Los Angeles Rain: Poem

Los Angeles Rain

by Armando Ortiz

Standing under the cover of night

watching the rain clouds paint

Downtown L.A. with Dodger grey

Palm trees sway goodbye to another day

as electric ensembles purify the streets

under the shimmering incandescent lights,

Wheels swish through water and disappear from sight

the rhythm of the acoustic ensemble continues

liquid cymbals splashing throughout the night,

Someone steps outside their tiny room and with all their might

remember their first winter storm in L.A.

and begin to play their trumpet to clear skies nigh.

Beijing Winters

Beijing Winters

by Armando Ortiz

Winter evenings in Beijing are frigid

Nights bring freezing winds

And though at noon the skies are clear and sunny

You don’t want to be outside for too long.

Red is everywhere during this time

And sticks with crab apples sealed fresh

Inside hardened caramel sugar abound

And seasonal preparation for the New Year begins

Bringing red pasted banners and signs on the sides of doors.

Though the eye is blind during these months

The flavors that season the soul are many.

Handmade noodles made to order are at hand

Which are served on steaming white bowls

Topped with thin slices of beef

And a fried egg on top for an extra 5 mao.

A stew of mutton innards quickly warms up the body

I don’t know if it still exists, but when I was there

One could feast on instant huoguo on a side street

Where I ate it on tiny chairs and miniature tables.

It’s also the time when one takes liberal servings

Of dumplings of all kinds; cabbage and pork

Pork and chives, mutton and onions and the veggie and egg kind.

It’s during the night that the dry steppe air of the north passes through the city

And which is further squeezed of its humidity by the centralized heating

With its miles of hot tubes, that connect to a network of pipes

That pumps hot oil and water from a coal furnace that keeps blocks and blocks of people warm

And with severely dry throats.

When those nights of lonesomeness get intertwined with nightmares

It’s as if one were being choked by the devil’s hand

And one awakens desperately reaching for water.

Winters in Beijing also bring into focus

The celebration of the longest night

Which I did once outside a pub, while eating

Grilled chicken wings and drinking Yanjing beer.

The celebration of the longest night and the birth of spring.

When preparations for Chunjie begin to appear.

People bundled up in layers and layers of thick cotton and synthetic wool

Prepare to go back to their hometowns,

And the long lines at the train station are common.

It’s the sign of optimism that we all have survived the terrible winter

And begin to celebrate by buying rolls and rolls of firecrackers and rockets

That for a week will light up the midnight sky, and all the ghosts

That are fast asleep will awaken and be sent back to where they belong,

And we triumphantly declare to spring to open herself and begin forth

The colors of life and the blossoms of spring.

Winters in Beijing are long,

But now they seem short and distant,

Like an old recurring dream that disappears with every waking moment.

The first snowfall that blanketed the school benches,

And topped the pine trees melt from the memory

As the changing jet stream shifts from Northwesterly to Southeasterly direction.

Sebastian Orth: Tattoo Artist and Writer

     I had the good fortune of meeting Sebesatian several times. Some of the more memorable conversations I ever had with any tattooer took place inside his shop. In the midst of Tibetan images and classic works of art by other tattooers that hung on the walls is where he spoke eloquently on the many different histories that exist in every valley on earth. He recently published Many Stories: The Point of the Needle, and in this short video he briefly discusses his book and how the psyche is transformed once one gets a tattoo. Great explanation to something that is mysterious yet modern, mythical but imbued with symbolism.

