los angeles is reimagining itself

dream and run into the dream, do not be afraid of it

@zeel_freel

@zeel_freel

I’m trying to think of a world in which I hold in my hands, that I play with as putty. I think of how to mold a world. I think of what world I would mold in my hands.

I’m currently crying reading David Lynch quotes. A lot of things have happened to Los Angeles and in result, a lot of things have happened to me.

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Rest in peace.

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I feel like my life has opened like one giant orb. Pressing inside of it, there is something in the center asking me to speak.

I remember the moment I first saw the flaws in the system. I was a junior in high school. I stopped being happy. The thrill of being a part of a large high school had worn off as I was an upperclassman now. Now they were preparing us to go to college. All of this a privilege.

Yet, I remember something cracking. I don’t know what caused it but one day I couldn’t look at life the same anymore. It might have been that I’d reached my limit in AP calculus homework, or how I’d come to notice I felt so far away from my own interests and desires, or how I began to feel the hand of the machine grazing my back. Telling me to go to this class, do this homework, go to this college, and make this kind of life for myself. I began realizing school was a pen to shepherd children into the workforce. Their robotic formulas identical.

I calculated my odds of being truly happy. Under these conditions, slim to none. Each day, I’d fantasize of all the things I would rather do than be in class. All of them involved physical pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved to learn. All my life I had been an excellent student. It was my defining characteristic. But these question began to creep up:

Why? Why are you being an excellent student? Who are you being an excellent student for?

And my behavior began to unravel.

I began to think of all the other things I could be doing. All the things I could be learning that were tuned to my true desires. How I could be following the strange pings inside of me leading me into a life of wonder. I wondered why school was designed in this unimaginative way. Locked in this cold, massive building for eight hours a day. So devoid of compassion and curiosity for the young and vibrant lives ahead of us.

It felt like they were just keeping us busy. So busy that we didn’t have time to observe ourselves. Or the world around us.

Again, it is a privilege to learn. It had been a privilege to be under those circumstances. But, that does not mean I cannot prod at its efficacy. At its lack of innovation.

This past week, I have been in disbelief and utter shock of the wildfires in Los Angeles. This city that I love. This city I was born in and ran back to the moment I graduated high school. All of my love for this city broke open. As well as the pain. It has washed me into a new sense of duty. A new sense of adoration for this city.

Each day, I continue to watch people online gather and give for the people who have lost so much. How the pain of one Angeleno has been equal to the pain of all of us. It is not just those who lost their houses who have lost. We have all lost something because of this. This pain is shared. This is teaching me how pain is meant to be shared. How pain is not to be endured alone.

For those of you not in Los Angeles, what has been occurring here in result of the fires has felt revolutionary. Whatever stereotypes that have been thrust upon this city have fallen away. Something truer and richer has taken its place. I’ve been seeing people mobilizing mutual aid efforts I’d never imagined would have before. The way people of all walks of life have been donating their time, their money, their resources and most lovingly, their ingenuity to get these families back into a place of care and comfort has been mind-blowing. It’s changing the way I view humanity en masse. It has confirmed to me, that people want to help. That people, truly, are not motivated by money. It may seem that they are because of the conditions that have been handed to us. But, I’m seeing firsthand, something more powerful than money. Human feeling. This endless, impenetrable feeling of being connected to one another.

It has created a new image of this city and all cities in my brain. How it is possible to redesign our world into a place where people and their well-beings live at the center. There is no purpose in centering money. Money is nothing but a tool. A flow of energy.

Returning back to work today, upon returning from evacuating, gave me the same feeling as my junior year of high school. That feeling of being a part of a system designed to distract me from my true desires. I do not believe in that system anymore. I create and participate within another. I feel this new system glowing. It has already begun to make itself apparent. It’s flow, electric.

I believe we all can make our lives outstanding. I just think we have individual work to do to make sure that is the case. And what you have to do is dream. That’s your end of the deal. You came to this Earth with a specific dream and it is the goal of your lifetime to tell all of us. You have to honor what you want in this life. Because what you want is connected to what I want. We’re a part of the same puzzle. That’s the contract we signed when we touched upon this Earth together. And when we let ourselves dream like this, we can observe and create new futures. We emit images to collectively walk towards. So, I’m going to ask you to dream. To dream without compromises. I want you to dream as if the door will be opened.

The work of Los Angeles in these coming days and these coming months, is to dream. And what better city, than the city of Angels, the city that ushers in the dreamers, for that to happen. Because so many parts of this city have broken because of this tragedy. So many people we have to dream for to get them back on their feet again. So many new ways we will need to imagine how our societies and governments can better serve us as people. Within this moment, we have caught glimpses of what our city can be fueled by, true giving — so, why can’t we continue this? Why can’t we create a longer form of this moment, so that it lives on?

As for me, I dream of a city which nourishes its people. Of school systems that cherish the growth of students into being curious, imaginative, and well-equipped human beings to handle the swings of new life. Where ideas are encouraged on how to live life better and in more accordance with the Earth. Where art and media are centered on the splendor of brave, risk-taking artistry and compelling ingenuity. That city-centers are designed for culture and connection, not only to each other but to nature. That people have vocations, that they feel a sense of calling to the work they do. So, they feel that they are giving, from the deepest centers of their cores, and not that they are being taken from, so that they can simply earn dollar. Ultimately, I dream that life is our highest form of currency. That being alive is never taken for granted. That each of us is connected and spurring with that irrevocable, revving life force that beams inside of us, jolting us actively to life.

If you’d like to contribute to the families affected by the fires, here’s a great place to start. It’s a master directory of GoFundMe’s for Black families displaced by the Eaton fires.