Winter Wonderland

In the alley outside my window, like the jingling sleigh bells and clip clop of Clydesdales, the clinking bottles dug from dumpster into mudclad overcoat, near soleless sneakers, broken boombox overflowing grocery cart and thud of hinged lid dropping sounds not quite the squeak and pop of a clarinet player hunched on the 118 off-ramp at Tampa Thanksgiving morning. Between the quick gasp, achingly soundless downbreath, saliva squirts, key clicks, puff strained cheeks--lost embouchure with lost teeth--here and there, always sharp or flat, chirps an abject hint of Bye Bye Blackbird.

A crumpled reincarnation of Rafael Garrett: I first saw him in the mid 80s blowing a battered silver tenor outside the Wrigley field El Stop before midday drunk Cub fans looking askance or laughing and throwing him a quarter--just another raggedy lookin' black man--oblivious to the legacy of this multi-instrumentalist, who studied clarinet and bass under DuSable's Captain Dyett, recorded with Coltrane, helped found AACM, performed and taught across the world.

But for free improvisers busking truth--and for black men in Reagan America, which institutionalized the racist character of homelessness (49% of streetpeople are African American)--life could be shit 'til the next meal, so he might, to scrounge a little extra cash, crash another guys' gig--like Lester Bowie's trio playing in the back room of a West Side record shop. Bowie looked a little startled when half-way through his first set the old man walked in, but he graciously allowed Garrett's string tied bag of bells and whistles to transform tightly rehearsed arrangements into mismatched inflations of a tear.

Bloodshot eyes, are you listening?

After Hours

Oh, someday I know
Someone will look into my eyes
And say hello
You're my very special one

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again
--Lou Reed

Near 11pm the crowding at the Taco Bell trough outside my window hits its peak.

They idle in U-shaped noxiousness--gold plated Escalade, Honda CRV, BMW E90, Toyota Sienna, 1980s Cutlass no paint on bondoed fender olive hood mismatched to maroon body rear bumper hanging into street.

AC hums on max to cool restless perspiring double chin neck to leg flab pinched by nylon belt--to think outside the bun.

Stomachs search in Kierkagaardian anguish a moment of gloried hope as nacho cheese beef gordita nears mouth. With bite brown drips to upholstery. Ice grabbed from 32 ounce pepsi moistens paper napkin--dabbing dabbing, dabbbing--but it's no use. 360,000 gallons of oil spreads through the Kerch Strait--58,000 through SF Bay--shedding death from Black Sea to Muir Beach.


Clyfford Still 1949 No. 1 (PH-385)
1949 oil on canvas © Estate of Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still Museum

voi siete un clown

In his remembrance for Criterion Collection's The White Shiek, Leopoldo Trieste recalls when Fellini asked him to take the role of Ivan Cavalli, the preening husband who has brought his new bride for a rigorously scheduled honeymoon in Rome:
"'You want me to be a comic actor?'
I actually got mad at him. I spoke ancient Greek. I could read Aeschylus like you read the paper.
'I'm a dramatist! You've got me all wrong! Leave me alone.'
'Listen Leopoldo, you belong to the race of clowns.'
I remember his exact words.
'You are a clown.'"

"Uuunnh," as I sit, rises a groan nearly whimper, like from a broken foot dog abandoned on outskirts of Rome circa 1940s neorealism. Soft sound hard to trace amid rackety hum, its source blends into tint windowed vegetable patch. Thin grey beard on balding cabbage head dressed in casual business attire but third look finds half shirt tail hanging, coffee stain on breast pocket, dirt rimmed cuffs on khakis.

The groan loudens, now punctuated by tiny croak gurgle whisp of belly bubbles. Hand grabs waist, bending, swaying forward, swallowing, "Ooooooaaah."

On-setting illness vague no more, image of chunk funky acid splatter to shoelace and nostril, passenger neighbors move to bus front.

Stomach upset memories of degurgitations, bent head over some strange Edina toilet, absent parent party weekend--how did you get here?--my incapacity stoking another of the recurrent grab and shoves between T. and K. over who will drive mom's Honda back to Saint Paul.

