He’s tall, 6-2 or 6-3, the frame and the slacks descriptive of the personal architecture characteristic of Downtown, Los Angeles. The concepts - alpha male, success, drive, wealth, ostentation – are chiseled into identities here, hard granite. It’s visible not so much in the suits or the European cars, but in the expressions.

I was never sure, though I observe it everyday, exactly what these expressions mean. But in this man in his fifties, in his wrinkled slacks, holding up his sign in a flow of ex-peers, I realized what I was seeing, both in this man and in the men around me. The expressions here are logos, brand-names for pride, the calling card of Los Angeles. But this man’s expression – a face of last-threads-hanging, of tears hardened beneath the surface – described the black hole of pride, when it collapses into itself. Despair, the utter decrepitness of despair. He stood tall, but you could see the strain of the effort. The ruin of what once was great, the tragedy of a humanity swaying without its architecture, holes of emptiness, what remains when nothing is left.

----

He had a stern look on his face. A starbucks grande in one hand and books in the other. You could instantly distinguish him from the crowd, as he rushed through the pack never looking up. As I quickened my pace to follow his footsteps, each of his stride kept doubling mine. Striving to keep up, I incidentally mimicked his every move, stature, behavior, and attitude.

Suddenly, I too, had a place to be.

Something about him reflects in all of us. No matter the situation, we are always battling time. Time never seems to be enough. Whether it is finishing an assignment on time, spending time w/a loved one, or battling cancer... it's something that runs out.

Ah, however, there is a solution to this. The glass is not half empty my friends, it is half full.

It's all in perspectives. Life is defined by perspectives.

I'm trying to see time, as a substance in which I can fill up w/memories, good people, progress, and health.

It's something I want to fill up, rather than just use up..

OKAY too late

gnite