The Injured Bird - out on my own in the streets of Los Angeles.
As the old saying goes, “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” In Los Angeles, in our generation, coming in to adulthood amidst a seething somewhat maturity, we’d been hearing that line since we were children. All sorts of lines, in fact. Many of us arrived here from somewhere else, or some happenstance sort of lifestyle such that we were - that our parents were immigrants, or not, or that we were largely fraught with the spectre of a melting-pot metropolis of assimilation, due West, just a bit more than our suburban lifestyles had led us. That’s what I knew of Los Angeles. I was about 25 miles east of the epicenter of town that had (by now - 2020), become DTLA. Back then, it was about Hollywood. That’s where I reared my chops, as the story would go, as a failure of grad school at the University of California at Riverside. My professor told me that my aspirations, given my skillset, simply would not match up to the thesis project I had supposed of myself as being [manically] capable of enabling, in and of my means of creation, being a Music Composition Master of Arts student, in the year of 2005.
Aside from that, my instabilities, as a highly-endowed methamphetamine and cocaine user, in addition to my unbeknownst fallout of my college-years relationship were looming high above me. An iconic failure-to-be, of what my [aside-] entrepreneurial self had taught me were building blocks of character, in entrepreneurialism. That sort of Françoise romanticism was where the promise of the American Dream had hit me. For others, it was other things, of about town. For some, they could get by on cheap kitsch and slapstick maneuvers - a bitsy-step more distant, perhaps a bit more pragmatic, yet somewhat still leaning in to the notion of a narcissistic finery - one feature that delves deep in to the youth-minded psyche of our generation that came to fruition around the turn of the century.
Here, I had been taken in by a lover, (fast-forward a year and a half, given some rest, medication, a boxer’s fracture, yet I still had my car), and my parents’ still-supporting of me; luckily, I landed a girlfriend (to reiterate), and I successfully found a niche in a new marketplace: craigslist. New to me, anyways, for the most part. I felt like it was special. A vast frontier of freedom amidst the lackadaisical responsibilities of a small computers and tech section startup of a self-initiative founding sort - with a girlfriend? I set out to live what would turn out to be a life of ultimate-in-comfort, starting with a craigslist gig with a prominent Los Angeles photographer and filmmaker. Here (in this gig), I edited a photography shoot in to a YouTube video. Originally, with a Rolling Stone’s song as the backdrop, the video got a great deal of initial viewership, which I was proud of (40,000 hits, in about a week, or so). The video was taken down, due to YouTube’s copyright and Digital Rights policies, and the photographer had me come back to make a second and third video of his photography for him. He was also the one to get me in to an apartment on the West Side of Los Angeles, in Century City, just around the corner from the Century City Plaza shopping mall, right next to Ralph’s grocery. I paid $1,400 a month, and I was on my own. The girlfriend thing didn’t last long; we ended up getting in to spats, and we decided to call it quits.
The backdrop to all of this was that I was taken by the street scene that had been developing in the suburbs just off of Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach - the Shoreline Crips and a few other assorted characters were selling crack cocaine on the streets in small-batch pop-ups by night, and I was a most fond client of theirs. Back then, the narrow roads in a small perimeter, where they frequented, were backed up in lines of cars trailing down the streets. My girlfriend had chronic motion sickness, whenever she traveled in vehicles, so she didn’t come along with me. I would drive out, after days where I did my gigs on the computers and tech section.
James (the photographer who hired me for the craigslist gigs) opened up pouring faucets of the imagination, during the time that I knew him. He brought me on to one of his photography gigs, one day, where he had arranged a photoshoot with the (late) David Carradine, of television and motion picture fame.
This was my first introduction to Scientology, aside from having read the headlines on the tabloid newspapers when I was growing up. It was truly a fascinating experience, as the photoshoot took place at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood. Scientology would eventually weave its way deep in to my mind, once I hit age 30. Here, in the photo, I was in my mid-20’s. At the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood, there had been two main facets of the location, at the time that I revisited it, which was, perhaps, in 2013. One of them is the mental health facet. Scientology is well-reknowned, in online literature, and also on its website, for denouncing anti-social behavioral disorders and abuses in psychiatry, as well as for their personality tests.