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

(Jupiter and Semele, 1894-95) G. Moreau

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

By Armando Ortiz

(Fairy and Griffon) G. Moreau

                Understanding Moreau’s works of art and how I came about learning of his work came full circle when realizing that the cover of Bolan’s 2666 was taken from Moreau’s epic piece Jupiter and Semele, where the symbolism and message being projected from his painting are both religious, cryptic, political and imbued with so much epic mythology that to come to a full understanding of them is quite a challenge. The cover and the novel it protected fit well with the apocalyptic story that is told inside. Nonetheless one comes to understand that even in darkness there is a flicker of light that either shines a light that reveals a hidden path or it simply lights the cigarette of someone who is just standing on the sidewalk contemplating the darkness. Though subconsciously I had been exposed to his work during my reading of Bolano, it was only while reading James Joyce’s Ulysses that I became interested in knowing who was Gustave Moreau. The quasi introduction came about as I was engrossed in the midst of a conversation on art and literature that one of the characters in Ulysses was having with one of the main characters in the novel,

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelly, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.” (Ulysses p.185)

(Death on the Pale Hore, 1865) G. Dore

I wanted to learn more on this artist, but this was only one part of the puzzle because aside from his name I was aware of two other Gustave’s that also made masterpieces in their perspective fields of art and in their time, and these are Gustave Dore who is best known for his etchings and engravings of master works such as Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and The Raven. I discovered Dore while reading 2666 where his work appears several times, becoming in a way an apocalyptic and quasi mystical message of the world that Bolano was depicting. It was then that I was able to appreciate many of Dore’s pieces of art, especially those depicting legions of angels and the fallen angels casted as demons.

(Mermaids/Whitefish, 1899) G. Klimt

Gustav Klimt who is best known for painting people that looked to be both floating in a dream world and going down the current of time had a certain appeal when I first saw his work, and as time has gone bye an appreciation for his genius has only increased. But both these artist will be touched upon on a later time. The fact that there are a number of accomplished artist with the name Gustav is enough to make anyone that likes connecting the dots spend months on end studying the lives of these artist. Nonetheless, their names do partially open the door to a better understanding of the late-19^th and early 20^th century art world.

                 

                Gustave Moreau’s art is very apocalyptic and what really stands out is that many of his paintings are watercolor, a medium that was not used much those days. It is one thing to paint landscapes with oils and mix white into different colors, but with watercolor one builds colors on top of the blank paper, and once that lightness is gone it is hard to recapture.

“It is in them that Moreau displayed his boldest technical freedom and the most remarkable facets of his personal style. <<Watercolor makes a man a colorist,>> said Delacroix. This is true of Moreau.” (Jean Selz p. 56)

(Persus and Andromeda, 1870) G. Moreau

His work is very compelling. The hues and combinations of colors are key to his art. In some areas he seems to have saturated the paper with multiple layers of color to the point that backgrounds turned purple or brown, all of which was contrasted by peach colors or faint limes and deep blue colors that make up his skies.

(Phoebus and Boreas, 1879) G. Moreau

“In the room that housed them (Moreau’s paintings) there was an auto-de-fe of vast skies all aflame; globes crushed by bloody suns, hemorrhages of stars flowing in purple cataracts on somersaulting clusters of clouds.”  - J.K. Huyusmans

His technique makes you think of light, and how when we look out towards the horizon is virtually impossible to assimilate to a painting, because though one may try, light and refraction plays a big part in the way we see light and color, and yet Gustave succeeds in this exercise with his paintings.

“Moreau undoubtedly saw in his painting much more than they were able to express. The dream he had of them was a vision more literary than pictorial. In his descriptions of his paintings he went so far as to mention elements which could not be represented graphically, such as fragrant smells and sounds. In this respect the careful notes which he wrote to explain his most important painting are very revealing.” (Jean Selz p. 36)

(The Apparition, 1876) G. Moreau

One need not worry about reading his notes on the paintings he created. Though it might reveal the artists worries and thoughts about what he wanted to accomplish on canvas. What he managed to paint is something that is very much along the lines as one of those songs that one just likes to listen to over and over. There is a connection in this case with his creation and the outside which still happens even today. Some might ask, well, what is so special about that, and I say that the same concerns that people back in his day had still have, and though the symbols used today are slightly different there is that concern of whether this life is a dream or not and lies beyond.