Fear to fascination--will rotting internality dissolve or burst? At Van Nuys the wrenching pauses then stumbles toward closing doors. Too late, rubber bound glass squeezes swelling melon. "Back door! Back door!" voice surprisingly strong, trap opens to release the suffering. It waddles then straightens--feeling better now?--just to end of platform. Arms outstretch, wings of a penguin leaning forward feeding the cement little liquid trickles. Again. Again. Again.

A Balmy Day in FLA

In 1974 Broward County boosters, hoping to attract game fish, dump millions of nylon bound tires to create the Osborne Reef. Over time storms bust them loose to shred nearby natural reefs and wash up on North Carolina shores.

On ocean edge of ecodisaster emulsion blots of hyperglobality--petrolium tankers, containerships of lumber, orange marmalade, t-shirts--import/export from Port Everglades Foreign Trade Zone.

The air a carwash interior, droplets to downpour shampoo the yellow heat. Creamsicle skin strained muscles amble and pump along faint lightning steamed sand.

A man, squirting cartoon sweat, waddles with one leg twice-thick the other--salt rusted frontyard flamingo stem peglike limb.



Squeezed between cement skeletons of soon to be jacked up tropi-glamour condos



W Fort Lauderdale Hotel/Residences, with an interior that "incorporates elements of fenshui, color therapy and aromatherapy,"



and Trump International Hotel and Towers, "a one of a kind destination for the select few,"



are the broken plastered bones of 1950s era unsentimentalia.


My economy hotel room overlooks patio turned parking lot. Mattress squishes next to chipped veneer of nightstand on dull cracky linoleum floor. Half-inch of screw sticks out on bathtub faucet knob. Water drains slow through clogging sand.

Banyan tree swamp, former Fort Liquourdale, now Venice of South Florida, multimillion dollar yachts park along white tablecloth purple aquarium dining elegance. Open collared fifty somethings with blonded companions strut the sparkle studded sunglass boutiques of Las Olas Boulevard competing with the concierge and valet parking of chilled dry faux art deco Galleria Mall a mile north on Sunrise Blvd.

Not quite competing a half mile east at downscale curving Sunrise Lane, "The World Famous Parrot" hides amid neon xxx Playboy paraphernalia and tatoo parlor with hand on hips artist gruffing "Tattoo Bro?" to passer-by me.



By a smoke shop, a man stands on the sidewalk in white to grey Chuck Taylor low tops, ripped jean shorts, bare torso--body hair bleached by the sun, tufted over broiled apricot skin. He crosses the street to confront me sticking a two inch square gash on inside elbow in my face, "Hey Buddy, can you spare some change for some gauze and bandage?" I wave him off and pass by souvenir shops selling drunken sexhibitionist T-shirts--a Men's Room figure missing top circle with the caption "UNIVERSAL SIGN FOR NEEDS HEAD".



Back on A1A, a golftourist in SLK convertible, clubs sticking out the back, flips off a grey Dodge van with cardboard for one back window, "Go to fuck!"

Warm moist wind sways darkening palms.

With you, my life

Napoleon put his hand on his heart because his hand was cold.
I put my hand on my heart because my heart aches.
--Ralph Kramden.

"Tell her I can do her make-up and hair tomorrow afternoon"
A splash of pink on the forehead sprouts from the spiked black hair of my Wednesday night traveling companion. Phone perched upon shoulder, she drags on board a roll-bag containing tools of a beautification student.
"Who?
What?
Shut up. You spoke to her?
I thought she hated me.
Oh my god, I miss her so much. I so want to talk to her.
Should I call her?
Tell her to call me.
Ok, love you."

Five minutes later rings the tinny mimicry of a pop tune.

"Hello?
Hey, I am so glad you called.
I am so sorry about what happened.
Y'know I totally didn't mean that.
Yeah, and Susan was totally trying to fuck with us.
I was so stupid and immature then.
I felt so bad.
You were my best friend, and I would never want to hurt you."

Imagination of Dirt

On a breezy fall afternoon, from the sidewalk, a glance at the park interior, a woman sagging naked scrubs herself with soil, grass, leaves in the shade of an oak. The confused appears as a blotchy black and white reproduction of Boticelli's Birth of Venus in a scribbled 1950s high school textbook.

The grape tomato worm ricy grit tasteless on the tongue stuffed down to gurgling belly, gums laced with black goop, the condition of Pica, the condition of Rebeca in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude palpitates our Freudian pulmonary artery--the maniacal fist feeding of dirt, the drive toward dark essence, the intestinal brick-making lust, the nourishment of decomposition and death, the lowly exaltedness of bourgeois pretensions.

