La Cienega Blvd. under the 10 freeway.
“I thought it, poetic .”
“Not really; more of a clichéd poetic.”
“Doesn’t it say something to you?”
“What does it say to you?”
“I marvel at the fact that one word, as simple as one word, can move someone, like the same way a poem moves when you read it, all just words. You look at a billboard, words. It gives you a message. You internalize it. Words move, even if those words don’t make sense. Out of context, and sometimes, with way too much context, and even just one word, one tag, that can move.”
“I wonder if the guy who owns all that shit is okay, and of course, I immediately think, of course, he’s not okay. But he was just there. Surviving. And you think, How long does he have left? I mean, if that’s rock bottom…”
“How do you know that that’s rock bottom?”
“If that’s not rock bottom, if that’s not the lowest one will go, one can go, then what does low look like?”
“It looks like death. That’s the lowest one can go.”
“I think we’re high when we’re dead. When we die, we’re not dead anymore. We’re elsewhere. I no longer matter to people, and people no longer matter to me. I, for one, couldn’t give a fuck about another stranger dying.”
“Would you give a fuck if that person who owned all that shit died?”
“Yes. Now, I do. I feel like I know him now.”