“Moreau did not remain enslaved to those traditions (Impressionist movement of the late 19^th century) so greatly respected  by the painters who, like him, were devoting themselves to interpreting scenes drawn from mythology or the Bible……… he sought to express personal thoughts and to develop ideological themes. The need to invest even the smallest detail of a picture with significant symbols that his most understanding admirers occasionally confessed that they could not decipher them.

                In order to grasp how the painter was able to fuse his intellectual vision with his particular type of pictorial expression, it is necessary to examine his work from the beginning of his career.” (Jean Selz p.6)

Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives: Book Review

The Savage Detectives: A Review

by Armando Ortiz

In his famous novel The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano sheds light into the lives of many Spanish speaking poets that make up the worlds of Arturo Belano and Ulyses Lima’s circle of friends and acquaintances. These two main characters embark on several journeys that parallel the experiences of those in the Odyssey and in a way resemble the young and adventurous life of Arthur Ribaud, who despite the works he produced at a young age decided on a life in the African frontier, working as an arms dealer, adventurer and desperado. The presence of Pynchon’s Slothrop of Gravity’s Rainbow is there as well since he too is on a journey or more like an escape, wandering around the earth in search of something. Bolano describes the youthful experiences of these two poets, and those that form a loose circle of poets called the Visceral Poets.

As he details the lives of Belano and Lima one is taken on a 15 year journey where one sees the vicissitudes of poets that have decided to take on the adventure of life and all its risks. Both of these poets experience love. Separately, they encounter their own rejection. Other times, they share drinks with other poets and desperados. They live the life of vagrant poets that take them throughout Central America, Europe, Israel and Africa. Through their adventures and as time passes they continue to live their lives as wandering barbs, diving into the underworlds of Communist plotters and freedom fighting vagabonds though always keeping a fierce independence, knowing very well that all that is available to them is their freedom and mind.

They come to discover the real rivers of humanity that flow from South America all the way to the borders of the United States that by the 1980’s were becoming more and more intense. The civil wars happening in several countries would eventually make the routes for other illicit activities. They discover that even in tough circumstances poetry can be a common ground for even violent people and artists who the thought of poetry or writing never crosses their mind. They carry that impulse to create within them as does the light that shines in darkness. In the book the real artist can live the life of a thug, and might not be at all linked to a creative group. 

There are various camps of writers and artists in the book but the main group presented is an insignificant speck when compared to the larger camps of writers that existed back in the late-60s in Latin America, and the world at large. In Mexico, there were two large groups of writers, one was supported by the governments which represented the established powers of government with their censorship, and the media that published and made writers famous. The other group was made up of leftist writers and were supported by foreign governments or by a small circle of leftist elite who’d been allowed to have the opposing voice. However, Bolano presents an alternative group-other poets from the lower ends of society, who express themselves with raw sentiments and navigate the world of poverty and struggles. These poets, despite their modest means, make their presence known throughout time. Going against everything that represented money and power, and living out their lives as artists, and crashing literary events that they felt were masked to represent writers that were not talented. Their unsettling sentiments create havoc and chaos to the literary establishment.

The Savage Detectives lacks the violence and is not as dark as 2666 but it definitely demonstrates Bolano’s ability to capture a reader’s imagination and take them on an epic journey. One learns of Lima and Belano via others who have met them and have had conversations with them; poets, revolutionaries, prostitutes, house wives, professors, lawyers, vagabonds, swindlers, editors and cops. Through those descriptions we are able to piece together the rough outlines of two men who decided to be poets. 

Their lives became one epic poem that unfolded with one journey after another, an adventure begun with every ending adventure. We see two young adults dive into their journeys head first and with fists flying. Towards the end of the book these two are mere shadows of who they were and now have to deal with the realities of age, the mind’s exhaustion and the quest for more journeys and adventure. Yet they continue on with their lives in search of that thing that keeps their flicker ignited, that will satiate their thirst for poetry, literature, life and adventure.

