I stop and momentarily admire the artistry of painted names and symbols
surrounding the tangle of bridges and scaffold, before determining I cannot
make it to my sacred path without severe water damage. Turning around, I
allow more ducks to pass, before running to another bridge that takes me to
an incline. I think of saying hello to a group of large men speaking in Spanish,
but I run past. Hearing a “hey!” I keep moving. At the opening to the path, I
wait for cars, one lets me pass and I run past a white 20-something year old
on his bike with safety lights and helmet. At this point, I can hop barbed wire
into the train yard but decide against it. Fifty feet down, there’s an opening
in the fence and I walk in and ask a man if I can get to the river from here.
He tells me it’s all fenced off, and I thank him and run out. I’m free to go, no
threat, no issue, a harmless red-headed Jew just passing through.
Across the street, a security man leaning on a big biodiesel generator tells
me there must be a party or filming in the La River Center. I ran through an
open gate to a park I’d never noticed at the edge of the center. Sprinklers
on but the fountains are off, I pass through the majestic space, wondering
why I’d never come here to read or play Scrabble with a friend. Out the other
side, an old man locks up the bakery that permeates a yeasty deliciousness
throughout the valley. After a motorcycle spits off down San Fernando and
turn just past the trailer park into the park, where more kids are playing
soccer. Nearby, a small group of men outside a big DIY-painted blue and
black RV are talking. Next to the bus depot, faint drumming emerges from
a gymnasium, and bright light from an open door reveals central American
Indian men and women dancing with maracas and plants in their hands, while
other men drum with big sticks against the wall. Transfixed at the scene, I
quickly turn, tiptoeing away from such overwhelming cultural beauty, only
to find myself facing a mural of the same Central American people painted
against the bus depot wall. I feel so grateful to be a fly on the wall in this
great cultural patchwork city. Then I think about petitioning my wealthy white
friends to move here and start an intentional community. The two feelings
run a static charge. I am so blessed to have this experience, these eyes, this
place to call home, and yet I want to change it. Why? Because I already have
changed it by being here?
Up the hill, I pass a middle-aged Salvadorian woman and then a man
sprawled out on his couch looking right out the window of an apartment
behind a glass repair shop. The amazing Ford Bronco that’s painted blue and
white sits outside the library that’s been under construction for the last five
years. I turn down a street where I’ve been told some gangsters live and cut
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