Joy

by TomiJoy

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Crazy Charlie

I’m lying on the roof, looking up at the stars ..when I get a get a call from Charlie who's underneath a bridge .. in a tent community by the L.A. River. It’s a place he knows well, which concerns me because it’s probably the first place they’ll look for him. “Nah” he says “..it’s terra incognita.” I try Googling it with no luck. It’s like wild kingdom down there. He spends his time sitting in squalor behind a wall of cattails .. reading and repairing his bicycle ..while freeway traffic rushes by overhead. His new lady friend ‘Musgrove’ prepares coffee while he plans his next destination. I tell him he sounds awfully comfortable for a man on the run. He says it’s OK, people down there come and go ..no one really knows who you are ..but everyone takes care of each other. He tells me there’s a string of communities like this running up and down the river. Some really reek ..but others are almost picturesque. He says he wants to go to one where, he hears ..elderberry and willow trees grow wild ..and you can watch the egrets nest. I tell him he ought to write a travel guide to the swamps and waterways that run below the city of L.A. They’re sort of a blank spot that most people either miss ..or glimpse from an overpass ..then instantly forget.

Letter to the editor

Written in response to an article about ~~>marijuana dispensaries

It sounds like District Attorney Steve Cooley has either an outdated, or conveniently narrow interpretation of the English language. It’s no wonder he has chosen to go to war with the City Council, its constituents, the Attorney General’s Office and the voters of the State of California. Although State laws governing marijuana dispensaries do not explicitly say that it’s OK to ‘sell’ marijuana ..they do allow for ‘cost-reimbursements’ by its members. Now, in business terms, when cost-reimbursements are received they are generally considered a ‘sale’. Sort of a modern-day convenience since we live in a mostly cash-based economy. If District Attorney Cooley has problems with money changing hands, perhaps we should revert back to earlier times and reimburse dispensaries with topsoil, seeds and fertilizer.

In a heartbeat

Many children with dyslexia cannot keep up with the flow of text fluently enough to translate symbols into sounds ..then sounds into meaning. To read OK, the brain has about 40 milliseconds to do this. For children with reading difficulties, this may take as many as 500 milliseconds. According to Usha Goswami (Cognitive Neurosciences Institute at University College in London), part of the problem may be caused by difficulty in perceiving the rhythm of speech. Goswami and her colleagues discovered that dyslexic children could not track the beat in speech. The ability to detect a beat matters when the brain is trying to process syllables and phonemes. Like a metronome, it helps children pick-up the properties of speech in time. The ability to keep the beat is so fundamental, they say, that the first language a child learns is it’s own mother’s heartbeat while still in the womb.

Another country

President Obama has decided on a settlement between the Navajo and Hopi Indians during his first year in office. Imagine that. I wonder when the last time a sitting president could make that claim. Marijuana production is definitely on the rise around here. The Mexican Cartels are moving their operations to the US. It’s especially apparent in California. This doesn’t surprise me much. It’s common practice for US businesses to set-up shop closer to their market. The border community between the U.S and Mexico is becoming another country. They even have a name for it: El Tercer Pais. Literally ‘the third country’. It’s a place where people go about their business without much regard for what legislatures decide on either side. Meanwhile, smugglers are using cranes to lift cars, filled with marijuana, over that scary fence we built ..reinforcing the notion of how adaptable humans can be. If you build it, they will climb it. I wonder when we’re going to end this crazy charade that has transferred so much wealth to the drug cartels that, pretty soon ..they’re going to declare sovereignty over El Tercer Pais ..and defend its borders with more than just a wall.

Crazy Charlie

Charlie taught himself how to fly an airplane by playing video games on the computer. So, when the time came, he got food and supplies from other people’s houses ..boots and camping gear from an army surplus store ..night vision goggles out of a nearby fire station ..and a Cessna from a hanger outside of Renton, Washington. He landed hard on a forest road near Bonners Ferry, Idaho ..actually cracked the fuselage. Then he called me on a stolen cell phone to ask where I thought he should go next. I’m like: WTF Charlie ..are you joy riding or something ..? Are you trying to get away from somebody ..? (I’m thinking it could be anything from pissing off a neighbor to causing a riot). He says they picked him up in Seattle on a ‘malicious mischief’ charge (which could mean anything) ..then told him he was a suspect in an armed robbery case. Suspect ..? He doesn’t carry a gun ..nor does he remember threatening anyone. But it was enough to flip a paranoia switch that told him he better get out of town ..and just keep on going.

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