The Savage Detectives is a remarkable novel that seamlessly fits within Bolano’s larger-than-life world. Bolano’s skillful use of language creates a palpable texture in his writing, immersing readers in vivid imagery. It is evident that Bolano aimed to create a lasting work of literature. Moreover, his profound understanding of the power of the Spanish language allowed him to captivate the imaginations of readers within Spanish-speaking communities, while also introducing readers from different backgrounds, different nations and language, to a world that might have remained hidden in plain sight.

A Drive to the Coast: Part 7

Part 7: Dawn Awakes

by Armando Ortiz

Sculptures create artificial shadows where white plaster bodies and papier-mâché skulls animate themselves under the bonfire and painted murals transform into the plastered walls of sacrificial ball courts.

Everyone embarking on the night’s journey rowing Mayan canoes of brown mahogany

They kick comets from here to yonder. Heads roll to their destiny.

Charon leading the procession of pasty white skeletons

Souls crossing lakes where caiman float prancing through valleys of spears swiftly hopping through old growth forests like jack rabbits that disappear into the chaos of nature’s pulse.

Persephone greeting the agonies of people whose journey continues to drown rivers, and we speak to screaming spider monkeys.

Peace is found inside Tibetan skulls that are traded at midnight along the trampled caravan roads, and grains are poured out from the heads of pious souls.

Boat burials take us to destinations that are as old as clouds that hover over unknown trails where spotted orcas and elephant seals guide spirits and morning vapors ride the fog of night.

Even after life, our trajectories are clearly uncertain, and the bubbles of our childhood will one day cease to be.

The pitch black pumas of yesterday become the third eye of the rising Huitzilopochtli.

Mocking birds coo their calls, reminding us that this night is not eternal.

The huitzi sounds, and the hum of tiny lustrous birds welcome the morning dawn revival.

A sunrise in pause gleams of morning light approaching, yellow needles piercing the armor of demons, vanishing with buckets of spiraling fire and everything is engulfed by morning’s dawn.

Streets polluted with plastic bottles and trails trampled by rising pedestrians. All is flooded in beige, and contrasted by morning shadows.

We follow the giant green serpent and hide with bushmasters waiting to pounce.

Devouring all under their view under that golden dinar that never loses value.

Purple violets surround opposing yellows in pink and everyone emerges with a stretching pose. The prickly pear cactus sheds a morning drop.

The sun sends thunder in waves repeating the cycle and we ride the ocean of snakes while our mother rides the carp of dawns orange that takes worshiping parties to a day of pleasures and mourning.

We bathe in the amber nectar of gods.

Laurie Lipton: Artist in Los Angeles

Lauire Lipton, Los Angeles Exhibit

by Armando Ortiz

            A few days ago I visited the Laurie Lipton exhibit being held at the ACE gallery in Los Angeles which is on Wilshire Blvd a few blocks west of La Brea. After decades of living abroad the artist decided to return to the states and make Los Angeles her home. The current exhibit she has on display is superb. Her style and the medium she uses are at the height of any master artist’s abilities. The space where her exhibit is being held is huge, and at times it left like it was an extension of the LACMA.

Her images are amazing and she certainly took a lot of time making the intricate designs come to life. The quality of her work shines through all the bleak subject matter. It shows what American contemporary society and western culture is and brings up questions as to what our realities ought to be. She showcases the daily grind of life, of money making, survival, and the machine that is churning away at our being. Our soul, and death, in this case, time and consumerism, is the all-consuming knitter of reality. Like Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son that eats all there is, her images also unveil the grotesque that exists in our daily life. Her current exhibit is a critical take on capitalism and modernity with the age old subject of death.

