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Beneath Us

Occasionally my eyes go where my feet go all the time. So much beauty and accidental form walked through, by and upon without ever being seen but peripherally. Sidewalks, lawns and streets are tapestries of pure function woven with petals, twigs and refuse cast into precise positions by momentum and gravity alone. The first light of morning gives these dramas their momentary glory. A glimpse of history is tentatively held up by a rail and blackened wood ties echoing a freight train path on the edge of an obliviously young and oily parking lot. Plant life is undaunted. On a petal blessed lawn, a tenuous fence holds nothing in or out of its demarcation. The clockwork sun begins its daily vocation on the eye level of a fallen leaf. For a moment mere sidewalks borrow a diamond necklace glow. A few stretching shadows later, dusk hides everything equally. Again. One dramatic day in this West LA neighborhood, the familiar asphalt of a street is ceremoniously scraped off to reveal forgotten soil one layer down from our view, our tires and our shoes. The next dawn suffuses its mineral nature for its brief performance in the sun after half a century waiting in the wings. The scars of the surgical process expressively delineate the chasm between the residential tameness and the wild earth it sits proudly on top of. Trailers full of asphalt pass like comets over naked manhole covers showing off temporary orbit trails of gravel planets. And then it is all hidden again by the smoothness of oil and pebbles that our tires prefer under them as they roll blindly over. The trucks move on. The morning dance of blue and gold goes backstage again behind our horizontal theater proscenium of attention.