Portrait of Los Angeles 2013 #77: Like everyone who ever lived, I hate to lose things. Thus, I experienced a mildly disagreeable feeling when I noticed that the tiny, itty-bitty, super-small flap of rubber that covered the USB port on my bike-light had been torn off and was now missing. I reasoned that the little lost rubber flap had come off somewhere along my route to work each day. And so for a few weeks I rode with an extra eye on the ground, looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, the unfindable, the permanently lost. I saw broken pavement and lunaresque pot-holes. I saw scrawls of graffiti, warnings and stories from the D.W.P. I saw skid marks, broken plastic, broken fenders, broken glass. I saw the smooth silky asphalt of West Hollywood. I saw the ruts and dents of Beverly Hills. I saw the still-white paint of the bike lanes in Century City. I saw the leaves blown into the street in front of the Mormon Temple. I did not see that lost little flap of rubber. It was senseless, quixotic, to expect to ever find it again and yet I looked and looked among the cigarette butts and bits of trash. I looked for it literally in the gutter of the places I passed and though I saw many other leftovers of life and its expectations I did not find what I sought. And meanwhile I had missed so much: The homeless old black man fighting with the younger homeless black man and the way they called each other ugly, racist names. The young white man and the young black man walking together, holding hands, nervously alive, unsure if the safety they felt was an illusion or real. The bicycle-commuting Latino with a back-pack, an older fellow heading off to what kind of job that would eat up how much his life so he could send some money somewhere where, to whom? The cops with their squad-car windows down taking in the sun of LAs endless summer-spring and fall. The bus-driver on his perch with his sunglasses and his Buddha gaze. I missed it all and so much more because I was looking for the impossible, the unnecessary, the gone. Then this morning, under the bougainvillea tree on our patio I became aware that the little piece of what-not on the table that I have staring at for five minutes in my meditative way was, indeed, the missing piece of rubber that covers the USB port on my bike-light. It had gone nowhere, had been here the entire time, was just waiting the way inanimate objects wait, with nothing but forever on their mind. I picked it up and smiled, knowing the metaphor and the symbolism and loving it just the same. Happy Sunday. Peace, Dre
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 15:25:23 +0000
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