            Quality aside, her take on city life and that of Los Angeles is quite superficial. If what best describes Los Angeles is fake and superficial and one’s existence in Los Angeles correlates with her personal vision then ones reality is truly sad. Nonetheless, that is what her work portrays, a superficial take on the anxieties of a few people in this city. The majority of the people living here hardly have the problem of dressing up in the morning and walking their dog along well-manicured lawns. And though many might be slowly murdering themselves to death by the many plastic surgeries they have and the daily grind that takes place, it does not represent the majority’s experience. She presents something that is and at the same time isn’t, because in reality the death that takes place is usually unknown and her work seems to muffle that reality even more.

            Her topics though they reveal the prevailing anxiety of life in the city are rather bland because there exist death and there exist Death. Death is what everyone has to face and has to come to grips with. On a daily basis there is exploitation in this city, and on a daily basis a type of violence takes place and these are things she refuses to touch on. Her preoccupation with death as the horror at the end of the tunnel and how it ultimately is above time comes through her work. The skulls that emerge from her mind and onto the paper are great, but it’s a reality everyone has to face. Death is a whole different matter when one considers the exploitation of illegal workers, the risk that sex workers face, the violence that gangsters and thugs exercise on their enemies and the random unknown victims that never make it on to the local news. It’s as if she herself is consumed with the idea of consumerism, media and modernity while refusing to touch on justice, love and life.

            She’s a great artist, no doubt about that, but there is something missing. She uses graphite/ pencil to render amazing images that reveals the worst of modern society. The mechanizations behind what we perceive to be reality seems to control the reality that we are experiencing, which at this time of year with the presidential election looming just over the horizon and the media frenzy surrounding really shows that politics are about- image over substance, and showcases our anxieties of our waking life. Yet, where is life in all of this, and what about the other reality? Aside from the “office workers” waking up in the mornings and having their cereal, and the “house wives” walking the isles there are people who are working their tail off and yet are managing to live a life that is worth living. Out of the 24 hours of time that we have in a day only eight are dedicated to work, and another eight are dedicated to sleep and in between all that there is time to spend on hobbies, time with family, listen to music or go to the beach. Her work makes it seem as if everyone in the city lives to work and does not work to live.

            The horror that she experiences in her daily life are not what kids living in the poor neighborhoods experience. Theirs is a more raw reality of what city life is all about, and consumerism, the media, plastic surgeries, white collar office work, and wealth are not a part of their reality. Living in the midst of drug dealers, trannies walking down streets, amongst the general violence and poverty that they experience is a reality that they deal with and yet continue to push through in their life. It makes one wonder if Laurie is living in Los Angeles, the city, or the Los Angeles that is made up of hills, Hollywood stars and lofty lofts that are more like fortresses, because she only reveals a partial slice of a city that is far more complex than she creates on paper. But I am sure that this is not the case, because despite of what she has experienced in this city, she probably has favorite music that she listens to, enjoys a walk by the beach, and finds pleasure being with close friends.

            Nonetheless, there is more to her art, and maybe what isn’t spoken is her ultimate goal. Some of her pieces are very Gustave Dore-esque like her presentation of The Consumption, where a shopper is faced with an endless row of items to purchase. Her skulls are life like, and her images come alive through our own anxieties with death. I certainly work eight hours job, but I also go to school, read books, listen to music, dance, enjoy nature and have moments of bliss. And these things are lacking in her work. It’s as if the grotesque is presented in all its glory, but the missing piece to what truly is real has to be there because there are those that don’t go with the waves that society conjures and certainly do not experience a life the way she makes it out to be.

            

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Thirteen): Morning Quake

Part 13: Morning Quake

by Armando Ortiz

Back in the mid-eighties there was an earthquake that happened early in the morning during school hours. The ground began to move side to side, like a rocking chair, and I began to run, but running was like racing across an old suspension bridge. Then the teachers began to yell to get on the ground, which I immediately did. The swaying seemed to last forever, the ground seemed to rock up and down, the telephone cables were swinging round and round but without anyone jumping over them, and the red rubber balls seemed to be confused and could not stop rolling in circles. The earth was churning and something was brewing under the earth. That day we came out early from school. I had to wait for an hour or two on the playground. My cousin came and picked me up, we both hurriedly walked back home.