This residue of unexpressed sickness expresses itself in the rumbling blast of highrise apartments in the "Noho shopping cArts District". The MTA recently approved a billion dollar office-housing-retail tower near the Noho red line station as part of our Mayor's dream of bringing the New York subway lifestyle to rubber boinking buggyville.

But a study by the LA Times shows previous attempts to link housing to rail stops in Hollywood, Downtown and Pasadena simply increased congestion since residents continue to drive.

Blind sticking smudged fingers down throats, pushing yuck to the yuppies, inters the clarity of solving planned foolery.

Why not simply require the new housing only be rented to people without automobiles, saving money on constructing needless parking structures and reducing traffic snarls?

Because people without cars are also the city's poor, and to build housing for poor people cuts deep with the anxiety of failed romantics.

Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

--Paul Verlaine

inbetween bleakness

Passing through the park a red orange feathering into grey tail squiggles after a squirrel perches on a "Ron Paul Revolution" sign. The squeaky bark of a Bichon hanging from a Honda CRV rings through the pines.

The sorely broken pungency of a refrigerator interior, not the moldy abandoned grime of a Frigidaire abandoned in an alley off Devonshire in Mission Hills but the ordinary unpealed onion, wrinkly peach, ziplock bag of fried rice and tofu, hoping it will not seep to tinge one quarter remaining half gallon fat free milk, melancholy soaks the dialogue of strangers sitting in the back bus seats facing one another.

"You headed for school?" asks the older man who has the height and headshape of Alan Arkin and a low creaking voice.

"No work," replies the younger. He recounts a one minute life story of wished I had-almost completed-still plan to... "Right now I am a mover."

"Moving is a good job. At least you stay active. Take care of your health and stay out of trouble because when a big break comes along if you're not healthy or you're in trouble, you won't be able to take advantage of it." Light tongue sticking to mouth roof ends the aphoristic exhaling.

A man with captain bars pinned to a camouflage hat crosses legs on the front seats, pulls a Binaca blast from his duffel and starts misting the surrounding sadness. He sprays the head, left-right shoulder, opens his mouth and takes it on the tonsils.

I blink at a pinch in my neck.

Gridlock Poppycock

From LA City Photo Gallery

The Texas Transportation Institute annual congestion report again lists L.A. as number one street clogger in the nation, scorching by an extra 12 hours of delay second place metro areas San Francisco, Atlanta, DC. But according to local planning officials, the study significantly underestimates snarl by assuming cars move at 35 mph during rush hours when freeway sensors show speeds closer to 20 mph.

In August of last year, digital cameras clicking, Councilwoman and Mayor unveiled the new needlepointing approach to L.A. street slogging: bright signs in "anti-gridlock zones" prohibit parking weekdays 7-9 am and 4-7 pm, creating more lanes for stealhead cased creepy crawlies during crushy crunchy.

Has the Mayor's "small things" traffic solution helped? Drive down Sepulveda near Ventura 'round 8 am--bumpity-bumpity-bumpity--I'll beatchya on feet.

Reversing the escalator over the hill world of mudsludging requires closing not opening car lanes: Auto-authoritarianism must confront its assassination by frustration.

At least one person in our planning department is in the fight. Emily Gabel-Luddy, head of the department's Urban Design Studio, says in a September 18 LA Times Magazine interview, "What we're trying to do is reverse-engineer decades of thinking about the city." This requires making major boulevards "dramatically less efficient as automobile arteries."

To boost walking, bust on driving--including of feelgoody hybrids and electrics.

Free--to ravage you and me--thinkers of the Pacific Legal Foundation object, "So long as people ardently desire to live and raise children in detached homes with a bit of lawn, there is virtually nothing that government bureaucrats can do that will thwart that."

Portland, the bête noir of these auto-pitying libertarians, proves them wrong. While traffic congestion is worse, commuters spend less time in traffic than in other cities. Why? Because they live close to work and can actually walk or take the bus.

A study by the Urban Land Institute further supports the Portland model. Popping California politicos environmental egos overpumped by proposals for CO2 downing--higher fuel economy, cleaner fuels, greener building--ULI calls for the kooky idea of living closer to work. "Shifting 60 percent of new growth to compact patterns would save 85 million metric tons of CO2 annually [equal] to a 28 percent increase in federal vehicle efficiency standards."

