here writing this, right now, in no other moment. making myself actual and proving my exhistance. achievement is just an attempt to stamp down our exhistance. breeding, the same. is just passing by, borrowing the air to breath, enough?

*******************

i've always feel accutely uneasy with the stratospheres of society. i feel as if i'm the friction between the sandpaper of each extreme. i'm uncomfortable and watchful of each , but for different reasons. and i float in and out of all. it throws me out completely. when i'm lost in the rythme of my own senselessness, i don't think beyond it. but when i submerse into others worlds i get so lost away from my own.

does anyone else feel this way?

i bought a lot of materials for my projects and i have been in heat over the creation of my stuff. i was up till six in the am doing it last night. i'm making mad love to it. but tonight, this has thrown me. and my place stinks and i refuse to clean it. my cleaning lady madolina, who will bus or drive in from east LA, will look after me and clean up my mess. so i don't want to create in my space when it smells.

the guy i met at the dealership called and i called back. perhaps too soon and with too much. he had asked me to coffee or to hang out this week and i said my nights are crazy, days better and that if he's feeling spontaneous to go for coffee tonight. basically i'd like to be around someone who can take me, catapult me out of myself.

last night lizard and i spent the better part of the night talking to straight men posing gay. they were a semi-riot. it was a cool art dj, live art party.

i was blessed by a hairy man with blue painted hands who was holding tight a trophy. he put his hand to my forehead, i obligatorily rose my right hand in a fit of southern baptism and was blessed for grilled cheese, jackrabbit and port authority. that's what i asked to be blessed for, as he seemed to think he won the trophy for grilled cheese. if that made any sense, then you seriously should consider cutting back on the weed. (spanki doll...hhhheeeehee).

i jest.

this fuckin city. it's as vivrant as it is body bagged in a morg. it is as confused and caotic as it is rythmic and reasoning.

i don't know why i ended up here. i don't know how i haven't left and mostly i don't know how i would be ever living anywhere else in the world.