A Drive to the Coast: Part 6

Part 6: Descent and Ascent

by Armando Ortiz

The sun descends into purgatory and wild shape shifters appear from hidden parts of the land.

Grave robbers come out, and pirates land to pillage in places where faceless people rest in peace.

St. Anthony emerges from his cave unharmed playfully pretending that captivity is a sacred past time from a self-imposed exile in a tiny Buddhist tomb.

Separate worlds running parallel to each other meet on the axis of all gravitational centers where dawn remains infinitely on pause and the sacred mornings of death are trampled by greed, hunger, and desperation.

Black panthers devour pythons and anacondas swallow the pale moon whole while caiman lie ready to devour the wandering soul.

Men snatch the precious coral, layered onyx, fine embroidery and speckled gold pins of yesterday exchanging it for paper gold.

Prometheus arrives carrying the sacred fire, and starts setting piles and piles of plywood over mounds of paper preparing for the sacred ceremony under the sky.

We circle and dance, panting, and singing praises to past ancestors using old Zippo lighters to illuminate our way and in unison attempt to ignite the fire.

The torch handed down to us is sent soaring into an arch, and starts the pyre.

Gentle waters reflect the trajectory of the speck of light that ignites a day within the night. 

Whispers from the morning air pass through our bodies.

In this sacred conch of wind and water are waves of yonder that mix and get lost in our parade of wonder.

Miniature protons ignite the needed flame to keep this performance going all night.

An artificial day in darkness is born, and our hearts illuminate our steps, bringing up postulations for contact and lightness of touch.

Ecstasies of cosmic paragons start to happen and sacred creatures that paraglide next to soaring peregrines experience interstellar parallax.

Shadows are cast aside and reveal the door to our hearts.

The earth palpitating thermal waves turn cold, the grains touched with every ponderous step as we dance to the beat in a splendorous trance.

The moon casts her dress on the ocean water. Now her body is naked, and shimmers on the dark waves like the paleness of her white dress.

The dark silhouette of the mountains hold up the cobalt glass above us and the obsidian waters reflect the shivers of the midnight stars. 

Childhood: Poem

Childhood

by Armando Ortiz

As a child mother took him to the park

and there she bought two bags of popcorn.

One bag was to feed pigeons and the other

they had to share with each other.

They walked along the cement trail and through a tunnel

to get to the sandbox where the swings and slides were.

The metal structures were huge

and glistened under the gigantic lamp of light.

Those scaffolds of youth and imagination

now bring back old memories as he drives by

of when he would let go of mother’s hand

and under her watch lose himself in the playground.

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Twelve): After the Rain

Part 12: After the Rain

By Armando Ortiz

He walked outside to smoke a cigarette, and downtown LA’s skyline could be seen at a distance to the east from where he stood. It had rained earlier so the view was quite fresh and crisp. The lights at a distance flickered and he could see the old neon sign that read, Westlake Theater, suggesting to people that a long time ago the swap meet where everyone shopped had once been a venue for black and white films. A white Datsun could be seen at a distance driving west towards Vermont, and a thin haze of grey clouds hovered over the cityscape.

Standing on the roof of the apartment building, he lit his drag and suddenly heard symphony music at a distance. He looked around to see where the music was coming from but couldn’t quite make out its location. The music sounded important, with its violin and suspenseful melodies, conjuring up images of a distant love and present royalty, as if some queen or prince had decided to visit the neighborhood and the only proper thing to do was to put Beethoven or Mozart. None of that was happening though; it was a girl down the street that was celebrating her 15th birthday, a quinceanera. He soon spotted some kids dressed in long sleeve shirts that had been neatly ironed, wearing grey vests and pressed black pants, the shoes they wore, like the puddles by the sidewalk, reflected the liquefied amber color of the street light above. Somehow he’d linked the orchestra music to some embedded feeling or idea that he’d assimilated in the past. He wasn’t sure though.