But density alone is not enough. We need fast, frequent, inexpensive transit: bus-exclusive lanes as found in Jakarta, Bogota, Ottawa and many others following the Curitiba trail. The first important step towards this goal takes place on Wilshire Blvd, so write councilwoman Wendy Gruel and ask her to secure funding for Wilshire Bus-Only lanes.

Address:
Councilmember Wendy Greuel
Transportation Committee Chair
City of Los Angeles
200 North Spring Street, Room 475
Los Angeles, CA 90012
email: councilmember.greuel@lacity.org

Dogon A.D.

Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis

Growing up in The Cities, Mississippi cliffs drew us to dark threats of joy--landscape of wind sent condom wrappers caught in chokeberry shrub, beer cans--Schmidt's, Hamm's, Grain Belt--beaten into stone bends, pockmarked by graffiti carved caves. Nothing to do on a summer night? Find an overlook with a pint of peach schnapps and gaze at barges twisting through birch crunched gorge.

One Saturday in the summer of '85, after a week of stocking detergents to dust-mops at Target mornings and phone-hawking the St. Paul paper evenings, I saw Julius Hemphill beneath cirrus striped sunset concussing free the structure of sandy silver floating from a bandstand on Nicollett Island.

A half-mile down river rough gray lines distinguished the undistinguished bridge--as Mom said, "It's hard for me to get in my mind--not like the Lake Street or Hennepin Avenue bridges, y'know, you can picture those"--which six weeks ago became loathsomely vivid mangled steel and concrete topsy turvy like Matchbox cars rolling off Tuna Helper boxes masking taped to tin foil fabricated cities.

After repeat dialings ending in overloaded circuit signals, I reach family, friends and learn of the almosts: my stepmother's book-club member drove over an hour before, my brother E. biked under that morning...

"But everyone's ok," I sigh.
"Well, not everyone," Mom's wry wise reply.

Walk on, walk on

Juan Genoves, "Cuatro fases en torno a una prohibicion" (1966)

East of Laurel Canyon on Magnolia the one lane of traffic at rush hour can feed irritation as sugar to ants crawling from the palm up the arm depicted in the creepy surrealism of Un Chien Andalou to the point where that itch must be scratched--ants squashed.

Somewhere near three in the afternoon on a Friday walking through a plywood tunnel, avoiding rusty nails that might punch through flip-flops, breathing orange dust from the demolition of another 1940s era courtyard complex to be replaced by multistory luxury "apartment homes" with underground parking and fitness center, a nasaled horn blasts from the boulevard and as if in homage to Pavarotti's pipes holds on at a steady pitch.

"AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN."

Must be a mechanical malfunction causing the electric buzz to freeze. But as the cry gets closer I see its source: in a silver Xterra a man with a growling face pushes forearms mightily into steering wheel plastic. He follows a shocked to tremble woman glancing frequently in the rear view mirror of her 1990s era white Sentra.

A half-block down the sidewalk a police officer chats with some locals gathered at the steps of an apartment building. Suddenly, the officer dashes to his car and flies away, lights flashing.

As I reach the building I nod "Hello" to a man still standing at the steps.
"Did you see that?" he replies.
"Hmmm?"
"Road Rager."
"Oh yeah. I was wondering..."
"This guy was just laying on his horn. The cop was pissed," he laughs.
"That's crazy. So what was he doing here?"
"Huh?"
"What was the cop doing here?"
"Oh, he was just finishing up an accident."
"Crazy."

Walking on an ant crawls up my left toe, but I let it ride.

le fromage le monte au nez de l'Américain

Epoisses image from Le Guide des Fromages

In the August 17 LA Times, Jay Handal, chairman of the Greater West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, comments on the Wilshire bus only lanes approved by the City Council: "You can't take a third of the drivable lanes from people who are already stuck in traffic for 45 minutes. Take a guy who earns a half-million dollars a year. He's going to drive to a parking lot and get on a bus? I don't think so."

2 Days in Paris reveals this banality of Botox Hill Gucci Gangsters as the ugly American's universal revulsion. Julie Delpy's film, plastered with clichés, intended as farce, becomes wretched realism through Adam Goldberg's Jack, a New Yorker who refuses to take the subway.