These are the results of my personality test from the Scientology website. I was invited to come in to the local Scientology Center to have a personal evaluation on the next morning. That’s my day for tomorrow. It’s out towards the beach, so I suppose I’ll have a beach day of it.
———
So, I did it. I went to the Inglewood Church of Scientology, and I met with a man named Raymond, who spoke with me about my test results. While I was in the lobby waiting for him, I was introduced, [via television] to the Scientology.tv network, and to various shows and clips that the network had produced; apparently available on cable. The stuff was compelling, modern, and flashy, but not gaudy or overtly religious, from what I could remember.
And then I left. I didn’t have any money to purchase the Scientology Dianetics book, although I was strongly urged to. I was automatically scheduled to show up at the Scientology Church, and I felt like it would be a novel and relevant aspect of writing, here, since I was mentioning Scientology in various degrees, and early on, in my writing. At this juncture, of where and when we exist, here, in space and time; the year 2020: our childhood youths happened in the 80’s. Many of us, in Los Angeles, and, ostensibly likely, as well, in any likewise metropolis outskirts suburban surrounding area, thereof, we had the tabloids, where controversial things would happen to and from and of by Scientology and Scientologists.
In our early university years, Scientology was largely framed by figures such as Tom Cruise (of many feature films’ fame, and Katie Holmes (of a popular teen’s weekly show,[Dawson’s Creek]). Here, in the post 2000 era, when a person such as myself had split off from my childhood upbringing, in which my Cantonese mother had shunned these tabloids, popular culture, cable television, and the entire set of lifestyles like it; I had lived that life out, as mostly sheltered from it, yet I found a youthful rebellion in pseudo ‘darkness’ of Norwegian Black Metal, which was somewhat Classical music progressions of a relentless and dramatic theatrics nature.
I was raised Christian (trying to tie it all together, somehow), and innately so. I was not really some portrayal of that which had attracted me about counter and sub-popular cultures. I took a lot of it in, however. The world of psychedelics and speed attracted me, significantly. I had a healthy set of friendships with my counter-culture (for lack of a more modern term) - friends | peers, I would say, at this point, in that I had been reasonably well-socialized: I had a couple of girlfriends during those years prior to university; it was etc. common fare dating of backyard parties and kegger-type partygoers who all had (probably) some likewise similar dynamic of a lifestyle in high school years such that I did, as well.
Not that I mostly ever really found out about stuff like that. I never really caught up with people on Facebook. I somewhat just presumed that people who were patronizing the same scene and hanging out around us had some of our common and base-level behaviors. I would [seem to] discover these things much later in life, as I developed schizophrenia, [still trying to tie it all in together - which these things ostensibly do, in Scientology, which deals with mental health and psychiatry]. On some level, it would rack the mind to try to comprehend the intricacies and, as well, to access the magnitudes and felicitudes
{
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Afelicitude&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS883US883&oq=define%3Afelicitude&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.5358j0j4&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
}
Imagewordincontext.com › felicitude
felicitude - Word in Context
... to those who were in the midst of the sordid round of tasks
or
the dull, heavy grind of poverty, of a felicitude that knew
neither hunger, fear, nor pain; it offered a heaven forever to
those who could endure a hell for a ...
Okay. Felicity means ‘intense happiness.’ Kind of like a beautiful Valentine’s Day celebration, when everything goes right. [cue the photo]. - ° | • • • ? Bwippsy-cat?
Okay. Maybe.
