Status Updates From Tropic of Orange

‘See the homeland—Don’t he know? Pretends he was too little to remember—can’t remember the Singapore they’re talking about. ‘What’s gonna surprise you—the eye of a storm coming—Everything’s colliding into everything.’ Digital memory failed to translate imaginary memory—the watching population surfed channels—There were not enough dots in the universe. In other words, to see it, you had to have been there yourself.’

‘—some were miserable, some hungry, some miserable and hungry—wending their way through life’s travails to a place of commonalities—miserable & hungry people—It was as life is: spilling its guts and filling its belly, endlessly. But, on a scale of reality to substance abuse—Time stood still momentarily—Looking for the eternal buzz—being someplace unsafe but pretending for the sake of others that everything was okay.’

‘‘Homelessness’s hardcore. 42 thousand citywide. 150 countryside. That enough homeless for you? You see homeless bobbing like pigeons in the streets. What you think? Dropped their contact lenses?’ Got a call—Singapore. Better talk—Find out the truth. Ginseng. $98.98/lb. On sale. Tang Gui. $8.89/lb. On sale. Adjusting the yin. Adjusting the yang. ‘She didn’t cost anything. Everyone knows you bring in the girls free.’’

‘Everybody’s got a timepiece—Watch was an outward reflection of your personal time. Had nothing to do with being on time. Had to do with a sense of time. Sense of urgency. Sense of rhythm. Cadence. Sense of history. Like listening to oldies with Margarita—and it wouldn’t make wrongs go away. Time came back like a reminder. Time folded with memory. In a moment, everything could fold itself up, and time stand still.’

‘He performed for the rich, the famous—the infamous—When they put him in jail, he performed for his torturers. And when they tortured him, he performed for his fellow inmates. He died a thousand deaths, but they could never shut him up—the scream of his absence. In one installation, he wore wings—sat in a cage. It was shocking, but profitable. He could—feel the already-heating breezes flowing from the Sea of Cortez.’

‘Been standin’ here—long time—will continue to long after you & I are gone. These trees’re like my watches here, markin’ time—knows the time for everything. Knows to put out flowers & fruit when the time’s right—Suppose we could all learn something from a palm tree that knows—better than us. The freeway—a great root system—an organic living entity—writhing concrete—& nothing less than the greatest orchestra on Earth’

‘If you know your Asians,—You say, that’s Vietnamese—underweight. Korean—rounder face. Chinese is taller—Turns out you’ll be wrong—Dude speaks Spanish. Comprende? Turns out he’s from Singapore. You say, okay, Indonesian. Malaysian. Wrong again—Hey, it’s not his real name—Chinese from Singapore with a Vietnam name speaking like a Mexican living in Koreatown. “Summer solstice today—that means the sun is right there—”’

‘—blood oranges, mandarins—Mexican limes—foliage spreading a rich blanket across the land. In the days when the orange was a blossom of soft petals, its fragrance surprised her. She had passed beneath the orange several times, drawn to its sweet scent before she had discovered it. The perfume could only be emanating from that curious flower—it was as if she knew this scent intimately—salty winds blew—like a lullaby.’

‘And my father’s people came from even farther south—brought his family across mountains & through the jungles to get here. But that was a long time ago—old-timers knew how to endure—my mother’s people were weavers, & my father’s people built the looms. They couldn’t talk to each other at first. They talked through their weaving and fell in love—she herself had never bothered to learn Chinese. Maybe she should have.’

‘Dodger Stadium commemorates in no way the Chicano neighbourhoods whose residents were forcibly evicted—properties were buried under landfill for—parking lots—razed—buried under famous freeways. Displacement—dispossession—dislocation continues—under the guise of gentrification. This book holds in solar heat like a piece of granite—you’re in for seven kinds of L.A. narratives—an origami flower of razor-sharp titanium’