Yes, they do exist: Upper East Side descendants of Tom Wolfe's Sherman McCoy but also Hell's Kitchen gentrifying professional hipsters who brandish Bush bashing but gushed over Giuliani when he "scrubbed the city" of its poor--and now, with chief scrubber Bratton in L.A., the battle line moves.

Our hero, Delpy's father, the American vision of French rudeness, discreetly scrapes a key into the sides of Citroëns, Peugots, Renaults parked on the sidewalk as he grins in broken English.

Paris has become l'enfer pour la voiture: former one-way high-speed corridors converted to two-way streets, bikes for rent with lanes partout, and concrete barriers allowing buses to race by traffic on schedule.

The political impossibility and necessity of sending L.A. automobilistes to hell begins on Wilshire Boulevard.

lighter fluid

Blue jeans, black Ts and shoulder length hair mark the two as rockers. Her voice lowered by smokes, his beaten by dope, closeness in pitch makes them hard to distinguish but for his soft saliva sucking through--perhaps false--front teeth.

Nearing the Van Nuys Station, county government buildings rise on the horizon.
"I'm glad I don't have to go there anymore," he comments. "You know what that is right?"
"Hmm."
"The county courthouse. I'm glad I don't have to go there anymore."

We roll past industrial lots into the residential streets of Valley Glen.

"Wow, look at that!"
"What?"
"Did you see that mansion?"
"Uh Huh."
"I wonder how much that property is. That was HUGE."
"Not as big as Ozzy's though."
"Yeah, well."
"In England, Man!" she chortles an awe.

"Did you feel that?" His voice softens only slightly, "A guy behind me just sneezed on the back of my head."
"Aww shit."
"If he gets up I'm going to say something. That's what I hate about taking the bus."

On December 8, 2004, schizophrenic former quickieluber Nathan Gale stormed the stage during a Damageplan concert at The Alrosa Villa in Columbus Ohio, unloaded multiple rounds of a Beretta 92 and killed four people, including "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. Gale's mother bought the semi-automatic pistol for her son out of pride for his service in the Marines and before the diagnosis that led to his discharge. Inside the grainy black and white menace of a nose guard's shaved head is certainty of identity and lyrics stolen by the Pantera lead guitarist, now buried with Eddie Van Halen's Charvel bumble bee guitar from the back cover of VH II.

"We was broke and hungry on a summer day
They sent the sheriff down to try an' drive us away
We were sittin' ducks for the police man
They found a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can, uh ha
Ooh! And I'm alone, I'm on the highway
Wanted, dead or alive
Dead or alive..."

The breeze of her hair waving to an internal rhythm, matching the rhythm of the whirring gears, touches my neck.

"You know that? D.O.A."
"D.O.A."
"D.O.A. Hehehe yeah."

River Rigoletto

Dieser Gott kommt aber nicht mit Kanon. Er kommt mit der Stimme von Caruso.
--Fitzcarraldo

With wealth from rubber trees accessed through aria, he will build an opera house in the bleakly luscious Peruvian rainforest. As the wild blond man's steamship chugs up the Amazon, a Pathe gramaphone perched on top projects Caruso's mud-cleansed torrent of grief, sinking in the bubbling greenness that surrounds, clarifying the operatic cruelty of colonialism.

L.A.'s Amazon--the 405--passing through the impenetrable savagery of Brentwood and Bel Air, carries streams of leather seated super-powered canoes projecting interior stirrings of the latest Syd Barrett/Nick Drake inflected voice to hit the Morning Becomes Eclectic playlist. The high fidelity components for this wall of sound are now being manufactured in China. Delphi corporation, a leading maker of car stereos and the now de rigeur GPS systems, has 26 locations there, including a plant in the enormous Suzhou Industrial Park.

According to a 2004 article in E Magazine: 'To the west and east of the city, where two industrial parks are growing by nine miles a year, centuries-old villages are being bulldozed to make room for 20-story apartment buildings, foreign-owned mega-corporations, landscaped parks and western-style subdivisions. "Development," reads a Suzhou billboard, "is an Immutable Truth."'

Suzhou is one of China's ten "model environmental cities," but its canals remain polluted along with adjacent Tai Lake. In June an algae bloom on the lake forced officials to cut off water to the city of Wuxi. Environmental activist Wu Lihong had warned of this danger but was arrested in April and remains in jail.

