Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains.
She leans forward and she kisses me. Though it is the same as before, it isn’t the same at all. It is more, stronger, weaker, deeper, quieter, louder. It is more, vulnerable, impenetrable, fragile, secure, unprotected, completely protected. It is more, open, deeper, full, simpler, true. It is more. True. She pulls away her lips pull away. Without words we walk hand in hand through the thick Wood.
A small portion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes are enshrined at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades. They are the only portion of Gandhi’s remains that are kept anywhere outside of India.
I could be hurt by something other than myself.
My body is falling apart and my mind fell apart a long time ago.
There is truth, and that is all that matters. The truth.
You want worship for what? For what you give? For how you treat us? For what you allow to happen? For the hatred that exists that you don’t stop? For the violence that you don’t stop? For the death that you don’t stop? Man killing man killing women killing children that you don’t stop. And you want worship? You want us on our knees? You want devotion? You want exaltation? You want faith? A crown of thorns pressed into the skull bleeding at the tips.
In 1918, a Chinese immigrant working in a Los Angeles noodle factory invented the fortune cookie. He did so believing that a cookie with a positive message in it would raise the spirits of the city’s poor.
In 1935, the Los Angeles Police Department, via mayoral directive, sends a battalion of police officers to the Nevada border to stop hitchhikers, primarily Mexican nationals, from entering the state of California. They return after four days and report that they were unable to stem the flow of immigration.
Twenty-nine cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on law enforcement. Fifteen cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on sewage collection and treatment. Eight cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on road maintenance. One-point-five cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on education.
I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy.
I think God is something that People use to avoid reality.
Our heart is an organ that pumps our blood through our body, but our heart is also an organ that fills that blood with whatever we are feeling and the blood, the blood, the blood moves through every part of us, every fiber of us, every cell.
She told me that living life as a Prisoner was a waste of life and that freedom, even a second of freedom, was worth more than a lifetime of bondage.
Life is hard, deal with it. Working sucks, deal with it.
He’s gone, but my memory isn’t and it won’t be for a long time. It has always been a fault of mine. I hold my memory. pg.15.
You gotta work for everything in this world. Scratch and claw and fight for every little thing. And it never gets easier. Never. And it doesn’t end until you die. And then it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want that moment to end and I didn’t want that feeling to ever leave me. But all things leave us, all people, all feelings, no matter how we want them to stay, no matter how tight we hold on to them. We lose everything in life at some point.
It is a touching story, and it is written more to convince than to tell. I am not convinced.
I am alone. I have no one to talk to and no one to call.
There are three shelves with about forty books on each shelf. As I look through them, I am hoping for something that will take me away from here.