Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 38

J.T.2 Comments

I am driven by the challenge to not only survive, but to thrive all across Los Angeles, even during this most unusual time. The fact of the matter is that I love challenging myself, taking on one task after another, and finding out just how I’ll get through.

I know I’m doing it all for a story, or for a cuento, which I will get to share with many generations for many days to come. To that end, it’s my great pleasure to announce that I’ve officially received my Certificate of Clearance from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

In the long term, the certificate allows me to pursue a teaching credential to become an official teacher in the state of California sometime within the next five years. In the shorter term, it assures that once the students get back to school later this year, I’ll be available to support their community on stand-by as a Substitute teacher.

It boggles my mind to think that I could actually do this. For the longest time, even while I believed that education was a world I was destined to be a part of, I struggled to find exactly what my role in it could be. This was due to a number of factors, including many jobs lost, many other jobs gained, and at some point as a result the notion that perhaps I had very little to offer my community after all.

But like the magical screen-printer from Compton whose talent allows me to pursue another dream for myself through Los Angeles, it’s true that at the end of the day, every human being has something totally unique and valuable to offer the world.

In turn, whether I am a substitute or a fully-certified teacher for students in Los Angeles and across California, what I can be certain of is this: I will give it my all to make our time an extraordinary one.

J.T.

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Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 37

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The summer-like heat was something fierce this day.

On this Friday the world appeared to me to return to its normal state by virtue of the summer glaze over the skyline, through the windows at home, and across the din of my eyebrows while I zig-zagged past so much of Los Angeles delivering the new Los Cuentos face-masks to the people.

Like the Los Cuentos hoodies, and the Los Cuentos caps a year earlier, the new face-masks are as much about caring for communities in Los Angeles as they are about declaring to the world of the metropolis that coronavirus notwithstanding, we are here, we are activated, and we’re not going anywhere without our cuentos still guiding the way.

I am thankful for every supporter in this next chapter for JT, and can assure them we will continue meeting the work with the same dedication and enthusiasm we show for this blog.

Let’s get covered, Los Angeles.

J.T.

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Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 36

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A scintillating sunlight brought an irresistible energy to the city today, brushing Los Angeles in great strokes that seemed to lift every color’s saturation to levels not seen in many months. A most welcome and radiant return.

I rose early, taking advantage of new-found springs of energy, which, especially after a broken night of sleep due to the fault-lines of this land that I write from, I was determined to put to use more synchronistically.

My whole world seemed to cooperate seamlessly with this prerogative, leading to a morning that in hindsight appears as though I swam past it like a beam traveling through a kinetic force field.

But when I pause to think for a moment about how more than 7 billion people in the world participated in sequences just like this, in cuentos all of their own, spread across land, ocean, skylines, and even underneath the surface of the earth, I can only marvel at the great achievement that is being alive in any way or form.

I think of all the things I’ve yet to see with my own eyes, but which I can still visualize about the world around me; in imagining the myriad of colors, shapes and sizes flowing from a trillion unique movements atop the planet’s spinning axis, I am ensconced with everything dead and alive, everything that’s ever lived, and everything which ever can be.

Even those things just in our minds are formed by hundreds of billions of neurons; in turn, with whatever time may lie ahead, I hope every reader of this series can also put their billions to great work. Los Cuentos awaits it.

J.T.

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Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 35

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Last night, only a few minutes after midnight, a 3.7 earthquake rocked the city of Los Angeles, making of my mind something like a frightened fish as I scurried for safety in reaction to a sudden, unwelcome stirring of the fishbowl.

Already weary, and already dazed at the final edge of a lengthy day spinning like a trompo across town, the shaking reminded my body how at any given moment, life remains a fragile force-field in a much larger one. At the same time, in a strange twist, what was also true was that on accepting the chaotic whirling of the world around me and finding something of a steady footing, I was actually ready for more bad news; in my own way, I was ready to face another crisis within the larger one that’s enshrouded all of our cities as of late.

Fortunately, the midnight rattling would be the apex of its type for the remainder of the dark morning, but its unexpected wrangling would still cast a specter over the sunrise that lasted even through mid-day for yours truly.

Even so, come the final moments of the lunch-hour, when I stood outside to gaze at the still road, and as my eyes fluttered through the southern California winds trying to process what had happened to my once-familiar city–or what was happening–I realized that the only thing that was truly different, was me. And then, that’s when I loved Los Angeles again. A city which, even if I can’t recognize it sometimes, still takes me around the world like no other.

J.T.

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Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 34

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I know that during these times there are families all across Los Angeles struggling to wage past this unlikeliest of changes in their lives. I know that not all of these families can simply take this crisis “on the chin” and boldly trust in the way forward as their more privileged counterparts might be able to.

I know that many teachers in Los Angeles are wavering past isolation that existed between them and their departments well before the crisis, and that this is only more pronounced now in the scramble to learn the how-tos of leading courses online while also needing to check off other long lists of personal needs as adults and professionals.

I know there are many students spiraling through a myriad of emotions, yearning to leave the nests they’ve been stuck in these last few weeks, alongside siblings who are similarly disconcerted, and close by parents who are also harboring emotions they might never have expected of themselves amid so much time with their loved ones.

I know there are tears blossoming across eyelids throughout the days into evenings between the small places we call home, that there are windows being rattled and sometimes broken, and that there are heart rates and blood pressures tailing off the Richter scale in dizzying spells with no end in sight at this point.

I know it’s not fair. And that there’s very little poetic justice to sound bells for in yet another call to persevere again.

But I also know that this is not the whole cuento.

I know that with each bitter evening, no matter how sour the sting of defeat might be, the fact is that for every last one of these families, individuals and more, a better day is not long from them.

I know this because I’ve lived this. And I know this because I’ve seen others live through their own winding roads of unimaginable loss and discord, only to still somehow rise again the next day to greet another bright morning in Los Angeles.

I don’t know exactly when I came to know this, nor precisely how resolutely I’ve memorized the lesson plan, but I do know that it’s for the purpose of continually uplifting my community no matter the distance, as my community has done for me during all these years mysterious flowing past my brainwaves.

I now recognize my community, even if only to let them know that their cries do not go unheard, that their tremors do not come and go in vain, and that their cuentos will continue. Words, like most things, are only temporary utterances, which can sometimes provide just temporary relief from the weight of the world. But I believe we can find all of the life of the universe imbued in such precious intervals. Indeed, that’s how I arrived to this conclusion today.

Onward we continue Los Angeles,

J.T.

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