Tai lake is a pond in the sprawling Yangzi delta, endplace of arterial gift to China's rice basket, now clogged by the largest hydroelectric project in the world. After 13 years of construction, the Three Gorges Dam nears completion ahead of schedule and under budget, promising to keep the economic bonfire burning. The 1.13 million displaced persons will have dreams of the Baiji's soft screaming song to remember.


Image from The Nature Conservancy

Beer Run

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlemazl! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Give us any chance we'll take it
Read us any rule we'll break it
We're going to make our dreams come true
Doing it our way

Nothing's going to hold us back now
Straight ahead and on the track now
We're going to make our dreams come true

There ain't nothing we won't try
Never heard the word impossible
This time there's no stopping us
We're going to do it

On your marks, get set, and go now
Got a dream and we must know now
We're going to make our dreams come true

And we'll do it our way, yes our way
Make all our dreams come true
When we do it our way, yes our way
Make all our dreams
Come true
For me and you
--theme from Laverne and Shirley

At the Days Inn 15 miles outside OshKosh Wisconsin (as supermarkets erased farmers, OshKosh B'Gosh assured their continued mimicry in miniature) in the orange tiled lobby, where a "continental breakfast" of burnt coffee and plastic wrapped sweet rolls is served from 8 to 10 am, a twelve inch square white board hung on the wall reads in pink marker "Guest of the Day". Below in blue is a name randomly chosen from the night's registrants. The honoree, at departure, opens a small plastic bag to find granola bar, bottled water and trial size hand lotion.

In the summer of '83 T and I drove mom through Wisconsin and the U.P. to grandma's summer home in Northern Michigan. Mom was to drive grandma to Florida while T and I drove back to St. Paul.

At that time the drinking age in Michigan was 21, but in the state that industrialized a German-Polish imbibing lifestyle, the home of Laverne and Shirley's Chaplin via I Love Lucy inspired beer bottling opening credits' scene, the drinking age was 18.

So, on our way back, in the border town of Marinette, we hit a convenience store for picnic supplies: bologna, sliced cheese, white bread, mustard, chips and a case of Old Style. As we lean against T's '69 Le Mans in the city park, nourishing a buzz, a couple of twelve year old girls leap from their swings and begin prodding us from across the playground fence.
"Hey, where you from?" One of them wearing a blue checkered jump suit asks.
"Minnesota," T replies with a grin.
"What are you doing here?"
"We're just eating lunch."
"Who said you could do that?"
"Whaddya mean?" I ask.
"Who said you could do that?"
"This is a public park, we can eat here," T plays outrage.
"No you can't," the other girl jumps in with authority.

The game of adolescent sentence senselessness builds to laughter, and any worry that it's already two in the afternoon, we still have 300 miles to drive and we're on our third beer, is far from the mind.

Finally, we promise to return in 5 years to marry the girls, jump back in the car, and peal out down the highway to Wausau, smoking a joint and cranking "Led Zepplin II".

200 miles later at Chippewa Falls, its time for a refill. We stop in a bar that serves a glass of Leinie's and shot of Jack Daniel's for a buck. After two or three of these, we're almost wasted but still 90 miles from home.
"You drive," T says.

Pleistocene Drip

Relax a stare at pavement: sparkling pepper jewels, freckled with ginger, shadowed, grease spotted, tire skidded, patchworked, manholed, yellow striped, notations spraypainted of utilities below. Occasional white spots bubble in gaps of campfire blackened marshmallows not ready for s'mores. The breakfast lunch and dinner, the all-in-one energy bar, the bowl of milky cornflakes topped with chopped banana, Blue Bunny neapolitan, no-brand peanuts and canned chocolate syrup--of motor vehicle diet.

25,000 years ago a 3,500 pound ground sloth, dazed by the art of a juniper, stumbled into a salty molasses funk and sunk. The black goop of La Brea Tar Pits is actually not tar--a derivative of coal--but asphalt. The tedious work of mining these pits ended in the early twentieth century as a process of refining road's dark essence from crude oil emerged.

Asphalt plants, scattered throughout our metro areas--All American Asphalt in San Fernando, Valero Energy in Wilmington--generate the gravy of automobility. A 2004 study showed one neighborhood downwind of a plant had not just the predictable increased rates of cancer and respitory illness but also a more than threefold growth in suicides.

