Angels in America

No, I am not talking about Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America, even though it’s one of the greatest plays ever written. I am talking about the Angels I encounter on the streets of Los Angeles. The dark and the dreary images of these helpless and trapped souls are frightening yet there’s something peaceful about them. As I walk down the streets of Downtown L.A from Wednesday to Sunday on my way to work, I have acquainted myself to some of these unnamed bodies. One I call the “bleeding footman." Underneath the squalor, grubbiness and filth lies the face of a young man in his early twenties whose eyes are shrouded with anguish but with a glimmer of hope, his face tangled with untamed beard yet I see a twitch of smile. He is lost but not lost in despair and discouragement but in his own happiness. Picking at his dry wound on his foot which looked like it’s eternally bleeding but at the same time finding it’s own way to heal. Life is full of contradictions and ironies.

I walk by him everyday giving him a mere glimpse, today it was special. I stood under the tree and watched this being giving his undivided attention to the wound. Talking to it, feeding it with lies, pep talks and nurturing it with his dirty hands and a smile on his face; only his mind knows what his obsession was with his bruise, but he was satisfied. I see him and I see the millennial who is mirroring exactly what he was doing. The young woman sat at a nearby café, picking at her gluten free sandwich with her earphones on, looking obsessively on her electronic device oblivious of her surroundings. Just like the “bleeding footman," the only difference between these two individuals was, she wore a face of disdain and sadness. He was happy with his death-like wound and she, who is still figuring out her life; is searching for happiness. Happiness is indeed a choice, irrespective of their stories, who they are or were, how did he get here, how did she get here, he chose to be happy in his darkest hours while the young woman finds herself staring at her social network double tapping, judging herself, her beauty, confidence and in her finest hours. Only if she knew how beautiful she was, how wonderful her life would be if she chose to delete all these man made illusions except her self worth. Again, I am writing from my own perspective, I don’t know their stories; everyone has their own story and the stories are brilliant.

I will not exclude myself from these individuals, I find myself going down the rabbit hole I have created in my mind. There are days, it’s hard to climb out of the hole and allow darkness engulf me, suffocate me until I gasp for air. I find myself hugging my body in the hole, consoling my weeping soul and whispering "I forgive you" to myself. It’s a climb, a lesson, a journey from darkness to light. Forgiving myself is the hardest thing I had to do, then was I able to forgive others. As these two were mirroring each other, I stood there and read the giant graffiti on the wall at the crossing of 8th and Hope, “you are a Goddess, living in the City of Angels”.

We have all dreamed of the Utopian world, an Arcadia—no place for hate, no color, no religion, everyone can live and choose freely. Only love, kindness and healing and abundance. But we don’t realize that we are living in the Utopian world. THIS IS the perfect world where to know happiness, one must endure pain and sadness, we must learn to lose what we have in order to gain, we must get hurt to heal, attain peace we must experience chaos and havoc. To love, we must learn what it feels like to hate. We must fall in order to rise, there lies our perfection... in our mistakes. We take this beautiful gift called life for granted and then in the brink of losing it, we learn to cherish it. This is Utopia, a place for us, for our kind to learn, love, heal and to grow. We talk about love, but truth be told, we really don’t know what love is nor do we know what hate is. Everything we do or know is conditioned by the books we read or the society we live in. I call myself the inamorata of spices and herbs, I love life, the downfalls, the tragedies, the heartbreaks, the errors and the follies because through these I gather all the ingredients, which I’d like to call lessons and enrich it with spices, which are my emotions, and create a beautiful dish that I want people to have a taste of. I want to taste theirs as well. The Exchange of human connections, empathy and concoctions of experiences and stories make the best meals.

To me when I look at the “bleeding footman” covered in his own gunk and foul smell, playing and smiling and happy with his wound – I see an Angel. I see an Angel with his broken wings. My mind is an Utopia of my own and my love starts by accepting it just the way it is, not judging it or conditioning it to think rationally, unafraid to see something different you may well never understand.