being raised in los angeles is
indescribable born in the old la county general hospital with its beautiful
antiquity is an unbelievable honor i drive by there almost daily sometimes
three to four times per day a place so intimately familiar and so alien at the
same time i love it so much a sick love it makes me want to run through the abandoned
hall ways and burrow myself in the old phone booths and never ever come out
again Jean-Louis have you been here and do you know that i want to fill my
lungs with that old air it was founded in 1878 ironically my three favorite
numbers 1 7 and 8 forty-four years before you came to consciousness i was born
there in the 70’s and i haven’t really consciously checked out Jean-Louis is it
possible to be a human ghost i am a charity ward alumni but in many ways those
of us born here continue to love our city bitter sweet the nursery that birthed
us and healed us with ticket number infamy we have paid and continue to pay one
large ass never ending bill one that is paid day in and day out hey! Jean-Louis
you bum tell me something kid blow the sax of time is not a sandwich and we
travel through the Ozone of your most triumphant hours general hospital with
its jubilant height and art deco facades sends shivers through my blood cells
when i see it off the santa ana 5 beautiful and mean and powerful and ever
loving with its chiseled arms going towards the sky like the baby Jesus of your
catechism years i can only imagine you Jean-Louis wide eyed Dharma child on the
knees of love and me as a child i was introduced to many medical machines and
medications i played for hours with knobs and hoses and tools i was sickly but
willful as most angelinos but i wasn’t a wizard the hospital in my mind was a nation state
with endless halls and sulfuric smells with the aroma of vending machine coffee
and chicken soup like mother’s Yiddish parlor the shower rooms with white cold
chlorinated tiles and the smell of latex too oh Jean-Louis even now i am conditioned
to seek out these smells and no food is as good as vending machine fare now
that i’m older i beat the gravel around Boyle Heights and look in wonder my
child eyes and Converse sneakers have not really changed much probably because
i refuse to lose sight of my cradle but Jean-Louis what
does it mean to look all of your life for a granule of meaning and be told you
are in God’s image and behold on top of a mountain there you are and while the
pigeons pan for peanut shell gold i look at the horizon and the junk yards of
the northeast beckon while i thumb through the pages of the oldest book
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