Gravy needs meat--bitumen needs gravel. Seventeen pits in San Gabriel Valley supply hard crumble for 70% of California roads. But please no dusty mess in Santa Clarita. A proposed gravel mine drew outrage from these clean exurban livers and a bill to prevent its construction by Assemblyman Cameron Smith. "We need to do everything we can to protect the quality of life in the region," Smith says with a straightface.

Drive 35 miles east to the development blaze of Antelope Valley and find Caltrans workers widening Highway 138 under fire from flying burritos and bb guns.

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
--Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

bête comme fedora

"dessin numero 1" from Le Petit Prince

At the age of six, Saint-Exupery tells us in Le Petit Prince, he made a little drawing of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. When he asks grown-ups if the drawing scares them, they answer, "Pourquoi un chapeau ferait-il peur?"

As the 750 Rapid rolls through the Reseda intersection, on the other side of Ventura Blvd, at the edge of a furniture shop that features kitschy cast iron sculptures in its outdoor lot--a reclining black bear with cub, a pony tailed girl in swing--I calculate.

In Chicago, before the realignment of Lake Shore Drive and the construction of a campus extending Grant Park to the south, the Field Museum was separated from downtown by five accelerating lanes of southbound LSD. One summer day I saw a man, apparently piqued by the crosswalk light's delay, calmly step into the rushing torrent and stick out his hand like an intrepid Charlton Heston parting waters in The Ten Commandments.

Fifty yards before impact, oncoming drivers begin laying on horns with the persistence of a kid discovering the fun of a glue gun only to be left with a crumpled sketch of a replica Robie House for the Jack Russell--Brandy--a backyard of disastrously sentimental sawdust and a sticky mess running down the inside pant leg. After cars screech to a halt, the target of our urban knight's shock-chivalry walks nervously across the bridge of bumpers created for her.

Seeing a gap, I dash across the four west-bound lanes, pause between the center yellow lines, look right, dodge a couple cars turning left from Reseda and jump in front of the bus. The driver opens the door and asks, "Do you have a death wish?"

With a grown-up grimace I answer, "Pourquoi une voiture ferait-elle peur?"

Spirits Rejoice

(19th annual Four Square Gospel Church Convention. Los Angeles Examiner photo from Bancroft Library.)

Last Monday a bomb threat at the Van Nuys Fire Station nearly closed down the meeting of MTA's San Fernando Valley Governance Council. Instead it brought the fiery spirit of Aimee Semple McPherson down upon the Marvin Braude Constituent Center. The sterile corner room became a tent of old time revival that had me rocking in my chair.

"Alleluia!" Angels moisten the eyes as the Chair calls for signal preemption to replace signal priority on the Orange Line.

"Amen!" Sweat beads collect until tiny streams roll down cheeks of harmonic tongues on swaying indigo robes that form the choir sonic ecstatic, affirming the Chair's demand for crossing gates at Orange Line intersections.

"But wait!" A growl builds from a pigeon's whisper as the necessary lesson of vigilance against corrosive power enters the homily.

"I know L-A-D-O-T..." A hiss bursts from the crowd, like the static clarity from the man playing a Fender knock-off through his boom box perched atop a shopping cart in the parking lot of the NoHo Ralph's, as "D-O-T" is mouthed, "will raise a jurisdictional ruckus at the challenge to north-south traffic. But we must get people out of their cars!"

The congregation erupts. Shouts of "Glory be to God" and "Praise Him!" roll through the chamber.

But the crown is yet to be placed.

"The astonishing success of the Orange Line, which in less than two years has surpassed the Gold Line in daily ridership shows the Curitiba model can work in L.A. For a fraction of the billions spent on a single rail line, we can build a rapid transit system throughout the city!"

Suddenly, a handsome man of about fifty with slicked back hair leaps onto his back row chair. He writhes and digs manicured nails into a double breasted Zanetti suit clad body as if ripping away leeches found after bathing in a murky pond. His lungs trumpet forth voices of the Pentecost like the horn of Donald Ayler on "Truth is Marching In" as it must have sounded at Coltrane's funeral.