But the photo is pretty compelling, to go with it. I find that novelty [full-stop; insert there] - (as a recycler), I find. . . that novelty is one of the seeking and needful behaviors fulfilled by such-named activity as recyclables collection, out and about, in the metropolis, as it pays, in various locales of America, and it suits it - the lifestyle; the novelty, the degradation of digging in the trash - for a certain type: ‘not so much, so’ - I figure people would say, if they who are them who are ones who are in and about: of ‘the business.’
Because it is a business.
On one hand. There are professional recycling centers that are operated by licensed and certified individuals who form businesses. Then, there are the recyclables collectors, ... etc. etc. various sorts and forms, although the path is ostensibly the same.
- not true.
Even within the sub-form of recyclables collector, there is some room for variety. There’s the ones who pull up at the recycling center, and who could understand where they had gotten all of those recyclables? [not my sort]. Perhaps it was a sporting event. I’d come to discover that some people list these things in the ‘free’ section on craigslist.
Much another forum and meeting place for a discourse on novelty. Of timeliness? That’s forum, short-form, written up. It’s important to incorporate rhythm in to the concept of novelty, sentence structure, regularity, expectation, and resolution of the listener’s expectations.
In this case, though, it’s [perhaps], (and, most likely) [as well] literature, so obv- oh-bee-vee it’s most ostensibly going to be read, although - . . .
< • ,^ ° >
In these days of turned-up nose-cat, there’s liable to be some people sporting the accessibility feature of text-to-speech reading, which is novelty, in and of its own, that it comes into light, as such that reiterating the point, when a typical becomes particular; novel, sometimes, and for effect, the participle, of a reiterative form [and not even going back, to check grammar], we somewhat just trust that it’s right, and somehow, the money keeps coming.
Eventually.
It’s a psychological tool of novelty - recycling is, and as well, as is thumb-and-thumb 2-finger typing; essentially what aught be a symmetric and viable form, in that it ought be balanced, and well, in its form, in addition to being ostensible;
Just for trivia, I’m using the iPad, going on several pages, for now, in the keyboard of AZERTY, for the sake of my affinities for it, and I find it more elegant.
That sort of thing happens for a recycling (recyclables): ahem, collector. Not that it’s always so elegant, but that’s somewhat the consequence of what and why, but how? That’s somewhat the mystery of the schizophrenic mind, of which, perhaps, Scientology does some sue discourse, thereupon, yet I’ve not discovered it, as of yet. I can but of only just briefly contextualize upon the topic and religion.
Even that was a contextually novel thing to believe, or to say.
On one hand, the fluff of contextualization somewhat bwipps up some fluff about contextually relevant au par truthful, given the span of time that someone could hope to be paying attention to something. Sometimes, a difficult and much-bereaved task to endeavor that someone could muster, in and of their own spatial-consciousness, which typically, on its own, is contextually... I suppose, . . .
Okay. Easily forgettable. But a novelty will stick around for a much more memorable section of time. Such as a cigarette butt. Gross, some people would ostensibly think, but then, it was almost as if everyone had become only some people, for the sake of that the cigarette butt is like, everything - to the novelty seeker.
Actually, it was in Data Science - that I had rehashed, in my imagination, the sake of the word, and its terminology and ostensible rhetoric usage, in commonality, such that a researcher < NAME HERE > had properly mentioned it had been included in a study.
I remember it fondly. It happened on Twitter. One other endless fountain-eous ‘mon-tableau;’ contextually, here, seemingly a luxuriant thing, to consider, but now, in the scope of science, given technology - it’s a much-customizable user profile and interface such that a tableau could be considerably contextual mockup noms-nom of selectively tasty-pidgin selective of dry goods and used | new electronics, given släde.
But then, . . . some people would, perhaps take issue and continue compounding upon the topic at hand.
[yeah, right],
But then, perhaps, someone would remember the context, given tableau, mockup au française, and the futility of maintaining attention-span, for the sake of ‘’whatever.’
Okay. Done.
Here's the image muah!
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| Check out the Valentine’s Day theme on this time lapse! |
(I don't have the attribution data for the Twitter reference, yet).
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