A Drive to the Coast, Part 5

Part 5: Your Eyes

by Armando Ortiz

Your eyes light a path that leads to your temple inside the living palace where waterfalls palpitate and your pupils ignite candles that cry inside your chapels. You let me turn your prayer wheels as everyone chants Om mani padme oum.

I proceed to enter the room of a hundred numinous Buddhas and Shamans start speaking with past spirits, talking in flames, while swirling and twirling in coyote pelts.

The wheel of time turns and we open doors to other doors, and the teachings of ancestors turn and turn like the atom, like the mani wheel, like the turning of chariots, like the cycles of days, and the turning of seasons, like the turning of time.

Huddled we watch our mother dance with the Whispering Spirit.

They become swirling dervishes shuffling with the present as the fox chases its tail.

The conception of nothingness is where knowledge emerges.

Kalachakra and Vishvamata disintegrate into ashes and the dust of our delirious steps rise above our feet revealing to us the sacred wisdom of the old self-perpetuating reality that has permanence one conception at a time.

All is vanity under a canopy of frozen tears.

A Drive to the Coast, Part 4

Part 4: Splitting of Electrons

by Armando Ortiz

All you get is the splitting of electrons. That is what she said after I told her what it was that I was seeing and feeling. I had been tripping pretty hard that day and the world that existed outside of me came in to focus. I had been aware of the world that I live in and the daily transactions that take place with others. However, on this particular day things changed, as if my entire world had been lifted up and taken up to outer space, where gravity is less stable, and things tend to have a mind of their own. I was about to step out of my capsule and out into unknown territory, and all communication would be unstable. I could see far into the horizon and spot the different layers of movement and people that were going hither and thither. From a distance I could see people pass bye and at times saw the tops of their cars, and at other times I saw people on platforms just enjoying the whole view of the festival taking place. I was at the center of all the chaos that was taking place. Everything was happening before me and around me. I realized that all that was outside was a sort of organized chaos, but I was the center and the central spoke of the center was I. My thoughts were in a state of chaos. The Chaos was somehow hyperbolically connected to the world at large like a chariot perpetually racing competitors inside a hippodrome of consciousness. A silent static took precedence between thoughts and the rest of my physical self.

She’d been listening to me talk, and at times turned away to look at all that was happening down the slope, occasionally spotting random decorated bicycles.

Then she said, “Well, after all that, all you have is the splitting of electrons.”

I gave out a loud laugh, “Hahahaha…” it really shocked me, but it made sense, because at the molecular level there were electrons splitting and connecting to other things.

“What we all are is mostly space and water, even though we don’t perceive that reality,” she said, “It truly is a miracle that we just don’t dissolve into nothingness.”

“What is that thing that keeps it all running? God? A spirit? An electrical charge? Air pressure?” I asked with a sense of desperation, “Is nature outside of this chaos? Is nature chaos by nature? Does this mean that our bodies are of nature, but we turn around and look at it in a weird way of chaos.”

Chaos……living in the city one experiences organized chaos, but in nature, one sees the multiplicity of nature’s wonders, an organization that seems to have equilibrium and symbiosis. We see the different animals, the trees, the ocean, the insects, the mammals, the birds, the snakes, and the grounds they slither on. There is so much more, so much of what we call wild and why do we call it wild? Why is it that humans have a desire to “tame” nature, just like we like to enslave others, conquer and dominate others. Nature does not do that, right? Is there love in nature? Our cities become representative of what we deem as natural. The slums, the desperation for survival, the constant up and down driving, the mechanized sounds of metal against metal, and the tall buildings that look offensive when compared to the distant backdrop of the Azusa Mountains. All we have are splitting of electrons, atoms that go round and round, like all that exists outside ourselves. The universe and other galaxies seem to go round and round with no perceived ending to all the life cycles out there. The cycles of time devour everything, and in the end, there all that is left are splitting of electrons.