He falls to the floor and crawls, a trembling salamander, toward the podium. Sweaty palms hoist unsteady limbs upright, saliva drips from lips moving frenetically at the mike, "bblbbbl...yayaya...I-I-I-I-I-I wawawawa was blblbblliind. I wawawas blind. I was blind. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see!"

The Time of Your Life

A sign with "Apt for Rent" inside a large red arrow, below which is written in bold black marker "BACHELOR SINGLE", hangs beside a white plywood and brick complex on Tujunga Ave. On the curb in front sits a Jaguar XK8 battered from collisions whose wounds go unrepaired. Clear plastic sticks to a parking light above a rear bumper held up by red duct tape on one side--in a small effort to match the maroon body--and several strips of black on the other. The passenger door looks crunched in by a fire plug and all that remains of the left headlight is a bulb that hangs loosely from a gray wire. Below it a greasy red ribbon signals the loss.

The maroon of dried blood that flowed from a deep gash forms a long curve across the forehead of a man sitting next to me. Don Johnson shades, missing the right temple, sloop down his nose where flakes of skin peel from sunburn. He murmurs a thought train softly, and I let it blur through me to become the buzz of a child who runs with arms stretched as an airplane.

Suddenly he looks at me, "How old are you? In your 30s, huh."
"I recently turned 42."
"Ah, Ah, just wait 'til you turn 50. That's the best time of your life. Yeah, oh yeah, believe me, that's the greatest."

Long after the death of 24 year old James Dean at the fork of California Routes 41 and 46, the accident tale recounted reckless speed in a Porsche Spyder. But the wreckage and position of Dean's body indicated his speed at 55. Just before impact he muttered, "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us." 52 years later, the trauma of internal injuries still lingers.

Al Fresco Feeding

Image from Picnics Inc

The sad trickle of liquid from mustard packets along with an empty bag of Buddig deli meat lay scattered under the highway overpass, remains of a slapdash lunch for the itinerant eater. The pavement above displays saltines and grapes on a plaid picnic blanket curling in the wind. These picnickers, mimicking their ant companions, swarm with an obsessive hunger--a hunger for asphalt.

The uncurbable appetite for pavement sparked the great HOV revolt of the 1970s. When Caltrans restricted existing lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway to carpools, Maoists of the middle class brandished radiator grills to demand their bread of life not be robbed from starving wheels.

Caltrans administrators, in fear for their bureaucratic lives, promised from then on to only create carpool lanes when freeways were widened.

Billions are now being spent to complete the HOV lane system throughout L.A. county, while a recent study shows they are often no faster than lanes where people go solo.

The next fight is over congestion pricing--charging drivers to use express lanes during peak times. Not having them has cost the county federal grant money for transit projects.

The revolutionary avant-garde fighting for motorist rights is the California Automobile Association. "Freeways must be free! Car drivers have too long been oppressed! We need more lanes not less! Create double decker freeways if we must!"

Mmmm, double decker freeways. That sounds delicious. Pass the mayonnaise.

Slow-churned

The Next Village
My grandfather used to say: "Life is astonishingly short. Now, in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village without being afraid that--apart from accidents--even the time allotted to a normal, happy life is far too short for such a journey."
--Franz Kafka

"It's too far."
My niece drones the blues with a voice sweetly trained by Christian pop sing-alongs.
"It's too far."
Naturally, as we begin a half-mile trip to the North Hollywood Diner, it was she who had suggested we walk somewhere to eat. "I'm tired of sitting in the car," she had said.

Dewy and lake cooled summers in northern Michigan stayed light past ten, and the wood of Grandpa's Victorian cottage mumbled softly through the night. The ritual morning walk brought sociability and contemplation. Between introducing a fidgety grandson to neighbors, Grandpa would mimic bird songs, recite poetry and quiz me on the names of trees. The sound of White Ash samaras crackled under rubber soles.

A retired Presbyterian minister, Grandpa never stopped teaching the sacredness of presence. In contrast to the stuff-fest practiced after fry-thru purchases--made perfect in world competitive eating--he admonished me to take time with my food. Later, he capped his fried chicken and string beans with a glass of buttermilk.

After half a bean and cheese burrito and an invitation to bake a brown sugar birthday cake, sobbing red face becomes cherub grin. "We're already there?!", she exclaims as we step through the courtyard gate to my apartment. "I can't believe we're already there!"